BHOC: THE FLASH #198

It was the summer, so it wasn’t all that difficult to convince my grandparents to take me on another buying trip to the Sun-Vet Mall not far from our home wherein Ed’s Coins and Stamps, a collectables shop, could be found. My grandparents lived about an hour away from our home, and they would come out to our house regularly every Saturday to visit my Mom and Dad and the family. They were fine people, albeit from another generation, so while they didn’t understand my obsession with comics (My grandmother would often intone, “Why do you need so many books?”) they were still a relatively easy touch–far easier than my Dad. And so, on the next Saturday, we went out to that store and I picked up a bunch of assorted back issues including this issue of THE FLASH. I bought it solely because I was intrigued by its cover–though even then, I thought Gil Kane’s depiction of Flash’s right arm looked as though it had been twisted up, like a rubber figure whose limb had been wound around. But something about the character’s emotional plea got me to take home the issue, so Gil had the last laugh there.

At the time when this issue was first published, the 1960s and the Silver Age of Comics had given way to whatever was going to come next. Super hero comics were on the wane, and while a bunch of titles managed to hang on, there was a bit of a feeling of desperation to be found in their pages as writers, artists and editors thrashed vainly around to find something that would connect with an audience in 1970. The big push at the moment, based off of a couple of stories written by Denny O’Neil that had gotten some small media pick-up, was for relevance: tales in which the super heroes grappled with real world issues. Unfortunately, when it came to understanding the issues that the youth culture of the era were dealing with, the creators at DC were still largely middle aged white men who didn’t have the understanding of the changes that were happening in culture, and indeed were often frightened by them. This meant that the messages in these comics often felt phony and patronizing. I don’t know that the Flash is the best character to be dealing with contemporary issues in the first place, given his world. But it was an approach that showed a spark of life, and so DC went full bore in that direction for a couple of years before the trend burned itself out.

The other thing happening at DC at the time was a changing-of-the-guard creatively. A parcel of DC’s established writers had been let go after they attempted to bargain collectively for benefits such as health insurance. This led to a creative shake-up on all of the titles, and an opportunity for some new young voices to come in. But that isn’t what happened on THE FLASH. Here, the title’s mainstay writer John Broome had relocated to Japan, putting his life as a comic book writer behind him. After a period of time during which editor Julie Schwartz tried out a rotating cast of different writers, he eventually settled on giving the series to his office-mate Robert Kanigher. Kanigher had written the very first Barry Allen story in SHOWCASE #4 back in 1956, so he had a familiarity. But Kanigher’s heart was never really into working on super hero comics–you get a sense that he thought they were beneath him. And so his FLASH stories carry a veneer of artificiality to them. What’s more, he moved the strip away from colorful super-villains and science fiction plots and more towards emotional fare that didn’t entirely connect. This is really a slump period for the title.

This opening story is illustrated by Gil Kane and Vince Colletta–not my favorite pairing, but Vince does decent enough work here. The story is pure Kanigher: Flash is performing at an orphanage, but a trio of kids who seem to directly be inspired by the then-contemporary Mod Squad, don’t dig his antics–he can’t understand their problems, man. In trying to win them over, Flash volunteers to build them a rec center club house in the slum they call home–but in digging the foundation, he comes upon stolen loot that’s been stashed there by criminals. The bad guys show up and Flash’s nogging is creased by a bullet, giving him amnesia and making him believe that he’s eight-year-old Barry Allen. The three kids need to look after the memoryless Scarlet Speedster and keep him safe from their attackers. In the end, they convince young Barry that he’s the Flash, he wipes up on the crooks, he takes another blow to the cranium that restores his memory, and the kids get their clubhouse and have learned that the old square is all right and an “honorary teen-ager.” It’s all a bunch of convenient nonsense, and it tries its best to tug on the heartstrings. But it ultimately failed for me.

THE FLASH was still most often featuring two stories each issue during this period. Between them, this House Ad ran, which helps to give a sense of the time period as well. It’s a bit more bombastic than the DC House Ads of the 1960s, channeling just a hint of the Marvel approach in its copy. Of the three titles showcased, two of them are reprint books, though they’ve been plussed up by carrying new contemporary covers. So there’s a lot of intrigue to be had here for an interested reader of the age.

The back-up story in this issue was written by one of the newcomer writers who stepped into the space left open by the exodus of so much of DC’s established writing talent. This was Mike Friedrich, who had started out as a regular letter writer to editor Julie Schwartz’s titles. At a certain point, Julie apparently invited him to pitch some stories, and bought a bunch of them. Friedrich became a regular writer for both DC and Marvel throughout the 1970s, and was one of the pioneers of the “ground level” comic book movement that came about in the earliest days of the emerging Direct Sales market. Here, he’s matched with Don Heck, who had migrated to DC when work began to dry up for him at Marvel. He too is inked on this story by Vince Colletta, but again here, Vince does a credible job with it–although Zatanna’s face on this splash page looks rather lifeless and dolllike.

The story opens with Barry and Iris Allen attending a magic performance being put on by Zatanna, a character who had bounced around in the Schwartz books for several years and who was something of a fan favorite–largely due to her attire. As Zatanna is performing a trick with Barry, she suddenly vanishes, drawn away to another magical realm. She’s been summoned to help the magician Namba, who has been possessed by his arch-rival Xarkon. In the instant that she disappeared, Flash goes after Zatanna using his Cosmic Treadmill–there’s some nonsense about Zatanna having left behind certain vibrational frequencies that Flash can track, but it’s completely implausible and hand-wavey. Arriving in the fantasy setting, Flash is set upon by guards on horseback dedicated to Xarkon’s cause. But he’s able to easily overcome them with his super-speed.

Xarkon, though, is mightier than his minions and he’s able to freeze Flash in his tracks, holding him immobile. Unable to separate Xarkon from Namba with her magic, Zatanna instead tries kissing him –and that does the trick, exiling Xarkon back to whatever nameless realm he escaped from. Turns out that this is why Namba brought Zatanna here in the first place. With the adventure over, both Barry and Zatanna are transported back to the stage, with only an instant having transpired for them, and so they’re able to continue on with the performance with the audience unaware that they were ever gone. As a bit of an overbearing motif throughout this story, Friedrich has various characters express variations on the line “Call it magic”, which was also the story’s title. This one was a bit better than the opener, but it’s really a Zatanna story that the Flash happens to coincidentally be in for a bit, so it’s not truly satisfying from the point of view of the book’s lead character.

The book’s two-page FLASH GRAMS letters page included a communication from another letter writer who would transition to working for DC in the months to come: Marty Pasko. At this time, Marty had been nicknamed “Pesky” Pasko due to his penchant for pointing out logical fallacies and flubs in the stories Julie and his team were putting out. But his brickbats were written well enough that Schwartz took a chance on him as an author as well.