Cover Cavalcade

 AUGUST IS DC 80-PAGE GIANT MONTH!!!

A 1964 cover by Carmine Infantino.

Three Flashes and a Most Dangerous Game

 

Flash #173 (September 1967) was written by John Broome and drawn by Carmine Infantino and is more fun than a barrel of super-speed monkeys. It takes Comic Book Logic, then twists that logic around into a pretzel without actually breaking it, creating a story that drips with entertainment value.

It begins with Jay Garrick, the Earth-2 Flash, visiting Earth-1 along with his wife. This is because Jay's wife is a busy-body and wants to convince Barry that he needs to tell his wife Iris that he's a superhero. 

Heck, as of when I'm writing this, Angela and I have been married nearly 11 months and I haven't said a thing about any superhero activities I may or may not be involved in. So there, Jay's wife!

Anyway, that's just an excuse for getting Jay to Earth-1. Once there, he finds out that Flash was hit by a myserious ray and disappeared. 

When Jay and Kid Flash begin searching for him, Kid Flash disappears as well. It turns out they've been transported to another planet, where an alien called the Golden Man wants to hunt them.

What makes this an interesting variation of the Most Dangerous Game trope is his reasoning. He's really not worried about catching them. The Golden Man is a mutant, a super smart person on a planet otherwise inhabited by ape-men. He wants the two Flashes' to use their super-speed as much as possible. He'll gather up their expended energy and use it to mutate the rest of the planet's population into men like him. He essentially just wants someone to talk to.

A big chunk of the story involves Barry and Wally using their speed and vibration powers to avoid a number of booby traps. Infantino's art here is magnificent--full of energy, a sense of movement and imaginative imagry. 

Things take a tragic turn when Barry apparently sacrifices his life to save Wally.

So the Golden Man decides he needs another Flash and brings Jay to his world. But remember that Jay doesn't wear a mask. He habitually vibrates his face so no one can ever get a good look at him. Because of this, he's still conscious when he arrives on the planet. Because that's how SCIENCE works!

I'm not mocking the story, by the way. Within the context of the story and a Comic Book Universe, this is a perfectly legitimate and fun plot twist. 

But the Golden Man manages to subdue Jay. He's given up on the hunting idea and now dumps Jay and Wally into a chamber with the temperature set to Absolute Zero. The two are forced to vibrate as fast as they can to stay alive, with the alien absorbing the energy they produce.

But Barry turns out to still be alive, having simply vibrated through the entire planet to escape the quick sand he was in. Because that's how science works!

Gee whiz, I love this stuff. It is completely unashamed of its Comic Book Logic and embraces it whole-heartedly.

The Flashes all rescue one another, but Golden Man still activates his evolution machine. Sadly for him, it works in reserve of what it was supposed to do and de-evolves Golden Man into a cave man. Well, it sort of works, since he can now talk to his fellow aliens on a equal level. 

The Flashes head back to Earth, where Barry promises to tell Iris he's a superhero on their anniversary. Everyone lives happily ever after. Well, except for Barry, who is likely to spend his anniversary sleeping on the couch.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll return to Animal Comics. 

The Importance of Matching Frequencies

cover art by Carmine Infantino

One of the fun things about the Silver Age Flash stories was how the hero could use his super-speed in supposedly scientific ways to accomplish whatever plot-convenient thing he needed to accomplish.

For instance, Flash #168 (March 1967) has him using his speed to find something invisible by spinning at just the right frequency. He also spins his arm to form a cushion of solid air to stop a beam of radiation.

There was always a chance that this occasions could come across as a contrived deus ex machina, but writer John Broome and artist Carmine Infantino were so casual about it that it all just seems like a perfectly natural and logical extension of Flash's speed. Besides, if all Flash could do was run fast, his stories would lose dramatic edge pretty quickly.

This is, after all, the way science in a Comic Book Universe is supposed to work. If the laws of physics followed Real Life rules, then a world with superheros in it would be pretty boring.

The story begins with Barry Allen worried, because Hal Jordan was supposed to be arriving for a visit, but seems to have vanished. When a Guardian of the Universe pops up in Barry's home to tell him even Hal's all-powerful bosses don't know where he is, there is definitely reason to worry.

Adding to Barry's problems is Hjalmar Helms (I love that name), who has been trying to invent time travel, but instead accidentally invents a purple ray that can in turn create futuristic devises. By himself, Helms is harmless. But when crooks find out about the purple ray, then lock Helms in his own closet and become self-described "super crooks."

Flash has a run-in with the gang and nearly defeats them, but a lucky shot with a sleep ray puts him down long enough for the bad guys to escape.

In the meantime, Flash does find an amnesiac Hal Jordan working on a local fishing boat. One clue leads them to the hotel Hal had been staying at before losing his memory. Barry figures that if Hal uses his power battery to recharge his ring, that could fix his amnesia, but the darn battery (and Hal's ring, for that matter) are invisible and intangible until needed.

So we find out that Flash can see invisible things by spinning around really, really fast. It's stuff like this that make Flash's stories from this era so delightful.

Hal gets his memory back and we learn that a mysterious feedback from the battery is what gave him amnesia in the first place.  But there's no time to try to figure that out as the two must hurriedly team up to take out the super-crooks, with Barry using his superspeed once again in wonderfully weird ways to help win the fight. Along the way, he notices that a ray gun fired by one of the crooks has no effect on a yellow school bus. So, when Barry and Hal track down Hjalmar Helms and set him free, they are able to deduce that Helms purple ray machine matched the frequency of the power battery. This caused the feedback that zapped Hal's memory and gave the purple ray its power.

So the two seemingly seperate storylines tie together neatly. And we learn that just as SCIENCE is done in the Doctor Who universe by reversing polarity, SCIENCE in the DC Universe is done by matching frequencies. I wonder what would happen if you reversed polarity on something and then matched frequencies with it?

Next week, there will be a Honeymoon Break with no posts on Wednesday or Thursday.  I appreciate my small readership and usually work to be regular in my posts to show the proper respect for you all. But, well, it's my honeymoon.

In two weeks, Iron Man and Doctor Doom travel back to the days of King Arthur.

Cover Cavalcade

Flash #120 from 1961 and the story's sequel from Flash #269, published 18 years later in 1979. It's interesting to note that neither golden giants or dinosaurs intelligent enough to use weapons & tools wouldn't even break the Top Ten on Flash's "weirdest stuff I've encountered" list.

Cover Cavalcade

Here's an exciting and very effective cover drawn by Carmine Infantino.

Don't be a Third Wheel, Flash!

During the Silver Age, it was fairly common for superhero books to have two or more shorter stories rather than one long tale. Flash 119 (March 1961), for instance, has an 11-page story involving the Mirror Master and a 14-page story guest-starring Ralph Dibney, the Elongated Man

Ralph's early appearances were all in Flash, where he was originally created as a supporting character for the Scarlet Speedster. It wouldn't be long before Ralph's popularity would get him the starring role in a Detective Comics back-up feature and an eventual membership in the Justice League.

But in 1961, Ralph was just getting started. This issue marks his third appearance and introduces us to his newlywed wife Sue. The two are on their honeymoon. For reasons that will forever be inexplicable, Ralph goes scuba diving alone. Ralph, you're on your HONEYMOON! Hang out with your wife, you idiot.

Well, he gets kidnapped by an undersea race called the Bredans, who are snatching up humans to serve as slaves. When Flash investigates Ralph's disappearance, he is also captured. Ralph has amnesia, but Flash helps him get his memory back and the heroes launch a two-man slave rebellion. The Bredans are defeated, agreeing to release all slaves.

It's a fun little story, written by John Broome and with Carmine Infantino providing great art. Images such as the Bredans fishing for humans being kept in a bowel or Ralph sitting on Flash's shoulders when the attack the Bredan war machines are all pure fun and easily justify the existence of this story.



But then, at the end of the tale, Ralph and Sue ask Flash to
stick around and vacation with them. While.. they... are... on... their... HONEYMOON!

And Flash accepts the situation apparently without thinking that this is at all awkward, thus happily becoming the third wheel on a date.

I guess being a top-tier superhero doesn't require social skills.

I'm making fun of this, but of course the story simply reflects the innocence of Silver Age storytelling and the fact that most comic book readers were kids. Broome and Infantino weren't interested in an exploration of the relations of a newly-married couple, but simply wanted to set up the story as economically as possible, so they could get to the really cool parts. And let's face it, a two-superhero rebellion against undersea slavers is a whole lot cooler than young love.

On another note, I think this is the one and only appearance of the Bredans. But the bottom of the world's oceans covers a lot of square miles. Underwater adventures in the DC Universe usually involves Atlantis, but there's no reason there can't be a few other smaller undersea cities down there.

Who's Faster?

We’ve got one more post coming to end our methodical look at Weisinger-era Superman stories. But before we get to that, let’s jump ahead a few years to examine a particularly entertaining story from Julius Schwartz’ tenure as editor.

I once read an interview with 1970s/80s-era Superman writer Elliot S! Maggin in which he says that Denny O'Neil used to "whine" about how powerful Superman was and how much he hated writing about the cosmic-level characters.

I can believe that. Before O'Neil finally established himself as one of the perfect writers for Batman, he messed around with Superman and Wonder Woman in some bizarre ways. He de-powered Wonder Woman, turning her into a martial arts expert who (if memory serves) ran a flower shop. He tried to tone Superman down by cutting his power in half, which didn't really do any good since infinity divided by two is still infinity.


But all the same, he did do some very worthwhile stuff with Superman and other truly powerful Justice Leaguers. In World's Finest 198 & 199 (November & December 1970), strange creatures called Anarchronids are zipping across the universe at several times light speed, which is causing the universe to unravel.

The Guardians of the Universe recruit Superman and Flash, the two fastest beings in existence, to run just as fast in the opposite direction to cancel out this effect. They give Flash a medallion that will provide life support and form a roadway in front of him as he runs.

Aside from the apparently minor issue of saving all of Creation, Superman and Flash also look at this as an opportunity to finally find out which of them is faster. They had raced twice before, once for charity and once when forced to do so by alien gamblers. Neither of those events produced a clear winner. Now they would know for sure.

So they take off, running head-to-head across light years. They are attacked by the Anarchronids, run into
trouble with an exploding star and briefly get stuck in a pocket dimension, but they overcome all this and keep going.

In the meantime, the whole universe-unraveling thing has thrown a pajama-clad Jimmy Olsen back through time, giving him some adventurous moments both in ancient Rome and at the Salem witch trials.

Eventually, Superman and Flash discover the Anarchronids were created by General Zod and some other Phantom Zone criminals, who will use the destruction of the Universe to create a portal that will allow them to escape from the Zone. In the end, Superman and Flash, both paralyzed from the hips down, crawl together towards the switch that will destroy the Anarchronids before the Universe falls apart. Which of them will reach the switch first?

It's a really fun story, casually throwing out one cosmic-level idea after another. It never gives in to its basic silliness or otherwise places tongue-in-cheek. Instead, it takes itself seriously--as most comic book stories of this sort should. It doesn't try to come up with faux scientific explanations for all the wild events taking place--it simply creates a world where such events are possible; a world where "run really fast in the opposite direction of the Anarchronids" is a reasonable thing to do. Because of this (and because of Dick Dillon's solid art), it produces a nice amount of honest drama. It was a good balance of characterization and fantasy storytelling that fit just fine into a superhero universe.