Spoilers for Flash #22!
We're still in the war on the moon arc, which truthfully I'm not really enjoying, but at least the Shade is a new variable who will hopefully liven things up. He shows himself at the end of the issue, and it's not clear whether he's an ally or enemy to Wally, as he grabs Jai against everyone's wishes and pulls he and Wally into…well, a space filled with dead Flash duplicates. That's not exactly heroic or even helpful, though it's possible he has a good reason for it; it's also possible he didn't tear apart the Flash dupes and they ended up in the Shadowlands incidentally. But it's also possible that he's not on Wally's side. I rechecked the solicit for the July special which refers to "a surprising new ally", and the wording is vague enough that he could be allied with Wally or with Eclipso. He's got no obvious reason to join Eclipso, but you could say the same thing about the Rogues so I can't say he's obviously against him.
But maybe Shade thinks Jai can help beat Eclipso, so he's recruited him into the war no matter what anyone says -- he can be coolly pragmatic that way. We'll have to see what he does and what his motivations are.
Anyway, the Rogues have just a one page cameo, and somehow Tar Pit is huge for reasons. I'd ask where he's gotten all that tar to fuel such a big body, but maybe that's overthinking things and a wizard Eclipso did it. Barry still talks very strangely, and so does Wally's renegade duplicate, but at least Wally's been under enormous stress so that's probably the source of his unusual dialogue here. However, while Spurrier has had interesting things to say about spacetime and the speedsters' powers in this book, a lot of his characters do like to engage in technobabble monologues and consequently sound very strange. It's fine for Mr Terrific and adult Wade, but more puzzling when it's Jai or Wally. And Irey's kind of all over the place in this issue; first she's shocked and horrified that she killed some dupes (and even enjoyed it, apparently), and then she's crying that Wally doesn't trust her. I get that she's a superpowered teen, but she's been pretty irrational as of late.
I guess I'm rambling now too, but this book kind of does that to me. The book could be very smart and have a lot of things to say about time and related subjects, and it's certainly not a stupid read at all. But most of the characters don't sound or act like themselves and it frequently seems like Spurrier is using them as mouthpieces to share his thoughts on sci fi technobabble, so to me it's an interesting read but not really the Flash. It's a shame, because the book could be amazing if done right, but I really think he needs to work on characterization and dialogue. Anyhoo. Glad to see the Shade, and hope he remains in-character during the arc.
