The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #1

Lightning in a Bottle Part One: Flashback

Danny Bilson & Paul De Meo Writers
Ken Lashley Penciller
KWL Studio, Norm Rapmund, Marlo Alquiza, Jay Leisten Inkers
Pat Brosseau Letterer
Carrie Strachan Colorist
Rachel Gluckstern Asst. Editor
Joan Hilty Editor

So here it is: Bart's second solo series, this time with him as the Flash. After about eight years of being Impulse, and just three as Kid Flash, Bart has already claimed the top speedster title. Instead of taking over the main title at The Flash #231, or simply renumbering it to another The Flash #1, Bart gets his own unique (and obnoxious) title of The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive. But perhaps the most concerning thing for me with this new series is the credit list. Not a lot of big names here. Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo (who passed away earlier this year at age 64) only had one other DC-related credit prior to this — writing episodes of the 1990 Flash TV show. So let's how they do with a comic book suddenly thrust into their laps 16 years later.

Our cover by Lashley shows the Flash possibly running out of the Speed Force, chasing a Flash ring for whatever reason. This could easily be Wally or Barry, and I believe that was intentional, as this cover likely could have been solicited before DC revealed Bart was the new Flash. Frankly, I find this cover to be an ugly, confusing mess. It's too vague, too busy, and Bart's face is so obscured in shadows he looks sinister.

We have an alternate cover by Andy Kubert, which I grabbed from dc.wikia.com (this cover is pretty tough to find and I'm not willing to spend too much on it). I love this variant so much more than the original. It's a clean, simple image that is heroic and classic, yet unique. And even though Bart's face is also obscured here, he doesn't look like a villain. This image was reused as the cover of the 2015 collection called The Flash: A Celebration of 75 Years.

Like most of the DC comics at this time, this series begins one year after Infinite Crisis. We begin on a stormy night in Keystone City, with a couple of armored vehicles transporting some hazardous material. A semi truck suddenly slams into the two vehicles, causing an explosion. A mysterious figure declares the armed guards the first casualties of his war.

Jay Garrick quickly arrives on the scene, lamenting the fact that he no longer has the Speed Force to tap into, although his natural metahuman abilities still do make him the fastest man alive. Jay rushes past the burning wreckage and goes after the semi, which is making a speedy getaway. When Jay catches up to the truck, he rips the door off to discover it didn't have a driver inside — merely a metal rod holding the gas pedal down. This momentary confusion allowed the masked man to escape with one of the damaged armored vehicles. He says it's time for blood and fire — time to build the bomb.

As Jay heads home, he takes an odd trip down memory lane. Half reminiscing with himself, half having a conversation with Bart he wishes he could have. Jay remembers how he first became the Flash and met his wife, Joan. He remembers Wally dropping Bart off at his house, and Jay compliments Bart for jumping into the family business with both feet. Jay remembers how Bart became Kid Flash, and their emotional departure at the Speed Force. The way Jay remembers it, he was holding tight to Bart's hand, sadly telling him he can't keep up. Bart protested, "You said you'd never leave!" then cried out Jay's name as he fell away.

We then cut to 20-year-old Bart Allen waking up from a nightmare. His roommate, a young man with blond hair named Griffin, wakes Bart up and tells him it's time to go to work. He notes Bart's intense nightmare and asks him what he's running from. Bart and Griffin throw on identical white jumpsuits and join a crowd walking to work at Keystone Motors. Many of the older employees are on strike, and Bart and Griffin have to walk past their picket lines to get to work. Griffin is critical of the striking employees, but Bart seems a little more sympathetic, citing some useless statistics about the state of the auto industry.

A striker named Thatcher overhears Griffin's negative comments and the two of them nearly get into a confrontation before Bart pulls Griffin away and Thatcher's friend pulls him away. Bart tells Griffin that Thatcher lost his house and family when he got laid off, and Griffin admits he lost his temper. But he insists that he has no use for old people. He was raised by his grandparents and left them as soon as high school ended. Bart doesn't relate to that sentiment. He says he was raised by a couple old enough to be his grandparents and they helped him through some difficult times and they're still close today. Griffin insists that Bart is just confused and he promises to get him drunk after work tonight.

We then head over to S.T.A.R. Labs, where intern Valerie Perez is asking Dr. McGee why there aren't any current test results for Bart Allen. McGee says Bart has stopped returning their calls and even blocked their email. Looking at pictures of Bart as Impulse, Kid Flash and now as an adult, she asks why Bart doesn't want to find out how he went from 16 to 20 overnight. McGee says it seems like Bart doesn't care anymore. In any case, Bart's rapid aging isn't the real issue — the Speed Force is. Is it gone forever? Or has it mutated into something more dangerous. So McGee lauds Valerie for her energy, but advises her to redirect it, noting that Bart lost his powers and his best friend, Wally West, so the best they can do right now is give him the space he needs and keep studying the Speed Force. But Valerie ignores all this and plans to confront Bart herself.

That night, Griffin takes Bart to a bar, as promised, and explains to him that the two girls making out in the corner aren't actually gay, but are just trying to turn the boys on. Bart nervously downs a shot and watches Griffin pick up one of the girls. Griffin tells Bart to give them three hours before returning to the apartment. Bart asks what he's supposed to do for three hours, and Griffin simply tells him to keep drinking and score.

The strikers outside Keystone Motors learn some good news — the union and management have agreed to return to the negotiating tables. But Thatcher insists talk is cheap and he walks to his car to prepare the bomb he's built with the stolen materials. Bart, meanwhile, is feeling lost and confused in the bar by himself. He laments the fact that he has the entire San Francisco Library in his head, yet he can't figure out how to get with girls, so he decides to find a movie to watch.

We then get another weird reminiscing/talking to Bart scene. This time Barry Allen is talking to him about what it means to be the Flash, remembering all his battles with the Rogues and the apparent death of his wife, Iris. But Barry rejoices in the second chance he received in the future, and even says he was present at Bart's birth, calling him his pride and joy. When infinite worlds were about to be destroyed, Barry did what he had to do and sacrificed himself. He says he went back into the light, and he asks Bart if he will ever outrun the shadow.

The next morning, Valerie makes her way to Bart's apartment, but first tells someone on the phone to stop calling her. Griffin answers the door and excitedly wakes Bart up, believing that he had hooked up with Valerie the previous night. He sees Bart's room is trashed, and assumes the mess is a result of the wild night Bart had with Valerie and begs for a video of it. Griffin then leaves the room and Valerie introduces herself from S.T.A.R. Labs. Bart notes that she must be new and tells her he's out of that business.

Valerie asks if Bart had a bad nightmare, but he unconvincingly lies that he had a party. Valerie asks why he hasn't been at S.T.A.R. Labs in months, and Bart says nothing is wrong with him. He's not Kid Flash anymore, and he's good. But Valerie still wants to know why he's avoiding them. She says she may only be an intern, but she made a vow to understand what happened to Bart Allen — not Kid Flash. She says he must need someone to talk to after growing up so fast. But Bart pushes her away, saying Wally's gone, the Speed Force is gone, and it's all over. Jay is the Flash now, and Bart just wants to have a life like everyone else.

At work that day, Griffin is teasing Bart about Valerie, despite Bart insisting he hasn't slept with her. The two of them are so caught up in their conversation, they don't even notice the masked man planting a bomb, saying it's "time to destroy the beast that's destroying us ... blood and fire." Bart and Griffin are caught in the ensuing explosion, with Griff becoming buried in equipment and doused in chemicals. As he cries for help, Bart decides it's time to risk tapping into the Speed Force to help his friend. But when he tries, Bart becomes engulfed in painful lightning and can't control his movements.

Griffin is then electrocuted by the equipment on top of him. Jay Garrick arrives and tries to talk to Bart about the Speed Force, but Bart tells him to get his friend to the hospital first. As Jay leaves, the agonizing Bart vows to never tap into the Speed Force again — to never let it kill him.

This is an ugly comic. Both story-wise and art-wise. I wonder why Ken Lashley needed three inkers in addition to an entire studio, but the results weren't pretty. The art was messy, clumsy, dark, and almost incoherent at times. It took me way to long to try to figure out what was going on in the action scenes. In fact, I'm still not sure I fully understand what happened.

Now for the story. Ugh.

Everything about this seems designed to get on my nerves. Reading this story is like fingernails on a chalkboard. And it's not so much that it's bad — it is — but it really feels like this was written by people who know nothing about my favorite character. And this is especially frustrating because we just went through a major continuity-altering event and I want to know if my character's background has changed. But this issue just complicates that problem. Look, it's good and necessary for the first issue of a new series to raise some questions. But this issue is raising the wrong kind of questions that only obfuscate things and alienate readers.

The storytelling was a bit sloppy, as well. At this point, I'm going to assume that those "messages" to Bart from Jay and Barry were Speed Force dreams/visions. It's very confusing, though, especially how the first one began directly after we saw Jay in an action scene, leading me to believe Jay immediately started talking to Bart after he failed to prevent that robbery. But as soon as this "message" ended, we cut to Bart violently waking up from a nightmare. So ... was this actually Jay talking to Bart? Even though he's not in the Speed Force, or even connected to it now? Or was this just Bart imagining Jay talking to him?

And to make matters worse, these "messages" were full of continuity problems. Ken Lashley meticulously recreated the cover of Flash Comics #1, showing Jay catching a bullet that would have hit Joan. But he didn't bother to look up the issue of Impulse where Bart actually did move in with Jay. And he drew Bart like an 8-year-old. Seriously. Jay is down on his knee and is still taller than this little boy with pudgy cheeks who looks way younger than the 12-year-old Bart Allen that first arrived in the 20th century. And then there's the scene of Bart being separated from Jay in the Speed Force. Was this supposed to be when Bart, Jay and Wally pushed Superboy-Prime into the Speed Force? Because that was nothing like what this issue gives us.

Barry's message was still rather confusing, but it did only have one glaring error — Barry being present for Bart's birth. Or maybe these aren't errors. Maybe Infinite Crisis did change Bart's history and he never lived with Max Mercury. But how am I supposed to know that? This issue keeps everything so annoyingly vague and ill-defined.

What we do know for sure is that in the year since Infinite Crisis, Bart has spent some time being poked and prodded and S.T.A.R. Labs (still unclear on how much information he gave them), then he took a job at Keystone Motors, living in a small apartment with the girl-crazy Griffin. There are so many things that bug me about this. First of all, with the accumulated knowledge of that library he read, Bart could essentially get any job he wants. Or get into any college he wants. But he instead chooses this low-paying, menial labor job. And not only that, he's actually taking work away from people who have been there 20 years and are now on strike. Bart did express a few sympathetic words for those strikers, but he still walked right past them to work a job they can't anymore.

I also have problems with Griff. He is so obnoxious and shallow, I have a hard time believing that Bart, who once was so good and pure, would choose to be friends with him. I get the pressures of Bart trying to be an adult, but did it have to be so crass? Thankfully, Bart did not have sex with anyone in this issue, but we did see some underage drinking. And that's really awkward, considering how this issue keeps hitting us over the head with the fact that Bart suddenly went from age 16 to 20 — not 21! By the way, did Bart actually suddenly age overnight, or is that just what S.T.A.R. Labs believes? I had thought that Bart spent four years in the Speed Force, or wherever, keeping Superboy-Prime at bay and watching Wally's kids grow up.

And speaking of S.T.A.R. Labs, am I supposed to like Valerie Perez? She deliberately disobeyed her boss, ignored her well-reasoned argument and invaded Bart's privacy. I get the need to have another Carol Bucklen-type character — a female confidant that knows Bart's secret identity, can help with the "sciencey" aspect of being a superhero, and has potential to become his girlfriend. But I would like a more likable character to fill that role.

In the end, the only positive I have for this comic is the concept of the Speed Force killing Bart. It's tough to find a legitimate obstacle for a speedster. That is the kind of intriguing question for a first issue to introduce. Unfortunately, I don't think that one little hook is enough to redeem this very rocky beginning from Bilson and De Meo. Well, enough sadness for one day; let's check out the ads:

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Next time, we'll return to the History of the DCU in 52 Week Ten.