Flashpoint #5 (spoilers)

Trev · Post by **Trev** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 1:34 pm

I thought it was a fantastic ending. Yes it was cliched a bit in that it was all more or less undone, but the emotional beats and wrap up were just outstanding.

First time a comic has made me well up since the end of Y:The Last Man.

When Barry gives the note to Bruce -- that was just awesome. And with that, I would say that Flashpoint is as much about the relationship between Bruce and Thomas Wayne as it is about Barry and his mother.

Great stuff.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 3:51 pm

Nice ending to what was overall the single best comics event I've read since the original Crisis on Infinite Earths.

DC really managed to take the old universe out with some style in this series.

Kind of alters my views about Barry though. The guy fundamentally screwed up time and his "fix" didn't really quite fix things back the way they were. He has fundamentally changed the entire fabric of the DCU.

Thomas Wayne really ended up the key hero of the whole thing, IMO. Very nice.

HassanT · Post by **HassanT** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 6:17 pm

I thought the ending was very touching. I was surprised how moved I was after reading this issue. I agree with Bob that is ended up being one of the better events DC has produced. I thought probably because when Johns writes stories, he tends to focus on character moments and not just plot moments.

I have been saying along that the villain of the book couldn't be Reverse Flash. That was too obvious. But, it never occurred that it would have been Barry.

Webhead · Post by **Webhead** » Wed Aug 31, 2011 10:47 pm

So let me get this straight...

Barry's mom was alive and all was right with the DCU. Then Zoom kills Barry's mom and all is still good with the DCU. Barry goes back in time to stops Zoom from changing the the past and this screws up the DCU and we get the Flashpoint DCU. Now Barry goes back in time and stops himself from stopping Zoom and this screws up the Flashpoint DCU and we get the new DCU.

Shouldn't Barry stopping himself just put everything back to the way it was before?

JasonNewcomb · Post by **JasonNewcomb** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 4:27 am

I have to say, I didn't like this except for the ending. When the big bad villain shows up at the end, I have no interest in reading his master plan that happened in the past. I want to see those events unfold, not be told how they unfolded. Johns has a propensity for this, especially when he writes the Flash. I've read all of Johns' Flash and I've concluded that I prefer someone else writing Flash. I think Manapul might actually do a better job scripting a Flash book than Geoff.

What I want out of a Flash book is Flash fighting the craziest coolest rogues in comics and a little pseudo science mixed in. What I got from Geoff (especially in his latest run on Flash) was a run down on how the Speed Force works. I'm quite tired of it. It would seem Geoff is a better fit for JL as I really liked issue one. Flashpoint #5 was a convoluted mess in my opinion.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:06 am

The wonderful world of opinion.....

Same issue is best thing ever for some & a convoluted mess for others

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:35 am

Humorous:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/31/ ... shpoint-5/

JasonNewcomb · Post by **JasonNewcomb** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:40 am

BobBretall wrote:Humorous:
http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/31/ ... shpoint-5/

That is pretty hilarious.

BadDeacon · Post by **BadDeacon** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 11:03 am

So, I'll give it this: the character moment with Bruce Wayne being given the letter from Barry was great. Really great.

Other than that: I read this and was so confused. I didn't get this series at all. Nothing made any sense. Sure, it was cool, and kinda interesting, but it was just really random. The entire time I was reading this, I was thinking, "Huh? Why is this happening now?"

I feel like the entire thing was a big pile of deus ex machina, seasoned with some great character moments. Like another recent big Geoff Johns written event, I'm left feeling like what I read had some cool stuff in it, but mostly left me confused.

Danscomics · Post by **Danscomics** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 1:45 pm

Webhead wrote:So let me get this straight...

Barry's mom was alive and all was right with the DCU. Then Zoom kills Barry's mom and all is still good with the DCU. Barry goes back in time to stops Zoom from changing the the past and this screws up the DCU and we get the Flashpoint DCU. Now Barry goes back in time and stops himself from stopping Zoom and this screws up the Flashpoint DCU and we get the new DCU.

Shouldn't Barry stopping himself just put everything back to the way it was before?

This is why it was mentioned that there were 3 timelines now and they needed to be consolidated. There was the Barry's Mom Lived without help timeline, the Barry's Mom Died because of Reverse Flash timeline, and the Barry Stopped Reverse Flash timeline.

As I mentioned in an earlier thread, it really isn't possible to return time exactly as it was because everytime you play with time it causes an alternate timeline. Now that Barry stopped himself, if it changed the timeline that he was in instead of creating an alternate then you end up with a paradox because he wouldn't have had a reason to go back and stop himself so he wouldn't have so then . . .

I'm actually not sure how I feel about the idea that they found a way to consolidate the three timelines into 1. All in all though I really enjoyed Flashpoint as well, and I also enjoyed most of the tie ins.

Trev · Post by **Trev** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 3:33 pm

I thought I saw that the 3 timelines were Wildstorm, DCU, and Vertigo.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Thu Sep 01, 2011 3:35 pm

Trev wrote:I thought I saw that the 3 timelines were Wildstorm, DCU, and Vertigo.

You are correct, Trev.

The 3 timelines being merged were DC/Wildstorm/Vertigo

Danscomics · Post by **Danscomics** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 1:05 pm

BobBretall wrote:
Trev wrote:I thought I saw that the 3 timelines were Wildstorm, DCU, and Vertigo.
You are correct, Trev.

The 3 timelines being merged were DC/Wildstorm/Vertigo

Fair enough, as I said in another thread I'm fairly new to DC comics so all I saw was different versions of characters like Swamp Thing and Green Lantern and I assumed. I still stand by the rest of my statement about the alternate timelines and not being able to return to one.

BobBretall · Post by **BobBretall** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 2:18 pm

Danscomics wrote:
BobBretall wrote:
Trev wrote:I thought I saw that the 3 timelines were Wildstorm, DCU, and Vertigo.
You are correct, Trev.

The 3 timelines being merged were DC/Wildstorm/Vertigo
Fair enough, as I said in another thread I'm fairly new to DC comics so all I saw was different versions of characters like Swamp Thing and Green Lantern and I assumed. I still stand by the rest of my statement about the alternate timelines and not being able to return to one.

I agree with your statement (at least in some versions of time-travel mythology):

it really isn't possible to return time exactly as it was because everytime you play with time it causes an alternate timeline.

abysslord · Post by **abysslord** » Fri Sep 02, 2011 5:27 pm

The time thing confuses me a little too, but probably more because I've never read a Flash book in my life and had no clue who Zoom was. #5 says Zoom is from the 25th century (I think) and he never could hurt Flash because Flash actually causes Zoom. Ok, I can understand that.

But then Flash used Speed Force [wtf is that?] and now Zoom can exist w/o Flash so he can do whatever he wants to him. A little more explanation would maybe have helped newbies like me. I mean, I can understand it as it is stated, just a little more clarification would help.

And the combining of three timelines seemed weird. Why not go back, stop himself from saving his mother, then a new timeline is created ... what does combining 3 have to do with it? And if it refers to DC's three lines of comics, that is breaking the 4th wall and I don't like that much.

And wow, Flash's mom getting killed causes Lois and Clark not to be married this time around .... he should keep 'saving' and 'unsaving' until a glorious crime-free world is created if that much depends on her.

This series was okay, but just kind of proves it's next to impossible to have a story where people can go back in time because it always asks the question "Why not keep trying it?" The company who sent back the Terminator to kill Sarah Conners would know instantaneously if it worked or not, so why aren't there like 100 Terminators showing up one after another? And if it's truly a different timeline each time, who cares if your plan works ... you're stuck in this (bleep) timeline still?

Time travel ..... tread carefully.

EDIT: Side note, the best example of what time-travel would be like in real life happens in the film "Primer". It's one of the most intelligently written films I've ever seen and I highly recommend it. It's short, low budget [so don't let the first few minutes fool you, it looks low budget], but really shows time travel realistically.