It’s probably every geeks’ favorite time of the year, new summer blockbuster movies and big comic book crossover events. DC Comics has Flashpoint and Marvel has Fear Itself so let’s have a little quick rundown on how these two summer events compare with each other.
Flashpoint #2 and Fear Itself #3. For starters, both events are shaping up nicely, pretty engaging stories with fantastic art. As expected, DC Comics and Marvel have brought their A-Teams to the game.
Writer Geoff Johns (Green Lantern, Infinite Crisis) is the brains behind DC Comics’ company-wide Flashpoint saga that promises to reboot/rewrite/re-establish the entire DC Universe this September. It starts with Barry Allen aka The Flash finding himself in a changed DC Universe where society is worse off than ever before, everything’s darker and most importantly, it’s a world where there is no Flash. What’s more, it’s been established that this is not a parallel universe but the same old DC Universe but twisted into something else. Some villains are now heroes while some heroes never came into being in the first place. For instance, little Bruce Wayne died in Crime Alley instead of his father Thomas Wayne and today, it’s the elder Wayne who is the Dark Knight. And Captain Cold is the hero Citizen Cold, Deathstroke is a seafaring pirate, Hal Jordan is not a Green Lantern, Aquaman and Wonder Woman are at war with each other, etc.
Now looking at Marvel’s Fear Itself, that’s where the main difference lies between the two series. While DC has turned everything inside out and introduced a whole new world, writer Matt Fraction (Invincible Iron Man, The Mighty Thor) has instead come up with a story that makes full use of all of Marvel’s big guns in a fan-friendly, straight-up, no-holds barred seven-part superhero slugfest.
The plot to Fear Itself is pretty clear-cut, a new major league villain, the Serpent, shows up, bestows new awesome powers to a bunch of ‘worthy’ Marvel heroes and villains, then turned them loose on everyone else. Yah, sure there’s much more to the plot than that but it all reads like a really fun ride that anyone can
follow and enjoy.
As for Flashpoint, there are a lot of question marks as in what exactly is going on, who’s behind it and most importantly, what happened to all our familiar DC characters? As this is only the second issue of a five-part series, we still don’t know a ton of stuff, which to me makes it hard to really care or connect with the
characters. That is the only major flaw preventing me from eagerly waiting the next issue.
Sure, the numerous tie-ins with all the DC heroes in their new roles sound interesting but the connection between them and the main Flashpoint series is still pretty weak. Unlike some of Marvel’s Fear Itself tie-ins which definitely fill in the story gaps between the main series’ issues. Like how the different heroes take on the hammer-wielding Worthy in different parts of the world.
I feel a sense of urgency more with what’s going on in Fear Itself than in Flashpoint right now. Maybe because I know at the end of Flashpoint, the DC Universe will be recreated (again) so whatever happens could be easily be undone (again), know what I mean? With Fear Itself, I don’t know what’s going to happen next or how it’s going to end, and that is making the kid in me really excited.
Two very different event series which I think is great for fans and like I said, both are well written, beautifully illustrated and definitely worth picking up.
