The Flash: Season Zero #9 - A Review

Felicity Smoak finds herself distracted at work, as Barry Allen's televised battle with a water-manipulating metahuman causes her to miss an important meeting. That turns out to be the least of Felicity's problems this morning. Because there's a group of terrorists out to turn everyone's favorite White Hat Hacker into street pizza and only The Fastest Man Alive can save her!


This issue of The Flash: Season Zero is somewhat perplexing.  The script by Andrew Kreisberg (based on a story by Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim) is well-written and quite funny, with a fair bit of quirky banter between Felicity and Ray Palmer and many accidental double entendres. Typical fare for an episode of Arrow or The Flash, in other words.

The problem is that it is unclear just when the events of this story take place relative to events in the show. As of the halfway point of the first season of The Flash, the existence of metahumans is still a closely guarded secret - at least so far as the team at STAR Labs and Joe West are concerned.   Explain then how it is possible for The Flash to be fighting a super-villain on a live television broadcast, with the reporter watching the fight acting like such fights are commonplace?

I'll admit this is a minor nitpick but it is an important point given the continuity of the TV series.  That said, the action of the story is well paced and it wouldn't feel out of place in a classic Flash comic.  The only real problem with this story is how it fails to fit into the reality of the show, unless it is set at some point in the not too distant future where The Flash is operating more openly.


The artwork by Marcus To is a definite improvement on the previous creative team.  There is a sense of motion to To's style that meshes well with the general aesthetic of The Flash.  To also does a good job caricaturing the series's cast and in blocking out the action of the story.