The Flash #8

I hate Turbine already.

Last issue ended with The Flash entering a tear in the fabric of space and time so that he could find Iris West. He has no idea if what he's doing will help but you need a whole lot of stupidity and a fairly high percentage of death wish to be a super hero. But when he enters the wormhole, he ends up inside the Speed Force instead of blasting through time. Why would the Speed Force that he taps into not only be a field of energy but a place as well, right? Makes as much sense as everything else in this comic book.

And since the comic is already in a pretty sketchy area of believability, turns out there is a Tuskegee Airman from World War II trapped inside the Speed Force as well. His experimental plane he was flying somehow transported him into it. And now he lives there. But he doesn't want to live there. He wants out and believes The Flash is the way. He knows The Flash is Barry Allen as well. So perhaps living in the Speed Force allows him to see the lives of the people affected by it.

Oh yeah. The guy's name is Turbine and his super power is spinning around in circles.

Wheee! Maybe when he gets better at it, he can roll down hills.

Once The Flash knees Turbine in the face (because spinning around really fast isn't the best defense in the world (the best defense is falling down in a fetal position)), Turbine decides he'll speak with The Flash instead of fighting him. So big point loss to The Flash for ending a comic with a guy who didn't really want to fight in the first place just for the action packed cliffhanger. Sure, Turbine is crazy and has been trapped in the Time Stream/Speed Force/Whatever the Fuck It Is for 70 years. And the spinning around all the time probably isn't helping.

Turbine knows all about The Flash because being trapped in the Time Stream / Speed Force allows a person to watch the lives of other people across the horizon like a super entertaining Aurora Borealis. I wonder how many times he's watched Barry take shit or masturbate. Or masturbate while taking a shit.

A path opens up to another wormhole to the future which Barry wants to follow but Turbine convinces him to go backwards and look at images of The Flash's origin story.

I prefer 'votices'.

Turbine (who I would like and fine more interesting if his spinning around really fast wasn't a real super power at all but he's just crazy and believes it is so he named himself) tells The Flash that the Speed Force builds up excess energy and it needs to be released somehow. When The Flash runs, he releases this energy like a pressure valve releasing steam.

Meanwhile in the real world, the Central City police are having a memorial service for police officers who died in the line of duty and Barry who died on a boat. Well, he disappeared into a wormhole but everyone might as well assume he's dead. Patty, of course, is hating on The Flash because that's how these kinds of relationships have to go down. She loves Barry Allen but hates The Flash! Oh the drama inherent in the set-up! It's too easy to pass up! But the real reason I mention this memorial service is because one of the officers, David Singh, a close friend of Patty's who had some weird flutes in his house that belonged to "a friend", introduces that friend to everyone. I think he might be The Pied Piper. Isn't that one of The Flash's Rogue's Gallery villains?

Is making The Pied Piper gay offensive?

Back to the Speed Force, Flash learns everything he needs to know about his super power. If he doesn't run, the Speed Force flips out and does crazy things like pulling Turbine's plane out of the world and trapping him inside itself. But when The Flash runs and releases that extra energy, wormholes open up within the Speed Force and release the energy. Things don't normally get sucked in. But every time a wormhole opens, Turbine tries to enter it to go home but he just spins around instead, creating a vortex which pulls shit through and ejects it into another time. Unless it crashes into the natural rock formations that exist within the Speed Force for some unknowable reason. So Turbine is to blame for stuff being transported through time! And Flash can go back to running super duper fast! Once The Flash kills Turbine, everything will work out in the end!

Except The Flash probably won't kill Turbine. Maybe he'll try to help him get back to 1944 so by the time The Flash returns to his time, Turbine will probably be dead. Maybe he'll be an old man and Barry Allen will visit with him. Maybe he'll become his Sidekick! Especially since Barry feels too responsible to fuck up the timeline by sending Turbine back to 1944. So he wants to take Turbine to the future with him. Turbine doesn't want to go and would rather kill The Flash.

How much more of a literal break from reality can Turbine get? He's been pulled out of it into Magic Picture Land.

Flash forces Turbine out of the Speed Force with him but Turbine yanks off his Lightning Bolt ear rig that lets him hear when he runs faster than the speed of sound and, I think, also contains the warning system that he isn't going to need anymore once he removes Turbine from the Speed Force. But after they escape, Iris West finds his antenna. It looks like her part of the boat did crash inside the Speed Force with the other victims. She'll probably find a way to contact Flash with his earpiece. But until then, she'll get to watch images of Barry Allen as he fucks Patty.

On exiting the Speed Force, Flash ends up in Gorilla City. Yay! It Monkey Time! Sorry if that offended any sentient gorillas reading this.

The Flash #8 Rating: +1 Rating. Still enjoying this comic! And now I'm pretending that Turbine doesn't spin very fast at all but he thinks he does. He'd be my favorite sidekick ever if he just followed The Flash around and spun about.