The Flash #791: War Has Consequences

In this issue, our speedsters are recovering from the destructive entrance of the Fraction. Time has practically stopped for everyone on earth so the stakes are high. Only the speedsters seem to be immune to this and most of their powers seem to be ineffective to the Fraction’s equipment. On a character level, each hero is reacting to this in a different way. Bart, Wallace, and Jay are immediately forced into hero mode while Barry and Wally are reeling from Iris’s death. Just when things can’t seem to get worse, the Fraction sends out their secret weapon, Miss Murder, to take out the Speedsters.

Jeremy Adams has been spinning a very personal tale for Wally since the beginning of his run. Unfortunately, The One-Minute War seems to be pausing in order to put the greater focus on this new threat and the other speedsters.  Wally should continue to be the focal point of this series and it’s extremely frustrating to see him pushed to the back burner. That being said, the parts of this issue that prominently feature Wally are the best parts. Wally has always had the most unique personality out of all the speedsters and his presence always stands out.

The primary pathos focus in this issue revolves around the death of Iris, but mainly Barry’s reaction. It’s unusual to see comic book Barry Allen so emotional since he’s usually a very logical person. It’s understandable for him to be so distraught after this but he reads too similar to Grant Gustin’s CW Flash when he’s like this. That may not be a negative for a lot of readers; however, he feels very different from the way Joshua Williamson had written him. The main problem with Iris’s death here is that it doesn’t feel very believable. We can see that almost everyone on earth is frozen in place so many readers probably assumed she was in the same position. It actually came as a shock to see that she was dead since I interpreted that very differently at the end of the last issue. Comic book deaths are notoriously meaningless and I can’t help but feel like Iris will be back by the end of this storyline.

If you read my review for The Flash #790 then you probably saw how hard I was on Roger Cruz’s art. Unfortunately the same issues still persist in this issue. Characters are drawn disproportionately and things seem to be even worse. In the last issue the art bothered me but it was serviceable; however, in this issue the art starts to contradict established plot points. The first instance of this is when we see the destruction of the city and how a multitude of tall buildings were leveled. The narration on this page states that “hundreds, maybe thousands” are dead. I’m sorry but if many large buildings in a populated city were leveled then the death count would be much higher than hundreds or “maybe” thousands. There must have been a miscommunication between Adams and Cruz here because somebody has to be wrong. The second instance of this is right after Wally learns of Iris’s death. He initially grows teary cries when he finds Barry holding her body, but in the next page he is off doing hero stuff and Cruz draws him smiling. This tells the reader that Wally cares about Iris’s death, but only for a moment. It cheapened the reaction and made the moment feel meaningless. Moments like these really hurt the book and make the story confusing.

Another confusing aspect of this story is exactly how the Fraction work. This will likely be explored in the rest of the event, but for now there are a lot of questions. How do the Fraction have the ability to force the speedsters powers on? How have none of our heroes never heard of the Fraction? Until this issue it seemed like most of the speedsters spawned from their relationship with Barry, but now we learn that the Fraction have encountered at least one speedster on some of the previously conquered earths. Will that come up later? These are actually very intriguing questions that I hope Adams explores later in his run. So far in The Flash, Adams has explored a lot of Wally’s character, but he hasn’t done a ton of worldbuilding for the speedforce, especially in comparison to Williamson’s previous run. If anything comes from One-Minute War, hopefully it’s a new understanding of Adams depiction of the speedforce.