Some thoughts about Flashpoint Beyond #1

Who is manipulating Batman?

Both Bruce and Thomas are investigating what made the universes change once again and this will take Thomas into a battle he might not win unless he gets a little help.

Worked solidly but not without a few issues.

Have to be frank here, I was excited to learn that Geoff Johns was working on another project (Even if that was yet another take on Flashpoint), but I wasn't so excited once I learned who was helping him. I'm not a big fan of neither Jeremy Adams or (Especially) Tim Sheridan's work and I quite frankly don't get why Johns decided to work with either of them (Then again, it wouldn't be the first time he works alongside a writer with erratic track record) and sadly some of their flaws can be seen here.

The chapter itself offers both plot-progression and surprisingly on-point character work, in fact it offers appropriate resolutions for a few characters that didn't get proper ones during the original Flashpoint. Right from the start is fun to see The Penguin working for Thomas as his own butler since you can see how different he is from Alfred which allows for many enjoyable scenes when he tries to raise the kid that Thomas just adopted. The story leads to the final confrontation with both Wonder Woman and Aquaman and considering how their respective plot-points just stopped during the first visit to this universe, is cool to see that at least we got some sort of ending for their conflict.

However, and here comes the issue, I feel this installment is overly-expository which is funnily enough one of the complaints I have with both Adams and Sheridan with many pages detailing what's happening to the world instead of actually showing it (In fact, the strongest scenes are when they actually show stuff). To be fair though, this doesn't read as bad as anything that Tim Sheridan has worked on so hopefully his involvement is minimal here (or maybe this was Adams' chapter, who knows?).

Xermanico and Mikel Janin share the pencils and they deliver a pretty solid job with expressive characters and on-point storytelling.

Nice read, hopefully the next one is not as overwritten.