A fascinating evacuation.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Carmine Di Giandomenico
Colors: Rex Lokus
Letterer: Saida Temofonte
What They Say:
Wally West is the Fastest Man Alive…but will even HE be fast enough to save his city from the Anti-Life plague?! With the help of his fellow Speedsters including Impulse and Jesse Quick he’s going to give it his best shot!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
While there’s a bit of a “been there done that” feeling to the Hope at World’s End series here as we know the broad strokes of what’s to come, Tom Taylor is filling in some fantastic gaps that allow the wide range of characters DC has to really shine amid the death and destruction. This installment has brought in Carmine Di Giandomenico on the artwork side and they provide some fantastic pages, especially when it comes to the infected with how they look and combined with Rex Lokus’ color design work. There’s a roughness to it that’s just perfect here and with the oppressive coloring when focused on the infected it just clicks. But we also get so many vibrant moments as it focuses on the heroes of the day and their shiny outfits as well so you get a really good blending.
The focus for this one is on Central City as we see Wally having learned what’s happened and quickly destroying any devices in his immediate area in order to save Linda. But his focus on saving his city is huge and we see him whisking all over smashing as many devices as he can and trying to save as many lives as he can. It’s engaging to see how he works on this and realizes he needs help, which brings in the delightful team of Bart, Max, and Jesse. The use of their speed to get information across is handled well and it’s a testament to this group that they know how to work together and get things done. But it’s how Taylor executes it in its simplicity that I like. We get some mild narration material from Wally about them working together but even that is incredibly short, allowing for us to just know and understand that this group has the experience and knowledge to focus on what must be done – even Bart.
What I like is that Wally is trying to find someplace he can move everyone to that he saves, some 150,000 people or so, in order to keep them safe. The problem is that the world is falling and there are no good options. Except for a parallel world, which requires Bart to work with him on running the treadmill in order to power it. This is a fantastic sequence as they have to be extra careful and work fast to bring over as many as possible while avoiding both burnout and bringing through anyone that might be infected. Taylor gets a lot of credit here for capturing the voice of these four speedsters with little time and providing an end journey for one of them in the best ways possible when it comes to the speedforce.
In Summary:
Like a lot of others, I could sing the praises of Tom Taylor all day long. I’ve actually not read a lot of his mainstream DC work but have read a ton of his non-continuity works and am a huge fan there because you can see just how much he gets so many of these characters and knows how to work them through tough situations with actual consequences, which is the biggest draw of it all. Carmine Di Giandomenico puts in a strong job here on the art duties with great looking characters, a fantastic flow to following the fast-moving action of the speedsters, and really capturing an intense look with the infected. I’m excited to see what the series has in store next.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Amazon Kindle
Release Date: June 16th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
