Can the Fastest Man Alive outrun the Rogues? That’s the question in Absolute Flash #2, out in April, from writer Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth) and artist Nick Robles (Doctor Mirage). This week’s Absolute Flash #1 hit the ground running with flashbacks and flash forwards, introducing a 15-year-old Wallace “Wally” West as an anxiety-ridden military brat son of Fort Fox Colonel Rudy West. He’s warned to stay away from Dr. Barry Allen, who works out of an underground lab conducting dangerous but groundbreaking experiments for the Army’s top-secret Project Olympus, but something draws Wally back to the lab. And that’s where tragedy strikes like a bolt of lightning.
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“RUN!”
That was the last thing Barry said to Wally, who is on the run when we catch up to him in the present. Wally’s racing thoughts go back to the lab accident that turned Barry into a charred corpse and Wally into a scarlet speedster whose powers manifest not through the Speed Force, but what seems to be the last vestiges of Barry’s life force. Barry Allen is dead, and Wally West takes the blame.
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A military craft deploys an AI-powered Boomerang drone to scout ahead and finds the runaway Wally in the desert. As Wally makes a run for it, we see the group that Colonel West sent after his son: Boomerang, Digger Harkness, Jesse, Lisa, and the Captain. In another universe, they’re the Rogues: Boomerang (George “Digger” Harkness), Trickster (James Jesse), Golden Glider (Lisa Snart), and Captain Cold (Leonard Snart).
ABSOLUTE ROGUES
The Captain orders them to bring Wally in “alive, for now,” and has Harkness flush Wally out using Boomerang (who refers to his wrist-mounted weapon as if the Boomerang is a person). Fort Fox’s Rogues give chase when the issue suddenly flashes forward to “one year later.”
In the wreckage of Dr. Allen’s lab, a mysterious figure access the Project Olympus archives using the password “Blue Trinity.” (In the original DC Universe, Wally’s father, Rudy West, sent a trio of Soviet-made speedsters — Gregor Gregorovich, Boleslaw Uminski, and Christina Alexandrova — after his son in 1988’s Flash #8).
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, time to make this whole world fall,” says the final Rogue to be revealed: Mirror Master.
“It’s been pretty much, ‘Just go crazy,’” Robles told CBR about redesigning the Flash’s most infamous villains for the new Absolute Universe. “The Absolute Universe being an original thing has let the editors and Jeff just let me go wild and toss him ideas, and run with things, because, on the other side of the spectrum from Jeff, I’m not that schooled on the Flash’s history.”
“I’m very much the new guy here, and I have purposely not gone back and read too much, because I want to bring original ideas into this Absolute line. I don’t want to be influenced yet,” Robles continued. “I mean, in time I will, I’m sure, but I want this to be all original, and that was a huge pull for me for this book. So keeping that in mind, and allowing myself to not worry about that so much and just kind of deliver original designs was my approach. I mean, you have a touchstone on the Rogues and Wally and everyone, of course, but I wanted it to be my look for things for the most part.”
Get another look at Absolute Flash’s rogues gallery in the solicitations for Absolute Flash issues #2 and #3 below:
Absolute Flash #2
CAN WALLY WEST OUTRUN THE ROGUES?! Wally West is on the run from his dad and the rest of Fort Fox, and while his new-found abilities are terrifying him, he needs to find a way to use them to make his escape. But how will he handle the elite group his father sent to bring him back?
On sale: April 16
Absolute Flash #3
THE ROGUES PRESS THE ATTACK! Wally’s back is up against the wall as the Rogues bear down on him. Can he evade capture and harness some of his newfound speed, or is he already at the finish line?
On sale: May 21
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Image courtesy of Max
