Hey guys, its Mo! Really happy to be here, this is a really cool opportunity to share my reviews with people not on the ‘Bloc! Thanks Kelson!
Alright, here’s the first review, and when I did this one, I was just getting used to how I was going to go about this, so don’t worry it only gets better!
Flash #1, June 1987
Story overview:
In the beginning, Wally buys lotto tickets and 6 Baby Ruths. He gets home for a ‘surprise’ party, which he knew about. The Titans and Wally’s girlfriend Francine throw it for him and for about 5 minutes and they have a great time. Wally gets a pair of shoes with ‘a special fiberglass sole which is good for 100,000 KM at 700 MPH’ made by S.T.A.R. Labs from the Titans. At the party, Wally eats an enormous amount of hamburgers, as eating is a theme throughout the issue. Before they even get to the cake, the party is cut short by a phone call from a Dr. Aikens who tells him that he needs to deliver a heart for a transplant that won’t make it in time due to bad weather. Note that when Wally walks in his office, Dr. Aikens calls him Kid Flash, which is corrected by Wally as Flash. Wally says he’ll do it for a price which the Doc isn’t too happy about. The deal finally is decided for the hospital to call on Wally whenever they want, as long as they take care of his medical bills. On his way out, an unnamed doctor calls him Kid Flash again, to be corrected by another unnamed doctor. He runs for quite a while when he sees Vandal Savage killing a detective who was on Savage’s case. Wally runs the detective to the local police station and as he runs to give the heart transplant, he can’t get Savage’s name out of his head. He gets to the hospital just in time for when he passes out, and sleeps for seventeen hours before awaking in perfect health. He runs to McDonald’s and gets five double cheeseburgers and four chocolate malts before he comes back to the hospital to see the patient who he ran the heart for. She happens to be an author that Wally has read books from and talks with her for a while before returning home on an airplane. On the airplane, he stops a hijacking and sprains his hand in doing so. He has six dinners and sleeps until he gets off the plane. When he gets to his apartment, nobody is there but his happy birthday banner is still up. He turns on the TV and realizes he won the lotto when the lottery comes on. He sees a present which he didn’t see before he left, opens it and in it there is a heart. Like the type you’d find in a human. The issue ends with Vandal Savage in Wally’s apartment.
Review:
The story seemed a little flat to me and although there were some surprises (Vandal Savage and the heart present), I just didn’t feel like it was that intense. In the issue, Wally can’t top the speed of sound which really sets a slow pace for the book. It takes him something like three hours to get to Seattle from the hospital, which frankly isn’t that impressive. Of course at the time, his top speed was 705 MPH and that was very fast for him at the time, which compared to his speed today is fast. I guess if I was reading this in 1987 and I was used to Wally being that fast, I wouldn’t think twice of it. My favorite part of it was when he was stopping the plane hijackers, which took him all of three seconds. The way that part was paced was perfect. And when he jumps back into his seat, the guy next to him asks Wally, ‘Did you see that?’ which was a nice way to end the scene for me. The ending did make it so I want to read the next issue, so I’m going to go do that now!!
Rating:
Writing: four out of five stars. I really liked this issue, but I’m holding back that one star because it didn’t seem like a first issue of a series to me.
Art: five out of five. I had no problems with the art.
Favorite Quote:
“All of a sudden, I’m a millionaire.” –Wally, page 20
Keep reading for issue #2! Continue reading →
Among this week’s ComiXology releases are The Flash vol.2 #13-14, in which Wally West, still early in his solo career, battles Vandal Savage and a host of Savage’s pawns given super-speed by the drug Velocity 9.
