Reverse-Flashpoint
Let's head on back down into the Dark Multiverse, where Tempus Fuginaut will tell us another dark tale of things going wrong and diverging from a story we should all know.... you know, a dark "what if". For this foray into this Multiverse, we're dealing with a more messed up Flashpoint, where Barry Allen never does regain his speed but simply dies, leaving this world on the brink of destruction solely in the hands of the paradox that is Reverse-Flash. Let's jump into this story and see what this Flashpoint timeline has in store for itself with Eobard Thawne not burdened by the obsession of Barry Allen. Let's check it out.
The setup for this story feels weird right off the bat because it doesn't exactly play with the story the way it was originally told to get our dark twist going. In this, Barry dies instead of regaining his speed and this act is the thing that causes Eobard to become free of time and become the paradox we all know him to be now instead of the Flashpoint itself being the thing that started him down this path, which made sense because originally we saw him screwing with Barry throughout the Flashpoint story. In this though, Barry dies, Eobard is thrown out of time and obsesses about hope from here on out because it seems he needs something to obsess over.
Really though, Eobard for the most part relishes this world that Barry misguidedly created and uses his negative speed force powers to go back and rewrite this world to whatever he wants it to be, which is a fun idea, but kind of loses itself and the timeline of the original Flashpoint along the way and then gives us a weird character turn for Reverse-Flash, making him the person he always wanted to be, but never could because of his own meddling with time and obsessing over being better than and punishing Barry Allen. It's a weird turn for the character that doesn't exactly feel earned but ultimately I like that Eobard essentially gets his own world to play around with where a Flash can't stop him but I just found some of his and Thomas Wayne Batman's motivations a bit off throughout this story.
All in all, I'm a fan of the Tales From The Dark Multiverse series and the Dark "What If" scenarios we can get from them but a lot of the writers don't seem to want to create a divergence in time from something that happened in the original story or one that makes sense within the context of that story and this one kind of falls in that category but we get a story that while feels a bit long in the tooth by the end, where character motivations don't feel right or earned at times, I do enjoy the idea of a messed up world where Reverse-Flash can just do people dirty for the fun of it and the idea that he may come out better in the end solely because Barry Allen isn't around to take up his time. I dig the art in this book even though it seems that Eobard's costume has been updated for some reason from the original story and I can't wait to see what tale Tempus Fuginaut tells us next.
Bits and Pieces:
There are some problems with the setup to this story with it not matching the actual Flashpoint continuity it's based on and some of the motivations of our main characters here feel off at times and counterproductive to their actual goals but even with these things, there's some fun to be had in a story where Reverse-Flash can make a doomed world into anything he sees fit.
Thanks for the review. Yeah, this story did feel off, like you said. I agree, the idea of Reverse-Flash getting his own world to mess with and have a journey of self-discovery is cool. Plus, it would be a lot of fun to see how Thawne would mess with all the different heroes and villains in the Flashpoint era let alone the DC world in general.
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