Went Oxfording with Nikki on Saturday. As I told her then, you really have to smile about a woman who will not only tolerate my occasional need to visit a comic book shop, but actually takes an interest in these four-color distractions. One series in particular caught her eye (Catwoman: When in Rome) and we ended up buying all four of the issues released so far. We were there to pick up the latest issue of Green Lantern: Rebirth, but we left with her choices, an older copy of JLA (the one with The Sandman on the cover), the new Flash and a trade collection of Jeph Loeb’s Superman for All Seasons.
It’s the Flash I want to talk about today.
Flash #219 – It’s been years since I picked up a new Flash. Almost decades. Shortly after writer Mike Baron rebooted the series in 1987, I lost interest in the Speedster and turned my head to the Marvel side of the fence, primarilly because Chris Claremont was putting the Uncanny X-Men through a devastating wringer of plots (The Mutant Massacre, Genosha, The Age of Apocalypse). It wasn’t that Baron was doing anything particularly wrong with Wally West (aka the new Flash), but I just couldn’t get on a boat harboring odd villains with names like Kilg%re and the Glasnost-inspired Kapitalist Kouriers — a pack of Russian immigre runners opening up shop in the US as FedEx on fleeting feet.
And maybe I still missed Wally’s predecessor, Barry Allen. Barry Allen was another of those Julius Schwartz characters, like Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern and (to a lesser extent) Ray Palmer’s The Atom, and replacing such solid groundwork can’t be easy. Thanks to the solid influences of some high school friends, I developed quite an interest in the last 20 or so issues of the original run. Writer Cary Bates and penciller Carmine Infantino pulled the series to a close with a story arc called “The Trial of the Flash” — imagine Law & Order with costumed heros, costumed villains and both good and bad time travellers, one of whom is basically cross-dressing. It was good stuff, let me tell you. In the end, after the last issue and verdict, a free Barry Allen sacrificed himself during the Crisis on Infinite Earths to save the known universe. Big time soap opera heroism.
18 years later. Flash #219. Maybe it’s time for me to give the new (after almost two decades?) Flash a sporting chance. I’d read of other storylines last year that could’ve pulled me in. One was a kind of George Bailey thing where Wally West actually got to see what life might’ve been like had he never taken up the superhero mantle, but I would forget about it when next I found myself in a comic shop.
To be honest, the cover of this issue is what caught my eye, as it features the most recent (and far more unstable) incarnation of the villain that sparked the murder trail of the first series: Professor Zoom aka The Reverse Flash. While other bad guys might just be out for the money or for the thrill, Zoom’s sole motivation is the Flash himself. See, he believes that he exists to make the Flash better. “Reverse,” he says, “it’s what I haaave to be to help the Flash.”
The story involves the aforementioned Zoom, who has been freed by the Cheetah, and is being pursued by our title hero and a recently blinded Wonder Woman — no, I’m really not sure how that happen’d, but it makes for very smart dialogue when the Flash is tasked with leading her by grabbing one end of her Lasso of Truth. Small talk takes on an interesting dimension when you’ve no choice about being honest.
This time, the cover-based judgment proved trustworthy. The issue unfolds its story in a way that accommodates the reader that needs to catch up. Even certain character points are identified, addressed and answered without slowing down the story. And nothing brings a reader back for the next issue quite like a good cliffhanger, which #219 certainly has … even though this story actually continues in Wonder Woman #214 — another DC series that was rebooted in 1987.
All in all, a good Oxfording choice.
Yeah. I’m thinking this will be a semi-regular thing, this kind of comic write-up.
