There’s no new Flash comics this week, but Salvation Run is being collected, and Kingdom Come is being reprinted.
Salvation Run
Written by Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges; Art by Sean Chen and Walden Wong; Cover by Joe Corroney
The hit 7-issue miniseries spinning out of Countdown to Final Crisis is collected in this new trade paperback. Exiled to a distant hell planet, the villains of the DCU split into two warring factions led by Lex Luthor and The Joker!
Notes: While Salvation Run tended to focus on Luthor and the Joker, each issue was told from the point of view of one of the Flash’s Rogues, the first group of villains to be exiled to the planet for murdering Bart Allen.
Kingdom Come – New Edition
Written by Mark Waid; Art and Cover by Alex Ross
Eisner Award-winning artist Alex Ross provides an amazing new cover painting for this new edition of KINGDOM COME, which features a deluxe foldout cover only on its first printing! (Subsequent printings will not include the foldout.)
Written by Mark Waid and illustrated by Ross, this is the unforgettable, best-selling tale of a world spinning inexorably out of control. Waid and Ross weave a tale of youth versus experience, tradition versus change, and what defines a hero. KINGDOM COME is a riveting epic that pits the old guard – Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and their allies – against a new, uncompromising generation of heroes.
On Salvation Run:
I find that this was a good concept, with good writers, that went awry.
The Flash Rogues were off character. What were they doing with Abra Kadabra, whom they hate and who had tried to kill them in the past? Captain Cold didn’t come off like the leader he was.
There was so much potential for greater tension here. Hell, just having Deadshot and Bane, two of the guys who helped round them up and put them there, could have been mined for more conflict than the few panels it got.
The whole situation didn’t feel like a gun powder keg, although it had all the right ingredients.
The art, while clean, seemed inappropriate as well. Chen and Wong are good but these villains seemed pedestrian and less sinister, less imposing that they ought to be. Even in a helpless, survival situation, you’d expect to see these guys come off as people you can’t trust. Here, they look like just guys walking around.
There were good bits though. The Doubles’ stunt with Hellhound was particularly inspired, and the Gorilla brawl was entertaining.
While I’m not to familiar with Sturges’ past work, I love Willingham’s writing. This, however, is not a high point.