5. Flashback brings his future into the room

5. Flashback brings his future into the room Flashback has the strangest power in this little lineup. Gardner Monroe summons versions of himself from the future to fight alongside him. They are real temporal counterparts, not illusions or a collection of unrelated recruits. It makes him useful for surrounding someone, overwhelming a position or simply putting more bodies between an opponent and an objective. It does not make each individual Flashback stronger or tougher than an ordinary man. That limitation catches up with him in Alpha Flight #12. While his future selves pile onto Guardian, Puck goes straight to the original. Judd knows his old teammate's habits, knocks him out, and the summoned men disappear. Their shared Beta history suddenly becomes practical information. Puck knows where Gardner leaves an opening because he has seen him do it before. The power also carries a much uglier possibility. In #28, Courtney uses one of the future Flashbacks as a shield, and that man is killed. The present Gardner is left facing the knowledge that the victim is himself at some later point in his life. His early story goes from treating extra selves as an endless advantage to confronting what it means for one of them not to survive.