One-Minute War is a 2023 The Flash storyline by DC Comics, written by Jeremy Adams, with art by Roger Cruz, Matt Banning, Wellington Diaz, and Luis Guerrero. The story takes place in The Flash (Jeremy Adams) #790-796.
When time stands still, the Flash Family must team up to fight off an Alien Invasion taking place at super speed in Central City.
One-Minute War provides examples of:
- Alien Invasion: The Fraction invade the Earth.
- Badass in Distress: Jay is captured by the Fraction in the middle of the arc.
- Big Bad: The Fraction, a race who use the Speed Force to conquer worlds. Specifically, their invasion's leader, Admiral Vel Anthro.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- In issue #794, Superman gets a minor one; although the Fraction’s technology has even immobilised him, he’s still fast enough that he manages to attack one of Ms Murder’s hounds when it’s basically in front of him, helping Irey gain the upper hand at a key moment.
- In issue #796, Wally, Gold Beetle, and the Heroes thought killed at the Sanctuary arrive to aid the Flash Family in their final assault on the Fraction.
- BFG: Jay ends up using some of the Fractions Speed Force guns after escaping.
- Character Death: Iris West is killed in the opening attack by the Fraction, but the later Reset Button restores her to life.
- Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": The Fraction calls Speedsters with a connection to the Speed Force "Organic Conduits".
- Extradimensional Power Source: The Fraction uses the Speed Force to power all of their technology.
- Extremely Short Time Span: True to the name, the entire war takes one minute, though it seems longer due to accelerated perceptions of the speedsters.
- The Faceless: The Queen of the Fraction is the driver of their campaign of razing the universe, but her face is hidden behind a veil.
- Fantastic Racism: The Fraction have an immense prejudice against those with superpowers, speedsters in particular, only viewing them as slaves. When they learn their general is a natural speedster instead of merely leeching his power from an organic conduit, they refuse to believe he's second to the Queen herself and turn on him.
- Fast Ball Special: Irey uses a frozen Jai as a improvised wrecking ball.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: The Flash Family ultimately defeat the Fraction by using the Speed Force to reset the timeline, causing the Fraction to retreat when they detect a blip in the timeline with an unknown cause and they decide not to risk invasion. The only one who knows aside from the speedsters is Admiral Vel Anthro, who is trapped in the core of the Fraction ship engine and unable to tell anybody.
- Human Resources: The Fraction only view those with superpowers as prospective slaves and nothing more.
- Kid from the Future: Wade is implied to be Wally and Linda's third unborn child.
- La Résistance: The Flash Family is the last line of defense against the Fraction, as everyone else is frozen in time.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The General of the Fraction is a natural speedster whose empowerment led to the Fraction becoming the galaxy razing menace that they are. The conclusion of the story leads to the invasion being undone and averted with him ending up another one of the Fraction's living batteries without their knowledge.
- Living Battery: The Fraction uses people with an organic connection to the Speed Force as living batteries to power their technology.
- Meaningful Rename: Irey changes her name to "Thunderheart".
- Mook Horror Show: A group of Bantering Baddie Buddies from the alien force out to invade, stripmine, and slaughter the people of Earth go to loot a dark mansion and find themselves being picked off by a mysterious speedster, who only shows himself as Godspeed once he's ready to Spare a Messenger.
- Power Parasite: Along with powering their technology, the Fraction use the super speed they drain for themselves with technological harnesses, so they are not also frozen in time.
- Retcon: Issue #796 completes the undoing of Heroes in Crisis by revealing that, barring Roy and Poison Ivy since they were brought back anyway, all the corpses were clones, just like "Wally"'s corpse was, and Gold Beetle saved the real people.
- Reset Button: Ultimately the Flashes use the Fraction’s own technology and their speed to push the world back in time, undoing the invasion.
- Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Fraction are your typical conquering empire that feel entitled to subjugating everyone they come across simply because they have the means to do so and cannot be defended against.
- The Short War: Played with, as the title indicates, the entire arc takes place over one minute, but this is in real time, not the Bullet Time our speedster villains and heroes are running on.
- Time Stands Still: Due to the Speed Force enveloping the planet and making everything speed up, everyone who's not a speedster is frozen in place; even Superman is only fast enough to attack one of the enemy's Hound forces when said foe was directly in front of him.
- Wham Shot: In issue #795, Wally wakes up in Flash World, joined by Gold Beetle, first speedsters Ugh and Swoosh... and the now-not-so-dead heroes and villains of Heroes in Crisis.