‘Heroes Reborn #3’ (review)

Written by Jason Aaron
Art by Ed McGuinness, Federico Vicentin
Published by Marvel Comics

This alternate reality of Heroes Reborn continues to push with the “Marvel’s version of DC” concept.

This time, we follow Blur, a super-speedster who’s like The Flash, but still different.

Current versions of The Flash have turned Barry Allen’s accident by science into a connection to the elemental Speed Force.

In the Heroes Reborn universe, Blur’s super-speed is straight-up attributed to magic.

Blur’s archenemy the Silver Witch fuses both Quicksilver and Wanda Maximoff’s powers into a speedster sorceress, a Speedster Supreme as she calls herself. (Stephen Strange, our regular Sorcerer Supreme, is nowhere to be found.)

And so in this issue we learn more about how Stanley Stewart traveled to the Ancient One to harness his magically bestowed powers.

It’s a well written flashback sequence that flows with the main action and promotes the simple power of centering yourself and making things still.

This version of Blur sees, thinks and hears at super-speed.

He can see a dozen dimensions at once, including their pasts, presents and futures. He keeps about 20 smartphones going, filled with thousands of mobile game levels and Tinder texting with multiple women.

Blur is a man who can’t slow down, for better and for worse.

However, what can the world’s fastest mortal do when the Silver Witch hijacks his soul and drags it into the Dread Dimension, a plane of reality made from nightmares.

This all begs the question: If Blur can see all these dimensions, why can’t he see that he’s living in a false reality? In battling an enemy who can warp reality, Blur comes close to seeing the life we know to be underfoot.

So does the Silver Witch, who appears to be acting out not simply in revenge for her brother Pietro, who died by literally burning up in a race against Blur. She says she knows reality is wrong somehow.

Of course, she’s stewing on this while incarcerated in the DC-by-Marvel home for the criminally insane, Ravencroft Asylum.

We get another backstory following Blade and Captain America, who are seeking to – what else – build a team to change reality back. One might say, to avenge the world that was.

Their travels bring them to Ravencroft, where Maya Lopez, the deaf hero known as Echo, has received the cosmic, planet-destroying, reality-shaping Phoenix Force.

Ooh, it’s gonna be good when these new Avengers finally assemble once they get to the bottom of who’s behind this reality change.