New comic book reviews: Final Crisis - Rogues’ Revenge #1, The Flash #242, Mighty Avengers #16

Final Crisis - Rogues’ Revenge #1 & The Flash #242: Tom Peyer is one of those guys who guys like Mark Waid and Mark Millar or whoever always say is a great underrated writer who doesn’t get enough work, but man, he writes some bad comics.  The Flash #242 is just awful in every way and demonstrates that the man just doesn’t get the series, the characters, or how to write an appealing story.  Freddie Williams’ amazingly flat and static-looking art doesn’t help elevate the World’s Most Depressingest Comics Magazine, but there’s really no point getting too worked up as Peyer and Williams are just filling space as the Flash rejuvenation has gotten underway elsewhere, in books people are actually reading.  Speaking of which, this week also brought us Final Crisis - Rogues’ Revenge #1, which is that recently elusive and rare item: a good Flash story!  Of course, technically “the Flash” isn’t the star of Rogues’ Revenge, but outside of Libra from Final Crisis every other character in this book is a Flash character.  The best creative team of the Wally West Flash series steps right back into their roles as if they’d never left: Geoff Johns elegantly picks up some abandoned plot threads from his run on the book, explains away some of the idiocies of Countdown to Final Crisis and Flash: The Fastest Man Alive in a few panels, and reminds us why The Flash was where his writing was first widely hailed; I do wish Kolins had been forced to have his work properly inked, but he manages to evoke his previous work on the book quite well and his storytelling is stronger than ever here.   I find it slightly odd that this was originally not planned as an official Final Crisis tie-in, because man, it’s hard to see how this could have much more to do with FC so far without having Metron and Anthro show up.  Point blank, if you read and liked DC Universe #0 and Final Crisis #1 & 2, read Final Crisis - Rogues’ Revenge.  And no matter who you are, skip The Flash #242 — and most likely, every issue of that series until such time as the changes currently occurring in the Final Crisis books filter into the regular monthly Flash series, whether that be the current volume, yet another new Flash #1, or The Flash v1 #351.

Mighty Avengers #16: This was kind of boring and lousy, actually.  The Secret Invasion tie-in backstory of when Elektra was replaced by a Skrull turns out not to be that interesting or dramatic, at least to me.  Oh well, they can’t all be winners.

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