Written by: Si Spurrier
Art by: Ramón Perez
Colors by: Matt Herms, Pete Pantazis
Letters by: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Cover art by: Ramón Perez
Cover price: $3.99
Release date: September 25, 2024
The Flash #13, by DC Comics on 9/25/24, brings the first arc to a close when Wally and Barry remove the Deep Change's poison, but the real solution will require some Flash-style TLC.
Is The Flash #13 Good?
Oof! You know a writer was forced to course correct when he ends a mind-bending, reality-warping, convoluted-as-all-get-out story with cheap pulls on the readers' heartstrings. The ending to this dismal story is at least an ending, but appeals to the lowest common denominator feels like a cop-out. Regardless, Spurrier is still the Flash writer for the foreseeable future, so hopefully, the next arc will show that he's learned from his mistakes. When last we left the family of speedsters in The Flash #12, everyone gave Wally the boost of power (and encouragement) he needed to catch up to the "bullet" attack on the Deep Change, intended to end the power on the other side of the Source Wall and stop Time. By the end, only Barry could keep up, so the two devised a plan to use the "interdimensional blade" to cut out the infection before the Deep Change "died." That's a lot of air quotes, but nothing is tangible in this series, so nothing that's real matters. In The Flash #13, the "surgery" has begun. After tone-deaf words of mutual validation, Wally and Barry excise the Arc Angles "ball" of infection. However, removing the poison isn't enough. The wound must be healed, and Wally feels compelled to wade into the wound to channel himself into sealing the wound. Meanwhile, Pilgrim appears through a portal and beckons Barry to follow with the "ball" of infection to prevent interference with what Wally must do next. "Oh. Is that all?" you might wonder. Yeah, after the complex, Rube Goldberg-esque series of twists and turns it took to get to the end, Spurrier opts for simple contrivances to align the heroes. Barry somehow knew he could out the infection with the interdimensional knife. Pilgrim somehow knew how and where to open a portal. Wally somehow knew he could be the conduit of healing. It looks cool, but it's lazy. When the Arc Angles see their plans are about to fall apart, they resort to showing Wally that they have his family and will kill them if he doesn't stop. Wally counters by racing at the Arc Angles and slices them to bits (temporarily) to save his family, bringing them together as a unit. At first, Wally was afraid that he would have to sacrifice himself to complete the healing, but now, he knows true healing will come through the power of his family's love. The issue ends with the Deep Change revealing it's giving birth to something that we never see, Jai helping the Deep Change come up with a proper (and confusing) punishment for the Arc Angles, and foreshadowing of things to come. What's great about The Flash #13? It's over. That's what's best about Si Spurrier's attempt at "cosmic horror." It's over, and hopefully, everyone can learn from this experience by moving on and never repeating it again. What's not great about The Flash #13? Oh, brother. Healing reality with the power of love is as cheap and cliché a resolution as you could possibly pick to end this story. In an arc seemingly designed to rip apart reality at every turn, Spurrier took the laziest out possible. Further, several developments never get explained. Why was Jai shirtless in the school's boiler room talking to someone we couldn't see? If Pilgrim knew what was going to happen, as evidenced in this issue, why was he arresting Speedsters for destroying reality with their speed? Did Jai turn the Arc Angles into The Stillness? If so, how is that a good idea when you consider that The Stillness chose to aid the Arc Angles because they wanted to die? There's nothing wrong with thinking outside the box or tackling big ideas, but big ideas are no substitute for basic story structure and complete thread management. How's the Art? Ramón Perez does a fine job trying to make sense of the senseless, albeit in the most coherent issues in the entirety of Spurrier's run. The visuals are certainly creative, and the brief moments of emotion are well done, so kudos to Perez.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
Follow @ComicalOpinions on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
Final Thoughts
The Flash #13 brings the mind-bending but ultimately ill-conceived attempt at cosmic horror to a close with lazy shortcuts and cheap tugs at your heartstrings to wave all the problems of reality away. If this ending was Spurrier's plan all along, somebody at DC should have told him to rethink his plan. At least the art is great, and the arc is finally over.
4.5/10
We hope you found this article interesting. Come back for more reviews, previews, and opinions on comics, and don’t forget to follow us on social media:
Connect With Us Here: Weird Science DC Comics / Weird Science Marvel Comics
If you're interested in this creator’s works, remember to let your Local Comic Shop know to find more of their work for you. They would appreciate the call, and so would we.
Click here to find your Local Comic Shop: www.ComicShopLocator.com
As an Amazon Associate, we earn revenue from qualifying purchases to help fund this site. Links to Blu-Rays, DVDs, Books, Movies, and more contained in this article are affiliate links. Please consider purchasing if you find something interesting, and thank you for your support.
Now that this arc is over this is going to be a long review. First off no part of this is intended as a personal attack and is only a criticism of the quality of the writing here. Secondly let's go:
ReplyDeleteIt's so interesting that despite all the claims of this run being imaginative and including different concepts and higher planes as it puts it, this run (and by extension the writer) fails to at least explore these concepts outside of the human exprience or human understanding or attempt so a little bit (basically trying to think outside of the box or getting out of their own way to write something a bit different). The way it conceptualised the finale and how it concluded is so much within the limitations of mainstream human exprience that it makes this issue unintentionally amusing in a way that you might be amused by a child exploring these concepts for the first time.
Just to humour this run though:
In general nothing is explored here, things happen just because, dressed in important sounding world salad to sound substantial and grand without it actually having explored anything. Why would the higher planes not understand love for example or not grasp emotions? Do you see how the concept of evolving and being higher and higher powers outside of humans doesn't really work with this self centered concept of humans feeling life and just living for the sake of it being the solution to everything there is without effort from them and simply by them 'feeling' and It also inspires nothing in the reader other than to confirm they can be as they are now and don't need to think or change or strive or contemplate their feelings, them just being there and feeling life is already solving everything. Is there some basis for that claim other than it being a certain troupe that usually gets repeated?
Why would a higher plane who can't grasp human emotions be scared or hurt or in pain or feel affection for living conduits and if so, then at that point are they not clearly capable of experiencing as living conduits exprience? So why would they need living conduits to heal themselves when they can clearly exprience emotions and love? And is it really a mathematical phenomenon when a higher plane being is clearly speaking to you and relating their emotions of pain and sorrow to you or is mathematical just a word to slap on anything for it to sound 'scientific'? At what point during this exprience would it be totally irrational and out of the scientific way for the person to keep functioning within their previous parameters of science and reasoning when clearly newer concepts are compelling them to change their parameters and paradigms??? Why would the higher planes function this way beside the limitations the writer is intentionally placing on them and then not explaining it, basically just wanting the readers to appreciate how 'deep' this is without the readers actually trying to engage with any of this? And finally did anything in this finale had substance that it committed to ? Or was it all just general daydreams that weren't realised enough to be put in a narrative for readers but was put there anyway because not enough effort was spent for this plot? I found nothing in this that was different than what a lot of casual other mainstream sci fi stories have tried, all the emotions are everything, humans are the key to everything and everyone's problems in the world including the higher planes and beings lol and the weak appeals to science with pretty sounding words that don't actually mean anything other than to make the readers feel like they have engaged with some higher concepts without the effort and thought that would really entail. Basically instead of broadening our mind to understand or contemplate higher concepts a bit better, these kind of stories bring down these concepts for us to feel 'comfortable' about ourselves and feel more intellectual at the same time, you see according to this hilarious issue the higher concepts learn from us instead of us from them.