The Flash: Mercury Falling

Title: The Flash: Mercury Falling
Author: Todd Dezago
Publisher: DC
My take: Fun, but I think it would have made a lot more sense if I'd come into the book knowing who these people were.

Spoiler-free synopsis: There's a part of me that can't help but do things like support Todd Dezago, whose writing I always find entertaining. So when I saw this Flash compilation with its cute style and its awesome writer, I had to pick it up.



The story is pretty straightforward - Bart Allen, AKA Impulse, is a speedster. His mentor Max Mercury, also a speedster, has lost touch with the speed force and it's killing him. and the only way they can come up with to help him requires quite a lot out of young Bart.

Impulse is the sort of character I ended up loving in spite of myself. He's... well... impulsive, with the attention span of a gnat, but he very clearly cares - about people, about the world, about justice and doing the right thing. this was a fun little story and a pretty great introduction to both Impulse and Max if you haven't met them before. The only drawback is that a lot of the interaction assumes you sort of know the characters, so getting the full gist of a conversation can sometimes require a bit of patience.


Spoilery comments: The really tough part of this book was that a majority of the time, Bart wasn't actually Bart. He was someone known as Inertia, and even at the end I wasn't entirely sure what Inertia was, other than a foil to Bart, a misguided kid who wanted to take over as Impulse in order to attain some happiness that he hadn't even figured out for himself. Funnily enough, in a way that helped develop Impulse as well, because once the hints started dropping that it wasn't the real Bart, you could see the differences other characters noted in him.

I have to admit though, Impulse's dream sequence before he busted out and went to take his life back were as baffling as they were fun. It was another point that suffered heavily from the not-knowing-what-came-before problem.

To explain better... near the beginning of the book, we find out that they want Bart to take Max to the source of the speed force to try to let him reconnect with it. The problem is, it involves immense concentration and very precise attention to detail. As determined as Bart is, he can't seem to get the hang of it, and in the course of trying accidentally lets out a monster creature. He eventually defeats it by pushing it back through the portal it came through in the first place, and after a few seconds, he pops back out alone. Only, as we soon as hinted at, it's not him. And a good chunk of the book is this Inertia living Bart's life... and actually getting so immersed in it that for a while, he even considers just dropping his plans and living out the rest of his time as Impulse, with a loving family and the respect of people he helps.

Alas, it is not to be, as Bart breaks out of some sort of VR and comes to stop Inertia. But He's already left on the mission to take Max back to the speed force. The encounter they have out there is pretty fantastic, and Bart proves that he can come through when need be.

One of my favorite parts was actually the congratulations party the superheroes have for Max afterward. He accepts their well wishes, but it's great to see him set them straight when they start talking poorly about Bart. Even if Max didn't owe his life to the kid, I don't think he'd stand for that sort of talk. There was a great bond there between the two of them. In a way, the whole thing was worth it for just their interactions. But as I said, I love Dezago's work, so YMMV.