Kid Flash in Mirror Games
Written by Joe Harris
Art by Andrei Bressan
Color by Marcelo Maiolo
Letters by Rob Clark Jr.
Editors: Adam Schlagman & Eddie Berganza
Our cover by Gene Ha shows Bizarro reading the previous year's Halloween Special to a group of hostages, while Superman, Guy Gardner, Robin and Kid Flash rush in to save the day. It's a fun, goofy cover, showing us that even though this is Halloween, most of the 13 stories inside will be a bit on the lighter side. And frankly, that's the way to go in the middle of this massive horror event, Blackest Night. For me, personally, it's nice to see that Bart is back and was chosen as one of the few characters on this DC-wide event.
Our story begins in a dark bathroom with a group of teenage girls trying to summon Bloody Mary through the mirror. To their horror, the mirror shatters on its own and out of it emerges Mirror Master, who promptly grabs the youngest girl and holds a large mirror shard against her throat. One of the girls is able to slip away and call the police, and soon a police barricade is set up around the house and a hostage negotiator is summoned.
This naturally attracts the attention of a couple of trick-or-treaters, who are dressed as zombie versions of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. They had apparently heard ahead of time of the girls' desire to summon Bloody Mary, and they begin to argue whether she is real. Kid Flash eavesdrops on the conversation, before quickly zipping away. The kids didn't see Bart, but they did hear a strange sound like somebody kicked out the plug of an Xbox 360, or shot it with a death ray. As Bart rushes off to what he's sure is a battle with Mirror Master, he kicks himself for spending Halloween night listening to police bandwidth instead of finding a party to go to.
Inside, Mirror Master still has a tight hold on the youngest girl, while making all the other girls gather up ever mirror in the house and smash them to bits. Mirror Master hears Kid Flash approaching, but Bart smartly vibrates through the wall behind him and punches the Rogue, causing him to let go of the girl. Bart hits Mirror Master a couple more times, before asking him what's with the hostages and the large pile of mirrors at his feet.
Mirror Master explains that he wants to destroy all the mirrors because he saw something much worse than him zipping through the Mirror Dimension. He doesn't know if it's just because it's Halloween or what, but he's sure this monster will rip them all up if she gets out. Bart asks who Mirror Master's talking about, and the youngest girl says, "Bloody Mary."
At those words, the shards of mirrors begin to swirl in the air and the image of a ghostly woman appears. Kid Flash gets all the girls safely to the back corner of the room, and then — somehow, someway — he causes Bloody Mary to disappear as quickly as she appeared. The art is extremely confusing here, and all we get for an explanation in the dialogue is a "targeted hypersonic wave."
Bart pulls himself out of the girls' embrace, saying he should probably check on the neighbors, and the girls invite him to their party. Bart then notices Mirror Master somehow slipped out in the confusion, and is unable to find Evan McCullough later. But we, the reader, see that Mirror Master escaped the old fashioned way — just running down the road. He's choosing to avoid using any mirrors for now to avoid Bloody Mary, but he happens to step on a puddle of water as he says her name aloud for some reason. Bloody Mary promptly pops up out of the water and drags Mirror Master down with her.
This story sucked. I know it's just a Halloween feature that's not supposed to be taken too seriously, but it still felt like only a half-formed idea. Joe Harris wanted to do Bloody Mary and Mirror Master, but apparently didn't spend any time figuring out what Bloody Mary is, how she works and how to get rid of her. Kid Flash was only thrown in here for the cliché "teenage boy saves teenage girls" scenario. This was a weak story with incoherent art. And that's a shame, because I'm craving a fun Kid Flash story.
Next time, there won't be a whole lot of fun, as we wrap up the Blackest Night: Titans miniseries.
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