The Flash #20

Last issue I said the book should have been dedicated to Carmine Infantino. Since this month, each comic had a one page dedication to Carmine, my guess is this story will be dedicated to him as well.

This morning I woke up thinking about Gopher from the Disney Winnie the Pooh movie. Could that character have been any worse?! You love a book for years and years and then when the movie comes out, they stick in a character that didn't even exist in the book! Really? Why don't you just come over to my house around breakfast and shit in my mouth, Mr. Disney? How dare you change anything from the book in the movie adaption?! It's like the book is all "words words words" and active reading and intelligent and imaginative. And then the movie is all "images images images" and passive watching and forcing us to now think of the characters the same way as everybody else and capitalist agendas! Okay, sure, the characters are basically based on the images from the book, images which forced their own image into every reader's mind already! But it was a book and therefore it's better! At least I can thank the movie for making it possible for me to run around telling everybody how much I hated the movie compared to the book so they'll see I'm a real fan of character and have been for more years than those lazy idiots who liked the movie!

The above paragraph was sponsored by every smarmy jerk that ever walked out of a movie theater, looked over at his friends and said, "The book was better." Fuck you, you pretentious twat!

I'm not saying "the book was better" is an inaccurate statement. But it's probably the most boring and obvious thing one can say whilst walking out of a movie based on a popular book.

Anyway, welcome to my mind coming out of the fog of sleep at four twenty in the fucking morning.

The Flash #20 begins with Reverse-Flash visiting Marissa (The Vibrator!) in jail as she writes a letter of apology to Gomez (Sprint!). Reverse-Flash undoes her letter to steal her time. I think he collects time this way so that he can travel back in time, possibly? Somehow it fuels him for something or other. This is still the first page so all I have is my usual speculation and nonsense to guide me. After reversing Marissa to the point where her letter only says "Dear Gomez", her head explodes. I think. Reverse-Flash says it's a price that must be paid for taking her time. Perhaps he just kills her himself so that he can keep the amount of time it took her to write the full letter.

Does anybody know anything about healthy eating? Are Oreos and unsweetened iced tea a bad choice for breakfast?

While Reverse-Flash is murdering Marissa, Barry Allen continues to try to pass.

Yes, I think Barry Allen is gay. He does everything fast except relationships. Something keeps holding him back. I suppose it could have something to do with his father being in jail for murdering his mother but I think he'd be the perfect character for portraying a gay man in denial of his sexuality. Not not knowing but struggling to constantly lie to himself about it. If Manapul and Buccellato could stick with The Flash for something like 120 issues, it would be fantastic to be able to write a character that is denying his own sexuality and constantly trying to fit in to a heterosexual lifestyle. But the writers would never explicitly state anything since Barry himself would be denying it so strongly. But imagine how fantastic something like that could be when Barry finally comes to terms with it ten comic book years down the line. And then people would go back and reread all the old Flash comics and just be amazed at how they never saw it before but after Barry comes out, it would all be so obvious because the writers knew it the whole time.

Hmm, I wonder if that's what Scott Snyder is doing over there in Batman with Bruce Wayne?

Dedication to Carmine and a Flash pun with "move on." Plus Part 1 of 6! Everybody strap yourselves in for the long haul!

Barry once again works at the Central City (or Keystone City?) police department now that he's officially back to life. But they gave him a job filing cold cases instead of doing his crime scene investigation lab work stuff he did previously. I think he might have a law suit somewhere if he wanted to pursue it! I would think if he did a spectacular job in the lab, the police force would love to put him back on that job. I guess he was just mediocre and they found somebody better. But the cold case room is in the basement, so that'll make it easier for Barry to change in to The Flash and come and go as he needs.

Stop acting so suspiciously, Iris West. Patty probably meant "sorry for interrupting you boys playing with the big glowing soccer ball," you tart.

I like ending sentences with a nice, short putdown. It's probably why everybody in my family hates me, the pricks.

Patty brings Barry news of Marissa's death. That makes two people that entered the Speed Force now dead. It's because Manapul and Buccellato gave them super powers. I bet DC has a policy that if a writer creates a new super hero, that writer must eventually kill the new super hero before they leave the book. It's to prevent future lawsuits when Manapul and Buccellato are old men eating out of dumpsters while DC rakes in millions from the new Sprint and Vibrator movie.

Barry just got through speaking with Iris, so he knows she's still okay. That means he feels The Flash should probably check up on Gomez. He finds him wearing a hat and a sweatshirt and being black in a subway which is really super duper suspicious.

With profiling abilities like these, you can tell The Flash is definitely a cop.

Gomez tells The Flash that Albert and Marissa were both killed by the same guy. But that's about all The Flash gets out of him before Gomez tears up the subway tracks and gets away while The Flash has to stay behind to save lives.

Later Barry checks out Marissa's corpse in the Central City Morgue. This causes him to think some things which eventually lead him to check out Albert's glowing soccer ball. Yes, the glowing soccer ball from earlier was created by Turbocharger, the first of Reverse-Flash's victims. It turns out the glowing sphere was a camera and it recorded Albert's death at the hands of a blurred figure wearing a lightning bolt on his chest! The Flash doesn't know anything about Reverse-Flash so he decides he should probably go check out that little asshole Kid Flash and talk copyright infringement.

The Flash #20 Rating: No change. Not enough Reverse-Flash for me or Carmine Infantino!