The Flash #47 Comic Book Recap/Review

The Flash #47 Recap/Review – Reunion

 

The Flash #47 Comic Book Recap

The Flash and Henry Allen are being confronted by Eobard Thawne.  Henry is shocked, as he has just learned that Barry is the Flash, and the hero apologizes to his father.  Eobard remarks that the Allens do love their secrets, and suggests it is time that Henry revealed his.  The elder Allen admits Barry was right.  He didn’t kill his wife.  Long ago, he discovered Nora’s body, with Thawne having been responsible for the woman’s death.  Eobard ordered Henry to confess to this murder, because if he ever uttered a single word about this to anyone, he’d kill Barry, too.

So, for all these years, Henry has been hiding the truth to protect his son.  Eobard mocks the Flash, saying he’s been working for centuries to orchestrate this plan.  And he knew exactly what to do, because he came from the future, in a place called the Gem Cities.  In the year 2463, legions of heroes will be inspired by Barry Allen.  They confronted Eobard Thawne, back then a tyrannical ruler, and Zoom couldn’t control them.  Barry infected their minds, even when Zoom destroyed anything with The Flash’s image on it.  Eventually, the Gem Cities would be destroyed as a result of Eobard’s cruel attempts to maintain order.

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So Zoom went far back in time.  He set up Barry’s life to mirror his own past, as Thawne’s father killed his mother when he was a boy, too.  Eobard knew if they started on equal footing, than Thawne was sure to win any competition between them.  Exasperated at all of this, Henry knocks Eobard down with a baseball bat.  He grabs Barry and they try to run, as Henry warns his son that Eobard now has Magali’s powers  One touch, and Zoom could age The Flash into a withered husk of a man.  Thawne gets up and says the Flash will die, but not of old age.  He wants to make Barry suffer.  Zoom leaps at Henry, but Barry is able to save his father.

Everyone is shocked at this, as Thawne is supposed to be faster than anything.  Barry isn’t sure what happened, but something has changed his powers.  The Flash believes he an win this fight, but Eobard says that just can’t be possible.  As Barry leaps towards him, Thawne easily sidesteps the attack and knocks his foe into a wall.  Eobard moves to finish Barry off, and the villain declares it is about time.  The Flash comes to a realization.

This is all about time.  Eobard isn’t fast at all.  He just slows time around him.  It doesn’t make him better than Barry, just the opposite.  Barry doesn’t just move fast.  He’s connected to the flow of time too, just in a different way.  Eobard slows time… while Barry moves me forward.  And he’s done holding back.

 

Zoom is outraged.  He is supposed to be the true hero here!  He spent a dozen lifetimes preparing for this.  He tries to drown Barry, but the Flash is able to knock him back with a burst of lightning.  With one final, mighty blow, he knocks Eobard down.

He’s sorry for what happened to Zoom.  But he killed Nora Allen, and it’s time to go to prison over it.  Henry approaches the villain and wants to kill him, but his son stops the man.  He refuses to let Zoom make the Allens into the criminals he wants them to become.  After everything he did, and after all he put them through, the Allens still aren’t murderers.  They’re the good guys.  Henry agrees, and embraces his son., saying he is proud of him.  Barry smiles, and in a flash, the police are called in, while Eobard is sedated and arrested.

Darryl is told that Thawne murdered Nora Allen, and Barry says he can put the forensic evidence together to prove it.  In no time at all, Eobard finds himself depowered and imprisoned.  He insists he will get out of here one day, and that he still won this fight.  Everyone knows the Flash is a threat now.  They will hunt him down, and reject the hero. Eobard looks disheartened, and quietly tries to convince himself that he won.

The Flash #47 Comic Book Review

Hello and welcome to Comic Island!  My name is Arden, and this is my recap, and review, of The Flash #47.

Well, here we are.  This issue wraps up the Yellow storyline quite nicely, and tells a lot about Professor Zoom’s history before ultimately depicting his downfall.  And like the rest of this storyline, I found the whole thing… okay.  I would say there is more good than bad, but this isn’t exactly a fantastic comic either.

So let’s start with the good.  The art is pretty great in this comic.  I’m still not a fan of how every single panel needs to look all dynamic and angled, nor am I particularly enamored with the way Zoom kind of looks like a Looney Toons villain.  But there are a lot of great panels and I really like when Barry starts to glow with speed force energy.  In fact, this fight as a whole is by far the best part of this comic.  The action is done really well, it presents the Speed Force in a new and interesting way, and it changes how Zoom’s powers work to make him a bit more of a distinct character from Barry.

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It’s this sort of change that I don’t mind them doing as part of the New 52 reboot.  They’re making a subtle but meaningful improvement.  It’s cool, new, and interesting.  What I don’t like, and what New 52 tends to more often be about, is the tendency to tell the same story but just… worse.  Yeah, all this stuff with Nora Allen and all that nonsense works a lot better in both the show and the original comics.

Here, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and the stuff that is different makes no sense.  Why would Eobard not just kill Barry at a much younger age?  He wouldn’t do this sort of thing out of honor or the need for a challenge, because that’s nothing like Eobard’s character.  Like I said, this has always been a bit of a problem, but the show and earlier comics had addressed this in a more clever way that didn’t make this plot hole so obvious.  Hell, the show actually gives us a really good excuse, as I’m pretty sure Eobard was depowered or something after killing Nora, so he wouldn’t have been able to easily kill Barry and he needed The Flash’s powers.

Here, it makes no sense.  But that’s just one plot hole.  No, what really bugs me is that half of this issue is telling us stuff we already know.  Thawne murdering Nora Allen, Thawne being from the future and his general history, and Barry being the fastest man alive are all things we’ve dealt with before, and are so similar in the New 52 that I barely notice a difference worth caring about.  There’s nothing to gain here by rehashing it.  This doesn’t update the plot to modern standards, we don’t get a new or fresh take on anything, and it all just feels like retread.  It’s the bad kind of remake.  The one that just goes along with what has happened already and is just doing it for the sake of doing it.

Let’s get really pretentious for a moment as I share a quote from a French writer who we’re going to call George Sand because her real name is hard for me to pronounce – “Art for art’s sake is an empty phrase.  Art for the sake of truth, art for the sake of the good and the beautiful, that is the faith I am searching for.”  The idea is that if you’re going to tell a story, it has to mean something.  You must try and convey some sort of truth or passion for your story to have meaning.  And I just don’t see it in this story.  I get the impression this was made because the Flash and Professor Zoom are really popular right now, and thanks to the New 52 they can retell this story without putting too much work into doing something more original with either Barry or Eobard.

And that makes for a pretty mediocre comic.  Because it doesn’t matter how good the art is, or if there is cool action, the story is seriously lacking in this passion.  Nothing is driving the story forward and it puts the entire comic in a rut.  As this comic explores all these cool ideas and interesting things, I keep getting bored by the main plot.  And it’s a bad sign when the villain’s henchmen and the hero’s supporting cast are more compelling than the main characters and central conflict of your story!  Yeah, I am being hard on this comic, because this is really bugging me.

All this aside, I do want to make clear that I don’t hate this comic or even the current run of the Flash.  I just think it could and should be better.  Let me know what you guys think in the comments section below, and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and keep reading comics.

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