Flashpoint #5 Review
With planet Earth on the brink of total destruction, Professor Zoom finally reveals himself and tells Barry the shocking secret of the Flashpoint world. As old heroes and new friends unite to save a dying world, does Barry Allen have what it takes to sacrifice the one thing he truly wants for the greater good? Only Time will tell…
Flashpoint #5
“It all changes here!”
So says the cover of Flashpoint #5, and boy they weren’t kidding. Obviously, as we knew months ago, the whole DC universe is changing as a result of this story, ushering in the era of DCnU, high collars and armor on everybody!
But the real ‘change’ that shocked the hell out of me was the one that makes me look at this story and its main hero in a whole new light. Because, you see, the secret of Flashpoint is that…
It wasn’t Zoom who went back in time and changed history. It was Barry Allen!
That’s right, Barry is the real villain of the story. It seems that after all the psychological mind-freaks Zoom has hit Barry with since bringing him back finally took their toll, leading an emotionally vulnerable Barry to say “screw it” and try to rewrite history and bring his mother back. Now the “Road To Flashpoint” issues of Flash make a little more sense as well, as Geoff Johns was laying the foundation for Barry’s actions here.
This issue had a lot of stuff to do, and surprisingly, it did it all pretty well. The War between Atlantis and the Amazons reached its climax, with heroes like Superman and the Resistance finally arriving to help. It was all pretty quick, but again, why spend time on a world that is about to blow itself up in 5 minutes and won’t ever have existed in 6?
After spending all five issues hanging out with Barry, the Thomas Wayne Batman finally does something and puts an end to Zoom just when he achieves ‘godhood.’ His note to Bruce at the end is a little sappy, especially since under Grant Morrison, Bruce has already moved past his parents deaths and become less obsessive about it. But I guess you could just say it was more about giving Thomas closure than Bruce.
The revelation that Barry was responsible for both Flashpoint and the changes of DCnU make a certain amount of sense. It was Barry Allen who “created” the Silver Age of comics, ushering in a new era of superheroes. So it’s only fitting that he does so again here. And unlike Hal Jordan’s shenanigans in Zero Hero, or Alex Luthor and Superboy Prime in Infinite Crisis, Barry’s goal here was not to FIX the whole world, but just to make one little change for himself.
The most intriguing thing to me about the issue is the identity of the mysterious woman in the time stream who is explaining to Barry what’s happening as he tries to undo his mess. She reminds me of a good version of the Time Trapper from Legion mythology, and her speech about reuniting the three timelines (DC, Wildstorm and, I’m guessing here, Vertigo?) so that they can all stand against some mysterious new threat was awesome, and made it seem like Barry’s actions have all worked out for the best.
For years now, DC has been telling stories about continuity. It seems like every major event is an excuse to FIX the world’s history, which usually creates more problems, needing more fixes, etc. Flashpoint seems to be a story about what happens when you keep trying to fix continuity. Hopefully this last time-screw will be the LAST one for a long time, with the DCU finally streamlined and the current Powers That Be given a chance to create their own world from scratch.
Flashpoint is over and the world starts again. Brave New World and all that. Now let’s go see what it has to offer, shall we?
A COMIC BOOK BLOG RATING
Pros
Cons
Surprise ending makes me want to re-read the whole mini-series
Wish we could have seen Barry making the decision to change history
Rating
Flashpoint Reviews: #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5
6 Comments
What complete crap. I hate when comics do that. They create a situation. Don’t explain the situation. Then at the last minute, solve the situation by setting up a convenient scenario that works for them. When did Barry save his mother from Reverse Flash? This saving never occurred in any comic that I know of. It was never in any book before this one. This was just like a magic pill that makes everything better. There was absolutely no point to this “event” other than to set up the new 52. And another thing, this “event” should have been called BatFlashPoint since Batman was as much of if not the bigger focus in this series than the Flash anyway.
FP 5 was godawful with a two page spread to segue the universes that didn’t need to happen (mostly because we already knew Vertigo was in the old DC Universe, thanks to Sandman, Xanadu, and Hellblazer).
Mostly this was just an excuse to do a crappy story and segue into a sucky title to replace Jim Lee’s X-Men 1.
I echo the sentiments above. The event as a whole has felt flat and has never seemed to go anywhere. I only read the main issues but I feel I would have to read the countless tie-ins to understand the whole of the world.
I know they had to restart the whole universe somehow, but this was convoluted nonsense which wasn’t the send off the old universe deserved
Not going to lie. I wanted this Earth they were on to destroy itself and force everyone into the new universe. I did like the last few pages with Bruce and Barry, but not reading any of the other tie ins, I felt lost more often than not and the one thing I didn’t want happened – an easy out if DC’s new 52 failed.
I didn’t hate the issue, but did have some issues with how it played out. Plus the cover kind of lied to us. Nothing really changed here, it just shifted focus.
I will have to agree with everyone here. The only point to this story was for the restart. Knowing this, I did not expect much from this story and couldn’t wait for it to be over so I could pick up the new 52
So… Barry went all original Parallax and decided to rewrite history like Hal did back in Zero Hour? LAAAAAME!!! Just goes to show how much of a hack Johns really is. He can’t even come up with an original scenario when it comes to reseting the universe. What a blow hard.