“Step Six: Stop Running”
Cover Price: $2.99
Bargain Price: $0.25
Cover Date: December 2009
Having read the intervening issues, I’m sorry to say that Run fails to live up to its first issue, but only just. As the story progresses, it quickly becomes a tale about the Human Flame’s rather inept quest for power, coupled all along with his penchant for self delusion, particularly among a cadre of DC’s lamest villains, and for carelessly taking advantage of those around him. Still, it’s hard to think of him as truly evil. He does commit horrible, despicable crimes, but he lacks the Machiavellian mindset to seem truly evil. Instead, he’s just kind of a douche, and while that’s pretty entertaining for two or three issues, it does begin to grate a bit by the end. As I hoped, there is no road to redemption for the Flame, but, as I feared, the result is a lead character who becomes increasingly annoying, so much so that writer Matthew Sturges brings in Jon Steward, Firestorm, and Red Tornado to give us heroes to latch onto and through whom we can witness the Flame’s inevitable and slightly ironic end. Still, I’m being perhaps a bit too harsh on the book. Even if it isn’t quite what I wanted, it is still entertaining and wonderfully off kilter with some terrific art from Freddie E. Williams II and, for a quarter, you can’t ask for much more than that.
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