The Flash #761

Finish Line Part Three

Joshua Williamson Writer

Howard Porter Artist

Hi-Fi Colors

Steve Wands Letters

Howard Porter and Hi-Fi Cover

InHyuk Lee Variant Cover

Marquis Draper Assistant Editor

Mike Cotton Editor

Alex R. Carr Group Editor

Our main cover is once again something that I can’t fully embrace. I don’t know what it is about Howard Porter’s covers, but they always seem a bit off. This is the classic pose of the villain standing triumphant over the fallen heroes, but it’s laid out in a very strange way. All the heroes are laying down, but Professor Zoom and the Flash are standing up — but it makes you think they might be laying down on top of everybody. And are they having a tickle fight? Seriously, what is Eobard doing here? But hey, Impulse was included, which is always a nice thing.

Our variant cover (courtesy of dc.fandom.com) is a brilliant, sharp image of Barry racing along with two of the Kid Flashes. Bart’s costume is a mix of the old and the new, but he looks great, regardless. And I especially appreciate how InHyuk Lee followed Patrick Gleason’s standard of not showing Impulse in a traditional running pose.

Our story begins on the planet Mercury in the 853rd century, where John Fox has taken his new Kid Flash (a green-skinned girl) to the Flash Museum to teach her about a day that “changed the Flash forever.” And that day happens to be where our story takes place. We return to Central City to see that the massive fight has spilled out of the cemetery and onto a street named for legendary Flash artist Carmine Infantino. Barry has Wallace take Iris to safety, while also noting how Eobard’s massive Legion of Zoom doesn’t include any other speedsters. Jesse and Jay comment on the disparity of numbers in this battle, which gives Max and idea.

Max sits down to meditate, telling Impulse to cover him. Bart’s shocked by this, but he obeys, beginning his work by punching Abra Kadabra while yelling, “I hate magic!” He subsequently fights off five more villains before conceding to Max that they’re now out of time. Luckily, Max has finished work of summoning 16 other heroes (mostly speedsters) from alternate times and worlds.

Leading the way are Wally West’s children, Jai and Irey, who both have super speed. Irey, who is now as tall as Bart, accuses him of stealing her costume. Bart reminds her that he had the costume first, as they work on evacuating the city. There is now an overwhelming number of heroes and villains running around and fighting each other, but the only fight that matters is between Barry and Eobard.

Eobard explains to Barry that he has dedicated his life to traveling back and forth through time to make Barry’s life miserable. Every single bad thing that ever happened to Barry can now be attributed to Eobard using a new power — whispering to people at a hypnotic frequency. Seriously. Eobard explains that he turned Hunter Zolomon into Zoom by creating the tragedy of the clown with a gun. He turned August Heart into Godspeed by killing his brother and planting Black Hole evidence.

Eobard hypnotized Barry and Batman to conceal their investigation of the Watchmen button. He hypnotized Bart to stay away from his family and friends after he first escaped from the Speed Force. He hypnotized Wallace, Wally and Barry to get into a big fight, which ultimately broke open the Force Barrier and released Bart. And, most significantly, Eobard hypnotized Wally to cover up the tragedy he caused during Heroes in Crisis.

But speaking of Wally, he somehow interrupts this fight with a bolt of blue lightning and a faint plea for Barry to come find him. Eobard is shocked that the timeline has changed under him, and he immediately takes off, followed close behind by Barry.

Meanwhile, this massive battle is apparently destroying Central City. Irey wonders if there’s a way to send all the villains back to their own times quick. Jesse reports that when Eobard was in Barry’s body, she learned that none of the villains are on the correct vibrational frequency. Bart realizes what happened with the Tornado Twins — he reset their frequency, which reverted them to state before Thawne’s influence, fixing their history. For some unknown reason, Wallace brings Iris back to the heart of the battle, and she asks her grandson if he has a plan. “Yes. No. Maybe,” is Bart’s reply. 

Bart, Wallace and Avery begin discussing how the Flash usually travels through time by controlling his vibrations. Jay begins to chime in, but Max and Jesse obnoxiously cut him off, telling him to let the kids figure it out. And so, even though they’re in the middle of a very destructive battle, the adult speedsters let their younger companions have a “learning opportunity” and come up with a plan to race around the bad guys in a way that creates a shock wave at just the right frequency to send them all home and reset their histories so they don’t remember this event happened.

Sounds convenient, right? Well, it is. Bart, Avery, Jai, Irey and Wallace begin racing around everyone, while Jay, Max and Jesse provide cover. All the other guest heroes are to focus on keeping the villains in a contained area. But before they begin, Iris tells Bart to not do this, since it could send him back to the 30th century, but Bart insists this is worth that risk. So they get to work running and vibrating, having just enough time for Bart to say goodbye to his cousin, XS.

There’s a big explosion, and everybody that was inside the circle vanishes away. To Iris’ surprise, Bart didn’t disappear, so she treats him to a big, crushing hug. Bart lamely reasons that the Speed Force knows this is their home. Bart then notices Barry is missing, as we cut back to John Fox, who ominously tells his new sidekick that this is the story of the final race between Barry and Eobard.

It might surprise some people to hear me say this, but I hated this issue. I absolutely hated it. Williamson has removed the ability for any heroes to have any flaws, to make any mistakes, to have any negative emotions whatsoever. Every single time they may have acted selfishly or irrationally or merely didn’t think things through all the way can now be blamed on the Reverse-Flash’s hypnotic whispers. Williamson is telling all Flash fans that anything they didn’t like about his run (or even before it) was all Eobard’s fault. “Don’t worry,” Williamson comfortingly assures us. “Barry, Wally and all the rest were always perfect all along!” This is revisionism. This is coddling. And this is stupid.

Hunter Zolomon’s origin was intriguing because he legitimately made an honest mistake that turned deadly. And what made him a twisted villain was his inability to move past that mistake. But now he was merely the victim of an elaborate scheme set up by a villain from the future. Williamson robbed that story of all its emotional resonance. 

Heroes in Crisis is a very controversial story that many Flash fans hate. I enjoyed it, however, because Tom King discussed depression and anxiety in a way that hit me on a deep, personal level. And I didn’t mind the idea of Wally having an uncontrollable panic attack. Yes, he acted out of character, but that’s the whole point. When someone is truly depressed or undergoing some sort of mental health crisis, they essentially become a completely different person. They act out of character. Heroes in Crisis is a tough, brutal, yet beautiful and illuminating story. And Williamson knee-capped it in a single panel. “It’s OK! It’s OK!” he soothingly tells the angry internet mob. “Wally’s panic attack wasn’t that bad! It wasn’t his idea to cover it all up!”

But I still don’t know how to feel about Bart. So the official story now is that because Eobard hypnotized Barry to act selfishly, and he hypnotized Wally to be angered by that selfish behavior, they got into a big fight that broke the Force Barrier and freed Bart. But before he could reunite with the Flash family, Eobard hypnotized Bart to stay away from them ... until now. The real reason why it took Bart so long to reunite with everyone was because Brian Michael Bendis was holding him hostage. Williamson’s comic book explanation isn’t that bad. For a boy who moved heaven and earth to find his Young Justice friends, it makes no sense for Bart to have not expended any effort into finding the Flash family, unless something was actively keeping him away. The problem, though, is the setup, the so-called Flash War, which is now a direct result of Eobard’s hypnotism, thus robbing Barry and Wally of the ability to feel any genuine emotions or make choices on their own. Even Bart loses the ability to choose in this explanation. All speedsters are now just puppets of the Reverse-Flash. Every Flash story you’ve read over the past few years was just the result of his manipulations. And that leaves me with such a hollow feeling.

Howard Porter’s art was fine. Not great, but fine. He got to draw tons and tons of cameos, but they might as well have just been statues in the Flash Museum. None of them made an impact on the story. And, sadly, I think I may have lost the ability to get excited by cameos anymore. I guess that’s because I’ve been forced to subsist on a diet of nothing but sporadic Impulse cameos for far too long. Or maybe it’s just because I don’t like this story anymore. It’s how I felt after watching The CW’s big Crisis crossover. Thirty seconds of Burt Ward did not redeem a flawed story. The sight of Jenni Ognats did not absolve Eobard’s revelation.

Next time, we’ll wrap up this story in The Flash #762.