The Flash: Blood Will Run


By Geoff Johns, Scott Kolins, Doug Hazlewood, Ethan Van Sciver & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1647-4

There are many super-speedsters in the DCU and most of them congregate around the conjoined mid-western metropolis of Keystone and Central City. Wally West, third incarnation of The Flash, lives there with his new wife Linda Park, his aunt Iris and fellow Vizier of Velocity Jay Garrick.

Impulse, a juvenile speedster from the future and his mentor/keeper Max Mercury – the Zen Master of hyper-velocity – live in Alabama but often visit as they only live picoseconds away and other recipients of the incredible Speed Force such as Jesse Quick are also frequent visitors.

It sounds pretty idyllic but there are constants threats to counteract the cosy friends and family atmosphere…

Created by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert, Garrick debuted as the very first Scarlet Speedster in Flash Comics #1 (January 1940). “The Fastest Man Alive” wowed readers for over a decade before changing tastes benched him in 1951. The concept of speedsters and superheroes in general was successfully revived in 1956 by Julie Schwartz in Showcase #4 when police scientist Barry Allen became the second hero to run with the concept.

The Silver Age Flash, whose creation ushered in a new and seemingly unstoppable era of costumed crusaders, died heroically during Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-1986) and was promptly succeeded by his sidekick Kid Flash. Of course Allen later returned from the dead – but then again, doesn’t everyone?

Initially Wally struggled to fill the boots of his predecessor, both in sheer ability and, more tellingly, in confidence. Feeling a fraud, he nonetheless persevered and eventually overcame, becoming the greatest to carry the name.

Following on from the astonishing and brutally game-changing events of The Flash: Wonderland, Geoff Johns’ continued his reinvention of the third Scarlet Speedster with new artist-team Scott Kolins, Doug Hazlewood and especially colourist James Sinclair, whose muted palette imbued the increasingly dark and edgy stories with a uniquely bright and airily destabilising counterpoint. There’s even a gallery of Brian Bolland’s eye-popping covers to gloat over.

This volume collects issues #170-176 of the Wally West Flash Run, the lead story from Flash: Secret Files #3 and the dark and nasty Iron Heights one-shot, leading off with the eponymous four-part ‘Blood Will Run’ as in ‘Breaking the Foundation’ a sports-mad Linda Park-West has her day off ruined when Wally is dragged out of an ice-hockey match to tackle a hostage crisis. Unfortunately the situation goes bad when Flash’s crazy ex-girlfriend Frankie Kane shows up and inadvertently exposes a cult which has been methodically murdering all the people Wally had saved during his career…

Now calling herself Magenta, Frankie eventually suppresses her magnetic powers and lets the police arrest her, but Wally is pretty rattled.

He’s even more shocked to see police officer Julie Jackham, another one of his old romantic mistakes and one he’ll regret forever since she’s the next victim of the cult in ‘The Harvest’, leaving behind her a furious mentor in uncompromising cop Fred Chyre, a deeply guilt-wracked Scarlet Speedster and a baby who leaks lightning…

Detective Jared Morillo is the one who first noticed Flash’s connection to the wave of serial killings, but as Wally reels at the enormity of the campaign of death, elsewhere in the city ex-super-villain Goldface is slowly signing up the metropolis’ entire blue collar workforce to his insidious labour union whilst Flash’s old friend and reformed meta-bandit Pied Piper is bracing for an unwelcome reunion with his estranged parents…

In ‘Close to Home’ the increasingly unstable Magenta busts out of custody and joins the cult, capturing Wally in the process. Horrified, the Monarch of Motion meets the demented Cicada who has been siphoning life force the hundreds of victims in the hopes of resurrecting the wife he murdered. It’s not just deranged delusion either as the madman’s blade rips a hole in the Flash through which Speed Force energy begins to leak…

In ‘Uneasy Idol’ Linda narrowly escapes being murdered and Morillo is wounded by Cicada’s life-transferring dagger before Flash spectacularly wraps up the case, but it’s clear that the madness is only beginning, not ending…

‘Moving Right Along’ finds Wally and Linda relocating back to the heart of Keystone from the suburbs and tackling a new super threat in the plasmorphic Tar Pit rather than spend an evening with the in-laws, after which the Pied Piper is accused of murdering his parents and the secret of Jackie’s baby is revealed in the blisteringly engrossing ‘Birthright’ beginning with ‘Eye of the Storm’, in which old Rogue Weather Wizard returns as an uncharacteristically adept and capable foe, determined to steal the child and dissect him for the secret of his power, culminating in a devastating duel in ‘The Rainmaker’.

Throughout all these tales a sinister subplot detailed how a number of Flash Foes were uniting under a deadly new leader, but before all was revealed ‘Iron Heights’, illustrated by Ethan Van Sciver & Prentis Rollins introduced the harshest prison in the DC universe, where draconian warden Gregory Wolfe relished every opportunity to break his metahuman inmates and where horrific serial killer Murmur was attempting to murder the entire prison population with a virus manufactured from his own toxic blood.

When Wally and the Piper infiltrated the locked-down penitentiary on a mission of mercy, they discovered a litany of horrors that would eventually cause even more trouble for the Flash and his twinned hometown…

This superb compendium concludes with yet another introduction as FBI profiler of metahuman threats Hunter Zoloman joined the Keystone cops in ‘Rogues’ (with art by Kolins & José Marzán Jr. from Flash: Secret Files #3), an action-packed prelude to an all out super-war with the Speedster’s most vicious foes united against him…

But that’s the raw meat of another book…

Fast, furious and fantastic, The Flash has always epitomised the very best of Fight ‘n’ Tights fiction and these tales are the cream of that crop . The Geoff Johns years are slick and absolutely addictive: engrossing, rapid-paced, classily violent and often genuinely scary. If you haven’t seen them yet, run – don’t walk – to your nearest emporium or vendor-site and catch all the breathless action you can handle, quick as you can!
© 2000, 2001, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.