Dead mothers can take care of themselves! Dead mothers don't find your porn under the bed!
Batman and The Flash have taken a trip to the Flashpoint Universe via the most ridiculous invention in the DC Universe (which is pretty ridiculous because this is the place where Doc Magnus developed Butt Plugs with Personalities): the Cosmic Treadmill! It didn't exist for a while because DC had outlawed time travel. But DC realized that they had made a huge editing mistake by trying to contain their universe into a manageable and coherent place where every story made sense in the context of every other story. The biggest mistake they made was hiring idiot writers who couldn't follow the script and used time travel anyway. No wait. The biggest mistake was not realizing how many people would stop reading their comic books after they threw about a third of their characters into limbo. I'm not surprised, though, that The New 52 began by giving Barry Allen Mommy Issues. You can't have a main character whose direction in life hasn't come from the death of one or both parents. Okay, maybe Wonder Woman never suffered the death of a parent but she did suspect that the vase in the foyer that was shattered while playing basketball in the house may have been her father.
What I'm trying to say is that Batman and The Flash are about to make some big time changes to DC Continuity. I suspect most of the damage has already been done with Preboot Superman's merger with New 52 Superman. Although if Mister Manhattan changed everything so drastically once, can't he do it again at any time? It's hard to know what causes him to do anything when he can't experience motivation since he already knows how everything turns out. I suppose the only reason to change the universe when you already know, in the future, that you change the universe is that you know you can't stop yourself from changing the universe so you might as well go ahead and change the universe just like you knew you were going to.
The Flashpoint universe still exists because time doesn't work the way comic book characters think it does. Thomas Wayne thought that by helping The Flash, his timeline's present and future would change. But it didn't because ha ha! Only the person traveling through time gets to experience the changes they made, you dum-dum! You're still stuck in the universe where Bruce Wayne died in an alley and that's never going to change. Although you could travel with The Flash on that stupid Cosmic Treadmill to get some of that sweet, succulent new timeline living!
Anyway, Thomas Wayne is just about to blow himself up (along with the Amazon and Atlantean assassins entering the manor) when The Flash and Batman arrive.
Fuck Flashpoint! I want them to arrive in The Watchmen's universe!
What I'm trying to say is that Batman and The Flash are about to make some big time changes to DC Continuity. I suspect most of the damage has already been done with Preboot Superman's merger with New 52 Superman. Although if Mister Manhattan changed everything so drastically once, can't he do it again at any time? It's hard to know what causes him to do anything when he can't experience motivation since he already knows how everything turns out. I suppose the only reason to change the universe when you already know, in the future, that you change the universe is that you know you can't stop yourself from changing the universe so you might as well go ahead and change the universe just like you knew you were going to.
The Flashpoint universe still exists because time doesn't work the way comic book characters think it does. Thomas Wayne thought that by helping The Flash, his timeline's present and future would change. But it didn't because ha ha! Only the person traveling through time gets to experience the changes they made, you dum-dum! You're still stuck in the universe where Bruce Wayne died in an alley and that's never going to change. Although you could travel with The Flash on that stupid Cosmic Treadmill to get some of that sweet, succulent new timeline living!
Anyway, Thomas Wayne is just about to blow himself up (along with the Amazon and Atlantean assassins entering the manor) when The Flash and Batman arrive.
Fuck Flashpoint! I want them to arrive in The Watchmen's universe!
Well, if you're going to have a character outright state the nonsense you want the reader to believe, who am I to shit all over your desperate need for things to be the way you say they are? Fine. It's the same timeline! Whatever! Fuck you!
The Flash goes on to explain: "The Flashpoint was never an alternate world. It was an alternate history." That's the same kind of stupid nonsense that DeFalco and Lobdell used to piss in the face of The New 52's no time travel regulations. It's a pretend distinction! Alternate worlds are just alternate histories. At best, it's semantics. "Oh, this future is definitely the future that arose out of this past but it's a shitty future so let's go back and change the past to make this future different." By describing them as alternate histories, you simply pretend one ceases to exist. But guess what? Flashpoint didn't cease to exist! So maybe you've got your science wrong, Barry!
The juggling of the whole time travel/alternate history/infinite Earths science thing becomes too tricky so a fight scene breaks out to distract the reader. Anyway, The Flash had the last word on what's happening and we just have to believe him. It's a comic book, after all. Nothing ever makes too much sense!
The Flash fixes the Cosmic Treadmill but there's only room for three people. Which is why Thomas Wayne stays behind to die because he can't count. But he does give Batman some advice after not knowing him as an adult at all. He tells him not to be Batman. As if he knows what Bruce Wayne has been through. What he's doing is what all fathers do to their sons. He's projecting his own faults and aspirations and mistakes and ambitions onto him. He believes he's giving Bruce good advice to not be Batman. He even tells him to be a father to his son. What kind of a father would Bruce be to Damian if he weren't Batman?! Damian would laugh in his stupid non-Bat-face! Instead of being all, "Dad! DAD! I LOVE YOU!", Batman should have been all, "Get stuffed, motherfucker! I am my own maaaaaaan!"
Bruce and Barry disappear on the treadmill and Thomas Wayne leaps into the engulfing whiteness of existence coming to an end while screaming, "We rise!" It's like a motivational poster still hanging in an empty office by one staple and partially covered in vomit.
The juggling of the whole time travel/alternate history/infinite Earths science thing becomes too tricky so a fight scene breaks out to distract the reader. Anyway, The Flash had the last word on what's happening and we just have to believe him. It's a comic book, after all. Nothing ever makes too much sense!
The Flash fixes the Cosmic Treadmill but there's only room for three people. Which is why Thomas Wayne stays behind to die because he can't count. But he does give Batman some advice after not knowing him as an adult at all. He tells him not to be Batman. As if he knows what Bruce Wayne has been through. What he's doing is what all fathers do to their sons. He's projecting his own faults and aspirations and mistakes and ambitions onto him. He believes he's giving Bruce good advice to not be Batman. He even tells him to be a father to his son. What kind of a father would Bruce be to Damian if he weren't Batman?! Damian would laugh in his stupid non-Bat-face! Instead of being all, "Dad! DAD! I LOVE YOU!", Batman should have been all, "Get stuffed, motherfucker! I am my own maaaaaaan!"
Bruce and Barry disappear on the treadmill and Thomas Wayne leaps into the engulfing whiteness of existence coming to an end while screaming, "We rise!" It's like a motivational poster still hanging in an empty office by one staple and partially covered in vomit.
It's a statement, dummies! It's as close as Geoff Johns is ever going to get to apologizing for The New 52!
On the way home, Eobard Thawne runs past them with the button. He lets them know that he knows who made the button so powerful and he's going to go beat that person's ass! Hee hee. He's actually going to die but he doesn't know that yet! Although, if you think about it, I don't know that yet either. I mean, what if this is an alternate history and not an alternate Earth? Or, um, what if it's an alternate Earth and not an alternate history? I mean...I'm confused. What I'm realizing is that even though Reverse-Flash died in Batman #21, DC Comics doesn't really know how to deal with time travel, so maybe that was just a time fart and he'll actually be saved by Batman and The Flash now. I have no confidence in the final issue of this story being any better than these previous three issues. There's a reason I dropped Joshua Williamson's The Flash comic. He's just not on my list of writers who don't make me bang my head on the desk for forty minutes after reading something they wrote.
The Ranking!
-1! I could have given this issue a pass except for that part where The Flash over-explains how Flashpoint is the real timeline. Okay. Got it! Nothing fucking matters in the DC Universe.
The Ranking!
-1! I could have given this issue a pass except for that part where The Flash over-explains how Flashpoint is the real timeline. Okay. Got it! Nothing fucking matters in the DC Universe.
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