The Flash #22, and thoughts on "The Button" in general

The four-part "Button" arc concludes with the dramatic return of Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash, as well as prelude to Doomsday Clock, Geoff Johns's November-launching DC Rebirth event that finally delivers on the promise of integrating Watchmen into regular company lore.  I know at least one fan who thinks this is inherently a terrible idea.  Spent a great deal of time last year arguing against his brick wall about the sacredness of Alan Moore's iconic original story.  Alan Moore has a way of inspiring that kind of lunatic devotion, and I can't say I'll ever really understand that.  As far as I'm concerned, the guy is a hypocrite.  He thinks he operates by a separate set of rules just because in the '80s he was considered the greatest comic book writer of that time, a reputation that more or less still persists.  He borrowed the creator rights crusade other creators from that time staked a lot more of their careers on, creators who spent their time creating original works as a matter of course, rather than spending it working very deliberately on the ideas of others, as he very demonstrably did, regardless of what else can be said about his work...

But that's neither here nor there, really.  Let's talk about some creators who are proving vital in 2017.  (Jerusalem may be an eminently worthy piece of literature.  Moore's ego will probably prevent me from judging for myself anytime soon.  Shame.  That's the first rule of literature, that you don't put the cart before the horse.  But then, there's also a tradition of writers attempting to make themselves more famous by reputation than by their actual creative prowess.  Seemingly to give their work a little attention.  Except with Moore he seems to begrudge attention.  And that's the real problem, here.)

I'm talking about Geoff Johns, who is given conceptual credit for "The Button," because it follows DC Universe Rebirth, and leads to Doomsday Clock, so naturally he has a vested interest in how "Button" worked out.  I'm talking Tom King, who wrote one of its four chapters.  I'm talking Howard Porter, who since JLA has never really had the spotlight put on his art.  I'm talking Josh Williamson, whose work in the pages of The Flash has been excellent all along, but whose role in writing three of the four chapters of "Button" has suddenly thrust him into a new level of significance within the elites of DC creators.  As is, he's becoming one of the elites.

Even at four chapters, "The Button" is a story that progressed so deliberately that there seems to have been very little actual story to it, but as a sequel to Flashpoint along with every other thing that can be said about it, everything about it seemed inevitable, except the skill and finesse of the storytelling is actually what makes it read so smoothly, and again, that falls completely at the feet of Williamson.  Anyone can be told what's expected of them, what elements to use, what's supposed to happen, but if they don't make it work, that's pretty clear.  Williamson makes it work.  He makes it work so effortlessly, the result is that he seems to have done hardly anything at all.  Yet he's done a truly incredible job.  Superhero comics can be such thankless storytelling, with a long tradition of generic storytelling, adventure quests filled with scene after scene of good guys and bad guys doing their thing, and yet, even Williamson's Reverse-Flash, who ends up making a comeback of his own, aside from everyone else making splashy appearances, it's just as easy to overlook his significance as everything else.  Reverse-Flash, the classic one who caused Barry Allen hell not only in Flashpoint but "The Trial of the Flash," one of the longest Flash stories ever, until a few years ago virtually forgotten in the face of Barry's death in Crisis on Infinite Earths, who actually becomes a kind of new Psycho-Pirate, the character who remembered Crisis happened when everyone else forgot.  And you can see where even that's significant, how it ties everything together.

Williamson, in just the material I've read so far, has been telling excellent Flash stories already, but "The Button" has put him over the top.  I loved Flashpoint.  At the very start of this blog, it saved me as a reader.  I love that it has once again proven important (and also in the Flash TV series in the just-concluded third season, which presented its own interpretation of Flashpoint and its consequences). 

I love that kind of resonant storytelling.  I'm glad Moore was able to write things that connected so powerfully with readers.  But I'm sorry it came at the expense of his willingness to stay connected with the stories that made it possible.  He closed himself off.  What I value so much about storytelling is the ability to make connections, not wall them off.  That's what Moore loves, too, but he seems incapable of admitting it at this point.  He thinks everything exists in isolation, unless he says otherwise.  Things like "The Button," and the work of Josh Williamson in general, prove otherwise, as far as I'm concerned.