Review by Ian Keogh

When tackling Girder alongside Flash, Kid Flash is over-confident, arrogant and showboats, resulting in greater danger to the public. Flash decides Wallace has a few lessons to learn, and the best way of them being absorbed is if Wallace comes to the conclusions himself. To this end he arranges a field trip to an alien planet. Wallace will be accompanied by Golden Glider, Pied Piper, the Top and the Trickster. For the purpose of this all-ages graphic novel some genders have been switched, and they’re all juveniles in a reform programme.

The general path of Steve Foxe’s plot is predictable. Flash soon has to leave for a Justice League emergency, and Kid Flash’s superior attitude is eroded by a series of incidents. When taking the trouble to befriend his fellow campers, he discovers they’re not so different from him, just not having had the benefit of the guidance he’s experienced. The whole trip is like an awayday team-bonding weekend for company employees.

Cartooning efficiency is a trademark of Jerry Gaylord’s storytelling, and he’s good with visual characterisation, defining the different personalities via expression and posture. It’s the energetic and hyperactive Trickster who steals the show, but the subtlety elsewhere is apparent when you look.

The sensationalistic title and cover are misleading in suggesting Kid Flash sympathises so much with the super powered teen tearaways that he adopts their attitude and joins them. One wonders why, The story holds up without the deception, which is already a diminished proposition by virtue of Kid Flash being an almost unknown character to a young audience.