Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
... or: "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once, When You Aren't Anywhere At All...?" (PART SIX)
Once he'd finally tumbled onto the actual mechanics involved in the
process... the Silver Age Flash (a.k.a.
Barry Allen) became a regular time-travelin' fool. 
That first epic cracking of the time barrier occurred in SHOWCASE #4, in fact; the very first comic book appearance of the good Mr. Allen, and the book which is most widely assumed to have served as the starting point of the Silver Age proper.
In "The Man Who Broke the Time Barrier" (story by John Broome; art by Carmine Infantino), the Flash's home town of Central City is being bedeviled by a series of "impossible" crimes. Metal objects either fly away from their owners, or else vanish outright; glass beakers and vacuum tubes -- ditto.
It turns out that the culprit responsible for all of the airborne cutlery and whatnot is one Mazdan: "an incorrigible thief" from the Earth's far future.
Having been found guilty of being an inveterate knave and filcher, the bald baddie was summarily sentenced to forevermore dwell on "the Earth of the 50th Century -- a desolate planet." (Which is something to bear in mind, I suppose, when considering whether or not to spring for those Braves season tickets, come the year 4901 or so.)
For reasons never rendered sufficiently compelling or lucid, however... the one-way time capsule in which Mazdan was sent a-rocketing didn't end up anywhere near the 50th Century. (Oopsie.)
Instead: the follicularly-challenged felon finds himself in the Here and (more importantly) Now.
The Flash has Mazdan captured and properly jailed by Page Six; however, the
canny cutpurse ("Imprisoning me in this primitive barred cell!
Ha! Ha!") is back out and up to his old tricks once again at the top of
Page Seven, which has just got to hold some sort of record for the fastest
"return appearance" by any super-villain in all of recorded comics history.
(I mean... he's only in his cell for two freakin' PANELS, f'cryin' out
loud -- !)
With an inward sigh of resignation, the Flash goes to all of the time and trouble to track this silly nit down yet again... and discovers that Mazdan's thefts have all been for the sole purpose of rebuilding his crashed capsule, in order that he might pull a Michael J. Fox and go Back To the Future.
Unfortunately, the resultant concussive blast of Mazdan's
jury-rigged hyper-jalopy will "blast out a crater at least ten miles
in diameter" upon take-off, thereby severely depressing both property values
and the all-important summer tourist trade in Central City.
This Mexican stand-off betwixt the Flash's civic consciousness and Mazdan's motivation to motor ends with the former grabbing the latter by the scruff of his futuristic BVDs and (effectively) super-speed marching him back to his own time and place.
Given that the time-traveling thief known as Mazdan has (so far as the author
can readily recall, at any rate) yet to make a reappearance... it may safely
be assumed that he is currently doing hard time somewhere, at long last.
A particularly effective chronologically-centered tale later saw print in the pages of FLASH #300, as penned by the industrious Silver Age scribe Cary Bates. Entitled "1981: A Flash Odyssey" (story titles were, admittedly, not Mr. Bates' strongest suit, all told), said story involved a hopelessly crippled and bedridden Barry Allen, being counseled by the staff psychiatrist of the hospital in which he is residing for "these obsessive delusional fantasies that you are some costumed 'super-hero' known as the Flash!" (!!)
As the story unfolds, we are informed that police scientist Barry Allen most assuredly was doused by electrically-charged chemicals, at some point in the past... but: rather than endowing him with the ability to move faster than any other human being, either before or since...
... it left him totally paralyzed, from the neck downward.
Dr. Petrou (the psychiatrist) goes on to chronicle the events of the following years: how the now-immobilized Barry Allen -- unable to come to grips with the sudden and horrible finality of his infirmity -- began to immerse himself in a fantasy world constructed from the yellowing pages of his favorite childhood reading fare: old Golden Age Flash comic books.
(As a part of his attempt to "shock" the paralyzed Allen
back to "normalcy," Dr. Petrou literally shreds one of those old Flash
comics, right before his patient's wide-eyed, horrified gaze. Geez...
does he know how bloody much those old Flash comics go for, nowadays?
That was a year's worth of golf club dues, right there.)
Now, by this point, you're doubtless thinking: "Oh, hell... there are any number of people in the DCU who could reassure the now totally disoriented Barry as to who he really is/was. All he'd have to do is have someone dial a phone for him and call in Kid Flash or the Elongated Man, f'chrissakes!"
This is precisely the reason that the vastly underrated Mr. Bates was
the one writing these tales... and we were the ones reading
'em.
Wally West pays a visit to his bedridden Uncle Barry. He has no memory of ever having been a "Kid Flash."
Hal (Green Lantern) Jordan and Ralph (Elongated Man) Dibny also drop by to pay their respects. They both insist that Barry Allen is delusional, as well.
Barry's wife Iris -- who's supposed to be dead, incidentally -- sashays over for a quick visit, as well... and pleads with him to "give up this fantasy of yours that we were ever married... for both our sakes."
She brings her husband and children along with her.
Hell, I'll admit it: by this point, I ws beginning to wonder if
maybe Barry Allen wasn't several McNuggets shy of a full Happy Meal... y'know?
As we are later to observe, the entire Machiavellian-to-the-max scheme is the brainchild of none other than... Barry's (*kaff*kaff*) "solicitous" psychiatrist, Dr. Petrou!
Utilizing hitherto unsuspected mental abilities to "telepathically orchestrate" the perceptions and reactions of everyone even remotely a part of Barry Allen's life, The Bad Doctor reveals his plans to twist the mental screws even more deeply into the bedridden hero's shattered psyche, by conjuring up a perfect duplicate of his wife's murderer: the futuristic felon known as Professor Zoom (i.e., "The Reverse-Flash").
This final bit of self-aggrandizing hubris on the doctor's part, however, proves to be that One Fatal Step Too Far, evil scheme-wise.
Realizing that he is, in fact, The Fastest Man Alive, the Flash quickly (you should only pardon the expression) unravels the Whys and Wherefores of the duplicitous doc's behind-the-scenes manipulations of his nearest and dearest, revealing the entire soul-destroying charade to be the black handiwork of none other than long-time 64th Century foeman Abra-Kadabra. [See panel reproductions, below]
As the psychically-rejuvenated speedster himself so ably
put it: "I told myself: 'How could there be a Reverse-Flash
in a world that was supposed to have never had a REGULAR Flash?"
Finally: not even the briefest of examinations or retrospectives of the Flash's whirlwind adventures in the time stream could be counted as worth the recounting without at least some mention of issue #214's "Death of an Immortal." (Len Wein, writer; Irv Novick, artist)
Barry Allen's longtime friend (and childhood idol) Jay Garrick -- the Flash of "Earth-Two" -- has been banished to limbo by the immortal villain Vandal Savage, in a devilishly comlicated attempt on the part of the latter to further extend his already elasticene existence and influence.
Barry manages to gain entry to said temporal nether realm, intent upon rescuing his (quasi-)mentor. While the two of them are busily zip-zapping this way and that way, however, in search of an extra-dimensional egress... they run into this... this big, dopey-lookin' guy who --
... well. Maybe it's best if I let you all take a gander at this
bozo, before we take another step further.
I sincerely hope and pray that none of you were actually
eating anything when you saw that.
[SIDE NOTE: The Time Trapper in the LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES comics.
The Lord of Time in JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA and KARATE KID.
Per Degaton, re: THE ALL-STAR SQUADRON. Waverider
and The Linear Men, in SUPERMAN. The Extant, in ZERO HOUR.
And now this mustachioed half-wit...? How many friggin' Absolute
Rulers of the Time Stream can there possibly be, anyway? I mean...
doesn't the concept of "absolute rule" kinda sorta imply a one-man, everybody-else-outta-the-pool-already
status from the git-go? Do these monomaniacal poindexters ever
even bump into one another? I'm just sayin', here.]
I think my very favoritest moment of all in this story, however, is the scene
in which we are informed -- all perfectly straight-faced, mind -- that the way
and rate at which one ages while galavanting about in Limbo is directly
related to how quickly (and in which direction) one happens to be running
at the time.
This must be yet another one of those oft-heralded "Flash
Facts" which the more fanatical devotees of this character are always
nattering on and bloody on about. I reckon.
Well: that pretty much wraps up this week's installment of new pages for this site. Be hear next week, when I conclude our spectacular nickel tour of TIME TRAVEL IN THE DC COMICS OF THE SILVER AGE...
... and maybe another new "goodie" or two, as well.
"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART ONE"
"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART TWO"
"Time Travel On the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART THREE"
"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART FOUR"
"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART FIVE"
"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART SEVEN"
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
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