Comic Review: The Flash (2016-) #52

The Flash (2016-) #52

DC Comics

Writer: Joshua Williamson

Artist: Christian Duce

It honestly amazes me that someone thought the new “Forces” were a good idea.  Even just saying “Forces” sounds incredibly unnatural.  The obvious comparison to the newest addition to the DC multiverse is the Lantern Corps.  When someone says the word Corps, I immediately know what they are talking about.  No matter the context, Corps has something to do with an army.  The term “Forces” seems quite…well…forced.  Even the names, Strength and Sage, are awkwardly named to coincide with the Speed Force.  The thing is, the Flash doesn’t need a whole bunch of new concepts to be interesting.  There is still plenty to explore in the Speed Force before we create a Force for every other superpower.  Even though I think the new Forces are a boring idea, I’m willing to give Williamson the benefit of the doubt.  This is the first issue to really delve into the new Forces.  Who knows, maybe the new Forces (I still can’t get over how dumb they sound as a term) will be the greatest addition to the Flash mythos in years.  So does The Flash #52 provide enough intrigue of the new Forces, or does it confirm my suspicions that they are an uninteresting and unnecessary addition to the DC multiverse?

The story starts in the House of Heroes with a meeting between the many speedsters of the multiverse.  Barry asks his fellow Flash’s if anyone else has heard of the new Forces.  To his surprise, no one else has heard of anything besides the Speed Force.  After his quest for the Forces, Barry decides to try and get back to his normal life.  Naturally, Barry gets back into gear by attempting to apprehend the Trickster, one of the Rogues.  But after a run-in with a time-displaced Commander Cold, the Trickster manages to escape.  Our heroes manage to track the Trickster down, but he has a “trick” up his sleeve.  It turns out the Trickster was exposed to the Strength Force, granting him enough power to take down the Flash once and for all!

Williamson’s run on the Flash has been very hot and cold for me.  He’ll write one arc that I love, and then one that I can’t stand.  I keep falling into the pattern of thinking after every good arc that Williamson has upped the quality of the book.  But just when I think Williamson found his footing with the Flash, he lets me down.  So again, after the phenomenal Flash War, I was expecting great things to come out of the Flash.  I was actually looking forward to this issue in particular because it featured the House of Heroes.  But again, Williamson let me down.

The highly anticipated multiversal meeting lasted for just a couple of pages.  I was expecting the meeting between the world’s greatest speedsters to be a discussion. Instead, we got Barry calling up some guys to see if they knew anything about the new Forces.  You’d think that a multiverse worth of heroes would be interested in the fact that physics-changing Forces have just opened up to the world.  Instead, we get a story with the Trickster that seems pointless and only included to shoehorn in the new Forces.  Wally, Wallace, Impulse: all the things that I was looking forward to in the book are pushed aside for a filler story.

One of the few saving graces of the book was Duce’s art.  Although I enjoyed getting Porter and Kolins on art regularly, Duce’s pencils were a fresh surprise.

All in all, I was disappointed with this issue.  Hopefully, Williamson can bounce back and keep the momentum from Flash War going.