The Flash #768

5/10

With a huge cast and very little actual plot development, the world's fastest serial killer takes on the title.

With all of the grace and forgiveness of a police officer giving slack to a mass murderer, this baffling issue offers the central spotlight of the title to Wally West after he committed ten murders and tried to frame two innocent people for it. With that as a starting point, there's little surprise that The Flash #768 continued on a downward slope.

The Flash #768 Review: It's Gibberish
The Flash #768 Cover. Credit: DC Comics

Let's start with the opening scene, a discussion between Barry Allen, Oliver Queen, and Wally West as the latter has decided to give up superheroing. For some reason, Superman, Hawkgirl, and Naomi were standing around, largely in formation, for virtually no reason. Batman has one line but otherwise looks like he's contemplating his tax liabilities. Superman bothers to have a surprised look at one point, Hawkgirl looks bored, Naomi has no expression at all … it's all a hot mess.

Then Wally and Barry have a race that makes sense in the narrative (sort of) but, for some reason, starts out on a busy city street. There's a nod to Future State as one of them needs a ride, and the other gets lost, and the whole sequence of events has a lot of big, splashy action and next to no logic.

None of this can be blamed on the visual team as Brandon Peterson, Marco Santucci, and David LaFuente make dinosaurs, machine guns, volcanic eruptions, Paris, a super-science lab, a jungle, and more look absolutely gorgeous. Sadly, Jeremy Adams script must bear the brunt of this as Oliver Queen plays the dumb role to keep the exposition coming; multiple heroes lose their powers, and it's possible that Wally West killed the dinosaurs. It's gibberish, frankly, and that's before you remember that this is all focused on a spree killer.

Yeah. Hard to say anything else for this. RATING: NO. JUST … NO.

The Flash #768
By Jeremy Adams, Brandon Peterson
The retirement of Wally West begins! After the events spanning from DC Universe: Rebirth to Heroes in Crisis to Dark Nights: Death Metal, the former Kid Flash decides to call it quits. But the current Flash needs his former partner now more than ever. As fallout from Infinite Frontier hits the Flash, Barry Allen and Wally West must confront the past by way of a Justice League led by Green Arrow.

About Hannibal Tabu

Hannibal Tabu is a writer, journalist, DJ, poet and designer living in south Los Angeles with his wife and children. He's a winner of the 2012 Top Cow Talent Hunt, winner of the 2018-2019 Cultural Trailblazer award from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, his weekly comic book review column THE BUY PILE can be found on iHeartRadio's Nerd-O-Rama podcast, his reviews can be found on BleedingCool.com, and more information can be found at his website, www.hannibaltabu.com.
Plus, get free weekly web comics on the Operative Network at http://bit.ly/combatshaman.

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