The Flash by Mark Waid Omnibus Vol. 3

by Mark Waid, Josh Hood (Illustrator), Oscar Jiménez (Illustrator)

Genres: Comics

1256 pages, Hardcover

Published February 17, 2026

About the author

Mark Waid is an American comic book writer widely known for shaping modern superhero storytelling through influential runs on major characters at both DC Comics and Marvel Comics. Raised in Alabama, he developed an early fascination with comic books, particularly classic stories featuring the Legion of Super-Heroes, whose imaginative scope and sense of legacy would later inform his own writing. He first entered the comics industry during the mid 1980s as an editor and writer for the fan magazine Amazing Heroes, before publishing his first professional comic story in Action Comics. Soon afterward he joined DC Comics as an editor, contributing to numerous titles and helping shape projects across the company. After leaving editorial work to focus on writing, Waid gained widespread recognition with his long run on The Flash, where he expanded the mythology of the character and co-created the youthful speedster Impulse. His reputation grew further with the celebrated graphic novel Kingdom Come, created with artist Alex Ross, which imagined a future DC Universe shaped by generational conflict among superheroes. Over the years he has written many prominent series, including Captain America, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and Superman: Birthright, bringing a balance of optimism, character depth, and respect for comic book history to each project. Waid has also collaborated with notable artists and writers on major ensemble titles such as Justice League and Avengers, while contributing ideas that helped clarify complex continuity within shared superhero universes. Beyond mainstream superhero work, he has supported creator owned projects and experimental publishing models, including the acclaimed series Irredeemable and Incorruptible, which explored moral ambiguity within the superhero genre. He later took on editorial leadership roles at Boom Studios, guiding creative direction while continuing to write extensively. In subsequent years he expanded his involvement in publishing and digital storytelling, helping launch online comics initiatives and advocating for new distribution methods for creators. His work has earned numerous industry awards, including Eisner and Harvey honors, reflecting both critical acclaim and enduring popularity among readers. Throughout his career Waid has remained a passionate student of comic book history, drawing on decades of storytelling tradition while continually encouraging innovation within the medium. His influence extends across generations of readers and creators, and his stories continue to shape the evolving language of superhero comics around the world today through enduring characters imaginative narratives and thoughtful reinventions of familiar myths within popular culture and modern graphic storytelling traditions.

Reviews

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third Waid omnibus contains right around 20 issues of Waid Flash, and is a huge mapping mess other than that, including among other things four years worth of annuals from a much wider timeframe.

Breaking that all down:

The resurrected Waid run is great. We basically get three big arcs: the Wedding; Chain Lightning; and Dark Flash. The Chain Lightning does have some repetitive elements from the other Waid mega-arcs (especially, Wally beating the villain by running along the Speed Force), but other than that is very fresh thanks to its huge cast across a huge number of time frames. The Dark Flash arc then really reinvents our protagonist before offering a really Silver-Agey explanation for it all.

But, oh, the volume is a mess other than that. I think part of the problem is that DC poorly mapped the previous Waid volume and did a horrible job with the Morrison/Millar year. Just off-hand Annual #10 should have gone with Omnibus 2 since it closes one of the loose ends from that, and some of the other material should have been included with its temporal partners in the Morrison/Millar volume (and that would correct other problems such as Flash Annual 11 being grossly misplaced in this volume).

But the other big problem is that Flash had gotten so popular at this time that DC printed a lot of material on him, and most of it is garbage. This volume would have been improved by the removal of Faster Friends and the vast majority of the stories in the 80-page and Speed Force issues.

The trickiest thing here is the Life Story of The Flash, which is a good Waid story, but which just drags down the story here. (I mean, it's page 400+ before you get back to the wedding cliffhanger from the Morrison/Milar volume.) Maybe it would have been OK at the end of this volume, but I personally would have preferred it either as its own Deluxe or at the head of the third Geoff Johns volume.

TL;DR Good stories by Waid, but it takes way too long to get to them because of all the other stuff piled into this volume, much of it in the wrong place, some of it bad.

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The actual mark waid flash stories in here are 10/10s, but this is just full of mountains of filler and weird mapping as others have said. There will be a huge revelation, like everybody has forgotten Linda park, and then an 80 page giant where that isn’t the case, and then an annual, and then something else. I think at one point there was 250ish issues between cliffhanger and resolution and that happens more than once.

That said the mark waid stuff is excellent. Chain Lightning and all of the Walter West/New flash stuff is incredible. If it was just all of that this would be a 5 star rating for me.

[Davide Pappalardo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The final omnibus for Waid's The Flash run. There are a lot of old school superhero tropes here, maybe a little bit too many for my taste, and the author repeats himself with some of them (Wally disappears...again, there are time travel shenanigans…again, mystery identities...again, and so on). I think the best moments of his tenure can be found in the previous two volumes. Here it feels like treading water most of the time. Still, a decent finale for a series coming from the 90s without feeling like a 90s series.