Best of this Week: Flash Forward #5 – Scott Lobdell, Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Luis Guerrero and Troy Peteri

Wally West was the hope of the DC Universe… until he wasn’t.

When DC rebooted after the New 52, Wally West was posited as the man who would be the hope that the dreary universe needed after five long years of depressingly dark and gritty stories. Wally’s return was also a return to a lighter, more heroic universe for a short while. Even though he and his wife, Linda Park, were no longer together and his kids were lost SOMEWHERE, potentially in the Speed Force, Wally never gave up hope of finding whoever messed with the universe and bringing them to justice. 

That is until Tom King (and maybe corporate interference) got in the way.

I’ll never waste an opportunity to rant about how bad I thought Heroes in Crisis was and how much of a great disservice it did to Wally and the other heroes he killed in the story, especially Roy Harper. The story turned Wally into an accidental killer and kind of a sociopath after he repositioned the bodies, made a speed force double of himself, murdered the double, placing its body among the dead and framed Harley Quinn and Booster Gold after releasing the private tapes of other heroes in the Sanctuary center in an attempt to say that heroes needed help too. The message, while good, was absolutely lost in bad storytelling and an utter derailment of what was supposed to be a hopeful character arc.

Flash Forward, thankfully makes the first steps in attempting to fix all of that without completely absolving him of his crimes. Over the course of the story so far Tempus Fuginaut, a cosmic character similar to Marvel’s Watcher introduced in the pages of Sideways, has been tasking Wally with fixing the spills of Dark Multiverse energy throughout the main Multiverse. Wally, not really being given much of a choice, accepts his new mission and becomes hero again and has been saving these various Earths from utter destruction. The last issue was absolutely spectacular as he met a version of Linda Park who was the Flash and finally reunited with his kids.

The book opens with Fuginaut giving a run down of Wally West’s history from being Flash’s sidekick to the Titans and finally to becoming the Flash himself. Brett Booth draws an amazing splash page of the chemicals falling onto Wally in a beautiful slurry of liquids accentuated by Luis Guerrero’s greens and blues and Norm Rapmund’s inks. The trio then burst through with an amazing double splash page with various shots of Wally’s career. Tempus stands in the middle of the fractured images of The Flash and narrates on his successes and failures.

Booth gives these pages an amazing sense of frenetic energy with the borders between each image looking like streaks of lightning. Rapmund and Guerrero color and shadow Tempus amazingly, making him look like an arbiter of justice through his dark blues and gold. Though this is contrasted when we reach the end of the character recap and Fuginaut kneels to the Mobius Chair and addresses the reader (really his unseen masters), calling us the Keepers of Knowledge in the Universe while looking pretty regretful of his actions and how they’ll test Wally.

When we finally do get back to our hero, we find him warmly embracing his kids. Lobdell, Booth and Troy Peteri sells the emotion of the scene through caring dialogue, happy facial expressions and awesome lettering as Wally’s fatherly thoughts fill the emptier space on the page. However, the happy feeling doesn’t last for long as a mass of Dark Multiverse energy threatens to consume them all. Jai and Iris reveal to their father that they’ve tried to leave many times, but the energy just keeps them there. Booth, Rapmund and Guerrero strut their stuff in this vast scene as a wave of excellently inked black goo threatens them like a tidal wave. There’s so much detail, especially as the stone statues of those killed at Sanctuary are swept away.

We then get an excellent scene of Wally, Jai and Iris running away from the energy. It very much reminds me of the later years of The Flash series started by Mark Waid and then Geoff Johns on Flash: Rebirth (2009). Lobdell absolutely captures the essence of the kids with their joking dialogue of insults to each other and that childlike care for siblings as Iris has to share her power with her brother. Booth gives us another double page spread which gives us an appreciation and hope for their family dynamic even as they fail in their escape.

Unfortunately, they do not end up escaping as Jai and Iris end up being caught by the black energy and Wally is absorbed into it as well. We then get a flashback to soon after the kids were born. Guerrero shows their skill as these pages are given calm and cool blue hues because of the night time setting. After the hectic action of the escape attempt, this flashback slows things back down and builds up the emotional tension as Booth shows Wally embracing his children as a happy father before all of that is ripped away as he comes back to reality.

Tempus attempts to tell Wally what his grand purpose on this planet is, but in his anger Wally attacks him like a gnat and then proceeds to try and ride the planet of it’s Dark Multiverse energy. Wally is the Fastest Flash Alive and the art team stresses that as they show the planet and then show streaks of blue where Wally has been, crossing the planet multiple times until he’s stopped by something unexpected: The Mobius Chair. The Mobius Chair was created by the New God Metron and allows the user to see all of the secrets to the universe. With Metron having been killed by a mysterious entity (Doctor Manhattan) in DC Rebirth, the chair lies empty.

Wally, knowing about the chair’s possibilities, touches it.

Wally West has always been a hopeful hero. In the face of insurmountable odds and utter destruction he’s always kept his head up high. He learned that from Barry Allen, he learned that from The Titans, but even the most hopeful heroes have fears and the Dark Multiverse is created from those fears. One of the things that Tom King, Joshua Williamson, Geoff Johns and Dan Abnett have focused on since Wally’s reintroduction has been his feeling of loss and displacement after losing ten years worth of history. 

That’s why the revelation of what this planet is is so heartbreaking. I’m sure my hints are enough to give away what happens and how Wally’s fears and the arc he’s been given thus far have been some of the better long term storytelling that DC has done despite some missteps. With this being the penultimate issue of Flash Forward, it delivered on the emotional impact that we’ve been waiting for and walks back some of the more dour elements of Heroes in Crisis, but paints Wally in a more sympathetic light. The art team does an amazing job in giving this book the life and excitement to a character that absolutely deserved it.

Wally West was my first Flash and seeing the big things planned for him go off the rails absolutely killed me, but thankfully this story exists. While it can’t undo ALL of the damage done to Wally and might actually result in his death at the end, it has served as a slow return to form and definitely a story that I appreciate being told. This deserves a high recommend.