Impulse #85

World Without Young Justice Part 2: Glimpses of You

Todd Dezago Writer
Carlo Barberi Penciller
Walden Wong Inker
Janice Chiang Letterer
Tom McCraw Colorist
Digital Chameleon Separator
Joey Cavalieri Editor
Impulse created by Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo

This issue's cover: A reflection of things past, in more ways than one, thanks to Humberto Ramos and Wayne Faucher! It's also a reflection of things to come, as Bart Allen will officially become Kid Flash before too long. This is a good cover, but not particularly great. Bart looks fine enough, but the image doesn't really jump out at me. Maybe the biggest problem is the computer-generated water, which becomes more distracting the more I look at it.

Our story begins at the abandoned Funland amusement park, where we hear a big "WHAM!" followed by the appearance of several of Impulse's scouts, racing off in all directions. We see that the real Impulse is being held in a purple box that is repeatedly whacked with a giant hammer. Each time the hammer hits, a scout pops out of Impulse. Bart is very discombobulated, and it takes him a moment to full take in his surroundings — a vast purple expanse filled with toys, video games and junk food. Bart is unable to vibrate through the purple box, nor can he prevent more scouts from being produced. As he looks around, he finally spots the culprit behind this: Bedlam.

Matthew Stuart is pleased that Impulse finally remembers him, as he believes he was completely forgotten for the past two years he spent in a coma. (Even though it has been two years since their first fight, Impulse, Robin and Superboy haven't aged a day since.) Matthew explains to Bart that he now possesses all the power of Bedlam, free of the genie's influence. And this time, he's prepared a better plan to destroy Young Justice. When he learned about Impulse's new power, he decided to exploit it to change history and create a new reality without Young Justice. Matthew's already created a thousand Impulse scouts, and has placed them all under his control.

Bart tries to point out that Young Justice didn't forget about Matthew — they just left him in the care of the D.E.O., who assured them Matthew would be OK. But Matthew has turned his attention away from Impulse and toward his TVs to monitor the progress of the scouts, which are retrieving seemingly insignificant items from the past to reshape reality. Matthew is also happy to watch the other members of Young Justice change — Secret becoming Billy, Wonder Girl becoming a glutton, and Empress and Arrowette giving in to their dark tendencies. Matthew doesn't seem to understand exactly how these changes occurred, but he's happy with them all the same. He does admit, however, that getting rid of his arch enemies — Impulse, Robin and Superboy — has been a little trickier.

We then see that Matthew doesn't quite have complete control over Impulse's scouts. One of them was sent back to steal Impulse's first costume, but he was worried about altering his own history and instead retrieved a Kid Flash costume from Wally West. Matthew chews out the scout for being stupid, gives him a blast of power to make him more obedient, then tosses the Kid Flash outfit onto a big pile of junk.

Meanwhile, an increasingly frustrated Bart laments the fact that he's not smart like Robin, Wonder Girl or even Superboy. As the hammer continues to pound more scouts out of him, Bart begins ramming the side of the cube in desperation. Eventually, he manages to knock the cube over and take it away from the giant hammer. Now free to think clearly, Bart can only come up with one option — to create a scout on his own. But he hasn't done that (willingly) since he was on Apokolips. But Bart manages to fight through his fear and create a scout outside his prison cube. He tells the scout to find out how Bedlam got these powers and everything that he's doing with them. The scout obeys and disappears with a "zwiiipop."

Impulse's scout returns less than two seconds later and slides through the cube to merge with Bart, showing him what he learned. Bart is treated to a brief history of Bedlam, starting with when he first corrupted Matthew Stuart and Impulse defeated him by constantly saying "reset." The genie then burrowed into Red Tornado before lashing out in Young Justice 80-Page Giant #1. That adventure ended with Red Tornado convincing Bedlam to turn himself into a human infant. But what nobody realized was that the power of Bedlam found its way back to its last vessel — the comatose Matthew Stuart. Matt eventually woke up, once again possessing near-infinite power, but this time without the genie controlling him.

Matt turns his attention from his monitors to mock Impulse and yell at him some more. He works himself up into a little rage, reliving his last defeat, and he reaches through the cube prison to punch Bart in the face. Bart doesn't understand how Matt could do that, and he impatiently explains that he designed the magical prison to only keep Impulse in. He places the cube back under the giant hammer, then returns to his monitors to admire the reality-altering efforts of Impulse's scouts.

As Bart tries to think of an escape plan, his thoughts turn to Wally, and his eye catches the old Kid Flash costume. Acting on a theory, Bart creates another scout and has him him fetch the costume. Conveniently, Wally's old uniform fits Bart like a glove. Next, Bart asks the scout to come into the cube to serve as the "Impulse" being held captive. To Bart's delight, he finds that he's able to leave the cube since he's now "Kid Flash." He tells the scout to stay in the cube for a while, as he heads off to get the rest of Young Justice. Praising himself for coming up with such a genius plan, Bart races off into the night. As he begins to wonder how he'll be able to recognize his altered teammates, he apparently recognizes someone who causes him to stop and shout out, "... YOU?!?"


I enjoyed this issue. It's great to have Bedlam back, and it's even better to have Impulse at the center of a big crossover. I was always wary of Bart's ability to create time-traveling scouts, and it makes perfect sense that one of his greatest villains would exploit this ability. It was also fun to watch Bart work out an escape, and I like to think that Bart's subconscious sparked the escape by guiding the scout to take a Kid Flash uniform instead of an Impulse uniform.

I do wonder why Matt showed up in his hospital gown last issue but was wearing his Bedlam outfit in this issue. I also wish that we could have seen some of the specific changes that Bedlam caused with Impulse's scouts. Maybe it was a specific artifact that they took that changed Wonder Girl's powers. Maybe show how the absence of Superboy led to Arrowette giving in to her dark side. And I think there was room to briefly show these things in this issue. There seemed to be quite a bit of repetition that could have been trimmed down.

And although I do enjoy the abrupt nature of this storyline, I think the last issue of Impulse could have helped set this up a little bit. After Max disappeared, the logical thing for Bart to do would have been to create a scout to go back to the time of Max's disappearance to try to see what happened. Naturally, Bart would have been hesitant to create his first scout since Apokolips, and it would have been nice if we had a quick conversation about this. I also don't think it would have been too much to throw in one of Bart's scouts running by in the background toward the end of the issue.

Impulsive Reactions begins with Retri asking when Impulse is going to get a serious villain to fight.

Havk provides a quick rundown of Impulse's "Rogues Gallery." White Lightning hasn't provided much of a threat, as Bart is always able to snap out of her trances. Havk suggests putting her on a team of villains. Evil Eye is no longer a villain. Glory Shredder can be easily defeated if Bart just takes away all his guns. Green Cigarette might die in a week due to lung cancer, according to Havk. Morlo is no longer a villain. Keller only has robots and isn't much of a threat. "The fog guy" was easily defeated by Inertia. So, Havk, concludes, the only serious foe Bart has is Inertia, who outsmarted Impulse in the long run and very easily could have defeated Bart and Max, but stopped himself. Havk also sees a bright side in Max's disappearance — maybe now Bart won't have to deal with his "hand-me-down" villains.

Morgan the Raider points out that the Impulse solicitations in Previews have indicated that Max is "hitting the road." Morgan is fine with Jay Garrick becoming Bart's new guardian, but only for the short term, saying Max should never leave this book.

Corndog7 mentions a message board where Todd Dezago apparently revealed that DC had given him permission to kill Max Mercury, but he chose not to ... yet. Corndog7 naturally became very worried by the word "yet" and has good reason to believe Max has been killed off for good now.

Rupert Giles believes Max is fine, citing issues of The Flash that mentioned Max being alive in the future.

Imp also brings up the time the Legionnaires visited Impulse, and they talked about having met Max in the future, as well.

Andy Oliver, of Upminster, England, liked Impulse #80 for getting back to single-issue stories after months of crossovers. He says Impulse works best on a more human level, which issue #80 demonstrated. Andy was surprised when Carol was sent away, but he liked the character development it granted Bart. He says White Lightning should become very old very fast, but for some reason, he enjoys her. Andy asks for more recurring villains, suggesting some forgotten Flash rogues, such as Colonel Computron or the Turtle. Now for the new ads:

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Next time, we head to Robin #101 for Part 3 of World Without Young Justice.