The Cover Alone Is Reason Enough to Pick This Up
Welcome to the world of Flashpoint where we can experience and explore alternate versions of the characters we know.
The Good
I have to begin with the cover. It's important to have a great cover and I often tend to forget to mention them. With a comic focusing on the circus life of the Flying Graysons and Deadman, it makes perfect sense to have a circus poster themed cover. And it looks pretty dang cool, as well.
With these Flashpoint tie-ins, we're seeing what happened to the other characters in this whacked out version of the DC Universe. Like an Elseworlds or What If? story, we get to see how things could have turned out for familiar characters if some event occurred differently. J.T. Krul gives us a look at the circus life with the Graysons and Deadman and you do get a sense of what life is like for them. Unfortunately for the Haley Circus, they are sort of trapped in Europe due to the war between the Amazons and Atlanteans. It's great, if not a little haunting, to see the Flying Graysons alive and happy, performing together. Luckily for Dick Grayson, he didn't lose his parents at a young age since Batman wouldn't have been there to pick up the pieces. The question is, how long will the happiness last? There are evil forces headed their way...
The Bad
Mikel Janin's art is great along with Ulises Arreola's colors. My only problem is there were times when you had to really look or pay close attention to the dialogue (which you should be doing anyway) in order to keep Dick, Jonathon Grayson and Deadman straight when all unmasked.
The costumes looked really cool as well but having the Flying Grayson wear "Nightwing" masked while performing seemed a little weird. A nice and eerie nod to the proper DC Universe but it almost felt a little too forced. Some of the other 'freaks' in the circus also felt a little too coincidental.
The Verdict
The Flashpoint miniseries might not all have major impacts in the main Flashpoint series but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be read. Deadman and the Flying Graysons is a solid and fun book giving a glimpse at what could have happened if tragedy hadn't fallen upon everyone involved. J.T. Krul has created an interesting relationship between the characters seen here and it's great seeing what happened to other characters not prominently featured in their own miniseries. I'm not really familiar with Mikel Janin's art but he does a superb job showing the Flying Graysons in action but when they and Deadman are unmasked, it could get a little confusing who each dark haired dude was. It's not just a comic about life in the circus. There is some major bad news coming your way. This is definitely worth checking out to see Dick Grayson, Deadman and the other background characters involved.
