The big DC Comics event of 2011, Flashpoint, is out in trade paperback this week ($14.99). Barry Allen wakes up powerless in a world he doesn’t recognize, a world on the brink of war between human and superhuman nations alike. To save the world, he’ll team up with Batman to learn who changed history and how to put it right — but this Batman isn’t who he expects to meet beneath the cowl.
Of course, the conclusion of Flashpoint led directly into the reboot of the DC Universe into the form of the New 52.
The Geoff Johns/Andy Kubert miniseries was previously collected in hardcover last fall.
The various tie-in miniseries and specials will be collected in five trade paperback volumes starting next week. World of Flashpoint Featuring the Flash ($17.99) arrives in stores March 21, and collects Grodd of War, Kid Flash Lost, Legion of Doom, Reverse Flash and Citizen Cold.
Order at Amazon for delivery next week, or buy it in your local comic shop today!
If anybody read this comment and hasn’t read the book yet
DON’T READ IT.
If you have any doubts, go to wikipedia. Flashpoint is reaaaaallly bad (IMHO), and it won’t really tell you anything useful to understand the “new 52”, which don’t really need much explaining. DC might as well have launched the “new 52” without any event whatsoever and it would be the exact same thing.
Don’t say nobody told you.
True, anyone reading Flashpoint expecting insight into the New 52 is going to be disappointed. As I understand it, it was originally going to be a stand-alone event that would end with Barry restoring the previous DCU (probably leaving the door open for minor changes), but when they decided to go for the reboot, Flashpoint became the catalyst.
Finally! ‘been waiting for this one! (I’m a tpb-reader mostly :P)
And despite what the above comment said.
I’m a huge fan of Elseworlds. I’m a lot more interested in reading Flashpoint than the current New 52.
Always liked seeing familiar faces in completely different universes/worlds/situations. (heck, I loved “Sliders”, back in the day!)
I like the idea of Elseworlds as well, but IMO Flashpoint as a *setting* was limited in terms of the kinds of side stories that ended up getting told:
1. The idea was to create (in TVTropes terms) a Crapsack World, so that there would be no question about Barry needing to fix it. This meant that a lot of the settings and stories were dark to begin with.
2. There seems to be a sense at DC that alternate realities are expendable. (See, for instance, Countdown to Final Crisis.) Somehow the “anything goes” of an alternate universe gets translated to “anything can be destroyed.”
Crapsack world + everything is expendable = grimdark with an extra helping of death. Which is fine if it’s one of many flavors being offered, but what I read of the event ranged from sortagrimdark to reallygrimdark.
Agreed
But for me the real problem with Flashpoint is that it got expanded to lenghts that the very modest story that Johns wanted to tell, didn’t really need.
I have nothing against Crossovers or Elseworlds in general, but when you have a big setup, you need a driving idea that makes the whole effort cohesive. The world of Flashpoint is born and dies without ever really mattering at all, not to the development of the central story (which could and should have been much more self contained), and much less to the development of the DCU in general.
Flashpointless is really bad storytelling, and very few things coming out of it have any strength at all to have a life of its own. Some people will say that the Azarello/Risso Batman story was cool… and I would agree, but only because of the pretty pictures.
The only thing I didn’t like that much about Flashpoint (other than trashing the DCU I was accustomed with) was the Atlantis-Amazon War.
I only read the main mini so I never got the real sense or danger behind this conflict. So perhaps I’ll check out the TPBs that collect the tie-in minis, so if that will change my perception.
But yeah, this could’ve been a straight-up Flash event. The bits between Barry and Zoom were the best.
I liked Flashpoint. It was much more low-key, story-wise, than previous summer events. However, probably would have worked better as a story within “The Flash” main title.
Curious note: comic adverts (including “Flash” #6) for this wave of collections lists them as being in hardcover. Clearly, Flashpoint will be in a trade, but anyone know anything about the others?
Huh, I hadn’t noticed that. I remember them being announced as paperbacks. DC’s redesigned website seems to have dropped the format information. (It has page count, color/black & white, and page size, but doesn’t say whether they’re hardcover or paperbacks.) Amazon lists them as paperbacks, though, which fits with the $18 list price, so I’m going to say it’s probably a mistake in the ads.
Advertisements in current comics list the Flashpoint tie-in collections as hardcover? If you can scan and send to Kelson or to me at my Yahoo account, or if you want to post to http://facebook.com/collectededitions, I’d love to see this.
I got a scan of this and confirmed it’s a mistake; the Flashpoint tie-in books will be in paperback. I’ll post more on this later today.
I wasn’t sure if you’d respond to a comment on an older thread so I’ll ask here; Which “Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told” did you prefer, the newest one or the 90s one?
The 90s one, because it had a much wider variety of material. The more recent one was a lot shorter, and took up a huge chunk of its page count with a single 80-page giant story.