Ladles and jellyspoons, Faithful Spoilerites, friends, Romans, countrymen!
I hereby present to you the origin of the finest and most perfect superhero costume of all time. Your Major Spoilers (Retro) Review of Flash #135 awaits!
FLASH #135
Writer: John Broome
Penciler: Carmine Infantino
Inker: Joe Giella
Editor: Julius Schwartz
Publisher: DC Comics
Cover Price: 12 Cents
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $300.00
Previously in Flash: A strange lab accident transformed Barry Allen into the super-speedster known as The Flash, using his knowledge of science and his amazing velocity to take down a wide variety of villains, most of whom were just jerks with funny guns. Some time after his own accident, Barry Allen gave his girlfriend’s nephew Wally West a tour of the lab where his origins occurred, when another, identical freak accident gave Wally the exact same powers as his, allowing the boy to join him in the field as Kid Flash. It may sound unlikely, but these sorts of things tend to happen when you’re able to break the laws of physics without breaking a sweat. Case in point: One weekend, Wally West goes for a run, and finds that he is hearing strange voices while traveling at a certain velocity…
Matching his vibrational frequency to that of the voices, Kid Flash discovers that they are, in fact, a message, sent from an alternate dimension by a beautiful girl named Ryla. A militant group known as the Makryds have been using their military might to take over new territory, with Earth as their next target!
Hearing that his mentor is dealing with a strange device that he believes may be one of the lost alien weapons that Ryla’s people launched into our world, Kid Flash races off to the Central City Science Institute, where Flash is examining the machine…
Empowered by an alien weapon, Flash is overwhelmed by arcane alien power, and when he gestures for his sidekick to stay back, something pretty amazing happens…
NEW COSTUME BOMB! Clearly, the scientists of Korydon intended to conquer our world through the unstoppable power of fashion design, as seen by the in-fighting on every episode of Project: Runway, but thanks to the Flash, their plans failed. Having altered the fabric of the universe (literally and figuratively), the Flashes blanket the globe at phenomenal speed, tracking down and capturing the other super-weapons in mere minutes. Bringing the weapons together, it seems like our heroes will have a fighting chance, only to find that the Makryds are one step ahead…
Using his vibratory powers, Kid Flash tries to send a message to Ryla, to no avail. Increasing his vibration to try to increase the range of his strange quasi-telepathy, Kid Flash accidentally vibrates himself entirely into Ryla’s home dimension. Seeking out his friend, Kid Flash finds that the Makryds found her first…
Freeing the Korydon rebels from their captivity, Kid Flash agrees to help them, as somehow the best course of action to stop the Makryds is for Earth to defeat them… or something? I’m not 100% sure of the logic here, it sounds like the kind of plan we’d come up with on Critical Hit, which means I find it highly suspect in practice.
Using his incredible speed, Kid Flash busts into the Makryd armory, sets their weapons to overload and destroy it, then escapes with Ryla to continue the fight back on Earth…
As for The Flash, he’s been busy as well, taking on the Makryds who have already made their way to Earth, in his own inimitable fashion…
The elder Flash is captured by the alien invaders, just in time for Kid Flash and his alien pal to bust in and free him, leaving twice as many crimson comets for the aliens to contend with. Infinite speed times two versus a bunch of jerks with frap guns?
Advantage: Flashes. With the help of the US Army (!!), the Makryds are defeated, and Ryla’s Korydon people are recognized by the United Nations (!!!) as friends of humanity. Ryla and Wally agree to keep in touch as interdimensional pen pals, and he likes his new uniform so much that he agrees to keep it as his official crime-fighting gear, only eventually giving up the awesome red-and-gold threads in his twenties, after Barry’s untimely demise. (It didn’t take, but in comics? Nothing much does.) As Silver Age Flash issues go, this one is particularly convoluted, and the twists and turns of the plot seem to be a lot of justification for altering Wally’s uniform, admittedly to a superior design, but leaving me wondering if they couldn’t just have him BUY a new suit. Still, Flash #135 is an okay read, and tries to explain real scientific principles to those who’d read it, with unremarkable but professional and solid art, earning 3 out of 5 stars overall. There’s a wonderful charm to a story like this, even if parts of it are more imaginative than they are coherent…
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