The Flash #39

Amanda Conner nails every cat mood: eating toe filth, big yawns, face licks on other kitties, and staring psychotically at a fixed spot in the distance until you phone 9-1-1 because the cat must be focused on some eldritch horror which you can't see.

I'm pretty sure I'd rather read this cover story than the story inside the cover. I bet if Harley Quinn can get these cheetahs going fast enough, she can break the time barrier! Then she'll arrive about fifteen years in the past where she'll accidentally run over Barry's mom, Nora. Then she'll have to make it look like a homicide and use her psychologist know-how to implant false memories into young Barry Allen so that he doesn't remember coming home from school to find a sexy clown splashing buckets of blood all over the living room but instead a speedster like himself. Another thing that would make it better? Art by Amanda Conner instead of Brett "Critics Can Suck My Dick" Booth!

By the way, what does DC Comics have against women named Nora?

This issue begins with Alastair the Horse's Luddite friend remembering how pleasant the days during Forever Evil were due to the whole town being blacked out. He was free from the horrible way technology has enriched our lives! Except for that part about people always being able to contact you no matter how hard you're trying to avoid them. That part sucks. I'm with Luddite Horse Guy on that part. I tell people that I don't have a cell phone so that I don't have to buy into their outrageous monthly prices and years long contracts. But really I just don't want to be at everybody I knows beck and call. If you don't respond nigh on immediately, then you get grief about it! It's easier just to not have a phone. Also, I'm convinced cell phones are the Mark of the Beast that John saw in his vision. Cell phones are practically attached to people's hands and with all the strange, future objects he would have been confused by, he probably wouldn't have been able to really differentiate the phone from the right hand of the people holding it. Then he'd just see them moving their right hand in front of some other object to pay for whatever they're paying for. So that's the main reason I don't have one! Although my middle name is "666" so I might already be in league with Satan. Thanks a lot, mom!

Here are the things I learned from college: the history of the Luddites, how the works of Horatio Alger helped shape America's can-do attitude, and how to flip a beer bottle cap hard enough and fast enough to draw blood. I also remember about five thousand other things that give me just enough superficial knowledge on a variety of subjects that make me appear much smarter than my IQ of 28 would have you believe. I bet most people think I have an IQ of like 40 or something!

For a guy who loves peace and quiet, he sure talks a lot.

Nearby (as the caption box reads), Iris takes her long ass freakish legs into a used bookshop. Her lower body is so long that her vagina is as big as the bookseller's head. Also that might be a trick of perspective. Whoever got to name the books has the best imagination! I'm guessing it was Brett Booth.

I think the seventh book down in the stack in the lower left is called "Nazi Farts."

Iris is headed to the "Mysternis" section to meet her contact in the police department: Patty Whatshername! I bet most of the information Patty passes on is stuff like "I'll kill you if you try to touch Barry's cock" and "Your tits aren't that perky."

Iris is a great reporter! She always asks all of the right questions like "Give me everything you have on the thing I'm interested in!" That's sure to bust her case wide open! Unless journalists don't bust cases wide open. I think they dig scoops or something.

That Marina and the Diamonds song where she sings, "You say Y-E-S to everything!", has been stuck in my head all morning. Get out, song! I have things to do!

Patty tells Iris a whole bunch of details about cases that are being worked which the Central City Police Department would probably frown heavily on. Then Patty points out that they need some hard evidence against The Flash to prove that he's gone from hero to killer in about two days. When you only get to be part of a story that's twenty pages long and takes place only once per month, you have to jump to conclusions quickly or people will stop reading your stupid comic book. So now the two closest people to Barry Allen believe he's psychotic. I mean, he is because he's Future Barry Allen from the future! But I bet it would still hurt Present Barry's feelings to know they doubted him so quickly!

Meanwhile Future Barry is working the Overload case that nobody else knows about because it hasn't happened yet. Except part of it has happened which is the part he's investigating but Barry knows the rest of it will happen later and he needs to stop it! So using the knowledge he retained from his criminology class on different types of horse hairs, he realizes the two Overload victims he's CSIing were killed by somebody working with a Clydesdale named Alastair!

Okay, he doesn't figure out the name of the horse. I bet Batman would have though.

Before Barry RUNS off to investigate more things, Patty slips a GPS tracker app onto his phone because Barry is too stupid to notice. But I bet Alastair's friend will notice! He'll be all, "What's making that awful racket?!" And he'll pull the phone out of Barry's coat and say, "It's this shitty GPS app running on your phone!" And Barry will be all, "What?! I didn't put that there! That jealous bitch!"

Meanwhile in the Land That Time Got To Forget About But DC Won't Let Me Forget About It, The Flash fucks up.

Ha ha! This reminds me that I need to DVR Land of the Lost tomorrow morning on ME TV. Love that show!

Hairy Potter rescues Flash because he needs him to be bait to call down the Speed Force Lightning. The Flash realizes too late that he's a big dupe and is knocked unconscious by Hairy Potter. I bet the lightning that gets called down misses him and hits his friend Johnnie since Johnnie just got her name mentioned a page earlier.

Back in the future, Future Flash catches Overload before he can blow up everybody using Central City's new citywide wi-fi signal sponsored by LexCorps. Go on! Try to tell me that wi-fi signal is going to be secure! I'd rather pay for Comcast than get free wi-fi from Lex Luthor! And Comcast is the devil!

As Future Flash beats the living tar out of Overload and tells him out loud that he's going to kill him because who cares about the crowd all around him and his reputation, Patty and/or Iris says, "Flash! You can't actually mean you're going to kill this innocent person with the cute horse that I'd love to put between my legs! *dramatic weeping*" Oh, I guess I'm going on record that I think Patty said it since I added the dramatic weeping part.

Really? That's the headline you're going to run with? Get it! I said "run"!

Is that why Barry Allen and Iris West were made for each other? Because he runs around saving people and she runs stories about him running around saving people? That's a lot of running jokes about running.

Future Flash hurts Patty as she tries to stop him from killing Overload which makes him way worse than when he was just killing people. Before he hurt Patty, Iris was just all, "Yes! Pulitzer! The Flash is evil and I get to report it and become super important!" But after Patty gets hurt trying to hold Flash's arm as he punches Overload, Iris is all, "No way! Unh-uh! Now you've gone too far and I have to interfere because this is finally something that's more important than the size of my name on the byline!" And then because of all of the distractions, Overload gets back up, sucks down some wi-fi signals, and begins kicking Future Flash's ass. And in the Speed Force Forgotten Realms, Barry has been tied to a slab and is ready to become a sacrifice.

The Flash #39 Rating: -2 Ranking. Holy fuck I can't wait until all of this time travel/Future Flash bullshit is over! I might not be as annoyed with the story if somebody else were doing the art though. The way Brett Booth draws that arrogant fucking shit eating grin on Iris West's face when she believes she's going to oust Lois Lane from the Number One Reporter spot makes me want to slap her into the Speed Force.

Gah! Nobody should ever smile at me like this! Get thee hence, jolly vampire!