Williamson's Flash run...

[sbp1972]

... so, I stuck it out from #1 through Flash War, then called it quits.
I found his Barry to be nothing but a constant "Woe is me, my life is a string of misery". Like, the type of person I would disassociate from in real life, because they are just such a constant downer. His Barry was the type to respond to "Sure is a nice day out" with, "Yeah, but it's going to rain this weekend. Probably historic flooding. Lots of people may die". And the addition of all the uninteresting additional Forces killed it for me.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure: I am a Wally fan through and through, never understood the reasoning (yeah, I know, Barry was Didio's favorite, and his well-known distaste for Titan characters) for bringing Barry back and basically trash-canning Wally. To me, Barry is wayyyyyy more interesting as the deceased spiritual inspiration to Wally, and by extension Bart and Jenni, and even (to a degree, based on respect) to Jay.

Anyway, rambling to get to my point: I'm seeing a lot of positive feedback at the end of his run on the book, and Speed Metal (which I will be picking up). Did he change something in the book, as far as his writing of Barry's personality?

[Dred]

He just undid a lot of bad stuff that's been plaguing the franchise over the last 15 years. And a lot of it is holdover praise from Speed Metal, which is much better than Finish Line.

[Restingvoice]

I don't know if I can hold him for being pessimistic if his stories have people he likes or feels responsible turn villains or mentally ill then manslaughter...

[The no face guy]

I thought the series was great for the first two years, with the Godspeed, the Rouges and the return of Wally West, but than it took a dip for a while, but it was still good enough to have on my pull list.

It started to get good again with the rise of Captain Cold, but the whole finale event has been a bit ho hum for me, but that could be in part that I've grown tired of the Reverse Flash over the years, and I'm not so big on having a big flash speedster family, the Flash is starting to turn into Green Lantern in that respect.

[Hol]

I feel like he is getting a lot of praise because he brought back many beloved characters that people missed and he retconed a bunch of stuff we mostly all hated. But really his Flash run seemed weak to me. Clunky dialogue and weak plots. Nothing special. I did enjoy Speed Metal though.

[Adset]

I think it also gets a bump because it was leagues better than that New 52 travesty, and both Waid and Johns’ second runs.

I thought it was overall solid, but nowhere near the three great runs of volume 2.