At the very core of the comic is a family, and the complications within that family can strike a pang of guilt and sadness into everyone’s heart. Read Full Review

The Flash #5 is not going to be for everyone, deepening an already complex story with more factors; but those who love high concept science fiction will truly appreciate it. Read Full Review

There's a reveal here about exactly what secret Jai has been trying to tell his father that's something I can't recall seeing in a long time in superhero comics, but this issue seems to ping-pong wildly between character-driven stories and a high-density sci-fi comic that continues to surprise. I'm wondering what the bigger picture here is, but I'm definitely intrigued enough to stick around. Read Full Review

The Flash #5 succeeds in creating a heartfelt story about a superpowered boy wrestling with his powers and his future. Unfortunately, the emotional strength of this issue is mired in pompous dialog, plot points that don't go anywhere, high-concept ideas that are meaningless, and a story that feels like it's treading water. Read Full Review

As with last issue, we get a character-centric story focused on another Flash child: Jai (Irey took center stage last month). It’s an interesting tale of Jai’s quest for his dad’s approval, a deeper exploration of Jai’s evolving powers, and a rather shocking glimpse into what happens when Wally thinks his son is gone. The sci-fi aspects of the plotting aren’t as dense and hard to follow this time around either. Spurrier has wisely realigned his storytelling approach to focus more on putting the characters front and center instead of the sci-fi wackiness, and the book is better for it.

Simon spurrier is one of the writers whom I am not a fan of. His writing is very hard to understand, since I feel like he's more of a fan of "black magic" or "occult" or "metaphysical" stuff similar to Grant Morrison. I tried reading Damn them All, but I couldn't understand it, and he puts out confusing explanations like "entangling conduits in the quantum waveform", or "kinetic hyper stimulation of organic molecules" or "organic homunculi"

I appreciate Simon Spurrier for the new concepts he's trying to put out, but this is too confusing for me. The one saving grace is that the art looks pretty nice and great.

I'm out

Can you suffocate from smelling your own farts so hard? Spurrier sure is putting it to the test. I don't mean to be crude but its the simplest way I can describe the books to this point. I am unsure if he got Jai's character correct (I prefer Adams stuff), and while some of it is kind of cool and the concept on paper is something I love... this just isn't working for me. It is like he is spinning his wheels and using complex words that when you understand what they mean... he is saying very little. He writes like what a dumb man thinks a smart man sounds like. This is deeply disappointing. I keep hoping it gets better because I should be loving every page... in theory. In reality I am choking on his pretentious farts.