The Flash 100-page comic giant No. 2 review: Get out of the kitchen

Central City is heating up in this month’s The Flash Giant No. 2.

Continuing from last month’s story, the second part of Gail Simone’s The Flash miniseries has Barry Allen facing yet another familiar foe; Mick Rory AKA Heat Wave. After the Mirror Master suggested to an as-of-yet seen masterminded villain to get Heat Wave to do his bidding, he does just that, leaving a trail of fire with which to destroy Central City.

Heat Wave had already been sent to prison some time ago by The Flash, doomed to never indulge in his pyromaniac tendencies ever again. But when the shadowy figure threatens him into breaking out of prison so he can set things on fire once again, Heat Wave takes him up on his threat and manages to build a heat gun to burn his way out of prison.

Barry Allen, meanwhile, has been pondering his state as the Scarlet Speedster, Simone giving the audience insight into his thinking of what it actually means to be as fast as he is. Being able to do everything at light speed isn’t as fun as one might think, it turns out. While to the observer it looks like Barry is doing everything incredibly fast, for him it is incredibly slow. But he’s found a way to use that to his advantage, reading tons and tons of library books over and over and memorizing them, ultimately helping him in his heroics.

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But library books only provide some amount of consolation, so Barry decides to try something else to interest him; calling one Iris West, the reporter he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about since they met in the last issue.

When he calls her, she’s too busy to talk. She’s hiding from Heat Wave, who is causing all sorts of destruction. After speeding his way to Rory, he discovers the pyromaniac has created a massive heat cyclone. After stopping the cyclone thanks to some melted ice from the nearby mountains, Allen sends Heat Wave to some ice caps to cool him down, but not before learning that Heat Wave was ordered to cause destruction just as Mirror Master was, clueing The Flash in on someone being up to something.

The second issue of Simone’s miniseries is another entertaining chapter in this saga. The action is exciting and the personal lives of Barry, Iris, and his enemies are engaging as well. We’re getting a chance to see The Flash in the light of who he is at his core as a human with superpowers. We get a sense of his loneliness and how hard it can be sometimes to be the fas test man alive. Also getting the chance to see Barry and Iris’s classic comic relationship redevelop in a new story has also been refreshing. All in all, I’m excited to see where The Flash Giant No. 3 takes us when it comes out next month.