Review: The Flash Vol. 4- Reverse

Quick Summary

Pros: The opening chapters are tense and do a great job in building up to the reveal behind the book’s main villain. The book’s main villain is an excellent antagonist with an interesting backstory. The book’s conclusion works well for all parties involved. The artwork still looks incredible.

Cons: The chapter with the new Kid Flash is poor. Conflicting love interests dilute moments that should be more meaningful.

Overall: Another volume of The Flash means another highly entertaining reading experience for fans to jump into. Within this book, a captivating story about a great villain is combined with simply stellar artwork. It gives the Flash plenty of opportunities to shine and works well as a continuation of his story throughout this era. This volume can be enjoyed by anyone on its own but is best read after experiencing the first three volumes in this series.

Story

At this point, it seems like old news to say that Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato’s run on The Flash is incredible and continues to be so in every subsequent volume. However, The Flash Vol. 4: Reverse reaffirms this level of quality so strongly that it is worth talking about again. This book has action, drama, and some great moments that show off the Flash’s skills as a hero and integrity as a human being. It also centers around an excellent villain, who’s story has some highly satisfying twists and turns. There are a few places where things, specifically relationships, aren’t handled well and one pretty lackluster chapter but these flaws are not severe in any way. In general, this is another entertaining addition to The Flash series.

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Reverse hits the ground running by establishing the mystery behind the Reverse-Flash. This enigmatic speedster has been killing everyone with a connection to the Speed Force and The implication surrounding this killing streak also raises suspense by making readers believe that either Iris and Barry will be the Reverse-Flash’s next targets.

The only problem, with this portion of Reverse, is that the team-up chapter with the new Kid Flash is rather poor. It offers little to the action story and the relationship between these two Flashes never develops into anything that makes this moment cool in retrospect. Instead, it feels like a lackluster way to promote the Teen Titans series within this series.

Then, in a great twist, the Reverse-Flash is revealed to be Iris’s criminal brother. I really didn’t suspect this twist coming but was pleasantly surprised when it happened. The entire situation is well executed and is enhanced even further when the Reverse-Flash’s backstory is dealt out. The backstory makes him sympathetic, as he was abused as a child and holds himself responsible for disabling his own father, but does not excuse his actions in the present. In this way, he becomes an antagonist that readers can understand but still root against.

At this point, Reverse enters its endgame and Barry is able to defeat Daniel by, temporarily, making him question his own twisted motives. Having the Flash win a mental and a physical battle over his opponent makes his victory even sweeter and is very true to his character. This victory also leads to an emotional confrontation between Iris and her brother, which continues the excellent character development from earlier, and leads to a satisfying wrap-up for Barry’s current story arc.

The only real problem that impacts various points of Reverse is the way it attempts to juggle between Barry Allen’s two current love interests. The majority of the volume focuses on his relationship with Patty and depicts him as completely happy with their relationship. However, other portions of the book, specifically a large flashback at the book’s conclusion, imply that Barry’s true love is actually Iris (which is something longtime fans are already likely to agree with). This makes it hard to enjoy sweet moments between either pairing, since it is unclear which one is real.

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Art

Once again, Francis Manapul’s artwork proves to be a tremendous asset to The Flash series. The characters are filled with emotion, the backgrounds are gorgeous, and the action flows well from one page to the next. Reverse also sees Manapul get more creative with panels than ever before. Some pages in this book are broken up into an incredible array of thematically relevant panels housed within a variety of creative shapes. Sometimes these shapes are part of the action taking place at the moment, other times they are contained within a full-page spread of a character’s body, still other times they are part of something else happening at that time. No matter what though, they look great and give the collection a unique and memorable visual identity. 

Reverse also contains some artwork from Scott Hepburn, in the Reverse-Flash flashback chapter, and Chris Sprouse, in the Zero Year flashback chapter. Neither artist performs at quite the same level as Francis Manapul but neither artist performs poorly either. Plus, since there work almost entirely depicts flashback events, it does not significantly disrupt the visual consistency of the modern-day narrative.

Continuity

The Flash Vol. 4: Reverse continues the story from The Flash Vol. 3: Gorilla Warfare (Review).

The story here continues in The Flash Vol. 5: History Lessons (Review).

This volume also makes references to other comic books, detailed below:

• Kid Flash’s adventures, before this point, were almost completely contained within the Teen Titans series, starting with Teen Titans Vol. 1: It’s Our Right to Fight (Review). See our Kid Flash Reading Order for more information.
• The final issue of this volume is a tie-in to the “Batman Zero Year” event. This event is kicked off in Batman #24, collected in Batman Vol. 5: Zero Year – Dark City (Review).