Speed Force

Jesse Richards sent in these photos of some bizarre Flash merchandise he found:

One is a knockoff of not one, but two, franchises as it’s Homer in a Flash costume. It’s a pretty well-sculpted plastic piece with a surprising amount of articulation but some sloppy painting in places. I got it in a street fair in Brooklyn – no packaging or anything. They had other superheroes, too. I don’t know why he’s angry.

The other one is possibly even weirder … my parents found it at the gift shop at Great Adventure (Six Flags in NJ). There has always been a lot of DC superhero stuff there, but this one is freaky – I thought it was a rat in a Flash costume but now I think it’s a bear in a Flash costume. The hat is the most interesting part, a baseball cap with lightning bolts.

This Is True is a weekly newsletter rounding up weird news from around the world, summarized with witty comments by Randy Cassingham. It’s usually funny, sometimes sad, sometimes infuriating — but it always makes you think.

I’ve been a subscriber for years, and highly recommend it. One of the things I like about it is that he makes more effort to verify the stories than the typical “odd news” wire service that simply repeats something printed in a distant newspaper without realizing that it’s the local equivalent of the National Enquirer or Weekly World News.

Anyway, I could keep talking it up, or I could show you an example story using the True-a-Day service:

Cassingham also links to interesting news items on Twitter and on Facebook, though not the same articles as in the newsletter.

Read on for the original explanation of the Shade’s powers of darkness: Read the rest of this entry »

What Were They Thinking?! is doing a series of posts this week on the weirdness that is All-Flash Quarterly #2 (1941).

1. All Flash Quarterly #2 is Special
2. All-Flash Quarterly, Part II: THE BLOOD RED RAY!
3. All-Flash #2 Part 3
4. All Flash #2 Part 4. Almost Done. Really.
5. All Flash Comics #2 ends with…ew

It’s notable as the first Flash story to be longer than the standard Golden Age length of 13 pages. Throughout its run, Flash Comics featured several 13-page stories starring various characters, and All-Flash featured typically four, then later three stories per issue of that length — but they were all Flash. Occasionally, All-Flash would feature two 26-page stories…or, as in this case, one really long one, broken up into standard-length chapters.

The full story is available in The Golden Age Flash Archives Vol.2.

The top search terms lately have been variations on the following:

• Flash Rebirth 6
• Blue Lantern Flash
• Wally West new costume
• Speed Force

But then there are the search terms at the bottom of the list…the weird ones that make you wonder either, “What was this person thinking?” or “How the heck did that term bring someone here?”

is final crisis canon or not? – Why wouldn’t it be?

is there a way to smoke speed – Umm… I don’t know. In fact, I don’t want to know.

can you name that dc character – You know, the who suffered a severe childhood trauma involving the loss of a parent, and everything in their past seems to be related to the costume gimmick or powers? Yeah, that one!

full episodes of Bones – I think you reached the wrong site.

kill the beatniks – I can blame Tom Peyer for this one.

batman/wally west romance fanfic – I’m sure it’s out there (and probably more than there used to be, now that Dick Grayson is Batman), but I have no idea how they landed here.

irredeemable comic reading order – Seriously, there’s, what, 10 issues out, and they’re numbered sequentially. Why is there a question here?

colour of ww1 brodie helmets in green – Umm…I’m going to go with green.

wally west’s hair – Umm… it’s red.

what’s the last bus to leave golden lantern and hidden hills – I don’t know, but you’d better not miss it.

where to buy batman ice cream – Is there such a thing? I’ve heard of Superman ice cream, but Batman?

flash gordon super speed – *sigh* – He doesn’t have it. I hope you learned something today.

Comic Cavalcade was an anthology series that ran from 1942 until 1954, publishing super-heroes and other adventures for the first six years. Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Green Lantern were the headliners. DC has reprinted the first three issues as The Comic Cavalcade Archives, Vol. 1. (At 100 pages per issue, it’s still a pretty big collection!) I bought a copy, mainly for the Flash stories, and it finally arrived yesterday.

I read a few of the stories this afternoon, and these panels from the Green Lantern story in issue 1, “The Adventures of Luckless Lenore,” made me laugh out loud.

Green Lantern’s sidekick, Doiby, has been trying to romance Lenore, whose “bad luck” seems to be engineered. At this point he’s been captured. I didn’t even notice the name of the bar the first time through, it was the menu that caught me off-guard. Read the rest of this entry »

Comic Coverage posted a humorous look at the role smoking had in the Golden-Age Flash’s origin. Jay Garrick was working late, took a cigarette break, and knocked over a beaker of “hard water.” Interestingly, later retellings of his origin downplayed and finally deleted the cigarette.

First, here are the original 1940 panels from Flash Comics #1 (copied from Comic Coverage), showing grad student Jay Garrick taking time out for a smoke:

Four decades later, in 1986, Secret Origins #9 would retell his origin. Mindful of the details, but also concerned about modern sensibilities about health, writer Roy Thomas kept the cigarette break, but added Jay thinking, “I know I should give up these things…”

A decade later, the cigarette had disappeared completely. Flash Secret Files #1 (1997) featured a condensed retelling of all three (at the time) Flashes’ origins, and this time, Jay simply succumbed to the hour and nodded off, dropping the beaker.

(Via Crimson Lightning)

Originally posted at K-Squared Ramblings.

After almost 1½ years, my Golden-Age back-issue hunt finally netted a relatively cheap copy of All-Flash #12, the first appearance of the Flash villain, the Thinker. It’s an odd read, because the origin of the Thinker (a mob boss who plans his heists very meticulously) is interwoven with a slapstick story of the Three Dimwits.

The Thinker story is played more or less as a straight super-hero vs. organized crime story. I’d summarize it, but the Comics Archive has already written it up in their article on the Thinker. Now, imagine the first five paragraphs over there interwoven with a Three Stooges film and you’ll get the idea. The Dimwits end up buying a restaurant heavily in debt to the mob, and accidentally make salads out of an alien plant that make people turn invisible.

It’s incredibly silly, but it ties into the other half of the story: The original mob boss’ henchmen are caught robbing the Dimwits’ restaurant, so he calls in the Thinker to solve his problem before they can rat on him. And of course, once the Thinker takes over, he’s mighty interested in these salads that turn people invisible.

And yet, the feel is so completely different that it seems like two different stories.

An unexpected discovery was a reference to the planet Karma, where the alien plant comes from. I’d seen two other references in other Golden-Age Flash stories, so it’s clearly part of the background mythos. This is one reason I’ve been looking for the source material. It’s relatively easy to find info on the leads, or the major villains, but the minor supporting characters who appear in three or four issues—Deuces Wilde, Evart Keenan, Dr. Flura, Ebenezer Jones—are mostly forgotten.

On a related note, while looking up the Thinker’s other appearances, I discovered that one of the non-Flash titles I’d been looking for, All-Star Comics #37, was reprinted in The Greatest Golden-Age Stories Ever Told—a book I already had. I felt bad that I hadn’t actually read the entire book, but that meant I could cross off two items from my wantlist instead of just one.

Originally posted at K-Squared Ramblings

One of the characters I encountered early in my exploration of Golden Age Flash stories was Ebenezer Jones, the Worry Wart. In fact, All-Flash #24 (1946) was one of those first two GA Flash books I bid on just to see if I could win. The story in that book referred to previous meetings. If it had been the Silver Age, it would have included a helpful editor’s note telling me “See issue #X,” instead of just a recap.

As I kept watching auctions and looking on sites like the Grand Comics Database, I identified at least two more appearances. I finally tracked down the last of the three in March, and was able to write up a bio of the character.

Who is the Worry Wart? In short, he was an ordinary man who had a case of anxiety so bad it was contagious.

There’s an odd subtext to the character’s stories, though. The reason he returns to Keystone City is that the Flash had previously set him up with a supply of “happiness pills,” which had run out. In Flash Comics #76 (1946), Ebenezer Jones deliberately overdoses on the happiness pills, causing a euphoric delirium just as contagious as his anxiety.

Looking back on this from 2007, it’s hard not to think of it in terms of the vast numbers of people today taking medications for depression or anxiety. Not to mention people who abuse prescription medications. Or just people who abuse drugs. There’s a disturbing drug-dealer vibe in that panel.

It gets better, though. In the Worry Wart’s first appearance, in All-Flash #15 (1944), the Flash makes him a serum to counteract his anxiety:

Yes, that’s right. The Flash gives him a bottle, and he drinks his cares away. No subtext here!

Originally posted at K-Squared Ramblings.

I’ve got a saved search set up at eBay that lets me know when Golden-Age Flash comics show up in my price range. It’s been a while since I actually bought one, though. Most of them are either too expensive or contain stories I’ve already read, either through reprints or through my own small Golden-Age collection.

Anyway, several books showed up in this morning’s email, and I checked them against my want-list and already-read list. Then I looked up the one that I didn’t recognize, Flash Comics #45. Comics.org has a synopsis of the Flash story, “Blessed Event:”

Jay wins a baby in a raffle and it immediately becomes a headache for himself [trying to explain it to Joan], and to the Flash, when the baby turns out to be a midget crook!

Leaving aside the silliness of an adult dwarf being able to pass as an infant (a premise that doesn’t seem to have gone away, being the basis of the 2006 Wayans Brothers film, Little Man), consider the fact that Jay Garrick wins a baby in a raffle.

Seriously. Even in 1943, who thought that raffling off children to the hero was a good idea for a setup?

It’s probably an oversimplication.

But then, this is the same series where the Flash’s dimwitted sidekicks buy a restaurant and accidentally turn people invisible when they use an alien plant in their salads. (To top things off, it ties into the otherwise-serious origin of the Thinker.) The Silver Age had its share of goofy stories, but it’s got nothing on the Golden Age for sheer silliness.

Believe it or not, “Midget Joe” (as his name is given) actually comes back in Flash Comics #61, one of the issues I’ve read. The criminal escapes from prison, then hides out in a children’s hospital ward. Unfortunately for him, the Flash is performing magic tricks to cheer up the patients, but the hero doesn’t recognize him at first…