Where Geoff Has Now Lost Me...(Flash #2 Spoilers)

[aulayan]

After a fight with the Rogue Cops from the Future:







Yes, it's Barry's "Super Speed Reading, remembering things long enough to make use of it before losing it again."

Suggested Tags: Title: The Flash, Creator: Geoff Johns, Creator: Francis+Manapul, Char: Barry Allen/Flash

Comments

[cainofdreaming]

Did he also gain the power of super speed bureaucracy somewhere along the way too? Since the zoning commission will be up his rectum if he didn't build it exactly the same way it was before and not file documents for renovations.

[queendork56]

Good thing he can outrun the government!

[icon_uk]

Central City, and indeed most superbeing-ridden cities probably has any number of waivers on such things, a sort of "Good Samaritan in unexpected emergencies" situation

[icon_uk]

Aside from how on earth he's able to manually lift the girders and things which would be way beyond a single person's ability to lift (And speed punches might well be able to replicate super strength single punches but in terms of manual lifting it just plain wouldn't work) all the cement and plaster he'd have had to use would not be able to set properly in the time allowed, you can't superspeed set cement AFAIK.

This sort of thing annoyed me when I was 11 reading this stuff, so it doesn't work for me now.

The one that lingers most was Barry realising his date was due over for dinner (This was post Iris) and preparing a casserole between the time it took for her to ring the doorbell and the time it took for him to answer the door... As she comes in she comments on the wonderful cooking smell. Which irked me because nothing would be giving off a smell yet, he'd just cut up raw meat and vegetables, it had no time to actually cook.

[snowglare]

Obviously, he imbued the casserole with the speed force. Flash fact! ;)

[deliandra]

I always found it funny that being a speedster obviously also means you have super strength (as long as you are running), can get stuff you are working with to process faster (drying, cooking, etc.) and in a cases like theese also produce the matrials necessary for the task out of nowhere/whatever is there.

[greenmask]

He could lift one end slightly, run to the other end and lift that a bit higher, return and higher, return and higher, etc etc..

..Maybe he blows on the cement? >_>

[amaniwolf]

Her Dolly is now part of the Speed Force!

[cainofdreaming]

Flash Barbie! Not what you'd expect!

[stig]

Aunt May took all that trouble moving into another universe to avoid Spider-Man villains, and now this.

[majingojira]

It's funny. Modern comics often attempt rather juvenile expressions of being more 'adult' such as having gratuitous sexuality and over the top violence.

Then they do something like this, which could easily be from a younger readers title or fit perfectly in Batman: The Brave and the Bold and no one would bat an eye at it--heck, they'd laugh and say it was great.

But in juxtaposition to the former? It just falls flat on its face.

[thehefner]

The next page has the little girl GET a dolly, but it has blond hair. She looks at it dully and whines, "My dolly had BROWN..." next panel, whoosh of red, she looks stunned to see that she has the right dolly. "... hair."

If this entire series was Geoff channeling that level of fun (and let me tell you, the artwork supports that better than SERIOUS stories), this would totally be a series that everyone would love and embrace.

I don't expect that to be the focus, because, well, Johns. But in this new-nostalgia era, that was the first moment in these two issues that genuinely had an old-fashioned Silver Age sense of FUN.

[lucean]

I think Johns did something similar with Wally, by having him repair a bridge as it was falling apart or something like that, but it didn't bother me as much as this here. To be truthful, part of it is because I actually like Wally, but also because it served the ultimate push in the story, a kind of a point of Wally doing something awesome. This just feels... ordinary. I can't explain it better.

[shale]

Yeah, it just felt like killing time. By the time the lame "dolly" thing is finished they've spent nearly a fifth of the book on a not-particularly-fun scene about Barry repairing a house that fell down for no reason at the end of his pointless fight with the Rogues that accomplished nothing for either side. And then we go on to get the same cliffhanger that the first issue ended on! In a Flash book, that kind of pacing is almost metatextually boring.

[kagome654]

Eh, Wally did this a couple of times during his run, iirc. I always considered it one of the funner aspects of the Flash. I mean...why not?

[benicio127]

I'm not a regular Flash reader, but what exactly is the difference between Wally and Barry? I've always thought Wally was the funnier one, but.... idk, this kind of makes it look like their personalities are pretty similar....
And is it possible to make their costumes have a bit bigger differences?

[thehefner]

Barry is more of a bow-tie wearing goody two shoes, one of the more innocent and sweet-natured heroes in the DCU. At best, he's the wide-eyed hopeful embodiment of the New Frontier and DC's Silver Age.

Wally's Flash... well, he's grown a lot. Used to be that he was an arrogant smartass who had lots of girlfriends and even cheated on one or two. Once he found Linda, he came into his own, being more badass and... what's the word to use, smirky?... than Barry.

Wally's definitely cooler, and the fact that he had such an arc makes him great. But you don't get too many characters with Barry's heart, and it saddens me that we have Barry back, only to have saddled his character with needless angst, thus making him no different than any other whitebread hero.

[retro_nouveau]

Oh, so much motto. It was a dilapidated wreck before the place came down, and Barry turns it into bright shiny new hotness. Did he buy, borrow, or steal new materials, or did Zatanna help him out with recycling the old stuff? Did Pam Isley help him out with the landscaping, or did Clark pick up and drop those trees up from somewhere?

Then Clark being able to tell that Bruce was no longer on Earth because he can hear every heartbeat on the planet and pick out individuals - what, like heartbeats are like fingerprints?

Then Diana disposing of a nuke at ground zero point zero zero by detonating it with her hands.

Top tier powers are phenomenally cosmic enough. Eye roll.

[akoya]

♥ I love your icon. May I use it and where is it from?

[shadowpsykie]

Well Bart can do this, except he actualy retains what he reads.

[dreamreaver]

But of course it's not nearly as helpful as one would think because "CUCKOO!"

[jcbaggee]

Wally rebuilt buildings all the time; Wally and Bart have both exhibited the ability to fill up and utilize their short term memory at super speed, but Bart is the only one to retain the information.

I mean...come on, it's the Flash. I'm a huge fan of the character, but there are much more severe atrocities on the principles of physics that are hand waved with "it's the Speed Force" than the ones presented here. It's a fun character, and it's really cool when they're able to tie the stuff here in to real world physics, but if you can't have fun and enjoy the dorky stuff like this, what's the point of reading comics?

[majingojira]

It's not the event, it's the context within the greater DC universe that's so off-putting.

Having the Flash rebuild a house so it's even better than before at super speed? Fine.

Having the Flash do that in a universe which is full of grimdark, oversexed, hyper-violent psuedo-maturity?

Not really gonna fly with most people. It's like having Bat-Mite show up in the next Nollan Batman movie--it's out of place and jarring.

[leorising]

Dialogue among the spectators:

S1: "You go first."
S2: "IIIIII ain't goin' first!"
S3: "Yeah, Flash, thanks, I think I'll go stay with my mom in Jersey."
S4: "Wow, man, those were some really rockin' 'shrooms!"

Etc.

[mullon]

Why pink? Why not red, with a giant lightning bolt painted on the front?

[icon_uk]

It's still glowing from residual friction heat?

[geoffsebesta]

The union ain't gonna be happy about this.

[arbre_rieur]

This isn't Silver Age. This is superheroes.

[autolychus2]

I disagree, unless you mean that horrible Marvel Super-Heroes 'toon.

[big_daddy_d]

Honestly..I actually liked this scene. How many heroes have you seen take the time to rebuild a home that was destroyed thanks to a brawl between said hero and villain(s)?

[intertobamf]

I'm sorry, but this comes off as bitching for the sake of bitching. Can we please go back to excessively complaining about actual problems with comics?

[aulayan]

I wouldn't say it's bitching for the sake of bitching, when in my case, I *never* liked Silver Age things such as this. This is just something I never cared for, and just swept it away as "An artifact of the time" And am annoyed to see it back.

I came into The Flash with Johns hoping to like it as I liked his Wally Run. Nay, actually loved it as it's one of the things that got me back into comics. Even with my not liking the fact they brought Barry back, I was hoping to be drawn in. And this scene actually really killed it for me, because it's the embodiment of a kind of comic writing I do not care for.

This is, of course, my own personal opinion. But that's what this community is for (well partially), opinions on books. Bitching, IMO, for the sake of bitching is "Oh god! Doesn't the Letterer or Editor do -any- checking, he used "They're" wrong, he meant "Their"!"

[saralakali]

Eh, it's not drawn that way, but one always assumed speedsters moved heavy objects by creating small-but-powerful whirlwinds with their arms.

The thing that was cool about Barry Allen when I started reading comics is that he was one of the very few superheroes that was married. (Elongated Man, Aquaman and Bouncing Boy/Duo Damsel) being the others. Barry and Iris were so delightfully normal. Admittedly, Midwestern, whitebread normal, but there was no weighty angst dragging the book down. Barry solved crimes and captured criminals. Iris often helped Barry put the clues together and chewed him out for being late. Then someone decided that was boring and killed Iris off. IMO, the book never recovered after that. When they finally killed Barry off, it was almost a mercy.

[jlroberson]

A lot of people forget that Barry was pretty much an exhausted character by the time he died. That's WHY he died.

Go back and read those last issues of the old series. Tell me how much fun they are to read(especially with Infantino's style by then, so sloppy it was nearly unreadable). I seem to recall at the time, as a kid, seeing it still there and wondering why.

[jlroberson]

A serious abuse of suspension of disbelief.

[zordboy]

This.

Where did he get the glass and electrical wiring from? To say nothing of the furniture or crockery or things like that?

Anyway.

[gamerguy]

Good lord, when did people get a stick up their asses about stuff like this? You might as well argue it's impossible for Superman to fly without destroying weather patterns all over Earth or some other picky silliness like that.

I'll also put to you that the Silver Age (filtered through some more modern sensibilities) is the normal state of comics. The stuff you kids saw in the Nineties was the aberration, not this.