THE FLASH #30
Written by Joshua Williamson
Art by Neil Googe, Ivan Plascencia, Steve Wands
Published by DC Comics
Release Date: September 13, 2017

Barry’s breaking, y’all…and there’s a new villain in Central City who appears to have some serious firepower.

Joshua Williamson is throwing strikes with this series and this is a solid start to a new arc primed for crushing Barry. Williamson builds the new villain, Bloodwork, well. There’s a solid Silver Age style back story here and it’s super-hero-y goodness. The dialogue work here is solid, the pacing is good, and this work is very in line with what we’ve seen from Williamson in this Flash run so far. I’m intrigued to see where he takes this, and the destruction of Barry Allen is entertaining enough to keep me interested.

Neil Googe’s artwork has some highs and lows. His highs are in the final pages with the new villain design and with when Barry is cutting loose, the Negative Speed Force looking like it’s killing and possessing him simultaneously. The lows show themselves when Googe is working with non-costumed faces. At points, characters look inhumanly crazy, to the point of it actually pulling me from the story rather than just being stylized art. This isn’t every panel, but it was frequent enough to break the reading flow for me.

The colour work by Ivan Plascencia is great taking Googe’s stronger pencil work and making it leap from the page. There is electricity in Plascencia’s palette and I really appreciated how there has been such a shift in the colour work as Barry’s powers have changed and become more volatile. There’s a darkness where there once was light and Plascencia’s work sets a great visual tone for this story.

The Flash #30 is a solid start to this arc and I’ll definitely be reading more. When Googe is on, the book is great and I hope to see more of that in the The Flash #31.

The Verdict: 7.0/10