DC Universe Presents #12: Kid Flash

The hardest part about a Flash/Kid Flash story is making it believable. They should be able to overcome any enemy as long as their foes don't also have super speed.

For those intelligent people refusing to read Teen Titans until Scott Lobdell is replaced as writer, let me give some background on this story. In the pages of Teen Titans (as the cover states), Kid Flash was out getting Chinese Food when some half-dinosaur, half-teenaged kids come out of Danny the Alley and get up to no good. Luckily Kid Flash is there to stop them! But too bad he couldn't stop them in the eight pages the story was allowed in the back of Teen Titans! Now they had to waste a whole issue of DC Universe Presents on it!

Oh look! Kid Flash gives the readers a summary on page one.

Thanks for the help, Bart Allen!

I captioned that panel with that Bart Allen bullshit because there's too much to talk about in that panel for it all to be underneath in bold text. First off, "those very few" not following his adventures? There is no shame in that! Don't be guilted into thinking you're missing a fantastic title by Bart Allen's hyperbole! Teen Titans is an awful title right now. This is primarily because Scott Lobdell is writing the series and he was never meant to be a writer. Maybe he dreamed of being a writer some day. But when a guy sends in scripts to Marvel that are rejected by Tom DeFalco, another crappy writer, you know he stinks. So don't think you should give Teen Titans a chance just because DC is using DC Universe Presents as a commercial to try to swell its numbers.

Second, N.O.W.H.E.R.E.'s base was in the Antarctic, not the Arctic. Hey, Scott Lobdell, Tom DeFalco, and Fabian Nicieza! Here's an elementary school website that helps explain the differences: Arctic versus Antarctic. They are not the same! Stop using them interchangeably. My guess is that someone someday will realize how many times this mistake was made across multiple issues and retcon some idiot explanation.

Third, how the hell was Mystery Island a "land made from jigsaw patches of different places and points in time"? The only thing they encountered there were dinosaurs! If I were Kid Flash, I would have described it as an island that time forgot! You know, like that war in G.I. Combat? The way he describes it makes me think Mystery Island is an old staple of DC that has been used before. The way it was used in Teen Titans, I never would have guessed they could have stumbled upon old west gunslingers or some rocket pack packing future people.

Fourth, if Kid Flash and the rest of the Titans realize that Danny the Alley is actually Danny, then I want to see them visiting him occasionally! That would be entirely super duper crazy fucked up if they just forget about him and leave him to a life of stray cats, overflowing dumpsters, and pissed on walls.

Fifth, nice of a writer to begin stating that continuity doesn't matter. A comic book like DC Universe Presents would be a great place to tell tales out of continuity. A place where writers could go no holds barred and just forget that their story takes place in DC's new world building environment. But of course that won't happen and saying "continuity doesn't matter" isn't true. It's just a clever way of saying, "This story is a silly bit of fluff that doesn't really mean anything." Which I'm not against! I'm ready to read a fun story from DC, believe me! I'm just not sure "Dinosaur Teenagers" fits the Hadrosaur's bill. I mean the bill on his baseball cap since he's a teenager! Ha ha! Dinosaur humor!

Just one more question before I begin reading the actual story:

What the hell does this mean?! Is Scott Lobdell a genocider?! Maybe Fabian is calling him a Neanderthal? I'm super curious!

Fabian Nicieza wasn't kidding when he said forget continuity. Kid Flash is chasing after the Pterodactyl girl and filling nine large Narration Boxes with comments about teenage girls ignoring him and how hot the pterodactyl girl is and how fighting with her probably means destroying a possible romance with her. Kid Flash definitely isn't thinking like a normal teenaged boy that's just begun a romantic encounter with a smoking, black naked super chick. Perhaps his romantic feelings pass just as quickly as everything else for him. Or his ADHD causes him to forget about Solstice while he's trying to nail the dinosaur girl.

Even in Kid Flash's Narration Boxing, Nicieza drops any thought about continuity. He thinks (or Narration Boxes, to be more accurate, since the boxes don't work at all like thought bubbles used to): "And is it even the least bit odd she speaks English?" And then when he begins speaking to her, knowing she speaks English, he says, "Fight's over. No mas! Me: Friend. You speakezie English, right?" What the hell is wrong with this kid? I think he might be a bit unraveled from time travel and running fast. I should probably give him a break.

Turns out Dinosaur girl speaks English, French, Italian, German, Mandarin, and Japanese. I do appreciate that she says she's "conversant" in these languages and not fluent. Unlike that Siobhan over in Supergirl who says she's fluent in Kryptonian but whenever she speaks it, she's always all "Ye this" and "Ye that" and "shillelagh begorah" and "blarney leprechaun." Although maybe by saying conversant, she actually means she's pretty much fluent. She speaks really well the English, yes?

Kid Flash kind of makes friends with this girl called "Dac." He continues to hit on her because he's just a maja playa like that. I don't blame him though. She is kind of hot in a "pterodactyl ate her head" kind of way.

So is she just a normal girl living in the skin of a dinosaur?

But before Kid Flash can get out of the batter's box, he's attacked by her friend, Teryx. Kid Flash's impression of him makes no sense.

Kid Flash learned how to Narration Box at Grifter's School of Profound Nonsense and Seemingly Understandable Inanity.

Basically, he's cool because he seems like a rugged man? Is that how to interpret that thought full of stereotyping and gender-related hate speech? Is Kid Flash saying "men" need to be a certain way to be "cool"? You're not going to earn many intelligent, life-long friends with those kinds of thoughts, Kid. So it's good they're just thoughts. Keep 'em to yourself, buddy!

Dac jumps in to stop the fight since she was busy flirting with Kid Flash. Well, she was telling him how many languages she spoke which is pretty impressive! That could be interpreted as flirting, right?

Dac's costume really is super cute. Silly and impractical, but cute.

Dac calms everyone down and Kid Flash rushes off to find their third friend, Steg. He manages to find him hassling some customers in a Chinese restaurant which has lizards in terrariums in the dining room. He's pretty pissed off about this for some reason and he releases a gas that transforms the lizards into man-sized dinosaurs. Kid Flash arrives a bit too late to stop him and ends up fleeing from the roomful of carnivores.

I actually like this bit here. Notice no Narration Boxes to get the point across? That's because I cut it out of that top panel. Not. Needed.

Teryx explains that Steg is a dino-supremacist which explains why he flipped the fuck out in the Chinese restaurant. But Dac says it's not so simple. He's just smart and misunderstood. And in the space of the last ten minutes that Kid Flash has spent around them, he comes to a conclusion.

Wow, Bart. You're so observant.

(continuing from the caption) Except this comic hasn't shown any of that so far! Dac has defended Steg but she also showed how much she cared for Teryx when she held him and helped him out when Kid Flash pummeled him. So this conclusion really just comes out of nowhere. But now that the writer has told me that there is a love triangle going on here (actually, to be a true love triangle, Steg needs to be in love with Teryx), I feel all sad and heartbreaky and melancholic for poor Teryx and the forlorn position he's in. cri cri.

Teryx tries to help Kid Flash stop Steg but when they find him on a nearby roof with Dac, Steg has thrown his sack of dinosaur-making gas on a street light across the way. Teryx warns if the sack is ripped by Steg shooting one of his manticore barbs into it, it'll douse hundreds of people and change them into monsters. Steg shoots at the sack and while Kid Flash is picking the barbs out of the air at super speed, Dac and Steg disappear underground. Seems they lied to Teryx and they were basically eloping away from the Mysterious Mystery Island of Mysteries. Teryx decides it's his mission to stop them and keep them from causing any harm. Kid Flash realizes he needs to report to the Teen Titans and they need to stop the other dinosaurs Steg created as they rampage across New York.

He's being serious. You really are a masochist if you're currently reading Teen Titans.

DC Universe Presents #12 Rating: -2 Ranking. I'm dropping this title two ranks to show my extreme disapproval for it being used in this way. This was really just an advertisement for people not reading Teen Titans to try to bring them over to read that book. This tale could have been told in Teen Titans since they've been doing short stories and short-short back-up stories in Lobdell's books lately anyway. It's an awful idea with dumb creatures that should never have made it's way into this book.