Who are the Stillness? Meet the strange new race menacing the Flash

Si Spurrier and Mike Deodato Jr.’s run on The Flash got off to a flying start last week with a terrific #1 that radically shifted the tone of the speedster’s adventures, moving things in an eerie cosmic horror direction. Now DC have released a teaser for #2 which promises to introduce a mysterious new race of entities known as the Stillness.

Here’s the publisher’s synopsis for the issue:

“As Wally West faces massively powered-up old foes as well as a new, mysterious being, he encounters a group of alien explorers who are very interested in Wally’s powers (which continue to glitch). Also, something seems to be literally bubbling up in Keystone City, as the new era for the Scarlet Speedster continues!”

You can check out some unlettered pages from the issue in the gallery below, which show Deodato Jr.’s famous “Mondrian panels” in full effect.

But who exactly are the Stillness? Si Spurrier had this to say on the new species:

“The Stillness: explorers, of a sort. These ineffable entities stretch our understanding of what it is to be a sentient being in this universe, existing in multiple planes of reality and enjoying – let’s say – a mischievous relationship with time and space. Their understanding of what we know as “the speed force” far exceeds that of any existing Flash or earthbound scientist, hence their enigmatic (and dire) assessment of Wally West’s abilities. And yet, more worrying still, is that for all their immeasurable power their main goal is to attract the attention of an even higher form of life.

At the lofty cosmic levels of beings like the Stillness, mundane concepts like ‘good’ and ‘evil’ don’t have much meaning. That these creature have even stooped to notice a mere human, like Wally West, is extraordinary. What they choose to do about him will be even wilder still…”

Above is a gallery of covers for the issue. They are, from left to right:

Mike Deodato Jr. and Trish Mulvihill’s main cover; a Deodato Jr. variant; a Bjorn Barends variant; a 1:25 variant by James Harren; a 1:50 variant by Matt Taylor; and finally an artist spotlight variant by Gabriele Dell’Otto.

Lovely stuff all, but we’re particularly taken with that wonderfully stylized Taylor cover.

The Flash #2 is published by DC Comics on October 24.

There are many different speedsters in the DC universe – and not all of them are nice… Discover the history of evil versions of the Flash here.