The Flash #24 - "Bad Moon Rising VI" (2025)

Many

As usual, while I am familiar with the concept of Eclipso and most of his most villainous deeds, he's a being of magic. Very deep, very old magic. With that in mind I am going to pass off the MC duties this evening to my lovely magical friend Gwen. Who actually has an education in such things first hand.

Gwen?

(A restored relief showing Eclipso, discovered on the wall of a ruined temple near the rim of the Chicxulub Impact Crater in southern Mexico)

Gwen: The being we now know as "Eclipso" is, in reality, as the ancient lore originally an angel under the name of Galid. While actual records on the War in Heaven are understandably scarce we DO know the aftermath. Galid joined forces with The Morningstar during his rebellion and was cast down when said rebellion failed. Rather than becoming a demon though his essence was captured by THE archangel-

(Sidenote, I apologize if I can sometimes be a bit vague with titles surrounding mystically or theologically significant figures. Those of us with magic are taught to never speak certain names aloud as our connection to the world beyond leaves us open to those names being...answered. While The Archangel IS a presence on the side of light I would rather not have him showing up at my apartment)

He was originally shaped into the original Right Hand of the Lord, a being we now know as the Spectre. A being of wrath and vengeance who was tasked with keeping the balance upon the mortal realm by visiting punishment upon all those who would escape mortal justice or unleash dark magic. Shockingly (or part of the divine plan, who knows) the unrepentant demon began to overstep his bounds in the cloak and was replaced by the being who NOW holds that title. Sealed away within a singular Black Diamond that was cast out beyond the veils of darkness.

There it would pass from hand to hand over the centuries. From the firepits of Apokolips, to the royal courts of a far off universe known as Gemworld, to a VERY unlucky archeologist named Bruce Gordon. In the modern heroic age it ended up clashes with both the Justice Society AND the Justice League during their earliest days as the Earth's defenders. He was always defeated, exoricized and resealed within the Black Diamond which became known as a cursed artifact across the many spheres of magic. During events that we DO NOT have time to get into that were the end result of Amanda Waller's little abortive coup detat it ended up on the dark side of the moon. Just about the worst place to leave it unattended.

Able to absorb the power of such unbroken and primordial darkness Eclipso made a big gamble. Reaching out and somehow biting a chunk out of the Speed Force, which in magical parlance gave him power over the CONCEPTS of motion, change and time. His ultimate aim was to achieve Heliosynchronicity, a mostly theoretical magical concept where moving the moon into such an orbit that would eternally block out the sun thus unleashes unending magical darkness on the world below.

Again, I stress, the concept of Heliosynchronicity was mostly a thought experiment based around the harnessing of conceptual light and darkness which is different from the physical phenomena you might be familiar with. It would also be possible to use that power to bathe the Earth in unending magical light, which would be just as bad.

As always, in came the heroes with the save. The Flash, using his connection to the Speed Force, was able to surround Eclipso's lunar base in a bubble of compressed time. Fighting for YEARS in his personal perspective alongside an army of his own temporal clones and the rest of the Flash Family. Ultimately the battle was won although the actual mechanics of HOW are still unknown. Since the Flash has yet to spill all the details and its hard to observe an event from outside that's sped up by a couple hundred times.

As of this moment the location of the Black Diamond is unknown, like most evil artifacts it finds a way to escape confinement eventually. But if Eclipso ever paid attention to the point of the Heliosynchronicity thought experiment he'd know why I'm not worried.