The Flash Annual #3

Because The Flash is a total jizz blister?

I Revile Comics! That should be the name of this blog! But no! I had to go with Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea because I'm too clever for my own good! Also because I created the blog before I knew what the fucking blog was going to be about. Maybe I'll make "I Revile Comics" the subtitle! That way when people find the blog, they'll know exactly what they're getting into! After they've looked up the definition for revile.

The stupid Annual begins, as all stupid annuals do, at the beginning of a story that I'd rather read in the regular monthly format. I hate annuals. They cost too much and they're too long to hold my attention and they force me to write commentaries on fifth Wednesday weeks instead of being able to take the time off to sit in my underwear playing video games and eating Oreo cookies. They remind me that I could be not using my brain instead of using my brain! Have you noticed how much nicer life is when you don't use your brain? I mean the conscious part of your brain and not the part of the brain that reminds your lungs to keep breathing and your heart to keep beating and all that crap. That telegraph line needs to keep going or else life would be no kind of life at all.

So Barry is out doing shit and then he notices someone in a hoodie in an affluent white neighborhood and he has the typical reaction of a well-off white police officer.

It's possible he's reacting to the stranger spray painting graffiti on a wall of his newly rebuilt city but why would I want to give him the benefit of the doubt? He may be a super hero but he'll always just be a cop to me.

One thing I didn't mention in my commentary on The Flash #30 was how unimaginative the taggers were in Central City. Every piece of graffiti on the police station had "pig" in it. I would guess that this tagger was spray painting "pig" on the wall right now but I already saw on the cover that she's spray painting "[Lightning Bolt]UX" which I'm interpreting to mean Flash Sucks.

Barry rushes over to stop the criminal and discovers the kid has spray painted some anti-Flash propaganda on the wall. Barry can't let him get away with that, so Barry decides to use his super speed to catch the kid even though he isn't in his Flash costume. I guess Barry figures since the kid is a vandal, he's too stupid to realize the only way this yuppie asshole could have caught him is by running faster than any normal person can run. Barry and the police have a good laugh about the stupid kid being arrested and go back to their easy lives of subjugating the poor, the different, and the mentally ill.

I'm just checking but it's okay for me to write horrible things about police officers, right? The current social climate says they're our enemies, so I can make really horrible jokes and comments about them without anybody caring, correct? Fucking pigs! They're probably straight and Christian as well! Assholes!

Back at work, Barry Allen has a run-in with the Theory of Relativity. I have a feeling introducing the Theory of Relativity into a Flash comic book is going to get a little bit confusing. As Barry nears the speed of light, time slows down for him. Which means time speeds up for everybody else. When he's done running at super speed, more time has passed in the world than has passed for him. So The Flash runs halfway across the world in mere moments to retrieve a South American fruit for Patty. He does it in the space of a few seconds so that nobody will notice he was gone. But when he gets back, his super hot coffee is already cold. And everybody on Earth has aged 100 years! That seems like the opposite of The Flash's supposed powers! Suddenly he's fast in theory but since time is warping around him, he's not fast at all? I guess he'll just have to stop running close to the speed of light.

I have a feeling The Flash is going to be giving me a headache.

And then Barry gets introduced to the kid he apprehended earlier for wearing a hoodie. And it's no surprise to anybody ever who it is.

Although it is a surprise that he doesn't have orange hair anymore.

Iris West actually asks Barry if he can hang out with her nephew because he needs a decent role model. The fucking gall this lady has! Why the fuck would Barry want to take time out of his life to hang out with some kid he doesn't even know?! That's the kind of favor you only ask of people you're having se...oh! Barry, you dog!

Meanwhile twenty years in the future, Barry visits the grave of Wally West because he needs to save him from dying fifteen years previously (that's five years from now!). Why does he need to do this? Comic books!

Whenever I can't actually answer a question because either I don't know the answer or the answer is too ridiculous to care about, I answer "Fuck you" or "Comic books." Those answers aren't as different as they might first appear to be.

I still don't know what he's trying to repair or how saving Wally West will repair it!

Back in the present, Barry visits an idiot criminal calling himself Mogul. It's a pun just like everything else in The Flash comic books! You see, Mogul has a gun that draws moisture from the environment to make snow! He makes snow drifts and skis away from his crimes. See? It's another stupid pun! Anyway, Barry points out that this guy's snow gun doesn't just make free snow. It takes moisture from one place to use it in another. It's a lesson Barry's going to have to learn when he realizes his super powers are based in science and that speed times distance equals time and that the Theory of Relativity isn't just a theory! It's the law! Ha ha! I stole that from Beakman! He'll never know! Besides, he probably stole it from Bill Nye!

Meanwhile twenty years from now again, Gorilla Grodd is busy eating brains while sitting in a rope web. I guess he's become a Spider Monkey in the intervening years. He's also been busy eating the brains of people connected to the Speed Force so that he could gain their powers. He managed to eat Daniel West's brain, gaining the Reverse-Speed-Force Power! Which means he can run slow? No wait! It means he can go back in time! Which Grodd did! He traveled back in time to save documents lost to history. Which is why all of Earth's history books suddenly have mentions of talking apes in them.

The Flash dreams of committing infanticide. Just like a cop!

Flash and Grodd battle in the future as Flash and some hooligans with ultrasonic vibrators tangle in the past. In the past, The Flash says he'll never take a life. In the future, The Flash blows Grodd's head off by putting a tiny bomb in his ear. Enh. Twenty years can really change a person.

Speciesist.

Now Future Flash has determined that he needs to go back in time to kill present Flash. Because being in charge of the time stream is a job that nobody should have! Or something.

The Flash Annual #3 Rating: Relativistic! Time travel is never a good thing for a comic book character to involve themselves with. It just gets so complicated that they eventually simply have to kill themselves! I guess. I'm sure the death of The Flash will solve everything! At least for about twenty years. That's about how long the solution held last time.