Broken Frontier

A final confrontation takes place between the Flash and the Rogues, only this time the Fastest Man Alive may not survive the ordeal.

What a year it’s been for Bart Allen, since surviving the ordeal of Infinite Crisis and then inheriting the mantle of the Flash from Wally West. Some fans have been divided by the idea of having Bart become the new Flash and over the course of a year his appointment as an A-list hero has come into doubt. Now the 13th issue has arrived and it looks like our much maligned hero is about to run out of luck.

Of course this is going to be a SPOILER, but by now every fanboy has heard the news that Bart is about to become extinct and ultimately replaced as the Flash. In fairness to Bart though, he did indeed put up a good fight despite not having any of his abilities at his disposal. The Rogues managed to get their shots in as Bart fought them off as valiantly as he could and in the end he gave up the ghost. Luckily, Valerie and Iris West were there to see our hero shuffle off this mortal coil.

So what does this all mean for the DCU? In some ways it means that the one and true Flash has returned (just check out JLA #10 for the answer), and it also means that the decision to have him replaced by Bart has been reversed. DC has stated all along that this series was meant to be a red herring, ultimately citing that a master plan was in place to keep the suspense behind the character a big mystery. The company even went so far as to allow writer Mark Guggenheim to claim in interviews that he was on the title for the long haul. Now of course all that turned out to be a ploy to spring this surprise ending and Mark did an exceptional job writing it. His plotting and dialogue balanced out nicely, and he gave this incarnation of The Flash a fitting end.

Even the outstanding art of Tony Daniel spoke volumes in such a short time, and it’s a shame his run on The Flash ends here. His splash page was obviously an homage to Barry’s heroic last stand in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, and that was juxtaposed with several pages following up with action-infused moments. Tony’s matured over the years as an artist and I am looking forward to the next project he tackles at DC.

I think in the end though, this series proved to be an uneven idea since launching on the heels of Infinite Crisis. The argument that the Flash is a generational character is debatable at best, and it became painfully obvious that Bart Allen wasn’t up to task of replacing a character like Wally West. Certainly the fans seemed to be divided by the idea, and I think in some ways DC realized this too, so plan B was hatched on the fly. Hence the diffusion by the company, but I have to hand it to creators like Guggenheim and Daniel who facilitated this subterfuge right to the bitter end. For me, the ending to this series seemed fitting and now I am wondering how this will play out next month in All Flash #1.