Convergence: The Flash #1

Barry Allen gets to live!

Barry Allen deserved to die in Crisis On Infinite Earths. The villain of any story must be punished at the end of the story or else you teach children that chaos, bedlam, and scoffing at laws pay off in the end. We can't have that. So Barry Allen, being the initial cause of the Infinite Earth Debacle, had to die as the chaos he created finally came to a close. It's simple arithmetic. By way of literature.

This issue manages to gain One Speed Force Point (The Flash earns Speed Force Points whenever the writer makes a pun based on The Flash's super speed or his name or anything else that I think is punny enough) right off the bat by calling itself "Out of the Running." What is it about The Flash that linked puns to his super power? Was that part of his origin that I missed? Is it because he gained his powers from a "flash" of lightning? That isn't really a pun but it's close enough to the level of puns one might find while reading a Flash comic book. Nobody really cares what happens in this story right? I haven't read it yet but I'm pretty sure it will be about how Barry Allen has learned to live without his powers or his city or Iris West for the last year. And then Planet Brainiac will challenge him to battle for Gotham's life and then the issue will end. Unless it's one of those issues that introduces the bad guy and lets Barry interact with them a little bit before it ends. Either way, it's the same story I've read twenty-seven times before this. So let's just count up the Speed Force Points and run along, shall we?

The title page garners two Speed Force Points! One for "Out of the Running" and one for Barry "flashing" the city.

The third page shows he has a treadmill in his bedroom (possibly of the cosmic variety) and even though he's also making coffee to keep himself moving, no Speed Force points are earned. He's still wearing his costume ring. Does that mean if he opens the ring, does a teeny, tiny costume fall out? You know, because shapeshifters seem to be stuck in the shape or at the size they were when the dome fell, so his suit can't grow, right? I wonder if Plastic Man is stuck in the form of a mailbox?

The treadmill is his cosmic treadmill. Barry just happened to be visiting from the 30th Century where he and Iris went to live. And while he was in town, the dome dropped down on him. And he lost his powers.

But he gained another Speed Force Point!

I hope this issue ends with Barry facing off against a bunch of gorillas from one of the other cities so that next issue can be called "Gorilla Warfare!" That's always a funny joke to use whenever Grodd appears!

Barry has decided that he's no use against the impenetrable dome so maybe he should leave it up to smarter, less boring depowered super heroes. Instead of helping find a way out of the dome, he runs. That's not worth a Speed Force Point. There's nothing funny about Barry running in the mornings! Even if he has to do it at normal speed!

This gets half a Speed Force Point for playing off the fact that Barry would normally say, "I'll be there in a flash!" Also, pagers! Ha ha!

Barry's lab assistant at the Gotham Police Department is a woman named Josie who wants Barry to be more than a coworker. But since he can't give up hope that he'll never find Iris again (especially since he has a cosmic treadmill that will allow him to go to any time to find her (also can't it take him to a time before he had sex with Josie so he technically didn't cheat on Iris? Just, you know, thinking out loud)). While thinking about how he's stuck in this other life that he isn't ready to accept, he thinks, "Maybe this is what life is going to be. I can't run from it." Bold text not mine! Thanks for making sure I caught that one, Tom Napolitano! That makes the score four and one half Speed Force Points so far. That's already a pretty good score and I'm not even halfway through this comic.

Barry skips having coffee with Josie because he has a date with Bruce. They talk about how Barry is a quitter and Bruce is a never-gonna-quitter. And then they end with a Speed Force Point!

Barry only understands advice in running analogies.

Barry leaves Bruce and takes a cab back to work. On the way, he gets a page from Josie about a crime scene nearby. Barry tells the cabbie that "it's faster on foot" and moves the Speed Force Point total to six and a half! And then Planet Brainiac chimes in with his blah blah fucking la dee blah.

When the dome falls, Barry runs off to talk to Bruce and realizes he has his super speed back. But not before some guy says, "That's right, buddy. Run and hide!" Ha ha ha! Ow. My sides!

And on the final page, The Flash meets his competition.

This must be Tangent Universe Superman.

Convergence: The Flash #1 Rating: Seven and a half Speed Force Points! That's a pretty good score although I think it's a bit low if this were truly representative of a Pre-Crisis Flash comic book. I think DC Editorial mandated three good puns per page back then. I wonder if Batman ever screamed at Barry to knock it off while on a Justice League mission. "You don't hear me talking about fucking bats all of the time, do you?!" And then of course everybody began pointing out all of his Batgear and then he'd stomp off in a huff.