The Flash #21: Barry And Bart Met For The First Time.

[superfangirl1]

Someone is killing people connected to the Speed Force and Barry wonders if the Teen Titan kid flash knows anything it or involve. Bart though, doesn't feel like listening to the adult hero, motivating a round-the-world game of catch-me-if-you-can.

Comments

[zabilac]

The meeting could have gone better.

[bluejaybirdie]

This is not the Bart I loved.

[q99]

Not even remotely. Even to people he didn't like he wasn't like this.

[silverzeo]

Hmm... would it be too Pony if I said that Q wanted to be a little like Discord after the Legion/StarTrek crossover, and decided to corrupt other heroes into being the exact opposites of themselves?

[chrisdv]

"I'm not a threat."

Says the guy who rebooted the timestream TWICE in 2011.



Bart should've hit him. Just saying.

Oh well, here's hoping Flash 3000 is Wally. And that he hits Barry when they meet.

Side bar: So are we taking Bart rejecting the notion of his being related to Barry as gospel, or not?

[espanolbot]

Yeah, seriously. Not even Vandal Savage messed up the timestream as much as him, and he's a guy who sent himself a laptop so he could taken over 1940s Germany, freeze Hitler and conquer America in a later recycled for the Captain America movie.

[zabilac]

I get the feeling you don't like Barry. XD

[chrisdv]

He's the greatest villain in the DC Universe.

[zabilac]

Shame. He's one of my favorite characters.

[quatoria]

Why the hell is Bart being such an asshole, here? That's not 'angry kid', that's just flat out jackass. "See you around LOSER?" Seriously?

[espanolbot]

'Cause DCnU, that's why.

[icon_uk]

I think the strain between them would only be either tense or enjoyable if we had been given any real suggestion of who Bart actually WAS beyond "He's from the future... probably".

Whether he's a Barry descendent is sort of secondary to to me (It's a reboot I'm resigned to "surprise" twists by now), but I have no clue who he is or why he's being such a complete asshole to Barry, and with no context as to who Bart is, I don't really care, I just know that these are scenes... I don't care about, which is a shame.

[flash_fan]

I have so much internal conflict with this goddam book. The book is gorgeous the scenes are awesome. The story is never great but never horrible. No Wally, but all the cool Flash villains have appeared (aside from The Shade). I don't even know anymore.

[silverhammerman]

With better writing this book would be an absolute must buy, but as it is it's just pretty middling. It's a solid journeyman level book, but art aside it's nothing to write home about I think.

Personally I dropped the book after Gorilla Warfare wrapped because I was sick of the pacing and I haven't really missed it.

[darkknightjrk]

I'm enjoying it still, but if I were perfectly honestly, I think Barry was more of an interesting character than Wally was--at least for me.

[jlbarnett]

I think Bart's problem is he remembers being charged with crimes against humanity and thinks he's a bad guy, but doesn't want to be one and doesn't want to have to think about it all.

But the people who charged him will be those bigots connected to Harvest

[goggle_kid]

Ok... Thadd you're not fooling anyone. We know you're Inertia. Now where's the real Bart Allen?

Good lord my favorite Marvel teen is dead and my favorite DC one has been replaced by an obnoxious clone.

I need a drink...

I feel as if DC Comics ran over my dog, bought a new one at the pet store, and tried to pass it off as the original thinking I wouldn't notice.

[q99]

- Now where's the real Bart Allen?-

Young Justice.

[dictionary00.livejournal.com]

Honestly I'm just glad at this point that there was no introductory fisticuff scene.

[thatnickguy]

The more DC does with this universe, the more I miss the last one. It may have been flawed, but at least it wasn't...this.

[ensiform]

Is this the nu-52? Everyone's a dick, so I just assume.

[katzedecimal]

And the nu-52 DCU is built from the influence of Barry Allen.

[darkknightjrk]

The writing on Bart is weird--this isn't even remotely the Bart that Lobdell's been writing over in Teen Titans.

[silicondream]

For some reason, Bart's pointless hatefulness doesn't bother me as much as Barry's interminable lecture that gets escape velocity, potential energy, friction and mass all wrong.* I know, comic book science, but if you're going to have a heavy-handed "the Flash is a science hero!!!" scene, seems like you really need to do your research for that one.

*Mind, I can accept that Barry can now alter his mass by vibrating, since vibration traditionally lets Flashes travel to the spirit world, balance their checkbooks and cook delicious low-fat desserts.

[icon_uk]

I can accept that Barry can now alter his mass by vibrating

I remember a much younger Icon_UK getting slightly irked that Mass Master of Power Pack based his name on the one thing he COULDN'T change. His mass always remained constant, it was the volume his mass occupied, ege his density that he could control. Him I gave him a pass to because A) Jack was 7 and B) Mass Master was a cool name. Barry doesn't really have an "out" like that.

[alschroeder3]

Altering his mass by vibrating...

*Sigh*

You're perfectly right. In the FLASH comics "vibration" might as well be "magic". You can go through solid matter by "vibrating". You can travel in time or between parallel dimensions by "vibrating".

But it's lazy writing.

I was excited by the initial "HEY YOU JUST REACHED ESCAPE VELOCITY" ---a scenario which was first captured in a Superman comic, where a Superman-turned-Flash ran off the side of the planet...at LAST a semi-realistic view of what the velocity these guys move at would result in...

But then I read that. Lazy, stupid writing.

Why in the WORLD couldn't they just write, "Whirl your arms upwards at super speed! That'll create a wind that will propel you back to Earth"?

That's easily within the ability of a Flash to do, and no fantasy physics need apply.

[onceaskrull]

Man, Bart is so out of character. And yet, I approve of his Barry hatred.

[chrisdv]

I propose that Bart's mad because of Wally's disappearance.

Wouldn't be the first time he wasn't 't happy with Barry being the Flash.

[beoweasel]

I have a question, if they're going so fast that they're worried about reaching escape velocity, how on earth are they able to talk to one another? Like, they're making such a big deal out of SCIENCE! But the writer is forgetting that at that speeds, there's no way they'd be able to communicate through normal verbal speech.

[reynard531]

Okay, I don't really know Bart Allen that much but... my OOC sense is going off here. He's so angry, and I don't get why. Barry is supposed to be his grandpa (at least I presume he still is, who knows at this point). Why is he so nasty? I thought Bart liked him. Then again, considering what this Barry did...

And how is it that Bart, with the power of super speed, isn't tapping into the Speed Force to do that? Isn't the Speed Force, by definition, the energy field that grants the powers of super-speedsters like the Flash? I thought it was. Are they changing definitions, or did they not bother to look?

[chrisdv]

To be fair, Jay Garrick didn't need the Speed Force.

He still accessed it, but when Bart became a conduit for the Speed Force following Infinite Crisis, Jay still had his powers whilst other speedsters didn't.

[silicondream]

Yeah, the general trend from Johns on has been to reduce the universality of the Speed Force. It became Bart-only after Infinite Crisis, then it turned out to be Barry's personal creation, and Professor Zoom generated his own separate negative Speed Force, and Zoom II was powered by time compression, and nu52 Jay Garrick is powered by magic....

The Speed Force doesn't seem to be the default explanation for DC speedsterness anymore. Current Bart's powers could come from anywhere.

[reynard531]

Oh, okay then. Thank you both for the correction.