The Flash #243 review

Everything, Always: Fast Money part six

Picking up from last issueNzame appears to have turned into a giant bastard ape and Iris looks about dead, but Flash soon realizes it's all an illusion by Grodd. Nzame is the same little chimp he always was and Iris is only half dead. Nzame, after getting attacked, no longer trusts the Flash but the real Grodd shows up so Wally, along with super old Iris, go on the attack. Jai stays behind with Linda (mama's boy) when a bunch of armed Apes come along demanding the return of Nzame and go along peacefully with them. Back to Wally and Iris, Iris gets the jump on Grodd and makes his body vibrate out of sync with reality. Doing so uses up most of her speed, but her and Wally come to realize, more or less, what's wrong with her. Back at Gorilla City, Linda speaks with the head ape about her kids when he summons his personal physician who, after quickly examing the kids, concludes their problems are not genetic. Wally runs the kids into the Speed Force where Jai, also, accelareates to old age. Wally realizes the part of the Speed Force that ultimately kills speedsters is the reason that the kids are aging fast. He somehow pulls this force from his kids and...does...something. Seconds later, the kids are cured! And their both...however the hell old they're supposed to be. Back home, Wally is running around the city thinking that even though he's still broke and now the city hates him, things are looking up.

And thus bring an end to the most directionless arcs of this series so far.

Ugh, where do I begin?

The arc was called Fast Money but, after two issues, had nothing to do with the Flash's money problems. The villain, Spin, comes and goes midway through the arc and suddenly the whole thing becomes about monkeys and aging kids. At the end of the issue, when Wally is thinking that he'd rather be broke (what a bum!) I snapped my fingers thinking, "Oh, right, this was about Flash's money problems!" What could have been a vaguely interesting satire about super-heroes needing jobs and media social manipulation ended up becoming...well...garbage.

Maybe I shouldn't blame Peyer for this. He was probably commanded by editorial to conclude some dangling threads, first and foremomst the speed aging kids. I think this could have been readily accomplished by simply concentrating the story on the aging kids instead of taking the most indirect route possible and doing this whole "Flash is broke" thing. So instead we get a lame story, I still don't give two shits about the kids, and I've managed to learn how to hate Linda. God, what a useless fucking tag-along!

Alan Burnett takes over with the next issue and, honestly, I don't care. DC took a shit on possibly their best character and the character that's easiest to write for. Underutilized and disrespected. We're supposed to be thrilled at the return of Barry Allen now? Come on! Wally West is the better Flash, the faster Flash and they haven't gotten this character right once since his return in JLA last year but DC wants us to trust them to do right by the classic Flash? Shit, whatever!