The Flash #11

Case Two: The Road to Flashpoint Part Three

Storytellers: Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins
Colors: Michael Atiyeh
Letters: Sal Cipriano
Cover: Francis Manapul w/Brian Buccellato
Variant Cover: Scott Kolins w/Michael Atiyeh
Assistant Editor: Darren Shan
Editor: Brian Cunningham

Our cover shows Barry turning into a skeleton, while Bart, Jay and Wally can only run by helplessly. This is reminiscent of Barry's famous death scene in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but it only marginally ties in to this issue's story. And as great as it is to see the four Flashes running together, that also doesn't happen in this issue. Although we will actually see all these characters, which is something, but I'm kind of craving having them all together in uniform.

Our variant cover is a closeup of Hot Pursuit, with Barry's angry face reflected in the helmet visor. Barry's face is slightly distorted, but I guess it should be on a reflected surface. This is a fine cover that gives us a peak at Kolins trying to draw in Manapul's style. He's not entirely successful at it, and I'm actually torn on his attempt. On one hand, I always appreciate it when a fill-in artist has a very similar style to the main artist. On the other hand, I think established artists, such as Kolins, shouldn't spend their time mimicking other artists. On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of Kolins' more famous, light style ... so ... I don't know.

Our story begins the morning after the discovery of another victim of rapid aging and a young witness. Barry and Patty have returned to the Central City Police Department, seemingly having worked through the night. The boy they found is being tended to by child services, and although he seems alright, he isn't speaking to anyone. Barry and Patty check on the boy, and Patty tells Barry to try to talk to him. But the boy suddenly jumps up from his chair and throws his arms around Patty's waist. Patty does not want to get involved, but Barry says the boy can see the kindness in her eyes — like he can. So Patty decides to take the boy to the cafeteria to get him something to eat.

We then cut to a children's playground, where a little girl has also fallen victim to the rapid aging attacks. Hot Pursuit is crouching over her body, complaining about his fuel running low and how he still needs to find the time anomaly. A couple of police cars arrive on the scene, and Hot Pursuit quickly takes off, telling the officers that they couldn't comprehend his mission.

Back in the lab, Barry tells Forrest the tire tracks they saw at last night's crime scene belong to the same biker that drove across the lab and blew out the windows. Barry's not ready to say if the biker is actually connected to the murders, beyond merely being at the crime scene. Forrest asks who the biker is, and before Barry can answer, he gets an urgent text from Iris, telling him to come home immediately. So Barry immediately sprints home, not even bothering to put on his Flash uniform. But when he walks through the front door, he finds Iris, Jay, Wally and Bart sitting in a semicircle. And Iris announces that this is an intervention.

Iris makes Barry sit down, and he initially thinks this is a joke, but Iris takes his hand and begins talking about how much they all love him. She says Bart told them what happened, and Barry thinks she's referring to Hot Pursuit. Iris says they aren't worried about time-traveling doppelgängers and rogues. What they are worried about is how Barry didn't attend the family picnic because of Bart. Barry says that's not why he wasn't there, so Iris urges him to explain himself to Bart. But Barry resists, saying he doesn't want to do this right now and would rather work on the case of the culprit stealing decades of life from people.

Jay jumps on Barry's word choice, saying he's now stealing life from himself. He talks about the isolation all speedsters often feel, and how happy he was when Barry found someone to run home to — Iris. Iris urges Wally to speak up, and he talks about how before he new the Flash's secret identity, he didn't hope Barry Allen was the Flash, he hoped the Flash was Barry Allen. Wally says Barry taught him how precious every second was, and now it saddens him to see how Barry's somehow forgotten that.

Iris asks Bart if he has anything to say, and after a long silence, Bart sullenly says, "No." So Iris again urges Barry to talk to him. Barry tries, but once again he falls back to his lame, vague excuses, saying he's "struggling with some stuff." Bart immediately sees through this pathetic attempt and tells Barry to not waste his time now, since he hasn't wasted any time with him yet. Barry tries to apologize, but Bart stands up, telling his grandpa that he's supposed to be the person he learns from and looks up to. He asks why Barry can't just be that, and he hastily runs out the front door. Wally offers to go after Bart, but Barry says he needs to do it.

Bart has thrown on his Kid Flash uniform as he angrily roams the streets. Suddenly, he's ambushed from behind by Hot Pursuit, who apologizes for what he's about to do. He drags Bart by his wrist and throws him against a wall and condenses his Cosmic Motorcycle into a baton and promises to make this quick — even for Bart. But before Hot Pursuit can strike, Barry steps in front of him, sternly telling his doppelgänger to stop.

Meanwhile, Patty has decided to start analyzing the victims' blood while the boy witness takes a nap. She discovers an odd trace of electrical energy that appears to be the same found in the tire tracks left at the second crime scene. But she tells herself to stop, saying she left Central City for a reason, and that reason is married.

We cut back to our speedster heroes, and Barry is now literally holding Hot Pursuit back. Hot Pursuit claims Bart is the time anomaly he's been tracking, but Barry refuses to believe this. Somehow, Hot Pursuit manages to get his hand free and hit Bart with a blast from his baton, saying Bart needs to go back to the future for the safety of the timeline.

As Bart writhes in pain, Patty is surprised to see the witness boy is already up from his nap. She kneels down and tries to talk to him, and the boy finally speaks, saying, "Shut up." His eyes flicker with red lightning, and he says it was trickier than he thought to steal years from other and unlock additional powers in the Negative Speed Force. He says it's time to grow up, and as the red lightning surrounds his body, he transforms into the Reverse-Flash. Once he's back to his proper age, Eobard Thawne announces he has some history to unwind.




This is a pretty cool, terrifying power of Eobard's. I'm just sad that we only have one more issue to explore this idea before Flashpoint hits. This has been a fun story. Hot Pursuit turned out to be a red herring, but still dangerous, nonetheless. Of course, it's hard to blame him for believing that sending Bart back to the future will fix the timeline. I was also happy to see the Flash family starting to get serious with Barry. Sadly, but realistically, none of them really understand what Barry's problem is, and Barry, himself, is unable to adequately explain himself. Sometimes, that's just how depression works. Sometimes, a group intervention ends up just being a lot of empty, flowery words before somebody finally storms off. I don't know if Johns actually intended the intervention to be so hollow, but that's how it ended up. Some progress was made, yes, but the root of Barry's problem remains untouched. As well as the full extent of his actions. None of our heroes realize how close Barry is to cheating on his wife with Patty, which is a truly troubling prospect.

I do wish Max would have been at the intervention, too. Even though he's not particularly close to Barry, he is very close to Bart. And Bart's distress was the main catalyst of this intervention, and no one has more experience at consoling Bart than Max Mercury. This is another example of Johns' inability to work with the Flash family. He went through all that work to bring everybody back in Rebirth, but here we are, on the eve of Flashpoint, and this crucial moment has Max and Jesse as no-shows, and Jay and Wally impotently reduced to sitting around telling vapid stories. At least Bart is doing something. And I do appreciate him for not sugar-coating his feelings. Yeah, he's a bit clumsy at this, but he's coming closer to snapping Barry out of this funk than anyone else.

I also need to complain about the art once again. Or, more specifically, the fashion choices. At the big family picnic, Manapul put Bart in a rather sharp-looking colored shirt. As strange as it is to say, I was happy to see him wearing some nice clothes for once — we rarely see him out of his Kid Flash uniform anymore. But in this issue, Kolins put Bart back in his awful baggy hockey jersey he was last wearing in 2003. It's now 2011, and baggy isn't the style anymore. Poor Bart.

Next time, we'll take a very quick look at Bart's cousin, Jenni Ognats, in Adventure Comics #526.