This is a book I have a conflicting thoughts on, and I will try my best to make them make sense, but it might get a little complicated.
When this book was first announced, my initial thought was one word, "why?" (to be honest, it still is) The idea of a sequel to Flashpoint seemed wholy unnecessary. But after the events of Justice League Incarnate, I was even more curious how they could possibly make this book a thing. This, combined with a desire to get back into new releases made me say, "sure, why not?"
So I read it. And it was... fine.
I'll get some of the more technical stuff out of the way first, because I have a lot of thoughts on the story and the decisions made within it.
The art was alright. It was never bad, but no pages particularly stood out to me. The script was also solid, but nothing special. I've talked about this with other users before, but it connects to the concept that Geoff Johns gets a lot of the DC universe, but doesn't write very good scripts, and it creates this strange dueling quality in his books. With Adams and Sheridan also involved in the writing process, this is partly improved, but it's hard to say how much of the book was written by each of them.
With all of that out of the way, it's time to get into the story, so here's a friendly spoiler warning before we continue. For those who don't want to be spoiled, I would probably give the book a 6/10. There's nothing really wrong with it, but there's not much that's particularly good either. But the story flows well enough that I can't really put it on the negative end of my rating system, even if I didn't like its continuity implications.
SPOILERS FOR FLASHPOINT BEYOND
I feel like I should go one by one on the things that bugged me, briefly get into the things I thought were dumb in an entertaining way, and then talk about the things I actually liked at the end so I can end things on a positive note. I am fully aware that some of these are nitpicks, but they did affect my enjoyment of the story, so I'm going to get into them because a review is meant to be an evaluation of one's perspective on something.
The Bad:
The ending feels very rushed
For the most part, the series was actually paced pretty well, even if there was that awkward zero issue before the actual story started. But when you get to the final issue you realize just how many storylines had to be wrapped up, and that leads to things feeling very rushed.
They have around 30 pages to wrap up the Clockwork Killer story, the hypertime snowglobe story on Prime Earth, and the Kryptonian invasion story that it feels like they might have actually forgotten about for multiple issues up to this point. Either that or they expected they would have more issues for the story than they got and they had to improvise. (It never gets resolved, by the way)
Needless to say, this conclusion was very messy. Especially because the storylines that do get a resolution do so in a way that feels like either a change to what they were setting up for the sake of a feel-good ending or just a really badly executed attempt at subverting expectations.
Geoff Johns won't let Doomday Clock go
Whether it be because Batman teams up with Mime and Marionette to steal hypertime snowglobe or whatever we're supposed to call it, the occasional name-dropping of Doctor Manhattan, or... this...
Nope. Not getting into that can of worms.
Anyway, it's clear that Johns is still trying to justify Doomsday Clock as a relevant piece of the DC canon. And for the people who liked Doomsday Clock, I'm sure that's cool. I did not like Doomsday Clock very much. Therefore, this epilogue just served to further sour an ending that I already wasn't a fan of. (Plus there's just an inherent weirdness to having DC characters reference Watchmen characters, but I'm choosing not to let myself rant about that because it's not super relevant)
I don't love Geoff Johns' characterization of Batman
Not much to really say here. I just don't really care for his characterization of Batman.
The ending is more disturbing than it thinks it is
For the most part, the ending is a conclusive, feel-good ending. And yes, the hypertime problem has been stopped by the end. But if you take a moment to look at more of the specifics of the ending it gets more disturbing. At the end of the story, Dexter Dent, the son of Harvey and Gilda Dent, becomes Robin to a Batman that has no problem with killing, and Martha is just... sane now and living in a tiny bedroom-esque cell in the Batcave. And then right before the epilogue we get this page as the Kryptonian army attacks the Earth:

I'm really not sure whether we're supposed to find this nice or not, but I feel like we are and that kind of bothers me. The whole point of Flashpoint Batman (and Flashpoint in general, for that matter) was that he was supposed to feel wrong. So I'm not sure how I feel about the idea that we're supposed to think this is a nice moment considering that Thomas is very clearly a worse choice to put a Robin under than Bruce. But this is probably me reading too far into this.
The Funny:
Characters we don't care about die for no reason
I realize you could say this about most events, but I do think it's a little strange that Barry Allen, Harvey Dent, Psycho-Pirate, and Aquaman are killed for shcok value, yet with the exception of Aquaman we barely know these versions of the characters, so I just kind of feel nothing.
These pages of Corky Baxter look funny
There's no real point to this section. I just think his inclusion was such a strange decision that I just found it funny.
The Good:
We clearly categorize the various Crisis-level events into two separate categories
Not much to say here. It's just more satisfying from a continuity perspective to have COIE, Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, Metal, and Dark Crisis as one thing and Zero Hour, Thy Kingdom Come, Flashpoint, Convergence, and Doomsday Clock as another thing. (even if they're clearly reaching with the attempt to create an equal number of each type of Crisis)
The book sets up the New Golden Age books, which I'm actually optimistic for
The heading says it all. I'm just curious about those books and pleased to see the JSA characters getting books again.
Despite these issues, it's not a bad comic book
Subjective gripes aside, it's still... fine. I don't hate it or anything. It just has a bunch of little things that bug me all happening at once.
Have you read this book? If so, what did you think of it?