Flash Forward #5 Review

Wally's World

Written By: Scott Lobdell
Art By: Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund, Luis Guerrero, Troy Peteri
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: January 15, 2020


After running around the Multiverse and beating back the oozing, black infection of the Dark Multiverse with a stick, we've finally made it to our penultimate issue.  Yeah, it's not exactly a milestone issue, but it's here where you'll usually expect the big setup for what's to come from the finale and where the big reveals start happening and I can't wait, especially since it looks like we'll finally get back to the Mobius Chair aspect of this story, which we haven't seen since the first issue.  Let's jump into this issue and see what we're dealing with and if all of this will make sense by the end and hopefully redeem Wally West.  Let's check it out.



For this issue we see Wally West coming to grips with the reality of why he was the one who had to beat back the Dark Multiverse infection and while it does give some kind of credence to the importance of the character, it also just kind of throws away everything we thought we knew about the Dark Multiverse........ Which..... really, isn't a lot.  Now as we hopefully all know, the Dark Multiverse worlds are worlds that have gone wrong, through the fears of people and when they drop down to the Dark Multiverse they are then destroyed by the dragon and re used to make new worlds by the World Forger.  Well, the World Forger has been busy for a long ass time now and currently we shouldn't have a dragon getting rid of the worlds in the Dark Multiverse, but in this issue we discover that there's only one world left and it's a world created by the fears of Wally West.

Now having a world created like this is fine because as we saw in Dark Nights: Metal, this happens all the time when the World Forger is doing his thing, but that hasn't happened in a while now and for some reason we have the Mount Rushmore of characters that Wally killed on this world from Heroes in Crisis and I'm just confused about the timeline of events or even what this world is doing on it's own besides for spreading out a darkness into the Multiverse.  What we do get though is a way for Wally to understand what's happening to him and the idea that he's going to have to sacrifice something precious to him to finish his quest, but the biggest problem is, it just takes a lot of forcing to get there........ like the Mobius Chair just being there and also giving Wally the answers without him having to sit on it........ It just feels like we're going so far out of the way to make things work that could never work without the fudging and that's disappointing.

All in all, I did really enjoy the art in this issue, but the storytelling just feels like it was slapped together with only the basic concepts of what is happening in the DC Universe and if that isn't the case, we're just not getting any kind of story that is thought out enough to be able to convey the ideas that we should understand when going into this kind of cosmic story.  That being said though, there are some great moments here with Wally and his kids of the Dark Multiverse and there was at least an attempt to make the different ways that Wally wasn't in the New 52 work here, but ultimately, I was disappointed with this issue because of how willy nilly everything feels thrown together.

Bits and Pieces:

With one more issue left of this series, I don't know if we're close enough to do anything that will redeem Wally West in any ones eyes, except for maybe his own and while I like some of the concepts that we're given here, it ultimately just kind of comes off sloppy and thrown together.  The art though is great and always a highlight to this mini, but I just need more from the story.

6/10