Speediest Chapter 1: Angel City
Danny Bilson & Paul DeMeo -- Writers
Ron Adrian -- Penciller, pages 1-10, 16-22
Art Thibert -- Artist, pages 11-15
Rob Lea & Alex Lei -- Inkers, pages 1-10, 16-22
Pat Brosseau -- Letterer
Richard & Tanya Horie -- Colorists
Rachel Gluckstern -- Assoc. Editor
Joan Hilty -- Editor
Cover by Daniel Acuna
Our cover shows Bart being pursued by the two new villains of the series, Mota and Inertia. I will admit to kind of liking calling them Force & Inertia. But beyond that, I do not like this cover. The bland background and the "blurred" effect don't work for me. And for some reason, Bart looks like he's 35 years old here. It's also worth noting that just seven issues in, Acuna is our third cover artist. And Thibert becomes our sixth penciller for this mess of a series.
Our story begins at the Flash Museum with a Flash Day celebration. Apparently word has gotten out that it was Griffin who caused the bridge to collapse and the Flash who stopped him, so Keystone has decided to show it's appreciation to the real hero of the day and present him with a medal. Jay and Joan Garrick are in attendance, but halfway through the parade, Bart still has yet to show up.
And that's because Bart has impulsively decided to move to Los Angeles without telling anyone or setting up a job or apartment in this new city. But Bart believes he now has his powers under control and can handle being by himself now, leaving Keystone in Jay's hands. Bart also acknowledges that Wally is still "out there" somewhere, but before beginning his search for him, Bart wants to "find himself" first. And this quest to inner peace apparently begins with a trip to the tourist destinations of Hollywood. But it turns out to be a good thing that Bart decided to take in the sights, since he stumbled across a live performance by the classic Flash villain, Abra Kadabra.
Abra Kadabra announces he'll make the condemned Hollywood Hotel disappear, but "accidentally" zaps the brand new jewelry store next door. As the building disappears, Bart throws on his Flash suit and rushes inside the store before it completely vanishes. The store reappears in the Swiss Alps, and Abra Kadabra also teleports himself there to direct his crew to empty the contents of the store and deposit them in his Swiss bank at the bottom of the hill.
Bart sees Kadabra's men heading toward building and he decides to empty the vault before they can. Instead of vibrating through the safe door, Bart types in thousands of number combinations at super speed to open the door. Once Kadabra and his men enter the building, they are shocked to find it completely empty. Bart locks Kadabra's men inside the vault, then gets right up in his face, saying the trick didn't fool him. Abra Kadabra tries to teleport Flash away, but he easily avoids the blasts from the magic wand. Bart then pulls out a small diamond he kept from the safe and uses it to cut a hole in a glass case covering a large diamond. Bart then uses that piece of glass to reflect Kadabra's teleportation blast back at him, causing the super villain to disappear. Our noble hero immediately takes off, letting the Swiss police clean up.
Bart runs back to Los Angeles, planning to find a place to live first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, Kadabra reappears in Cambodia, realizing that this Flash has gold eyes, which means Inertia was right. He now acknowledges that Inertia's plan might have some validity, and he plans to present this information to the Rogues.
We then cut to the Gila Canyon test site in Nevada, where Inertia has taken a break from prepping Mota's experiment to secretly meet with Deathstroke. Apparently Inertia has also lost his connection to the Speed Force, and he is relying on Deathstroke to provide him a drug called Velocity 9 to give him super speed. Inertia tells Deathstroke that Mota is currently analyzing his daughter's D.N.A., and he's about to head off to collect the final piece for the regeneration machine — the trigger. Deathstroke approves of Inertia's plan and reminds him to come out East to fulfill his end of their deal.
Once Deathstroke is gone, Inertia injects himself with the Velocity 9, blaming Bart for forcing him to "shoot up" like a back-alley junkie. He has Craydl reactivate the teleportal, which sends him back to his lab in the future. Craydl has developed a taste for classic rock for some reason, and Thad gives him a Rolling Stones CD with a promise to get some Pink Floyd on his next trip.
The next day, Bart is moving in to Casa La Brea Bungalow Court in Hollywood. He is trying to open the door to his apartment while balancing three boxes labeled "Bart's stuff." His neighbor, a pretty girl about his age, helps him open the door and quickly picks up on Bart's Midwest accent. She introduces herself as Roxanne Snow and says she's an aspiring actress working on her regional dialects. Bart thanks her by giving her a piece of Swiss chocolate.
Out in Nevada, Inertia finally begins the process of using Valerie Perez's genetic material to restore Manfred's Mota's body. Thad notes the coldness of Mota's willingness to sacrifice his daughter, but he admires their shared goal of seeking death for the speedsters. But when Inertia pushes the button to begin the process, the entire lab goes up in a massive blue explosion.
Meanwhile, Bart is sadly reading Val's goodbye letter for the thousandth time. He idiotically believes the letter to be genuine — despite all the clear warning signs around Val's sudden departure — and he decides that if Val really wants to talk to him then she'll give him a call.
Speaking of Val, she miraculously survived the explosion. She pulls herself out of the rubble and runs through the desert until she finds the highway. Val stops the first truck she sees, begging for a ride to the nearest town. The truck driver is eager to help her, but only if she lets him have his way with her first. But before the driver can do anything bad to Val, Inertia arrives, beats up the driver and ties him up. He explains to Val that he designed Mota's chamber to fail and Val's to protect her from the explosion. Inertia also reveals that Abra Kadabra has informed him that Bart has moved to Los Angeles, and he thinks it's time to reunite the two love birds.
Using a device that mimics Val's voice, Thad gives Bart a call, asking him to come to the Desert Star hotel in Las Vegas to talk. Bart doesn't ask any questions over the phone and agrees to race over there immediately.
I now see why Bilson and DeMeo dragged their feet so long on making Bart the Flash. They don't know how to write a good Flash action sequence. Everything about that Abra Kadabra scene was awful. So a super villain from the 64th century teleports a jewelry store to Switzerland. Pretty low brow for someone like Abra Kadabra, but whatever; he needs to fund some operation. Bart, as a superhero, has two main objectives here: 1) Take Abra Kadabra into custody, and 2) Return the jewelry store to Hollywood. And Bart failed on both those counts. What was the point of him removing all the diamonds? And where did he put them? Or why did he manually punch numbers into the safe combination? Or use a diamond to slice open a case of another diamond? All of these decisions were horribly stupid!
But Bart's worst decision was to move to Hollywood without telling anyone. He owes it to the Garricks to let them know what he's up to. Yes, a city as large as Los Angeles does need a superhero, but Bart shouldn't be going there at this time. Jay just barely got out of the hospital, and even though he healed quickly, this series has repeatedly told us that he's getting slower each day. Bart's not exactly leaving Keystone in good hands here. And Bart also owes it to Wally to try to find him and bring him home. Now's not the time for more "soul-searching." He's been doing that for a year now. Start acting like a hero for crying out loud!
The most interesting part of this issue was Inertia's interaction with Deathstroke. But I think the credit for that goes to Geoff Johns, who is building up a Titans East storyline, which we will be covering before too long. But really, this is a painful comic to read. It even fails on little, easy things, like Inertia's gloves. Even the cover had one fingerless glove and one full glove. So it was no surprise that this issue would switch between the two styles back and forth in this comic, even once on the same page. And the sense of time has always been all over the place this whole series. (How long ago did Mota kidnap Val?) And this issue struggled with that mightily. When Inertia pushed the button, the sun was just starting to rise. When Val pulled herself out of the rubble, it was the middle of the night with hundreds of stars in the sky. But on the very next page, when she found the highway, the sun was rising again. Are we to assume she spent the entire day under the rubble, then wandering through the desert all night? Or was this just a massively flawed book with too many errors for the two writers, two pencillers, two inkers, two colorists and two editors to catch?
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