The Life Story of The Flash is a most unusual book. It's not a comic book completely but neither is it a prose book entirely. It's a hybrid unlike anything I've ever seen. Writers Mark Waid and Brian Augustyn cover the whole history (to that point since the book came out in 1997) of Barry Allen the Flash. It was an odd time for such a book since Barry Allen had not been the Flash for quite a time. The story is told as if written by Iris Allen, Barry Allen's longtime girlfriend and wife before she was seemingly killed, but who turned out to not be dead at all but merely in the future with her real parents. Now that will fill a dust jacket.
The main attraction for me with this book is the artwork which is done primarily by Gil Kane but who in the later stages gives way to Joe Staton inked by Tom Palmer. By artwork I mean actual comic book pages as well as illustrations. This book moves back and forth from prose with spot illustrations (imitating photos at times) to becoming full-fledge multi-panel comic stories which can run several pages. The transition from one format to the other is the greatest narrative challenge of his hybrid creation and sadly it's not always successful as the font sizes of the one don't match the other. But still the art does shine.
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