The Flash #769

Blink of An Eye Chapter Two

Jeremy Adams Writer

David Lafuente & Brandon Peterson Artists

Mike Atiyeh & Luis Guerrero Colorists

Steve Wands Letterer

Brandon Peterson & Mike Atiyeh Cover

Zi Xu Variant Cover

Bixie Mathieu Assistant Editor

Mike Cotton Editor

Jamie S. Rich Group Editor

Our cover shows Wally West and Gold Beetle running away from a giant Dominator in the future. This is a mostly accurate representation of the story, with the exception being Wally possessing Bart Allen’s body. Oddly, even though the outside world sees Impulse like normal, Wally (and the reader) sees himself as regular adult Wally West just dressed like Impulse. Anyway, the cover is fine, nothing too catchy. Sadly, the real Impulse is nowhere to be seen on this or the variant cover.

Our story picks up with Barry Allen, Mr. Terrific and Green Arrow adjusting their equipment to continue communicating with Wally. Strangely, Barry regained a portion of his super speed when the raptor exploded and blasted Wally’s consciousness to the future. And when we catch up with Wally, we see that he (or rather Bart) is wearing a power-dampening collar (which he was not wearing last issue).

Gold Beetle has to push Wally off a building to save them from the giant Dominator. Still believing she’s talking to Bart, Gold blames him for growing that alien to the size of “Gorkong.” Wally is confused by all this, but especially the fact that his powers aren’t working. Gold drops a line about the collar having an anti-cloak field, which would explain why we didn’t see it last issue, but doesn’t explain why we did see it on the previous page. Anyway, our heroes land in Gold Beetle’s ship, which is uselessly smaller on the inside.

Gold Beetle blames Bart for messing up the time stream continuum in an attempt to get revenge against the Dominator who killed his dad. Barry begins speaking with Wally again, and Gold Beetle surprisingly can also hear Barry, thanks to her headnet from the 853rd century. Gold is thrilled once she realizes she’s talking to Wally, someone she’s had lots of adventures with in her past. But for Wally, this is the first time they’re meeting. Gold references one of their previous missions and even calls him Captain, which confuses Wally, who was planning to retire before this whole mess began. Gold laughs at the idea of Wally retiring, saying he still has five more crises to live through.

Gold Beetle then asks an interesting question: Where is Bart? However, Gold’s robot, Beets, quickly dismisses this intriguing idea by saying Bart’s “conscious self was probably sublimated” … whatever that means. Barry then tells Gold they believe the Speed Force is hurt and is using Wally to try to heal itself. So Gold has Beets pull up video footage of the recent chronal  disturbance caused by Bart during his encounter with the Dominator.

The video shows a big blast of light suddenly erupt from Bart’s chest. Barry, who can somehow see what Wally sees, identifies this as Speed Force energy. Wally hypothesizes the energy is looking for conduits at their weakest point, like a leak in a fuel line causing pressure to drop. Barry agrees with this theory, saying it feels like the Speed Force is now regaining equilibrium. The video continues to show the energy from Bart blasting the Dominator into the wall and then causing him to rapidly grow to the size of giant.

Mr. Terrific suggests the Speed Force may affect various physiologies differently in an attempt to account for the dinosaur gaining super speed, but the Dominator increasing in size. Barry and Wally don’t disagree with that assessment, but right now they’re more worried about the Dominator exploding like the raptor did. The two Flashes begin to form a plan to siphon energy off the giant alien, and Wally asks Barry if he still has the device Inertia used on him (I have no idea what he’s referencing). Wally has Barry put the device in a time capsule, so he’ll be able to grab it in the future. As Wally and Gold head to the Flash Museum, she asks if his son Jai is still single. Wally says Jai is only 8, but Gold says he’s older when she first meets him.

For absolutely no reason, Green Arrow and Mr. Terrific join Barry in visiting the Flash Museum in civilian clothes. They discuss at length the operating costs of the museum and its gift shop, but Barry doesn’t say a word about the device that Inertia supposedly used against him. Luckily, the device is no larger than a pen, and Barry is able to discreetly place it in the time capsule, which turns out to be a bust of Jay Garrick.

In the future, Wally prepares to break into the Flash Museum, but Gold Beetle warns him that the museum’s security defenses are specifically targeted to stop speedsters — mostly Bart — and Rogues. Wally asks how they should break in then, and Gold responds by saying they do exactly Bart has done a dozen times — be impulsive. She crashes through the museum’s roof, which summons an army of Flash robots. Wally quickly snags the bust and Gold takes care of the robots with a flare of bright light that blinds the bots long enough to cover their escape. Gold calls the security droids terrible and says she now understands why the museum gets ransacked every couple of decades.

Barry tells Wally to not turn on the device until he’s placed it on the target, but he still fails to provide anymore information on it. When Gold asks Wally how they’re going to accomplish this, he suggests they continue acting impulsive like Bart. Barry then hypothesizes that once Wally shuts off this Speed Force leak, he’ll be pulled to another conduit that’s been weakened. In other words, as Wally says, he’s going to keep bouncing around from speedster to speedster until he stops all the surges. As for what happens after that, nobody knows. Barry is worried that Wally won’t have a body, and Mr. Terrific offers to build one for him, but Wally strongly disagrees with the idea of being an android.

In the meantime, Wally and Gold reach the giant Dominator, and in her quest to be impulsive, Gold slams her ship into the back of the alien’s head. Wally jumps out of the ship, runs up the Dominator’s arm, and jokes about the alien’s breath being so bad that it dominates everything. He continues to joke, pretending to be a baseball player, as he tosses the device into the Dominator’s mouth. Wally jumps back onto the ship as the alien rapidly shrinks back down to normal size. Barry tells Wally to be prepared to be pulled back into the Speed Force stream and he asks Gold Beetle to retrieve and dispose of the device the Dominator swallowed. Gold tells Barry she’ll do that, but she has a sarcastic smirk on her face that suggests she won’t.

Gold Beetle then wraps Wally up in a big hug to give her final goodbyes to her Captain. She asks him not to attack her the first time they meet, and Wally whispers something in her ear like Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation. Then Wally is gone, replaced by Bart, who is quite confused to have Gold Beetle so lovingly hugging him. Bart says he promised to not “break time again,” but Gold ignores him and continues to have her moment, as Wally is sent back to World War II.

Well, that was certainly something. Wally West got to have a mildly fun adventure in the future dressed as Impulse. But the real Bart was virtually nonexistent during the whole story. We learned that Bart is in the future, battling Dominators with Gold Beetle. But that’s it. We don’t know why or when he decided to abandon Young Justice and Max Mercury and everybody he knows and loves. I’m not opposed to having Impulse in the future — I just want to actually see him there doing things. Having Wally choosing to act impulsively in Bart’s honor isn’t enough for me.

The art was very difficult for me. Everything has a rubbery, computerized feel to it. But that complaint is quite minor compared to the sheer convenience of everything in this story. Wally’s lost in the future, but a competent ally with a capable form of transportation immediately shows up. He has no difficulties communicating with Barry in the past, and every single one of their guesses about this mystery proves correct on the first try. Wally has a power-dampening collar that is promptly removed without any difficulty. There’s a giant alien lurking around that fails to threaten anything and is instantly defeated with a mysterious device that we’ve never heard of before. (Seriously, Inertia has never utilized any device against Barry Allen. The closest I can think of is the machine he had the Rogues build to take down adult Bart. But that was completely different.) 

There were no stakes in this story, but there were grave consequences for our buddy Bart Allen. He is now essentially trapped in no man’s land — too far removed from anything for anyone to use him in another comic. Adams seems to have no desire to do anything with Bart, other than a convenient way to show off his original character, Gold Beetle. Until somebody does something drastic like bring back Young Justice or actually tell a story with the full Flash family, I don’t think we’re going to see Impulse in the comics again. So, in the meantime, let’s drown our sorrows in the new house ads:

Uncover the darkest corners of Gotham alongside its legendary protector! Legends of the Dark Knight.

Batman vs. Snake Eyes! Zeropoint.

DC Nation spotlight on Robin #1. Interview with Joshua Williamson and Gleb Melnikov.

Next time … well, technically, Bart did make minor cameos in Suicide Squad and Teen Titans Academy … but those were just pictures of him on a TV screen or whatever. I could review those issues, but, frankly, I wouldn’t have anything to say about them. So, I’ll just skip ahead to the debut of Bart Allen on the live-action Flash show!