Flashpoint: Kid Flash Lost #2

Kid Flash Lost Part Two

Sterling Gates Writer
Oliver Nome Penciller
Trevor Scott Inker
Brian Buccellato Colorist
Dezi Sienty Letterer
Kate Stewart Assistant Editor
Joey Cavalieri Editor
Cover by Francis Manapul
Cover Color by Brian Buccellato

Our cover shows Bart still falling onto a city far below him, this time reflected on Hot Pursuit's visor. This still has nothing to do with our story inside, but it is really neat-looking. I mean, it's a Manapul cover, can you expect anything less?

Our story picks up in the year 3011, with Bart and Patty plotting their daring escape from Brainiac. Well, first, Bart has some questions about how Patty acquired Hot Pursuit's suit and Cosmic Motorcycle after he died. Patty explains that she went to Central City to see a friend, but then suddenly found herself back in the lab and the job she tried to leave behind. She was still helping out in the lab when some policemen gathered Hot Pursuit's effects to turn over to the Justice League. But instead of waiting for the Justice League to show up, Patty impulsively stole the gear and decided to become a superhero. She taught herself how to ride the motorcycle, thanks to the guiding influence of the helmet's AI, but on the third day, the bike "freaked out" and brought her here.

Bart reiterates that this is the wrong future and something must have happened to the timestream. He borrows Hot Pursuit's helmet and asks it to tell him what happened. Bart then cries out in pain as his brain is overwhelmed with dozens of contradictory images, showing the timeline he left behind, the new Flashpoint world Barry inadvertently created, and the post-Flashpoint world of the New 52.

Patty pulls the helmet off Bart, but he has collapsed and is slow to get up. And our heroes find out the hard way that they've been dawdling in one spot for too long, as a handful of floating robotic orbs have caught up with them. The robots begin to carry Bart away, who finally wakes up and demands that "Dr. Ball" put him down. Patty fires up the Cosmic Motorcycle and uses it to smash the robot and save Bart. But one of the other robots shoots Patty in the shoulder with a laser, so Bart insists on driving the cycle.

Bart drives right through the giant glass eye of Brainiac's skull-shaped base, which is unfortunately perched atop the old LexCorp tower. He assures Patty that he's driven a batplane before, but Patty, in a full-blown panic now, swears and tells Bart this isn't a plane. She manages to hit a switch on the bike that lets it drive on walls, preventing an imminent crash. Eventually our heroes are able to outrun the floating robots and find a safe spot atop a nearby building to regroup.

Patty berates Bart for pulling that stunt that almost killed them, and says she might as well just crawl back into that hibernation chamber and dream her worst memories again. She angrily asks how the Flash stands working with him, and Bart sadly says that the Flash doesn't work with him, at least not lately. Patty realizes she went too far, so she starts to apologize, but Bart interrupts her, asking what she dreamed about in the chamber. Patty says she drowned at a pool as a kid and it took the lifeguard a few minutes to resuscitate her. And she kept reliving that moment on a loop while she was in the chamber. She asks Bart what he dreamed, but he doesn't tell her (probably because he knows dreaming about a slightly rude Flash is no comparison to the torturous repetition of a near-death experience).

Bart gets down to business and starts piecing together the information Hot Pursuit's helmet gave him. He notes that something happened to the Flash (Bart's careful not to use Barry's name in front of Patty), and he laments not being able to see any trace of Max, Wally or even Jenni in this new timeline. Continuing to think aloud, Bart speculates that his grandfather is dead and there's nothing he can do about it. Patty tries to cheer him, saying they just need to find the Cosmic Motorcycle's fuel tank so they can use the Speed Force energy to go back in time and fix everything. Bart sadly says he doesn't think he's going to make it, and he shows Patty both his hands and now half his face have begun to fade away.

Patty sits in silence next to Bart for a moment, before turning the conversation back to how they need to save the future. She reminds Bart how Brainiac's studying the Speed Force to unlock the secrets of time travel, and she worries he may have already done so and has changed the past. In any case, the fate of the world depends on them to stop Brainiac. She asks Bart what the Flash would do, and this snaps Bart out of his depression.

We then check in on Brainiac, who is working in sub-level 7 of his laboratory. Bart suddenly shows up on his security monitors, calling the villain "Nerd-iiiac" and claiming that he'll never catch him, since he's the fastest time anomaly alive. Bart furthers the insults, by saying that Brainiac 5 told him Brainiac is dumber than a bag of Coluan rocks. This actually gets under Brainiac's skin, who responds that he vaporized the planet Colu when he was 7 years old, so there are no Coluan rocks left, and there is no such thing as a Brainiac 5. Bart is promptly captured by two large robots and forced back into the sleep chamber so Brainiac can continue studying the Speed Force. Of course, this is exactly what Bart wanted.

Bart wakes up in the same VR as before, with Barry ranting and raving about how Wally was a better Kid Flash than Bart ever will be. But Bart ignores his fake grandpa and begins to run. He doesn't have access to the Speed Force in the real world, but he does have super-speed in the virtual reality. And now he's using it to outthink the greatest criminal mastermind the universe has ever seen. Bart's plan works, and he's somehow able to rewrite Brainiac's programs from the inside. Brainiac noticed something was happening, but he wasn't able to disconnect Bart quick enough. Bart boasts of how the scientists had to constantly adapt the VR he was raised in, and he calls Brainiac a "noob" that has been "haxxor'd and pwned."

Patty emerges from hiding right on cue to blast Brainiac from behind with her baton, demonstrating Bart's success at disabling Brainiac's security programs. They're easily able to collect the Speed Force fuel cell, with is a glowing orange orb. But as soon as Patty picks it up, Brainiac blasts his robotic hand through Patty's chest. Bart attacks Brainiac in a rage with a hunk of metal he found on the ground, demanding to know why he killed her. Brainiac logically states that both Bart and Patty are temporal anomalies, and he only needs one of them alive to study. As he fights off Bart, he states that he's in the process of rebooting all his systems and he'll soon regain complete control of his citadel.

As Bart continued to fight and yell at Brainiac, Patty summoned all her remaining strength to crawl back to the Speed Force fuel cell. She tells Bart that she knows he can fix all this, so she tells him to do what he does best — run. With her last breath, Patty destroys the fuel cell, unleashing a bolt of lightning that strikes Bart in the chest. Lightning appears in Bart's eyes, and he instantly zooms away at super speed, vowing to do whatever it takes to save Patty and prevent this future from happening. He races into the timestream, determined to find the Flash, even if it kills him.




This issue took a little while to get going. The first three pages mostly just recapped stuff we already knew. And Patty's "backstory" added absolutely nothing. This issue also brought up a few inconsistencies that were a little too convenient for the plot. Like the nature of the sleep chambers. If they were supposed to show your worst nightmare, then why was Bart's nightmare just a mildly rude Barry and not Bart actually being killed by Inertia and the Rogues? Of course, if it was that memory, then he wouldn't have super speed and wouldn't be able to stop Brainiac. And although I love the idea of Bart having to outthink the most brilliant villain of all time, I wish the execution would have been a bit better. I mean, what, exactly, did Bart do?

I also have one last nitpick. In the last issue, Gates established Brainiac as a living computer that obnoxiously prefaced everything he said with "statement" or "query" or "order." In this issue, Gates forgot to do that half the time and/or forgot the difference between a statement and an order. It's not a big deal, but it adds to the rather long list of annoyances with this issue. It was nice that Patty died to help Bart, but I don't care about her. I wish it could have been someone actually connected to Bart. Oh well, in any case we did get a strong ending of a dying Bart boldly racing back through time to save the universe one last time.

Next time, we'll return to Teen Titans #99.