Tony Black reviews The Flash #6…
“LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE” part 6! You’ve seen glimpses of him. You’ve witnessed the carnage he’s unleashed on Central City. Now meet Godspeed, the super-speed serial killer who murders speedsters and steals their powers. Barry Allen is going to need help!
Easily the darkest issue of Joshua Williamson’s excellent run on The Flash to date, ‘Revenge’ is also without question one of the best. We open and close on Barry Allen in a very sinister place – haunted by the seeming death of the young speedsters imbued by the Speed Force he was training up (not to mention his new girlfriend Dr. Meena Dhawan), killed by mysterious super speed villain Godspeed, Barry is now growing increasingly obsessed with putting the pieces together on who this killer is, why he’s murdering these people and how to stop him. Williamson does a fine job through Barry linking all the threads from the beginning, before delivering a crushing revelation.
For Barry, it’s intensely personal, having taken these murdered speedsters under his charge and now he must face the devastating consequences of not being there to protect them. It’s neatly contrasted with his friend, Detective August Heart–himself one of the speedsters–who is looking for revenge against the killer of his brother, and doesn’t trust the system Barry still wants to believe in, seeking justice. When they inevitably clash over this, you understand their reasons. Though she’s been a tad underused across this opening arc, Iris West plays a key role in Barry coming to understand the truth behind Godspeed, and we get a nice moment of Wally West’s continued difficulty wrestling with his speedster powers as he doesn’t take well to learning Meena’s fate. It’s great character work weaved into the forward momentum of the story.
By the end, The Flash leaves us on a huge cliffhanger as Barry faces his first real battle against Godspeed, and it looks set to be very high stakes for him in more ways than one. With great panels from Carmine di Giandomenico, and superb writing from Williamson as we’ve come to expect, The Flash is speeding towards a triumphant conclusion to an excellent opening arc.
Rating: 9/10
Tony Black
Originally published October 4, 2016. Updated April 14, 2018.
