The future is coming for The Flash!
Creative Staff:
Story: Gail Simone
Art: Clayton Henry
Colors: Marcelo Maiolo
Letterer: Rob Leigh
What They Say:
A time-traveling soldier arrives in Central City and her mission is to kill the Fastest Man Alive! But what is it that the Flash did (or will do) to destroy her world – and is there a way he can prevent it without dying?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The opening installment of this run of material on the character of The Flash was fun even it didn’t do much for me in terms of our title character. A chapter focused on a version of King Shark – by Gail Simone, no less – was exactly the best way to launch things. Simone is back with another chapter that sets up a future threat for young Barry Allen to face in a fun way with a little retroactive continuity spliced in. Clayton Henry gets to step in for the artwork once again and I really like his take on the character with its angular look within the costume combined with the curves of it all. And Maiolo does some great work with reds and yellows to tie it all together in a way that’s bold and vibrant but fits and feels in-universe realistic.
The focus of this one, taking place early in Barry’s life as The Flash and being a forensic scientist, involves a single day where a woman named Beth Arden has arrived from the 25th century to kill him. She’s a part of something called the Speed Resistance Force and has spent some time hunting him down and trying to eliminate him, not caring about any collateral damage within Central City. We see the story alternating between time with Barry as the Flash rescuing some kids that got caught up in it and doing his initial forensic work on a strange case in a closed train tunnel where some people died. Both of these, with the narration, show us who Barry is and how he operates, first in the way he helps and talks to the kids and then giving us a feel for how he balances the “slow” normal living life with his police duties, especially with cops that aren’t all that keen on modern ways of doing things.
The rest of it involves the back and forth fight with Arden in her special suit going up against the Flash. It’s really nicely done with a dynamic edge to it and she’s got a lot of future-knowledge of how the speed force works to take advantage of. Her reasoning is solid enough as well in that his actions destroyed her future, but this is the kind of story where if she’d just talked to him they probably could have worked things out. Of course, this is set as part of the introduction of an iconic villain from the rogue’s gallery that the Flash has so it has to happen as it does but it’d be fun to see a wholesale rewrite with a more proactive Barry taking this news in a different timeline and actively dealing with it instead of letting events unfold naturally as they have in the past. It’s definitely well done here in what we get though as Arden makes for a good enough character to pull off the concept.
In Summary:
I cut my teeth on the final issues of The Flash before the original Crisis series and spent years working my way backward hunting up those old books and enjoying them. But I went forward reading from writers like Messner-Loeb and Waid that produced some great stories. Simone has one that fits easily into the older Barry Allen world where it’s something that could have been done in the 60s but cleaned up and streamlined for modern sensibilities – all while keeping it to just one issue. I miss the days of one-off books so these releases have been a fantastic thing for me and issues like this reinforce it.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Kindle
Release Date: May 1st, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
