The cover of Simon Spurrier’s Flash Vol. 3: As Above self-referentially proclaims “Genre shift!,” ostensibly to turn from the hard science-fiction of the last two volumes to something more superheroic, given Wally West and family venturing to fight supervillains in Skartaris. But indeed the book is just another flavor of esoteric; if the last two didn’t thrill you, this one isn’t much of a shift.

We just escaped two volumes of the Flash family acting callously to one another, explained away by evil machinations; no sooner do we arrive here than Wally’s again making boneheaded emotional decisions. It is not that we don’t want to see our characters sin, in the right place and time, but the downside of giving about every Justice Leaguer a spouse and children is that then sometimes writers can’t create drama without having the characters act poorly toward their own families.

Spurrier’s on his third volume now where Wally doesn’t value his relationships or gets mind-controlled (here, both), plus encountering a certain villain in broadly similar circumstances to when he encountered that villain just two years ago. I adore, and am somewhat amazed by, how Spurrier is able to work in specific material from the DC All In special very quickly, but on the whole I continue to be bored, confused, and annoyed at this title, and not particularly excited to see the story isn’t even wrapped up by the end.

[Review contains spoilers]

After a dozen issues of cosmic shenanigans, Spurrier’s Wally rightly decides his family needs a break and takes them adventuring to the action/adventure world of Warlord’s Skartaris. But for a vacation that’s meant to be about connecting with one another, Wally already hasn’t told his family he chose Skartaris because of a Justice League mission. Then, further, it turns out Wally has undergone an experimental procedure to split himself in two such that one of him can go on vacation while the other sticks around to help out the League, again without telling his family.

I will say that Spurrier almost makes this worthwhile at the very end when “love over duty” Wally meets “duty over love” Wally and they agree that yes, both impulses are equally strong in the Flash and that makes him who he is. But it’s not as though we couldn’t make the same argument for family man Superman; this seems true only because Spurrier says it is. And it’s predicated on a variety of fallacies: Red Tornado shames Wally for taking time off with his family (bad Justice League HR, that), when an equally realistic scenario sees another Leaguer taking over in Wally’s stead; that if Wally can clone himself and create a “duty-bot,” why not let the automaton do all his superheroing and live out the rest of his life in peace?

I maintain a good conflict is one where there’s heroes on both sides: Captain Cold steals out of some sense of honor while the Flash has to stop him, or Sinestro equally believes in justice but metes it with more force than Green Lantern. Here, setting aside all the other foibles of the plot, Wally is still lying to Linda, and professing to be spending time with her and the family while actually hanging out at work. As a metaphor, perhaps it’s relatable, but it’s such a jerk move (again!) as to make it hard for the audience to be on Wally’s side or really see anything in this “clone saga” beyond how it’s all Wally’s fault.

The story is marginally more superheroic toward the beginning of this book than it has been, but I’d venture the hard science-fiction transmutes more than it does disappear (though, also self-referentially, when Wally dimension-hops late in the book, a character mutters, “Nice to see [dimension-hopping] again, actually, it kinda took a back seat lately”). In the aftermath of Flash Vol. 2: Until Time Stands Still and/or the DC All In special, West kids Irey and Jai’s powers have changed — Irey has a “glow” that she can manipulate, while at one point Jai can sense a “shadow in time” of which he can twist its “echoes.”

In the previous volumes, too, Spurrier used vague language to build mystery, so this is in line. But in those two volumes, Spurrier already introduced new power sets for the kids, including Jai’s ability to create fleshy “animated homonculi.” That the kids' powers should change again so drastically, so soon, equally makes one think the facts are shifting just to meet the needs of the plot. I might at this point be ready for more answers than I am additional questions.

On the topic of “genre shift,” Spurrier balances some of this loftiness with narration from the Wests' new dog (who also happens to be a god-baby. It’s a thing). It is cute, I guess — “[Jai] is very clever and very sad and I have not pooped in four hours”; I think my general frustration with the slowness and opaqueness of this story tempers my enjoyment. That sequence also comes in the midst of an extra-long, super-campy monologue by surprise villain Eclipso — here’s the main tie to the All In special, which is great, but Spurrier’s Eclipso goes on at length, with hard-to-read font, and I begin to feel a book maybe too in love with its own voice?

Flash Vol. 3: As Above is drawn by Vasco Georgiev, whose rounded lines remind favorably of Jorge Jimenez; we are far from the grainy horror depicted by Mike Deodato in Flash Vol. 1: Strange Attractor, but Georgiev’s art appropriately fits the changes in tone and often helps sell the book’s weaker moments. But just a couple years and one Flash run ago, Jeremy Adams wrote Flash Vol. 17: Eclipsed, in which Wally went off to a swords-and-sorcery realm (then, Gemworld) and battled Eclipso — not the same thing, to be sure, but also not not the same thing. That Simon Spurrier is then continuing all of this into the next volume of Flash doesn’t thrill me; I keep waiting to latch on to this book and haven’t yet done so.

[Includes original and variant covers]