The Flash #752 Review and *SPOILERS*

Pie In The Sky

Written By: Joshua Williamson
Art By: Howard Porter, Hi-Fi
Letters By: Steve Wands
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: March 25, 2020

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

The newest storyline in The Flash has had a very bumpy start. The series was hoping to bring on a lot more readers when the renumbering happened and so there has been a lot of “catching up” to do for those readers. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, after all, we all want our favorite books to be successful and gain new readers. If a recap every once and a while is all it takes to do that, I think most of us would be okay with that, or at least we would skip those issues and come back when new content is coming. However, in the midst of all this recap, we get a pretty by-the-numbers storyline with certain storylines being dropped, and a boring villain to top it all off. I’m not against trying to introduce a new villain but when that villain is a cookie-cutter version of most villains things tend to be boring. However, we got a nice cliffhanger in the previous issue so hopefully, we can turn things around in this one. Let’s jump in and see where it takes us.

We start at the Flash Museum where Paradox still has hold of Godspeed and looks like he intends to use Flash’s Cosmic Treadmill for something as Iris watches from another room. We cut to where we saw Barry last as he embraces his mother. Flash is confused because he last remembers fighting Paradox but his mother calms him down and comforts him as his brain goes a mile a minute. She stops him and decides to show him their new home. She introduces him to Flash City, the place the multiverse built for him after all he did. Excited, Barry rushes with his mother into the city and as he begins to tell her his story, she reveals that she already knows them all. The city is devoted to his life and his stories are told for all to hear. She then reveals that the other speedsters are also here. He loves that everyone he loves is in the same place and his mother tells him that he can finally rest. However, Barry knows better. As nice as it is, Barry knows that this place isn’t real.

Barry runs around quickly to inspect this new environment and finds that this place has no vibrational frequency. Still, his mother tries to convince him otherwise, but Barry holds to his conclusion and knows that the person talking to him isn’t his mother. Her expression changes quickly and soon the city begins to attack him. Barry is able to fight them all off though and his fake mother questions why he wouldn’t want to live in heaven. Barry simply states that he would always know that Paradox was out there and now he has even more reason to beat him; because he used the memory of his mother against him. Barry begins vibrating fast in order to give the illusion a vibration and before too long the illusion breaks and Barry finds himself somewhere strange in the multiverse. Barry runs around to try and find a way home before he comes across the remains of several people. While there, he finds the construct that Paradox built.

Barry finds that he is being drained of his life force by the place he is in and he doesn’t hesitate to move quickly. He begins scavenging the wrecks for parts and builds himself a metal harness for his suit. Soon after he builds a supercomputer and uses to pinpoint where he needs to be. Finally, he constructs a Cosmic Treadmill for himself and although he knows the risk, he decides to travel back in time. The only one that was able to beat Paradox was Eobard Thawne and Barry knows that there is always one point in time that he knows that he can meet Thawne. That point is the night that Eobard killed his mother. This is where the issue leaves us.

This issue can be summed up pretty quickly. In the previous issue, we removed Barry from the universe and so this issue we need to come up with a quick and convenient way that he can come back. That’s pretty much it. I guess it is to be expected for a story this lazy to come up with a way for the hero to triumph in a lazy way. I don’t hate the part with the Flash City even though I think we all knew that was fake the moment we saw it. However, once he is in the multiverse, he just so happens to have exactly what he needs to build a supercomputer (with all his files conveniently available on it) and a Cosmi Treadmill? That just screams that the writer wrote himself into a corner and couldn’t think of a good way to get himself out of it so he took the easiest way out. This was honestly very insulting to read. I feel like I’m hard on Williamson a lot so I want to state that I think he is actually a very good writer but holy crap this is a new low for him. This honestly might be the worst issue of the Flash since he has taken over.

Bits and Pieces:

A new low for this book is reached as we quickly find the easiest way to undo the cliffhanger we left on in the previous issue. Instead of some brilliantly clever plan, our hero simply finds old tech and is able to build exactly what he needs to escape. Basically, Paradox did nothing to actually stop The Flash but instead got him away from the battlefield so that he could regroup instead of taking him out when he had the chance. This issue is lazy and frankly, as a reader, I feel as if my intelligence has been insulted. This is REALLY bad!

2.5/10