The Flash #31

The Flash is trying to tear the Brett Booth off of himself. "I want to look normal!"

I never really had a problem with Brett Booth's art. It was a bit cartoony but I generally like cartoony. And then he had to go and open his big dumb mouth and start telling critics how to criticize! Ain't nobody gonna tell motherfuckin' Tess how to criticize, bitch! You're lucky Van Jensen is practically my brother so I'm going to go easy on you. But I'm watchin' you, Booth.

While I'm moaning on and on, let me give a hearty Fuck You Friday to Tumblr. Can we get the Recommended Posts off of my feed please? I work hard to avoid comic book spoilers of every variety. And now I can't avoid them as you recommend fucking blogs with covers from comic book issues that won't be out for three months! If I want to know how a story ends, I read the fucking story. If I want to know what will be happening after the current story, I'll finish the current story and then pick up the next issue with the new story in it. If I want to know what the fuck is going on in Catwoman, I'll find an interview with Ann Nocenti where she explains what she's failing to do in her writing.

That last one had nothing to do with Tumblr spoiling shit for me but I thought it fit in well there. How come Ann Nocenti sounds like she knows what she's doing and knows what kind of stories she wants to tell when she's talking about her upcoming Catwoman arcs. But the minute she scripts it, it becomes complete nonsense. Does she send her script through Babel Fish from English to Spanish to Japanese to German before translating it back into English?!

Speaking of Van Jensen being my friend, I catch his secret message on the first page. Because we're besties!

Van Jensen and I have one friend in common on Facebook. This is a reference to that friend's old website.

The guy who killed this guy is called Black Mold. Yet another super villain naming himself incorrectly! You don't want to give heroes a clue as to how to stop you! If you kill people with fungal spores, you want to name yourself Mystery Date! Or Designated Driver! Or Phallic Retribution! But not Black Mold! That's a sure way for Batman (or The Flash, I guess) to come up with a protective suppository to make him immune to your one weapon before the big confrontation! You want at least one issue where you win the fight because Batman didn't know you were going to choke him with mushroom sperm. Make Batman test his own blood to figure that shit out. And while he's playing World of Warcraft waiting for the Batcomputer to do all of the work, you can be out robbing more banks! Or just killing random people like it seems like you're doing at the beginning of this comic. But where's the profit in that?!

Tell her to fuck off, Barry! You don't owe Iris anything! Especially spending time with her vandal nephew!

Patty is feeling neglected and it's no wonder. Barry would rather spend time with Iris's idiot nephew than with her. Why is Barry trying to impress Iris? I can't believe he's that decent of a person. Although he might have some kind of God Complex and believes he's the only fucker in Central City that can steer Wally in the right direction. Or he has a huge crush on Wally. Or Iris. Or both!

Ignoring the babysitting plot, Barry has discovered that a mess of super villain weapons and technology were stolen from the Central City Evidence Lab during the Crime Syndicate's invasion. Members of an old gang are being killed by different pieces of technology, so Barry believes one person is responsible for all the murders. When Barry tells this to Singh, Singh gets annoyed! What the fuck?! Stop being a statistician and start being a practitioner of justice, you jerk! Who cares how many cases are closed as long as the ones that are closed are closed correctly! And who cares how many open cases there are? Don't make me dislike you passionately, Detective Singh. Ask the fictional characters of Tom DeFalco and Scott Lobdell how it feels to have earned my wrath.

Barry decides to investige the crime scenes as The Flash when he realizes, yet again, that his watch seems to be getting slower and slower. Seriously though. If we bring real world physics into this with how time slows down the closer one gets to the speed of light then we're going to have a Flash that does exactly the opposite of what he's supposed to do. So he can run around the world in no time flat relative to himself. But how is that any good if the rest of the world has now zipped ahead even more time than it seemed to have taken Barry? He's just been neutered by the Theory of Relativity!

Just like a cop! Thinking about shooting before he knows what he's shooting at!

I once had a cop yell freeze at me while I ran across a dark field with a Lazer Tag gun in my hand. He pointed his flashlight at me but I don't know if he had his gun out. If I were in a major urban center with even a hint of regularly occurring violent crimes, I might have been shot for being young and in the dark and holding something. It's a good thing I lived in a city where the worst crime was probably car radio theft. The cop was also lucky I didn't fucking Lazer Tag his ass! Ba-de-de-deep!

Anyway, Barry's late to meeting Wally West in a dark park.

Right here at the "eventually," I'd turn around and leave. Fuck you! I'm doing you a favor watching your kid! You're lucky I arrived at all!

Wally walks off because who wants to hang out with a cop? Hell, Barry's not even a cop! He's a want to be cop lab rat! And he's barely even that right now because he's on some kind of probation or something for being a huge fuck up. But Barry still offers to help out with Wally because he really, really, really wants to bang Iris.

Meanwhile in the future, Future Flash continues to run backwards saving lives where he couldn't save them before. He's also killing off all of his old enemies in the process. He killed Grodd in the annual and poor Sam Scudder eats it this time as he's cut to ribbons by his own mirrors. And then Future Flash continues his trip backwards in time.

The Flash #31 Rating: No change. Perhaps The Flash was supposed to actually confront Black Mold this issue. Or perhaps the cover really is The Flash trying to claw his way out of Brett Booth's style. It certainly isn't a very exciting cover nor did it have much to do with the story inside. So far, this Flash story has not been as exciting as Manapul and Buccellato's run! And since I'm grading on a huge curve because I liked that run so much, this story is mediocre at best! I also don't like Barry being such a pushover to Iris. Who taught him that the best way into a woman's pants is through her asshole nephew? That sounds illegal!