In any case, issue #4 seemed to indicate that Zoom recreated his powers in the accident seen in the present-day beginning of Rebirth #1; and Zoom is shown with long gray hair and a walking stick in the flashback to that moment in #4 and in #4′s “present” when he unmasks. I take that to mean he’s physically older than he was when he originally died.

And he also mentions having returned after Barry’s death, which can’t refer to his clash with Wally, since that was not a return but a preamble to his Zoom career. There’s also that business about Barry leaving the gateway open when he turned up in Infinite Crisis.

Remember, according to #4 Zoom was able to send the “subliminal” pulse that brings Barry back for keeps in Final Crisis. Using this, he manages to return long enough to repower himself as his own narration indicates. Zoom is quite clear that he “transformed [him]self into a NEW kind of speedster only after Barry’s Final Crisis return. And we saw him do that in Flash: Rebirth #1, which was labeled as occurring in the present day, not the past. Of course,t hat rather confusingly means he can already time-travel to get to thepresent in the first place….guh.

I’m just a huge Bart Allen fan, but I was rethinking it and perhaps I was a little harsh. I’m just tired of all the $4 books and double features when what I really want to read is the story on the cover. I did like the idea of Impulse coming back, just didn’t know it would be this way.

I didn’t like this particular issue. I like some of the reinterpretations of continuity that Geoff Johns has made in the past, they work particularly well when the character doesn’t have much background and needs and update. However, I don’t like the idea of The Flash being a tragic hero, it doesn’t suit the character that I’ve read for almost 20 years. It’s not tragedy per se what I don’t like, since there’s been plenty of tragic storylines over the years, but making the characters tragic at their origin point makes them more grim than what I want to read with a Flash comic book.

The idea of Zoom traveling back in time to mess with Barry’s life in order to make him miserable is not all that bad, but having him pushing Barry down the stairs or opening the door so his dogs gets killed is absolutely idiotic.

I’m rather disappointed with this story, is not good at all, it has a function and it’s doing so well, but as a story is rather simple and uninteresting. I haven’t liked EVS’s work either, he certainly take his time to work on every panel, but the more simplistic part of his work which is to depict an action and draw the human figure accurately (as much as it can be done), has been done poorly, he often makes the characters take awkward poses, and the perspective is weird at best.

Overall, I’m not particularly fond of this miniseries, but I guess that if 3 years from now The Flash is as important a character as Hal Jordan is nowadays, I won’t be complaining all that much.

R-Flash’s motivation in general is the one thing in this series that bugs me. (Barry’s new backstory was another, but now they’ve explained it.) He’s just an obsessive jerk who wants to devote his entire life to taunting Barry? Why?

On the other, Thawne’s secret plan is making less and less sense the longer this goes on. Based on his dialogue, he’s planning to “resurrect” himself. But given that he can apparently pop up whenever he likes in time and appear in the present and stage a physical battle with the present-day speedsters, isn’t he…err…already resurrected?

Seriously, I’m not seeing what possible status change “resurrection” would offer Thawne that would be any different than his apparent status in Rebirth already. It’s a bit like that Chuck Austen story with the villain who plotted to escape his otherdimensional prison by traveling to Earth repeatedly and at will. He wasn’t all that banished, and Zoom’s not particularly dead as it is, y’know?

I don’t think this particular story expands on his character (unless you’re talking about the speedforce bits) – it only riffs on the obsessive and sadist persona they’ve established over many decades.