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| Front cover of Flash Rogues: Captain Cold |
Score (out of 5 Capes)
A scattered collection of moments in the career of a middling member of the Rogues earns a middling score of 2.5 out of 5 Capes.
My Review
Leonard Snart, aka Captain Cold, has a very long history of villainy battling the Flash. This collection mines the DC Comics archives to pull out eight of his most memorable tales.
For such a significant rival, of course you have to start at the very beginning, and the collection does exactly that, opening with the 1957 Showcase #8 debut. Written by John Broome and drawn by Carmine Infantino, who would spend decades on Flash stories and lay a foundation for his classic look, the tale introduces the "ambitious crook" Leonard Snart. Needing a way to ply his trade despite the Flash, he accidentally exposes his gun to the rays of a Cyclotron (classic 1950s origins!). The result is a gun capable of blasting ice in various forms, and producing hallucination-inducing levels of cold.
Gardner Fox's 1965 story, "Captain Cold's Polar Perils!", comes next in the collection. It adds nothing to the Snart character, but does have some full-length fun with the ice and frigid hallucinations gimmicks.
When we reach the 1981 story, "Capt. Cold's Cold, Cold Flame!", written by Cary Bates and (still) drawn by Carmine Infantino, the criminal methods and motivations are the same but the person under the parka begins to grow. Bates introduces a love interest into Leonard's life. Alas, his choice in girlfriends is no better than his career choices; behind his back, she uses his reputation and his ice gun for a burglary spree of her own. The betrayal moves him to set up an attempted murder-suicide, foiled ultimately by Barry Allen as the Flash.
By 1989, Barry Allen has been killed in the massive universe-realigning Crisis on Infinite Earths story. But the race continues for the Flash, this time with former sidekick Wally West stepping into the starring role. The William Messner-Loebs tale from Flash #28 is perhaps the most forgettable of these collected stories, as the attempt to drop a classic Flash villain into the life of the new Flash falls flat. Maybe most notable is the big stylistic difference between this era's penciller, Greg LaRocque, compared to the longstanding look laid down by Infantino.
After decades of little to no character development behind Leonard Snart's history or motivations, the new millennium brought renewed focus. The tales in the second half of the collection, dating from 2002 to 2017, start to round out Captain Cold into a less one-dimensional character.
"Absolute Zero" (2002) by Geoff Johns (discussed more in the What I Loved section below) sends him on a mission of vengeance, hunting down the man who killed his sister.
"Best Served Cold" (2011) by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato similarly uses sibling tragedy to fire up the cold heart of Leonard Snart.
Most fun of all, though, has to be "Cold-Hearted", the 2011 limited standalone tie-in to the Flashpoint cross-over event throughout DC Comics. Our man Leonard, in this alternate reality, is Citizen Cold, the hero of Central City. He is a complicated hero, a dark and amoral edge just below the surface. Despite the adulation of the city, the cries of "Cold Snap! Cold Snap!" from his fans, he seems barely to acknowledge them.
Adding to the fun is the conflict with another icy villain, Batman's occasional opponent Mister Freeze. In this reality, he still harbours his own tragic back-story, but has been reduced to merely a head under glass. Writer and artist Scott Kolins pits the two cold-masters against one another in a fascinating, if too brief, comparison.
The efforts of all these writers over the past quarter-century help to round out this otherwise limited character. They unfreeze his back-story, give him more shape and dimension and begin to reintroduce some interest. We the readers finally start to care, at least a little, for this cold-hearted villain. I would love to see more texture added to his frosty exterior, ideally beyond tragic loss of a beloved sibling.
It is always fascinating to watch a character evolve and grow over time and this collection gives us a glimpse into Captain Cold. The nature of such a collection is to leave us hanging amidst any multi-part tales that they include, and this one is no different. And it shows the efforts and limited successes of writers who tried to make him a more human, relatable, nuanced character.
Over all, I give it a middle-of-the-road 2.5 Capes out of 5.
What I loved
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| Nicely done Revenge tale |
More recent writers have taken pains to expand the emotional and motivational range of Captain Cold. The results are mixed, but a couple moments do stand out in this collection.
The first is the tale of justice and revenge by Geoff Johns, "Absolute Zero" from The Flash #182 (2002). Johns balances past and present; flashbacks to the abusive father and Snart's tragic childhood interspersed with his current-day quest to avenge Chillblaine's murder of his sister.
Snart knows who he is and what he will or will not do, in Johns's telling, making for a lively if chillingly cold-hearted internal monologue. The pencil-work by Scott Kolins is solid. But it is the colouring work by James Sinclair that really makes the visuals stand out, using saturation differences to communicate when the panels are current and when they are flashback.
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| Giving Leonard Snart a tragic back-story |
Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato mine a similar vein in their 2012 story, "Best Served Cold" from The Flash #6. Again the death of Snart's sister is the motivation for his rampage, but this time he blames Barry Allen, the Flash.
Manapul's icy visuals are filled with clever touches, beyond the dangerous ice spikes and jagged fragments. My personal favourite is how he worked in the title of the series, "The Flash", into one of the spires of ice supporting a floating restaurant.
What I didn't love
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| Wally West inherited a Rogue |
With the set of eight stories pulled from various Flash series or Flash-adjacent one-shots, the hero beneath the mask switches from Barry Allen to Wally West and back again. But no matter who is the scarlet speedster du jour, Captain Cold continues to be a central rogue.
I understand that a rivalry so deep it turns to hatred will persist no matter who wears the uniform - the Yankees and the Red Sox will hate each other regardless. But when the hero's mantle is handed off to another hero, with his own life and friends, patrolling his own corner of the world, it is not necessary to continue the same Rogues' Gallery.
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| Simple escapes are always disappointing |
Several of the stories collected here are only one part of a larger story, an unfortunate side-effect of the nature of this kind of collection. I can forgive those, frustrating though they can be.
But there is no excuse for lazy, convenient short-cuts in the story-telling. The final tale in the collection is most guilty. "Rogues Reloaded Part Four" from The Flash #17 (2017) has the Flash at the mercy of a team-up of many of his Rogues. But by some massive good fortune, Flash accidentally broke one of their weapons just enough to incapacitate all of them but not himself. How convenient. How disappointing it must have been to anyone who had followed the entire four-parter, to have it end so randomly.
Related Reviews
Here are some reviews of other books that look at a character's evolution over their history:
Aquaman's 75th Anniversary collection
Poison Ivy's evolution told through the Batman Arkham collection
Quick Reference Details
Writers: John Broome, Gardner Fox, Geoff Johns, Joshua Williamson, more
Artists: Carmine Infantino, Scott Kolins, Francis Manapul, more
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: Aug 28, 2018
Parental Rating: Teen
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| Back cover of Flash Rogues: Captain Cold |
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