Flash Forward #2 Review

More Darkness Than You Can Shake A Stick At

Written By: Scott Lobdell

Art By: Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Luis Guerrero, Troy Peteri

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: October 16, 2019

It's the redemption of Wally West...... or what we're hoping is the redemption of Wally West because boy did that speedster go and break our hearts in Heroes In Crisis and now that we see the aftermath of that story here and the idea that Wally is in prison for the murder of his friends and fellow superheroes.... not to mention framing Booster Gold and Harley for said murders........ it's time to run into the Multiverse?  Yeah, there's a Dark Multiverse infection spreading throughout the Multiverse and it's up to Wally West and a stick from Tempus Fuginaut to save the day and with it..... hopefully, himself.  Let's jump into this issue and check it out.

For our second issue of Flash Forward, we see Wally West on Earth-23, where he's protecting President Superman from a Dark Multiverse Infection, that just seems like the Venom Symbiote if it liked to take on the form of animals.  Now, I'm not saying that this six-issue mini has to be the redemption of Wally West, but that's sure what the fans of the character are looking for at this moment and I don't know if a personal realization of self-worth and forgiveness is exactly going to cut it because, at this moment, it just doesn't look like our character is doing more than pointing a stick at darkness and moving on to a new world.  

The infection aspect of this story feels weird too because within the confines of Earth-23, we have the DC versions of Marvel characters from Earth-8 show up looking for a fight to the person that destroyed their world with the darkness infection and this fight takes up a large portion of the book, where Lobdell seems to primarily want to relive his days on the Uncanny X-Men than to start giving us any answers to what's going on in this title.  Yeah, that's a bit harsh, but with so many unanswered questions about the Dark Multiverse and Wally West himself, this issue just took way too much time giving us a fight scene, where like I said the catalyst for victory is simply a stick that fights back the darkness.  Even with this though, the cliffhanger to this issue does give fans something to look forward to even if it feels like a ruse or a monkey paw because like most things that involve the Dark Multiverse........ it usually doesn't work out in any kind of good way.

All in all, I loved the art in this issue besides for the idea that I think the dark infection is supposed to be turning people into dark versions of themselves or at least making them act different then they should, but you don't really get this idea from the art and because the story was lacking in answers and focusing on a fight that felt pointless, this aspect might just be me speculating, but if not, you don't really get the focus on the characters that you should, especially since these aren't characters that we normally see.  I love Wally West though and I'm looking for great things to come out of this book, but right now I'm just not seeing anything that I was hoping for when this book was originally announced.  Right now we just have a scavenger hunt-style story, which I'm not a fan of because that usually means just going place to place until finally getting an info dump at the end.

Bits and Pieces:

While I really enjoyed the art in this issue, I felt the storytelling was lacking because beyond two big fight scenes and a interesting cliffhanger, there really wasn't anything to this issue and we're still left wondering what Wally is doing pointing a stick at darkness and how this darkness is spreading in the first place. 

6/10