Absolute Wally West has been through a lot lately. Absolute Flash #12 saw the end of what’s really the first arc of the story, and Absolute Flash #13 is the beginning of a two parter that promises to be no less twisted, tragic, and dark than the previous year we’ve spent getting to know the eponymous character.
This issue is about Wally dealing with the trauma he’s endured since gaining the climactic confrontation at Fort Fox, and instead lets Wally have a little, for a while. With nowhere else to go, he returns to the Dibny Youth Mission in Central City. While he’s able to shrug off the accusations of having powers from Dibny, but not from fellow guest (if that’s the right word), Linda. She has him dead to rights and he opens up to her so sincerely, and her to him, in a way that just makes perfect sense when you’re a teenager.
DC
The rest of the issue feels oddly, and welcomely, reminiscent of Ultimate Spider-Man #13 from 2001. Like that book, this issue is dripping with the manic highs and depressing lows that teens know all too well, especially two teens who feel like they’re the only two people in the world. When I was in high school I had those nights, and I’m sure you did too. It’s so wonderfully captured here.
This might be the first issue of an Absolute book that’s, well, cute. You’re going on a date with Wally and Linda as they explore his powers, and she tries to help him get answers. His dad is gone, stuck in the Still Point, and she suggests they return to the scene of the crime, Fort Fox, CO.
Along the way they acknowledge the Rogues Gallery, Grodd, and the supporting cast that’s been slowly built up over the past 12 issues, but at no point does it feel like they’re missing. Heck, they even tie into Absolute Green Lantern a bit with the reveal that Hunter Zolomon is a D.E.O. Agent with Wally on his radar. Despite focusing on only two characters, this book feels bursting at the seams with a bigger universe.
DC
This is a charming book that feels like the “San Junipero” episode of Black Mirror, like the one bright light of the Absolute Universe, which is saying something because the end reintroduces familiar villain in a very familiar way. Because of the previous 18 or so pages feeling so calm and innocent between two teenagers, that villain reveal feels jarring and terrifying in the best of ways, snapping the idea that this is a sweet book in half like a cookie.
The art is such a treat. Haining manages to capture the shy vulnerability of two people letting the other in, the angst of being in shitty situations, and the joy of just cutting loose. Colorist Adriano Lucas does a wonderful job of adding atmosphere and grime to the locations the two characters visit. The world looks dead and rusted out, but this relationship (friendship or otherwise) between the two leads is bright like a flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk. Add in the patented easy-flow conversation from a Jeff Lemire penned script, and this book is fun to read in every sense.
There’s an energy in this book that feels youthful and optimistic, almost like a rebuke of the Absolute Universe. While the at times almost saccharine veneer comes crashing down in the final pages with a spooky villain reveal, Absolute Flash #13 continues the wonderful Flash tradition of being the only Absolute book that gives me hope their world isn’t screwed, and that there might just be a happy ending after all.
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