Fear is a feeling that consumes you in an instant. Fear doesn’t take time to fill every inch of your being with dread. Fear is the fastest force in existence. Fear isn’t something you can escape, no matter how fast you run. Fear is what keeps us alive. Absolute Flash #1 captures the anxieties stemming from the fears of never being enough, overthinking, and all of those human feelings of inadequacy. Jeff Lemire, Nick Robles, Adriano Lucas, and Tom Napolitano introduce a beautifully crafted version of The Flash for Absolute DC that is flawed and vulnerable in a world that moves too fast for even someone with super speed.
When we meet this Flash, a young Wally West, he is in what can only be described as a speed force-powered panic attack. Tom Napolitano’s layered lettering of Wally’s repeated “WHAT HAVE I DONE?” is a perfect example of the use of lettering to show the inner turmoil he is going through. He thinks so fast that everything is jumbled, which we see visually with the lettering. Each text box is adorned with white motion lines that Napolitano used to mimic the similar white lines around the red boxes Robles used in his art. These add another level of visualization to the inner dialogue and give a glimpse into how fast these thoughts are moving.
If you have ever struggled with anxiety, you know that once your thoughts start snowballing, it is hard to slow down. One thought splinters into a thousand different ones, one after the other, on top of each other until it’s hard to distinguish them from one another. Napolitano’s lettering carefully crafts that anxiety into something you can see in text form, which I have not seen done so well in a comic before. It is matched by Nick Robles and Adriano Lucas’s art, which thematically follows the same anxiety-driven fears.
The first panel of the issue shows Wally coming to a stop, with that iconic Flash lightning crackling behind him. The box says, “What have I done?” with standard comics coloring. But that quickly changes when everything catches up with him. Visually, everything follows the red and yellow color scheme of Flash up until the title page after the first panel, but becomes almost overbearing in the most visually pleasing way to go along with how Wally is feeling. As those thoughts of whatever is haunting him start to overwhelm him, we see Robles drawing in more lightning at first, but it continues in the third panel with echoes of silhouettes of Wally’s self.
It’s an absolutely stunning visual of all of those fears, anxieties, obsessive thoughts, and the whole world coming crashing down around you. Robles’ splash page before the title card has Wally’s body wrenching into these different forms or ghost-like echoes that are almost horrific screams of a child in pain. You can see the tears streaming down his face as he holds his head. It’s a really powerful visual.
Adriano’s focus on the flamboyant red and yellow during this breakdown is incredible because we know that this kid is cursed with this forever. Those colors are interwoven with his being, whether he likes it or not, for his entire existence. We do not know this Wally West other than the idea that he is the Absolute Universe’s Flash. Having our introduction be this visually striking breakdown of the familiar being an echo of the familiar in a painful, anxiety-ridden way sets the tone for this character in a way that the Flash has never had. But we see Wally center himself after the title card and remind himself that he knows who he is, which is a really powerful example of grounding through Lemire’s writing to bring Wally back to his center.
Jeff Lemire’s Animal Man was the first comic I read from start to finish from the day it came out until the day it ended. Hearing he was taking a run at a different take on Wally West made me very excited because I knew the themes he played with in his work. Even in Absolute Flash #1, we see many of the themes explored in Animal Man bubbling to the surface, such as fatherhood, anxiety, and fears of never being enough, no matter how hard you push yourself, but through a very different lens. Lemire is an extremely capable writer who tackles complex themes with a careful hand, but this time through the eyes of a 15-year-old boy rather than a father.
I bring up the comparison because Wally’s father plays a looming force in this issue, but we only see so much of what could potentially be his true motivations. Reviewing a single issue of a comic and making a more nuanced take means I must make some comparisons. We see Wally is dealing with losing his mother and being moved from place to place as an army brat. Even with his father being a more strict and more militaristic parenting type, I have to harken back to how Buddy Baker was as a father. Lemire wrote an extremely complex father with his run on Animal Man, and this is why I think his take on Colonel West will be fascinating. Even if we are only given a few brief scenes with him, it’s clear there is more going on with why he is involved with whatever research is happening at the facility.
While Wally’s actual father isn’t the mentor he needed at the time we met him, a very familiar face stepped up, and that is Barry Allen. You may know Barry Allen from CW’s The Flash, and he’s been Flash in the comics for all those years, too. Barry serves as that older male role model and friend that Wally so desperately needs at this time, when he is reaching out desperately for a lifeline when he has no one else. Barry does become part of the essential mystery of the book, which I will not get into so you can read to find out, but it’s the first time in a long time I was excited to read Barry Allen! The way Lemire writes him makes him truly likable. The clash between Wally’s father and Barry actually hurts to read because deep down you know both of them only want what’s best for Wally. While that may not be true for everyone, Barry and Colonel West just want Wally to be alright.
Now, personally, there is no Flash without his Rogues. They are the greatest gallery of villains in the DC Universe outside of Batman’s because they are so wildly different. They are crooks with a moral code. Seeing them appear here working for what seems to be the government breaks my heart. The Rogues being part of a regime in the world created by Darkseid makes sense, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less. Their designs by Nick Robles are as perfect as the Flash’s design. They fit so perfectly amongst everything else in the Absolute world, and I cannot wait to see more of them.
Fear is something that catches up to us all. Fear isn’t something that cannot be conquered. Absolute Flash #1 introduces us to a Wally West who is enveloped in fear, but as we know, the Flash is the fastest man alive and can outrun anything. With the tour de force of talent in this book, Wally is destined for incredible things through the storytelling, narratively and artistically. This has the makings to be a classic story about conquering fear, no matter how fast it can run.