The Flash #10: Oh Lord Almighty

The Flash #10 picks up with Barry’s fight against the mystery man within the Justice Buster armor as Wally fights to make everyone forget about him. For a series that started with so many mysteries and speculation, The Flash #10 provides a ton of answers to everything, putting the plot in a place that makes it feel like this story has come full circle. Like many of the Dawn of DC narratives, this issue also heavily features a connection to the upcoming Absolute Power event, as Amanda Waller strikes out against the heroes in an attempt to swing the tide of battle in her direction.

The Flash has been a whirlwind of content thus far, with Si Spurrier and company delivering one of the most unique stories in decades. Unfortunately, this is one of the books that suffers the most from the need for everything to connect back to the overall DC narrative, namely Absolute Power. The mystery here has been very complex, with Spurrier often making it purposefully hard to understand; however, it is incredibly hard to put any of these pieces together as this secondary plot seems to be taking everything over. The entire plot with the Justice Buster armor seemed like something that would tie in with the mystery of this series; however, this issue quickly reveals that it is just part of Waller’s ongoing schemes. There is nothing harder than trying to understand the complexities of a series that is forced to attend to a narrative that is only tangentially related to the overall plot.

When it comes to the actual plot of this ongoing series, The Flash #10 does make some genuine strides in moving the mystery forward. Without getting into too many spoilers, it is Wally’s kids who start to unravel the plot behind the plot, creating a hilarious moment where the Flash’s rogues unanimously have a “Oh $#!&” moment when they realize that their cover has been blown. This is the narrative that this book needs to maintain focus on, and it is really a shame that this series has been too involved in the attempts to set up an event that does not seem super Flash centric. If The Flash is suffering from these aspects, then there must but other DC titles that have fallen into the same trap.

Regardless of what is going on in the overall plot, the art from Ramon Perez and Vasco Georgiev is outstanding. Much of the narrative here features some abstract concepts, something that these creatures truly embrace. It is also worth noting that Matt Herms’ colors play a huge part in this, giving life an nuance to some of these “angelic” concepts. It was a shame to hear of Mike Deodato’s Departure from this franchise, but it is nice to see that the art team that took over is so well equipped to produce the same, high quality of content for this character.