The speed force has become the deux ex machina of the Flash Universe; it’s God in a very fast machine. Basically, whatever story an author wants to do, whatever rule he needs to break, all he has to say is “speed force” plus some randomly chosen verbs and nouns and, voila, the plot has moved to the place he needed it to go—at an increased rate of speed no doubt. Various Flashes (and their various villains) can all die and come back and age and die and de-age and come back and age and de-age and die and come back and on and on and on without any pretention of consequences as long as there is some connection between them and the speed force. For a guy’s who’s power depends on his legs, Flash sure needs an awful big crutch to have his stories told these days.

What makes Flash an exceptional comic book hero is that his power, his only power, is to move fast in a medium that moves only one frozen panel at a time. By endowing the Flash with “access” or “control” or “knowledge” of the speed force, it robs him of this central conceit and Flash goes from just being fast to just being another powerful hero, a practically infinitely powerful hero. That’s why this issue was such a disappointment as character moments were dropped in favor of haughty, nonsensical ruminations on the speed force. Rather than embrace this idea, in re-conceiving Flash, DC should run as fast as they can away from it. Or if that doesn’t work, they should use their access/control/knowledge of the speed force to simply extract it from the DCU altogether—I know that doesn’t make sense, but that’s kind of the point.