Sidekick Rules
Jess Carson and Emily Palizzi – Writers
David LaFuente – Artist
Miquel Muerto – Colorist
Tom Napolitano – Letterer
Kim Jacinto – Cover
Justina Mintz – Photo Variant Cover
Andrew Marino – Editor
Katie Kubert – Senior Editor
Special Thanks – Kim Roberto and Richard Flores
Earth-Prime is a limited series with each issue focusing on a different DC show on The CW. The Flash’s Impulse (modeled after Jordan Fisher) made very small, inconsequential cameos in the backgrounds of the Legends of Tomorrow issue and the Stargirl issue. So I’m skipping straight to this one, which prominently features Bart front and center, with his sister, XS, trailing behind him. I actually love this cover. It’s fun and dynamic and reminds me of those energetic Impulse covers by Jeff Matsuda in the ’90s.
I got this photo variant cover from dc.fandom.com. There’s nothing too special about it. Just Grant Gustin posing for a promotional photo. Ironically, Gustin’s character, Barry Allen, has almost nothing to do in this issue.
Our story opens in Central City in the year 2049. Impulse and XS are chasing a couple of crooks, and Nora warns Bart to wait until they form a plan, but he ignores her. Impulse somehow creates a ring of lightning around the criminals, then smashes their heads together. As he stands triumphantly over the unconscious crooks, holding their stolen bags of cash, Impulse fails to notice the getaway driver aiming a gun at his back. Fortunately, XS is able to catch the bullet before it hits Impulse, who’s left wondering where that guy came from. Nora lectures her brother for not being able to go one nanosecond without showing off, but Bart defensively insists that the gunman would have missed him. Bart sees nothing wrong with improvising a little, but Nora wants them to work as a team. Adding to Bart’s chagrin, a nearby boy praises XS for her heroics, completely ignoring Impulse’s “lightning tornado ring.”
Bart and Nora then rush home to their parents. For some reason, they lie about where they were, but Barry and Iris seem too busy packing their bags to notice or care. They announce they’re heading out for a few days on an overdue vacation, leaving Nora in charge while they’re gone. Bart protests this, not only because he wanted to party, but also because Nora hates being XS. Barry tells Bart he’s too young to understand that being a superhero isn’t about the glory. With that, Barry rushes Iris away, and Nora immediately forbids Bart from doing anything impulsively by himself, saying that if anything comes up, they’ll handle it together. Poor Bart is left to whine about how unfair this is.
We next see Bart at Central City University, where it’s apparently the first day of the semester. Bart has his nose in a book, reading as he’s walking, not noticing the people he bumps into. He does, however, notice a large young man with blond hair named Will Parker, who is live-streaming his arrival on campus. For some reason, Will glares at Bart and his blue eyes suddenly flash red. Even though Will seems incredibly popular, Bart doesn’t know who is, and he’s even more perplexed by what just happened.
Bart then attends Forensics 101, taught by Dr. Evie Clariss, a Black man with an arm in a sling. (I suppose this is a reference to the show’s version of Rival, but I’m not entirely sure.) Dr. Clariss announces that Bart West-Allen (we finally know his full name!) scored a perfect grade on his extra credit early-semester quizzes. The only other student to score perfectly was Will, who naturally has to share this with his social media followers. At the end of class, Dr. Clariss tells Bart he has a knack for forensics but is too easily distracted. Bart barely listens to him, though, because he’s so busy thinking about Will.
Will happens to have several other classes with Bart, one-upping him in each one. Finally, Bart manages to catch Will by himself and begins talking to him. Will’s eyes glow red, and so do Bart’s, who suddenly says it’s “crash” how Will takes command of each class. Will asks Bart what makes him tick, and Bart starts to blurt out how he’s happiest being Impulse, but Will abruptly leaves before Bart fully reveals his secret identity. Bart snaps out of a trance once Will is gone, and he begins to suspect the social media influencer might be a metahuman.
Bart begins seriously investigating Will, learning that not only does he have 5 million followers, but his followers absolutely adore him. Bart later catches Will convincing Dr. Clariss to throw out a test score so it wouldn’t hurt his grade. But Bart’s big break comes when he surreptitiously records a video of Will convincing a food truck vendor to give him his order for free.
We cut to Bart eating pizza at home with Nora, who asks if he’s made any friends at school. Bart says he’s too busy doing important things to make friends, then complains that they’re sitting around having boring conversations instead of going out and catching bad guys. Nora insists they stay home and be safe while their parents are away, especially since Bart can’t control his impulses. This only angers Bart and he promptly runs away from his sister.
Bart heads to a laboratory owned by a company called Tannhauser and begins fiddling with some equipment. It isn’t long before he’s discovered by his “aunt,” Dr. Caitlin Snow. He shows her the reflective “sunglasses” he’s working on and admits that even though his parents don’t want him to do superhero stuff while they’re away, he needs something to negate Will Parker’s hypnosis energy. He shows Caitlin the video he took and she cross-references it with temporal readings in the area to confirm that Will really is a telepath. Bart then heads out to expose this “Evil Eye,” saying he can take him down without Nora’s help or even becoming Impulse. As he leaves, Caitlin admits Evil Eye is a villain name Cisco would be proud of.
Bart heads back home, carrying a large box stuffed with all his blueprints for the reflective lenses. He initially tries to lie to Nora, calling it a homework assignment, but he quickly admits it’s to help him take down a metahuman at school. Nora says they should do it together, but Bart says he’s not a kid anymore, and it’s time for him to do something like this on his own. Nora tells him to stop whining for five seconds and directly orders him to not go after Will alone. Enraged, Bart runs off once again, leaving his blueprints behind. Nora decides it’s time to call in some reinforcements to reign in her little brother.
Impulse finds Will live-streaming in front of a large crowd of people trying to get his attention. Wearing his reflective lenses, Impulse quickly crushes Will’s phone and smugly tells him his account’s been deactivated. But Will calmly snaps his fingers and the entire crowd turns on Impulse. Bart runs away, repeatedly saying “Oh shrap!”, while Will orders his followers to “take back the city” and bring Impulse to him. Bart is quickly surrounded by hordes of angry mobs, but he’s suddenly joined by Nora and Wally West (who still goes by Kid Flash, even though he’s in his 50s by this point).
Nora and Bart immediately start bickering, but Wally is able to calm them down long enough to form some sort of a plan. Both Kid Flash and XS are sporting reflective lenses, as well, but Wally says he and Nora will run damage control in the streets, while Bart takes on Will himself. Nora saves some people from a car crash and puts out a fire, while also demonstrating that beyond protecting her from Will’s “evil eye,” the reflective lenses can also snap other people out of his hypnotic trance. Of course, while she’s doing all this, Nora has to lecture Bart, saying she wishes he told her sooner about Will, so they could have figured out how to stop him together.
Wally also has a bit of lecture for Bart, telling him that flowers don’t bloom by denying sun and water, but they must trust in the powers of others. Wally also demonstrates the ability to create energy duplicates of himself that race around rescuing people and loading up the injured into ambulances. (I don’t know if he had this power on the show, but it does remind me a lot of Impulse’s scouts from the comics.)
Bart admits that Nora and Wally are right, and he reports that he’s found Will, sitting on a throne outside the bank. But instead of immediately charging at Will, Bart oddly spies on him from around the corner, giving Will’s followers enough time to ambush Impulse and destroy his reflective lenses. When Impulse is brought before Will, he cheesily says he’s going to “unsubscribe,” which infuriates Will. Shouting that no one unfollows him, Will leaps into the air and … blasts a big beam of red energy from his eyes at Bart. I guess? Anyway, XS and Kid Flash arrive in the nick of time to reflect this … blast … back at Will, which conveniently causes all of his followers to instantly snap out of the hypnotic trance. Will is carried off to Iron Heights and the crowd begins to cheer for Impulse. But Bart humbly shares credit with Kid Flash and XS, calling them “totally schway.”
Later, we catch up with Bart and Nora studying human anatomy under a tree. Even though Bart scored perfectly on Dr. Clariss’ extra credit quizzes, he now has apparently asked for Nora to help him catch up in the class. Regardless, Bart quickly grows bored of this, and goofily pretends to hypnotize his sister into giving him another break. Their parents then call them, saying their done with their vacation. When they ask if anything interesting happened while they were gone, Bart and Nora oddly decide to lie once again. But the siblings smile at each other, so I guess it’s a happy ending? There’s also an epilogue with Wally and a backup story with A.R.G.U.S., but Bart’s not involved with those, so I don’t care.
I am gobsmacked. Completely stunned. This is a legitimate, honest-to-goodness Impulse story. Just change the setting to Manchester, Alabama, in the late ’90s, and you have a plot that easily could have been written by William Messner-Loebs or Todd Dezago. Even the art reminded me of Craig Rousseau and Carlo Barberi. It was incredible. I don’t know who Jess Carson and Emily Palizzi are, but they are clearly nostalgic for that old Impulse series and I absolutely love them for that!
And I haven’t even gotten to the best part! I completely was blindsided by Evil Eye! The name Will Parker seemed vaguely familiar, but I didn’t put it together until Bart directly named him Evil Eye. And that’s because the original Evil Eye always went by Eddie. It was a rather obscure fact that his real name was Wilfred — but not too obscure for Carson and Palizzi! But I loved this reimagined version of Evil Eye. He’s more obnoxious and a legitimate threat and more modern. I also appreciated how this story didn’t try to feel too futuristic. The year 2049 isn’t that far away, and I think it’s reasonable to assume that people will still have smartphones and live-streaming then.
It was nice to see the future versions of Barry and Iris, albeit briefly. I was also glad that Jay Garrick wasn’t awkwardly shoehorned in just to try to match the show. But most importantly, I was thrilled that this Bart didn’t start randomly breaking down in tears every five minutes like he does on The CW. This Bart actually felt impulsive and fun. And thanks to the cartoony art of David LaFuente, Bart actually had big hair!
Of course, this wasn’t a perfect story. The pacing felt very odd and the conversations between Bart and Nora quickly became redundant. And the final showdown with Evil Eye did not make a lick of sense. But that’s alright. This is just a goofy, fun little one-shot that got to explore some aspects of the show that The CW will never air. And the fact that they not only chose to feature Impulse, but to do a nostalgic Impulse story, just made my day.
Let’s check out the house ads:
Something terrible lies at the the bottom of the ocean. And it’s waking up. Aquaman Andromeda.
DC Nation Special Edition. Six pages of coverage devoted to Dark Crisis. Joshua Williamson doesn’t say anything significant in his interview, but we do get a teaser for Dark Crisis: Young Justice #1, written by Meghan Fitzmartin with art by Laura Braga.
“Tim Drake, Impulse, and Superboy go missing during the Justice League’s funeral. The only person concerned enough to find them? Cassie Sandsmark, a.k.a. Wonder Girl. But … the three boys of Young Justice aren’t on the Earth anymore … they’re on the world of their dreams, one they may never want to leave! A six-issue series.”
We then get a beautiful two-page spread honoring the late George Pérez and another DC Nation Spotlight page, this time specifically on Dark Crisis #2.
It certainly looks like I’m going to have an entertaining summer. But before I can dive into this Dark Crisis mayhem, I have to wrap up Young Justice: Phantoms.
