The lightning-fueled finale of “Flash War”! Zoom adapts two new Speed Force powers into his arsenal against both Barry Allen and Wally West. What are these strange new powers? What can they do? And how will this haunt the Scarlet Speedster long after “Flash War” is over? It’s the power of two Flashes pitted against the seemingly unstoppable Hunter Zolomon!

When “Flash War” began it had a vibe that it’d be Earth shattering like “Flashpoint,” an event brought up a few times during the event. By the end of it all, it’s not so much “Flashpoint” as it is Dark Nights: Metal.

Zolomon has been manipulating Wally to break through the Speed Force unleashing all new forces, much like the barrier was smashed in Metal. If there’s a force involving speed, what about strength? What about intelligence? What else has been unleashed? And that’s the negative thing about this story. Like “The Button,” it feels like an unfinished story in some ways just setting up what comes next. Each act like a prologue to what’s to come instead of being the main story. There’s a small thing that’s missing.

But, “Flash War” is entertaining and writer Joshua Williamson shakes things up when it comes to the relationship of the numerous Flashes. A similar issue in the past, there’s too many of them and not enough to really separate each. Here, we get delineations that are clear and relationships that are fractured. There’s also that return of…. you think we’d spoil that?

Howard Porter‘s art feels like it steps back in some ways with this issue. Much of the battle takes place in Hypertime and those panels are great with the use of legacy panels/art but beyond that, the characters don’t quite look like themselves throughout the issue and it’s all just a hair or two off from the excellence I’d expect. An issue too is the loss of movement. The series for 49 issues has used the sense of movement in amazing ways to drive the look and narrative and here that feel of flow has stopped in some ways.

The Flash #50 shakes things up a lot really changing things for the world of the Flash. There’s a lot that has me excited but the issue feels like it’s just a bridge to the next thing as opposed to being a story on its own. It hints at something big to come when itself was billed as that something big. Fun, but some air has been let out of it all.

Story: Joshua Williamson Art: Howard Porter
Story: 7.5 Art: 7.85 Overall: 7.5 Recommendation: Read

DC Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review