Somehow someone has reset the events of Flashpoint so that they never happened. Thomas Wayne is alive again as the Flashpoint Batman but remembers everything that happened before - and is determined to put things right. Except someone called The Clockwork Killer - whose victims’ bodies are found with their innards replaced with clock parts - is stopping him.
Now, Thomas Wayne, the Flashpoint Batman, lookin’ for the fight of his life, is on the trail of the clockwork maniac, maniac, and has gotta detect like he never detected before - this is… Flashpants Beyond!
The title references Flashpoint, the book that kick-started The New 52 over ten years ago, the cover is designed to look like those early New 52 books, and the first issue is also drawn by Flashpoint Batman artist Eduardo Risso, and yet… this isn’t really a Flashpoint sequel. Not least because Flash himself is barely in it. It’s unexpectedly more of a continuation of the Doomsday Clock storyline, the Watchmen sequel that Geoff Johns wrote a few years ago.
Johns’ two original characters from that storyline - Mime and Marionette - reappear, the whole clock theme repeats throughout, there are references to Doctor Manhattan - and then there’s that final page. Except it’s not really a continuation either as that Watchmen stuff barely progresses here. At best it’s a superficial reprise.
If you’re a Papa Johns fan, you may be a tad miffed to discover he only wrote the first bumper issue. He co-writes the rest of them with Jeremy Adams and Tim Sheridan (never heard of either) but, if you didn’t know that, you probably wouldn’t notice as I didn’t think the writing was all that different from most of Johns’ output. That is, ordinary and competent up to a point.
It’s amusing how Johns tries to spin the disaster that was 5G (“Generation 5”), the DC launch that never was, as somehow being “averted”, rather than being cancelled by corporate and Dan DiDio getting fired!
Besides the alternate take on Batman and Joker, I wasn’t all that taken with anything else in the original Flashpoint world so revisiting all of that malarkey wasn’t terribly interesting to me. About the only slightly compelling thing Johns does with that stuff is with Superman’s reason for being sent to Earth. And, despite the “Nothing matters. Everything matters!” mantra being repeated throughout, I don’t think any of it does matter as we see things being rejigged effortlessly throughout with no consequences.
Similarly, we slowly discover that all this book is doing is basically table-setting for new DC titles (like The New Golden Age by Geoff Johns, which started in November). Or is it? Johns presents a ton of potential new books for DC to explore but, given how he did the same with Doomsday Clock and nothing was done following that (Tom King’s Rorschach series was unconnected and standalone), I’m dubious whether DC will actually pick up the batons being offered here and follow through with any of it not being directly written by Johns.
The Clockwork Killer storyline, the centrepiece of this book, wasn’t a well done mystery. There were no clues that the reader was given so there was no way of figuring it out for yourself - instead we have to wait and watch for Flashpoint Batman to somehow put it all together (although it’s kinda obvious who it is considering Flashpoint Batman has one other notable, and evil, character in his world and we don’t see them for much of the story). The framing device of Bruce Wayne Batman and the obscure characters he’s interacting with was dreary and convoluted to say the least.
The book did have me intrigued to keep turning the pages to see why we were revisiting Flashpoint/Doomsday Clock, and for the reveals, which Johns is pretty good at. Xermanico, Eduardo Risso and Mikel Janin’s art is excellent - Xermanico’s especially looks great and detailed with striking imagery dotted throughout.
Unfortunately though Flashpoint Beyond quickly becomes a slow-moving and vague narrative and ultimately reveals itself to be a filler-filled load of pointless nonsense. In that sense it’s a fitting “sequel” to the original Flashpoint which was much the same and could safely be skipped by anyone wanting to jump into reading The New 52. If you’re planning on reading Johns’ New Golden Age, you needn’t have to read Flashpoint Beyond as it’s little more than a weak - and I use this label in the loosest sense - “murder mystery”, beefed up with unnecessary exposition and world-building, with a short sizzle reel in the closing pages of attractions to (possibly) follow.
Flashpants Beyond? Eh. I wouldn’t.
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