Broken Frontier

As the Flash races to escape this timeline and fix what once went wrong, Aquaman continues to wage his war with his former bride Wonder Woman. With the armies challenging each other on the surface, Arthur and Diana have one last conversation deep underwater; can they avoid the fates and end in peace, or will they take the rest of humanity down with them?

The book is split into three chapters of the story; the current discussion between the two leads and its inevitable fallout, the actions of their subordinates outside the scenes, and the events that lead them to this moment. It's all balanced very nicely, but the strongest moments deal with Aquaman's pain. He's not the crazed warlord that Flashpoint itself would indicate, but a pained monarch who's lost true love and desperately wants revenge. Likewise, Wonder Woman's rage is much more subdued, as she's the one who actually searches for peace in the battle. Tony Bedard does great in giving the characters backstory that admittedly doesn't fit in the Flash-paced Flashpoint.

For the most part, Vicente Cifuentes' art is great. He can go from a stately dinner to a tense standoff to an aerial assault with ease. It's unknown who dropped the ball, but one scene throughout the book features Aquaman and Wonder Woman talking underwater. Aquaman can naturally breathe the water, but Wonder Woman cannot, using a rebreather. Drawn as a simple outline around her lower face, it comes and goes depending on the frame, and stands out as an oddity in inconsistency in the book. He's supported by Diana Egea and Kyle Ritter (and Adrian Syaf on the cover), and it all comes off looking fine, if a little heavy in the blues and reds. Given that it's set underwater half the time and Aquaman's rocking red in this timeline, it's fitting, but sometimes overwhelming.

Emperor Aquaman provides the necessary counterbalance to Wonder Woman and the Furies, showing the other side of the war, but as Flashpoint has proven, the best stories in this event have nothing to do with the war. Barry Allen's tale has only him trying to avoid the war and make it back to his original timeline, Project Superman deals with how Kal-El would be raised by General Lane, and the amazing Batman: Knight of Vengeance ignored the war completely. While some of Arthur's pain carries the book well, it's a wholly skippable part of Flashpoint outside of those actually interested in the Flashpoint-verse's Aquaman/Wonder Woman war "event."