The Flash #10

Issue Ten: "Run Red"

Written by Simon Spurrier

Art by Ramón Pérez & Vasco Georgiev

Colors by Matt Herms

Lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou

Cover by Ramón Pérez

Variant Covers by Matt Taylor and Otto Schmidt

DC Pride Variant Cover by Nick Robles

Editor Chris Rosa

Group Editor Paul Kaminski

Our cover shows Barry Allen facing off against the memorable Batman armor that I last saw during the New 52's Batman #35. It's not a particularly dynamic cover, and it doesn't seem to serve Spurrier's story that much. I suppose this is mainly for the Absolute Power event, which really feels like a minor annoyance invading this lofty, high-minded story that's been playing out over the past 10 issues.

Anyway, all good fans of the New 52 will remember that Superman destroyed this armor in Batman #36. So what we're really looking at is a replica reverse-engineered by Amanda Waller and the billions of dollars she seemingly has at her disposal. And naturally, that's not the real Batman under the armor, but Green Arrow. And the reasons why don't really matter for this story. 

Suffice it say, Green Arrow was tasked with bringing in the Flash because Waller also believes that speedsters are destroying reality. Oliver Queen is worried about how effective this tech will work against Barry, since he (somehow) fully knows that it previously was only able to momentarily derail a highly compromised Flash infected with Joker toxin. However, Oliver surprisingly puts up a strong fight against Barry, probably because he boldly chose to turn off Waller's very expensive, yet unreliable AI.

Meanwhile, Inspector Pilgrim has sought an outside perspective from Harley Rathaway and Jai West. By this point, it has been revealed that Pilgrim is actually Wade West, Jai's baby brother. So it's kind of fun when Wade's older brother is the one who comes up with the solution, even though he's only 12 (approximately). Remembering his dad's advice to change the way you look at things, Jai realizes that the data provided by the Arc Angles is correct, but only because reality is wrong. He explains it like "folding a page of math so the wrong number solves the equation."

All this means that the Speed Force is under attack and someone is trying to frame Wally. And somehow, someway, all the minor villains tangentially related to this plot — the Folded Man, Mirror Master, Gorilla Grodd and Abracadabra — all realize simultaneously that Jai has learned the truth. Or at least enough of it for Wade to agree to finally free all the speedsters he had captured. The Flash family immediately races to Barry's side and Impulse destroys the "Justice Buster" with ... bombs? ... I guess?

Barry chooses to let Oliver escape even though he never figured out who it was under the mask, he could tell he was a friend. Waller isn't too upset at the lost multi-billion dollar project, as this confirms she no longer has to waste time with Batman's defunct technology and can proceed with her plans in Absolute Power. Oh, and Wally has lost all his memories and been abducted by the Arc Angles.

It really feels like editorial forced the whole bit with Amanda Waller and Green Arrow on Spurrier. It really had no bearing on the story and robbed us of precious space to explore the Flash family's reactions to this crazy scenario. Freeing all the speedsters was a big deal. But it happened entirely off-page. We never found out what Max and Bart think about all this. We didn't even get to see Gold Beetle — not that I needed to, but issue #7 made such a big deal of her, I thought there'd be some sort of payoff. Oh well. I also need to quickly complain about Pérez's style of drawing Bart. He looks younger than Jai. And that is so not right.

To be continued ...