This won’t be the last time the fate of the world resides on the shoulders of a cute teenage girl.
What They Say:
FLASH FACT: As the war between Amazons and Atlanteans rages on the battlefield around her, Traci must find the strength to stop her father before he rips the world asunder.
The Review:
While it hasn’t been the best series, the World of Flashpoint miniseries has definitely been a fun read since it’s touched on the magic side a fair bit and covered a lot of ground with other members of the DC Universe that have been twisted in various ways, sometimes for the better. At its heart though, like most of the other miniseries, it revolves around family. With Traci 13, the loss of hers was a huge impact on her life but it was the way her father basically tried to isolate her while he worked out his plans for revenge on a worldwide scale. Her journey throughout the world showed her things she didn’t realize though and that was enough to get her to go back and to try and stop him. The way she found out the scale of his plans was certainly enough to motivate her to do what she can, but as we saw it’s all turned out pretty badly for her.
A lot of her strain came from the fact that even after going and meeting so many people that she felt she was supposed to recruit to help her, nobody actually stepped forward and just focused on their personal missions at the time. The self involved nature of many is something that Circe made clear was a problem, but it’s also potentially a strength she can use against her father. With his having gained a lot of power in the form of dark magic, he’s really going all out with it and it’s twisting his soul and personality. And it’s gotten to him so much that he has no real problem tricking his daughter and taking her down in order to achieve his goal, which of course includes the deaths of some one hundred and eighteen million people. The anguish coming out of Traci is decent, but it doesn’t work as well as it should.
What does work well is that in an effort to stop him, she throws herself down into New Themyscira so that if he follows through on his plan, it’ll kill her as well. It’s the obvious shakeup needed to rattle him, but it’s just fun to see her caught up in the massive fight that’s going on there. There isn’t a huge amount of crossover with the big characters of the war, but they’re there to some extent and Traci isn’t able to just jump into the middle of things without getting off without anything bad happening. Though the book ends in a bit of an anti-climactic way, especially when you take into account how many sides were involved in the creation of the satellite, there’s plenty to like here with how it’s dealt with. It’s a personal fight against a larger backdrop that’s playing out more so in other books, but enough so here with the realization of just how seriously some are taking the war and their efforts to stop it.
Digital Notes:
This Comixology edition of Flashpoint: World of Flashpoint contains the main cover as seen with the print edition with no variants or other extras included.
In Summary:
World of Flashpoint was definitely a series that I enjoyed overall, simply because of the way it gave us a different look at the world and touched on the magic side. There were a lot of characters that had their nods given here and that helped to make it feel more connected to things while still forging its own path. Traci and her father are definitely in the thick of things multiple times since the war came to Europe and seeing them as a side story to it all, important as they are on the outside comes together pretty good here. It could have used a few more pages and some better dialogue at times, but it still left me pretty pleased overall. It won’t be a memorable run, but it was the kind of slightly quirky book that stood out nicely in the scope of things.
Grade: B
