The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13

Full Throttle: Conclusion

Marc Guggenheim – Writer
Tony Daniel – Penciller
Jonathan Glapion, Marlo Alquiza & Tony Daniel – Inkers
Pat Brosseau – Letterer
Tanya & Richard Horie – Colorists
Rachel Gluckstern – Associate Editor
Joan Hilty – Editor
Cover by Tony Daniel

The main cover shows a striking image of a dark, empty Flash suit. It is haunting and depressing. Yet I personally prefer the alternate cover, also drawn by Daniel.

I think I like this one more because it is the only issue of this series that makes it 100% clear that Bart is the Flash — not Wally or Barry. And although it might be a tad melodramatic, I do like the idea of the Black Flash mourning Bart's death. This whole scenario is so tragic that even the embodiment of death for speedsters can't help but cry. None of this was fair to Bart. He shouldn't have been forced to grow up. He shouldn't have been thrown into a terrible series initially written by two people who had never worked on a comic before. He shouldn't have been forced to try to make a name for himself a series that never had the same art team twice. And the great tragedy is that the only way to fix those awful mistakes is to kill him.

Our story begins in the year 2989, taking a rare look inside Bart's virtual reality world. On this particular VR adventure, Bart is a normal kid at school, losing miserably in a race on the track. He asks his grandpa Barry why he keeps losing, but Barry gently prods Bart into finding the answer himself. Bart says he has to slow down because his legs hurt — it's like they're just gone. Barry points out that Bart's legs are only "gone" because he lets them hurt, which he needs to stop. Bart's confused by this, so Barry slightly changes the topic by asking his grandson what he wants to be  when he grows up. Bart says he wants to be a hero, just like Barry. So Barry ends the lesson by saying "a hero is just someone who stands when their legs are gone."

We return to today in Los Angeles, with Valerie and Iris examining Inertia's machine. Val is trying to figure out a way to prevent the machine from transferring the Speed Force to Inertia and/or emit an energy discharge that destroys half the western seaboard. Unfortunately, Val is in way over her head — the machine operates on principles of quantum mechanics that are early theoretical today. Iris, however, still has hope, saying she has noticed some odd behavior in the timestream during her recent time-traveling, suggesting to her that history is in flux and they might still have a chance to save Bart. Iris hands Val a communicator and takes off, saying she's going to help her grandson buy Val the time she needs.

Bart, meanwhile, is staring down a being that only he can see — the Black Flash. The Rogues begin charging at Bart, but before they reach him, a small explosion knocks them all down. Bart sees the blast came from Iris, who is throwing a second grenade at the Rogues and firing off a few blasts of her tranquilizer gun for good measure. Bart tries to tell her to get away, but she says she and Val are here to help him. Iris pulls Bart behind a wall and tells him all about Inertia's machine.

Bart says he'll stall the Rogues by himself, telling Iris to stay behind the wall. Seeing she can't stop him, Iris abruptly changes her plan and tries to teleport Bart away, but he stops her by placing her in a chokehold he learned at the police academy. With his grandmother unconscious, Bart takes her communicator and begins talking to Val. Despite being overwhelmed (and having absolutely no business being able to understand this machine), Val claims she'll be able to deactivate it in 10 minutes. Val does, however, warn Bart that she has no idea how to give the Speed Force back to him. Bart's quite serene about this, though, saying all he cares about is making sure the west coast doesn't blow up.

All this time, Inertia has been standing idly by, watching the Rogues slowly pick themselves back up after Iris' grenades. Thad is a little too relaxed, though, as he doesn't notice the Pied Piper sneaking up behind him. Piper knocks Inertia out for betraying them, but he also admits that Inertia isn't the only guy here with a secret agenda. Bart, meanwhile, has made his move against the Rogues, leading them in a chase away from his grandma. Armed only with Iris' two remaining tranquilizer darts, Bart decides to use them on who he considers the two most dangerous Rogues — Weather Wizard and Mirror Master. The darts were designed for speedsters, though, so they only put the Rogues down for a couple of seconds.

Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Abra Kadabra and the Trickster are soon on top of Bart. For some reason, the Rogues abstain from using their weapons, making this a pure fist fight. Using his police training, the few tricks he's picked up from Robin, and his knowledge of anatomy from the San Francisco library, Bart manages to get in a few good hits. But at the end of the day, he's outnumbered and overwhelmed, and ends up locked in hold by Captain Cold. Piper drags Inertia over to the group and tells them if they want payback, they should get it on the guy who played them.

With Bart and Thad side by side on their knees, Abra Kadabra realizes that even though the Flash is a few years older, he is otherwise identical to Inertia — a detail that Kadabra is embarrassed to admit had eluded him. Pied Piper also has figured out that Inertia has lost his speed, and his machine was designed to give his speed back. Kadabra pulls out his wand and removes the needles from Inertia's wrist compartment, fully exposing the ruse.

Inertia begins shouting at the Rogues, telling them not to idiotically waste this chance they've waited for all their lives. He admits he lied about the machine, but says he delivered on his promise to give them the Flash and they should kill him now. Kadabra insists that Bart is a mere child — not the Flash. At this prodding, Bart manages to find an extra burst of energy and breaks free of Captain Cold, shouting, "I AM THE FLASH!!!"

Bart surprises the Rogues and even himself with this newfound fury. And it isn't directed at the Rogues — it's all aimed at Inertia. Bart begins pummeling Thad, consumed by an animal instinct, enraged at the thought of his own twisted reflection causing all this trouble. Inertia is too shocked to fight back, as are the Rogues, who watch the fight with awe and amusement. Bart spots the Black Flash out of the corner of his eye again, and for a moment, he believes the Black Flash could be here for the death of a different speedster — Inertia.

As Bart beats Inertia, we get a flashback of Iris telling Bart how he dies. Even though Bart had initially asked his grandma to tell him what happens so he can avoid it, he actually ended the conversation by saying he's OK with the idea of dying. As Bart remembers what he said, he instantly loses all hope. Inertia manages to land a decent kick on Bart's chin, and the Pied Piper notices a door has opened on the machine, emitting a spark of blue lightning. Thad and Bart immediately begin racing toward the door, while the Rogues slowly piece together that the machine could give the Flash his speed back.

Iris finally wakes up, but is unable to fully get up to her feet. From her hands and knees, she watches with horror as Bart does manage to tackle Inertia, but is hit in the back with blasts of fire, ice and lightning. Captain Cold loudly proclaims he's not going back to jail, and Pied Piper seems to be the only one upset with the idea of killing a defenseless young man.

The Rogues oddly give Bart some space to die in peace, and as he takes his final glance at the world, Bart sees swirling blue lightning shooting out of the machine. But it seems to be releasing the energy in a safe manner, indicating that Val was successfully able to prevent the explosion. Satisfied that thousands of lives have been saved, Bart allows himself to fall to the ground. Val is quickly by Bart's side, urging him to tap into the Speed Force to heal himself. Bart says he's tried, but it's not working. As Iris joins them, Bart begins says, "Wally. Wally, I'm so ... I'm sorry I was a jerk." It's not entirely clear which words he meant for Wally and which for Val, but she seems to think he's talking to her and tells him he wasn't a jerk. Bart says, "I think we would've worked out, y'know?" Val says they would, and Bart wipes a tear off Val's cheek, saying, "Don't know what it feels like, but ... I think I love ..."

And then Bart dies.

At Titans Tower, Robin gets a phone call that causes him to drop the phone and fall down to the ground. At the JSA headquarters, Jesse meets Jay in a dark room, and the two embrace with tears running down their cheeks. At the Flash Museum, the flag is lowered to half-mast and a large crowd shows up for a candlelight vigil. We get some final narration boxes from Bart: "My name is Bart Allen. I'm the fastest man alive. End of the day, you only need to know two things about me. I run fast ... and I help people." And our series ends with a quote from Sir Walter Scott: "And come he slow, or come he fast, it is but death who comes at last."

The End.




OK. I'll admit it. I got a little choked up at the end. This has been a mess of a series, and the last few years have been extremely frustrating for Bart, as each element of what made him Bart was stripped away bit by bit. Mark Waid famously said that Dan DiDio called him to let him know they were going to kill Bart, to which Waid replied that Bart had already been killed long ago. And I agree with that entirely. But this issue still made me sad. It's now official. Unable to be Impulse or Kid Flash anymore, Bart was thrust into the role of the Flash, and he failed. And now he's dead.

The opening scene was a bit jarring. We never did learn much about Bart's time in the virtual reality world. We know he had weird little alien friend named Dox, but that's about it. Apparently he also spent time talking to his family members — or representations of his family members. Either way, it was a pretty nice message to keep standing even when your legs are gone.

And it is fair to say Bart died heroically. Even without his powers, he still boldly took on the Rogues and Inertia, doing everything he could to prevent a massive explosion. Of course, the cynic in me wonders if there ever really was much of a threat of an explosion. Wouldn't Inertia, who is from the future, have carefully made sure his machine wouldn't have backfired on him? And how can Val, the former intern at S.T.A.R. Labs, be so sure the machine would have exploded, much less be able to somehow prevent that explosion? It was all rather convenient. I would have preferred to have Iris visit two different futures — one where Bart dies and another where he survives, but half of California is destroyed. That would have helped clear up a lot of things.

Ironically, I actually did appreciate Bart's conflicted nature in this issue. It felt realistic seeing him range from sad and depressed to unreasonably angry and final acceptance. He was just going through some of the stages of grief, including a brief bit of bargaining to have Inertia die in his place. I thought that was good, but the Rogues' ultimate decision to kill Bart felt a little forced. In most stories with the Rogues, they're portrayed as criminals with a code. People who rarely kill — if ever. Perhaps that's why Guggenheim threw in that small subplot of Captain Cold killing a random criminal over a petty grudge. He wanted to justify this ending as much as he could.

I am perpetually perplexed by Iris' complete lack of imagination. She can transport to any place on Earth at any time (presumably), yet is unable to come up with a halfway decent plan to save her grandson. I'm also quite perturbed with Val's presence in this story. I thought breaking up with her was the best thing Bart did. And besides all the vague "science" Val did to save the day, I think the only reason she was here was so we could have someone cry over Bart's dead body. Superman needed Lois Lane to cradle his corpse, so I guess Bart needed somebody, too.

Bart's final words were quite interesting. As we'll soon find out, Wally West actually returned to this world at the same time Bart was dying. Did Bart sense Wally's presence? Or was he just lamenting on the fact that he didn't spend any time trying to free Wally and his family from the Speed Force? Or that he and Wally were never particularly close? Were all his final words directed at Wally or Val? I think it could go either way. The only thing I wish is that Bart would have also mentioned Max Mercury.

I loved the final four pages. No speech bubbles, just reactions. Tim's was particularly heart-breaking. He's lost his dad, Conner and now Bart. And I think Bart's death hurts even more because Bart was around for a whole year but refused to spend any time with his old friend. When Tim was grieving Conner's death and insanely trying to resurrect him, Bart was being an idiot with Griffin. No wonder Tim goes crazy. It was also nice to see Jesse Chambers again. She's going by Liberty Belle now and has been absent from Bart's life for a long time. But it is fitting that she would mourn his death, as well.

So there we have it. The death of Bart. Did DC overreact to the rapid slide in sales of the first six issues? Possibly. But then again, it was kind of a mistake to make Bart the Flash in the first place. So we should really be looking at this as a chance for DC to push the reset button and undo that initial mistake. And, because this is an 11-year-old comic, we all know that Bart does come back to us — albeit in a strange, convoluted way — but he will be back.

Let's check out the ads of our series finale:

Ghost Rider on DVD and Blu-Ray.

He is not alone. Kyle XY on ABC Family.

Green Lantern: Wanted ... Hal Jordan.

A collection of classic Godzilla movies on DVD.

Here's a Countdown ad featuring the death of Bart Allen. It might be a little cliché, but I do like that the word "Alive" has crumbled. I have seen this image used as third alternate cover for this issue, which makes a lot of sense. As an ad, though, it tells us that even though Bart won't be featured in the Countdown series, the ramifications of his death will be played out in it.

The origin of the Emerald Archer! Year One: Green Arrow.

If she's going to marry Green Arrow ... she'll be kicking and screaming! Black Canary.

DC Nation is written by Richard Bruning this time, offering advice on how aspiring artists can show their portfolios to DC editors.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer The Video Game on Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Lara Croft Tomb Raider Anniversary on PlayStation 2.

As I said, Bart will return. And next time, we'll see that the seeds of his return were planted as soon as he died in Justice League of America #10.