"This is the World We Hope For”
In this climax issue, Traci 13, finding herself at a magical impasse with her formerly magic-hating father, Doctor Thirteen, who is hell-bent on slaughtering both the Atlantean and the Themysciran races, whose war had resulted in the deaths of his wife and children except for Traci, literally throws herself into the line of fire. “You want to kill 118 million people?” she asks. “Fine … Count me as one of them. Bye, Dad,” as she teleports away right into the midst of the raging three-way battle in New Themyscira (formerly England) – the heroes of the World of Flashpoint vs. both the Atlanteans and the Themyscirans. That is not what he wants. He follows her, implores her to relent – those people deserve to die! Traci finally gets through to him. He's trying to fix the world for her, but it will be a world she cannot bring herself to live in because of what doing so will do to him. He relents. But then a stray lance impales Traci right before his eyes, throwing her father back into a berserker rage. Traci is dying, but the World itself heals its champion. Doctor Thirteen is too far gone in his grief-stricken rage, however. The words of Circe (so that's who the prisoner in Antarctica was) come back to Traci, as well as what Fr. Todd had been telling her (see previous issue) – and she realizes she must show her father that along with great evil in the World of Flashpoint there is also great good. She does so magically, tying him into the “planetary consciousness” of the World. She pulls her father back from the brink of madness yet again. It's time to avert the genocide with only moments left. But they can't go together – Traci is exhausted after hours of teleportation hopping hither and yon, followed by the mystical battles with her own father, being brought back from the very point of death, and finally the latest effort. He heads off alone to sacrifice himself to block the death ray even as it fires from the satellite. The satellite is destroyed, but Doctor Thirteen is left floating unprotected in space – at peace with himself. But then Traci blinks briefly into view, grabs him, and teleports them both back to the surface – using up the very last of her magical abilities to do so. Both have used up forever their magic; she has sacrificed the life of the Homo magi but has her father back.
I'm still not sure what relevance this is going to have to the overall story. Mainly we got to see in the second issue various corners of the World of Flashpoint that I presume are not touched on in the various other miniseries and specials (Buddhist Guy Gardner! Fr. Jason Todd!), which is interesting in itself (perhaps even moreso for those who are all in for the multi-series event and maybe wonder about these various other corners). The first issue was basically set-up for that. In this third, however, we see the true heroism of a young girl, motivated by her basic goodness of heart and love for her father, prevailing in the end, and at least one Flashpoint series has a happy ending. I've never read anything about either one of these characters (Doctor Thirteen or his daughter Traci), but I really like her in particular and hope there's a place for her somewhere in the “DCnU.”
Cheers!
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