Freddie E. Williams II

A few months after the end of Final Crisis, the Human Flame-- for whom Libra murdered the Martian Manhunter, thus convincing Earth's criminal fraternity to join his side-- wakes up in the hospital. He decides, small-time idiot that he is, to go on the run. And soon, everyone's after him: the Justice League, bounty hunters, criminals angry that Libra's plan didn't work out. And he picks up more enemies as he goes, including mobsters and the Endangered Army of General Immortus.

The Human Flame show more is purposefully portrayed as a pathetic villain here: not a has-been, but a never-was. He's not smart, he's not funny, he's not lovable. He's just a scumbag who thought he got lucky, but it blew up in his face, as almost everything does. Run! keeps him continuously on the move, escalating his situation, with more and more people pursuing him as he gains more and more power. I can't say I finished Final Crisis wondering what would happen to the Human Flame next, but this is a pretty diverting way to find out. The book is amusing, but not a laugh riot. I enjoyed the art of Freddie Williams II; it's somewhat grotesque, but also somewhat cartoonish, which is perfect for the subject matter. There's some gruesome violence here, but by and large it doesn't convince you of its reality, which is what I think this book really calls for.

Its essential problem is twofold: on the whole the book is pretty substanceless. You don't really learn anything about the Human Flame by chapter 6 that you didn't already know in chapter 1. Run! isn't really a book with anything to say. This might be okay, except that the book is six issues long. You could have substanceless three-issue runaround, or a substantial six-issue one, but as it is, it feels like a decent idea has been spread too thinly. Hopefully future Final Crisis Aftermath stories (they're all six issues long) have more to say than this one.

I did, however, really enjoy the Human Flame's short-lived ally, the Condiment King. A villain whose entire modus operandi is based around condiment puns ("mayo I intercede," "I'm soy glad to meet you," "you mustard up the courage"), this guy deserves all the exposure he can get. And surely he ought to ally himself with the greatest of supervillain teams, the Wurstwaffe.

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A pretty lackluster title. The big, bold lettering in the larger than normal text boxes got a little on my nerves. There was a countdown clock on almost every page that takes away from the art of the story. Not that the story was much, because this read like a Dr. Manhattan knockoff and I can't say I was all that pleased. I am understanding in reading all of the New 52 volumes, that there were some bad titles sprinkled in with the majority of good titles it contains. This is one of them. Do show more not read, unless you are a New 52 completist. show less

A pretty cool book, and not to difficult to follow along with. My experience is with GIMP rather than Photoshop, but most all of the stuff talked about in here I was familiar with and knew how to do, I just never considered using it this way. This book has made me excited about trying out digital drawing. The one downside to this book is that it stops at the inking stage and doesn't go into doing color (which, I suppose is something he doesn't do, so understandable, though it would have been show more nice to have had a co-author who does digital coloring to add a couple chapters about that at the end of the book. The cover illustration erroneously leads the casual browser to believe that coloring will be addressed). Overall though a good read. show less

An okay story that's by and large let down by pretty bad art. It's definitely not the worst art in the world, but ugh, it is ugly. Too messy, with warped character designs and questionable communication about what's going in a scene or who characters are talking to or what they're trying to do.