By Zack Quaintance — The Blue Flame #1 is one of the best new #1 comics I’ve read all year. It’s an intriguing and rich read as a single issue comic book, pacing itself perfectly as it both orients the reader in a world of new characters while at the same time seeding multiple fascinating mysteries. It spins pieces of recognizable tropes — from pulp sci-fi to superhero team stories — within a hazy fog of melancholic borderline apathy, creating a reading experience built upon tantalizing hints of fantastic escape and recognizable bouts of languor and apathy.

Oh, and it all leads up to perhaps the most horrifying and sudden cliffhanger I’ve experienced in comics — or any other storytelling medium, for that matter — all year. The Blue Flame #1 is, simply put, an absolutely excellent comic that I think anyone engaged with the medium should pick this Wednesday, although be advised that some of the subject matter is serious, particularly as is it pertains to — SPOILER PAST HERE… — mass shootings.

So that’s my broad, glowing 20,000 foot review of this comic in a mostly vague sense. The two questions that remain, I imagine, are what exactly is this comic about, and what elevates it to the point of receiving your first perfect review (for 2021, anyway, a year in which we’ve tightened the standards on what constitutes perfect). First things first, this is a comic that bounces through several motifs. We open on a lone deep space explorer, sort of a floating Adam Strange-Green Lantern-Flash Gordon type, headlined by a story summation in just the most excellent pulp sci-fi evocative letters. We get a splash of lonesome interstellar art, minimalistic pitch-perfect captions, and a story that moves to an adventure on a strange world. And within nine pages that has ended, and we’re in Milwaukee.

From there we get small talk with a neighbor, snow shovels, morning coffee, and HVAC repair, tethered by a few key visual clues — the blue uniform, the hero’s blue eyes, a familiar posture, the severity of a certain stare — the interstellar segment that came before. And suddenly that bit recedes and it is revealed the subject is a known superhero throughout Milwaukee. It’s a blurring of the fantastic and the domestic, reminiscent of some of the conceptual and tonal work done by Tom King and Mitch Gerads on Mister Miracle, except I would argue what this book does is more impressive, given it’s building its fantasy side from scratch, rather than constructing something on a foundation of known and beloved characters.

What is perhaps most impressive about this comic is how coherent it feels, how smooth and well-paced, despite being split into multiple segments. There’s even a two-page total non sequitur in this book, wherein a couple — whom we don’t see before or after — discuss having conceived a child. In the hands of lesser storytellers or with a less coherent creative team, some or all of this comic might have felt jarring. But it’s all done so well with an excellent and unified tone that it fits together perfectly, and each of the various parts combines for a better whole, leading up to an ending that while shocking, brings it all into sharper focus.

That last paragraph is perhaps my best possible summation for why The Blue Flame #1 ranks in my mind as a perfect comic. It’s supremely confident, deliberate, and interesting. Every element of craft in this book is not only well-done but deployed in a way that serves a greater unified narrative, one that gets at the heart of the intersection of the fantastic and the tragic. It’s brilliant work, and my only complaint is that I haven’t been able to read through the rest of the series.

Overall: The Blue Flame #1 is a supremely confident, deliberate, and interesting comic. Every element of craft in this book is not only well-done but deployed in a way that serves a greater unified narrative, one that gets at the heart of the intersection of the fantastic and the tragic. It’s brilliant work. 10/10

REVIEW: The Blue Flame #1

The Blue Flame #1
Writer: Christopher Cantwell
Artist: Adam Gorham
Colorist: Kurt Michael Russell
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Publisher: Vault Comics
THE BLUE FLAME is a cosmic hero. The Blue Flame is a DIY vigilante that fights crime on the streets of Milwaukee. The Blue Flame is a blue collar HVAC repairman named SAM BRAUSAM. In the wake of a horrific tragedy, the boundaries of the Blue Flame’s identity blur even further. Now, before a universal trial, the Blue Flame must prove that humanity is worth saving. But in order to do that, Sam Brausam has to save himself. Can he?
Price: $3.99
Buy It Here: The Blue Flame #1

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.