Warning: Spoilers for Tales From The Dark Multiverse: Flashpoint #1 ahead!
When it comes to making the life of the Flash a living hell, Barry Allen’s most brutal enemy, Reverse Flash, is usually at the epicenter of all of his most piercing pain. Constantly targeting the Fastest Man Alive for the worst schemes he can possibly think of, Reverse Flash, aka Eobard Thawne, is a thorn in Barry’s side that never seems to go away.
Spurred by one particularly painful experience, which saw Barry travel back in time to save his mother from being murdered at Reverse Flash’s hands, Barry inadvertently creates an alternate reality known as Flashpoint on his return trip to the present. Now living in a skewed world without the Flash and where DC’s greatest heroes are echoes of their former selves, Barry decides to team up with Flashpoint Batman aka Thomas Wayne, to hopefully find a way to restore the timeline to its proper form.
Even though the original Flashpoint event ended with the good guys on top, the recently released Tales From The Dark Multiverse: Flashpoint #1 written and drawn by Bryan Hitch, shows what would have happened if they didn’t. And in a Dark Multiverse where Reverse Flash rules over all, he also found the time to make the Dark Knight himself, Batman, entirely obsolete.
As with the rest of the Tales From The Dark Multiverse one-shots that have been slowly rolling out over the past few months, things in this story don’t go the way they should have, leading Reverse Flash to murder Barry, take “ownership” of the United States of America, and place Flashpoint Batman firmly under his thumb. And it’s here where a conversation between Thomas Wayne and Reverse Flash sheds light on how powerful Thawne has actually become, and why Batman isn’t worth his time to destroy in the first place.
After calling Thawne out for having no purpose or point in existing now that the Flash, his ultimate foe, is gone, Flashpoint Batman gets a wake-up call in the form of a very calculated and pointed comment Thawne gives as a rebuttal. Threatening and condescending in his words, Thawne points out that “I could kill every criminal in Gotham before you’ve taken your morning diazepam. What would be the point of you then?” to only then further add insult to injury by saying, “Who would be the object of your vengeance?” These two observations prove that in this Dark Multiverse, Reverse Flash makes the very idea of Batman obsolete just by existing. Furthermore, by calling Batman out, Reverse Flash also points out how Thomas’s entire shtick isn’t actually to save anyone. Instead it’s just a messed up coping mechanism stemming from the death of Bruce and the mental breakdown of his wife that sees him dress up as a bat and partake in nightly therapy sessions of violence and brutality that aren’t really helping anyone.
So while the Dark Multiverse is strewn with tragic tales and villainous victories, this alternate take on Flashpoint proves that Reverse Flash can make Batman – in this universe and most likely in regular continuity – entirely obsolete. Batman might be one of the most well-trained and smartest heroes in DC Comics, but that means nothing when you can run in between the ticks of a second and ruin someone’s life before they can even blink.
