I have mentioned before that I’m a sucker for a good story. That being said, story endings are my true weakness. A good ending can be very hard to write so when I watch or read a story that has a clean and powerful ending that sells me, I’ll always care about it. For that matter, there was a mini series called Infinite Crisis that spanned across the entire DC multiverse. In the end, my favorite Flash, the one I grew up with, Wally West, gave up his life to help save everything from the villain ‘Superboy Prime.’ He did so by pushing him into the Speedforce, the source of the Flash’s power, with the help of JayGarrick and Bart Allen who are also speedsters. Afterwards, Wally was gone and so apparently was the Speedforce. It was reminiscent of when Barry Allen, the previous Flash and Wally’s mentor gave his life in a similar fashion in the 80’s miniseries: Crisis on Infinite Earths. Infnite Crisis was a sequel to this of sorts. The only difference now was that there was no longer a Flash…so we thought.
The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive was written by Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, Paul De Meo and Danny Bilson. De Meo and Bilson as it happens were the producers of the 90’s television show The Flash. When I found this out, I was immediately on board and couldn’t wait to see what they had next for the ‘Scarlet Speedster.’ The first story arc “Lightning in a Bottle” takes place months after the events of Infinite Crisis. Jay Garrick is the only speedster left. His powers didn’t come from the Speedforce as the others did. We also catch up with Bart Allen who mysteriously aged four years after helping to battle ‘Superboy Prime.’ (It’s also important to mention that he is a time traveler from the future as a descendant of the Allen family, formerly the Speedster named “Impulse” and was also connected to the Speedforce.) Bart shares an apartment with his friend Griffen and works at Keystone Motors. He’s trying to make a life for himself now, but all that changes when he and Griffen are involved in an accident and Griffen needs help. Here we discover that Bart has been lying about not being connected to the Speedforce. In fact he is the sole bearer of it but it’s too powerful for him and he’s afraid of it. We discover that there is still someone who has the power of The Flash. The saddest part of this story run for me was that it was only thirteen issues. That’s because it comes to an end, and that is something I won’t spoil because I really, really liked it.
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