The Flash: 5 comic book stories to read while waiting for season 7
By Scott Brown
United They Fall
A very recent addition to the comics collection, United They Fall is a great book to pick up new fans and old alike. This series, written by Gail Simone with art by Clayton Henry, completely stands-alone from every existing canon and acts as its own thing, most notable in the fact that Iris West is depicted like Candice Patton. There’s no need to know any elaborate back-story or read a two-page “Previously on…” synopsis. You just need to know that The Flash is a character that exists.
This collection, with each chapter originally released in The Flash Giant series, contains several relatively standalone stories that then combine into one larger story towards the end of each respective chapter. By themselves, each of these stories are fun, but when they come together, they present a nice presentation of The Flash mythology that isn’t wrapped up in decades of time travel and reboots. It’s a fun, relatively easy read that you should check out.
Rebirth
If you’re looking for the current ongoing series though and not just stories from a decade or more in the past, look no further than Joshua Williamson’s run that started with DC’s Rebirth initiative in 2016. Starting with The Flash: Rebirth No. 1, the series continued onto issue No. 88 before reverting back to the original number from all Flash series combined with issue No. 750. The most recent issue of the series to be released was issue No. 758 which paves the way for Williamson’s final storyline, which will end with No. 762.
So, really, it’s the perfect time to catch up with this series as it has been generally really good. There have been some lackluster moments and storylines, but for the most part, Williamson, accompanied by great artists such as Carmine Di Giandomenico, Howard Porter, and more, has been a fun ride.
This is the run that introduced Godspeed, who is apparently going to be featured heavily in season 7 of The Flash, as well as expanding the elemental forces beyond the Speed Force. And, despite some of the missteps along the way, the series heavily emphasizes the idea of the Flash family, which is wonderful to see in any capacity.