by Tom King (Author), Joshua Williamson (Author), Jason Fabok (Illustrator), Howard Porter (Illustrator)
The next chapter in Joshua Williamson’s run on the Flash continues! And this time, a crossover with the Batman title for something truly special.
An unsolvable, ultra-high concept murder mystery between the speedy CSI and the Dark Knight Detective. Right off the bat (lol), the artwork by Jason Fabok and the iconic Howard Porter, famous for his stellar work on the title with Geoff Johns, elevate the chapter to something truly special, featuring breakdowns purposefully reminiscent of Alan Moore’s Watchmen as the DC Universe heads into a confrontation with that universe in the eventual Doomsday Clock event. Most impactful here is how the same layout amplifies the presence of the Reverse Flash within its pages to make an already predatory figure truly imposing and terrifying existing between seconds. Although the story does not reach its apex here, it has pulse-pounding build-up homaging both Watchmen and the lore of the Flash, pulling from the Golden Age all the way until Flashpoint. Most poignant is the quasi-return of Jay Garrick, who has been absent in his classic form for years now and seems to be lost for more time still. Even in re-reading this, it is almost as heartbreaking as not having the character around at all; a character who has served as both mentor and surrogate father to the Flash family for so many years to have been dropped and ripped away from them again so quickly seems almost cruel, had his eventual return not had been teased by DC by this point. Seriously, I often find the whole media coverage and marketing choices around all things comics rather odd this way. Let alone something as underrated as the Flash’s corner of the DC Universe.
