The Flash #1

To be perfectly honest, The Flash always felt like one of those comic characters that I knew a lot about due to their (I'll include all of them) endlessly appearances within countless wonderful animated series and movies. However I would be slightly surprised when I picked The Flash: Move Forward Vol 1. and I realised that I did know enough but less that I thought.

The Story

Or stories, are interesting. They move back between various genres such as science fiction, dsytopia and the superhero genre itself. We are allowed to fully explore the world of Barry Allen aka The Flash through himself, his enemies and his friends. However the first part of the volume was the part that really stood a part for me personally. Manuel and The Mob Rule were fascinating tragic figures whom's life is turned upside, I generally felt for them at the end of their eventual demise and hope that the second volume shows more of him as it looked as if Barry caused repercussions after that. Then of course we had Captain Cold and The Trickster making interesting appearances in different forms, Captain Cold is on a revenge warpath while the Trickster is observing from the background but is in the foreground on a few accounts.

However one issue I had was the silent movement of Gorilla Grodd and Gorilla city, I felt it put more weight and sometimes distracted from the actual story going on. I understand that Grodd will eventually be a threat but was it necessary to place him and his fellow Gorillas when something else was going on.

The Art

The art of this volume was some of my favourite, Francis Manapul has a completely but usual art style. It's softer and almost cartoonish compared to the last trade, I read in the form of Aquaman done by Ivan Reis (who has a more darker but Hollywood blockbuster art style).

Manapul manages to give a picture its own fluidity through the use of subtle lines and colours such as orange, red, yellow, flesh pink and brown which is interesting contrast when compared to the blue and purple world.

However Manapul really shows his artistic qualities when we see Barry thinking too fast or seeing events before it happen, this great as you see the usual comic book structure broken down into smaller chunks which fly to you off the page making you feel connected to the mind of The Flash.

Patty Spivot and Iris West

This is one character however I felt was a bit of cliche, the anti-Flash stance of the girlfriend of the man who is actually is The Flash is a rather tired superhero trope which really brings her character down. On top of that she feels rather clingy, I can't really say that makes me like her anymore than she really is. Iris West is totally the opposite, she independent and is classic Lois Lane reporter character whom is willing to get the story if it takes getting locked in a freezing cell! I liked how she didn't exactly rely on Barry in either one of his forms and its obvious they'll eventually get together, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Overall I enjoyed this trade, even if there we certain things that bring it down but it was still a great read.