Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver, the visionaries responsible for the blockbuster GREEN LANTERN: REBIRTH and THE SINESTRO CORPS WAR, comes the start of an explosive and jaw-dropping epic that will reintroduce to Barry Allen, the modern age Flash who single-handedly birthed the Silver Age of comics!

“Flash: Rebirth” has so many plot twists and major revelations (including, at last, an explanation of how the “speed force” that all Flashes draw upon works) that it’s difficult to suggest how good this story arc is without dropping any spoilers, so let’s just say that in the aftermath of the Final Crisis, Barry Allen returns to Central City, which is more than happy to welcome back its original Flash. The moment Barry confronts his first supercriminal, though, things go catastrophically wrong.

Geoff Johns, whose 2000-2005 run on the Flash comic book convinced that Wally West was THE Flash, now imagines Barry Allen as “a man out of step with everyone else”, from his quirky sartorial and social habits to his old school sense of morality. His reintegration into a grittier, somewhat more corrupt 21st century Central City will be a treat to watch. Ethan Van Sciver’s artwork, a blend of photorealism and wild exaggeration, is in a class by itself, and “Rebirth” looks like a six-issue riff on Carmine Infantino’s spare, stylized Flash pages from the ‘sixties and seventies’. Like their previous collaboration, Green Lantern: Rebirth, the Johns/Van Sciver Flash is an exciting, must-read update of a classic Silver Age hero.