The Flash #15

I think this is a pun about how the feet are used to travel upon roads.

Last issue ended with one of the greatest examples of "Gorilla Ex Machina" I've ever seen in a comic book. And comic books being what they are, there have been a lot of them! For the first forty years in the history of comic books, the most surefire way to get kids to pick up your comic book from the pharmacy comic book rack was to throw an ape or a dinosaur or the word "SHOCKING!" on the cover. Judging by the amount of monkeys and dinosaurs in The New 52 so far, it must still be common wisdom.

The great moment last issue was when Solovar was introduced two pages before he threw his life away to save The Flash. Technically he was introduced in an earlier issue during one of The Flash's Flashbacks to his safari trip. But only Turbine had any idea what that was about so it doesn't really count. Now can The Flash turn the tables on Gorilla Grodd or will Solovar have thrown his life away for nothing? Although I think philosophically speaking (depending on which philosophers were speaking, of course!), a mere ape throwing his life away so that a human being filled with God's Soul and Righteous Glory can live for even just a few more seconds is as majestic a life as an ape can live. Of course those philosophers are idiots.

Barry lies beneath 800 pounds of dead gorilla while Grodd beats his own chest in gorilla victory. But that's not enough to keep Patty Spivot, Barry's love interest, from submitting the first pun of the comic!

Okay, so it's not actually a pun. But you know what I mean! On a meta-textual level it is! Okay, not really. But she said "run" and we're reading a comic book about a guy that runs fast!

Grodd's infusion of speed force suddenly wears out, so Turbine begins throwing rocks at him to distract him while Patty somehow pushes an 800 pound gorilla off of Barry's chest. Luckily Solovar isn't completely dead so he can roll himself off of Barry while Patty pretends to do all of the work. Now Solovar tells her she's supposed to tell Barry something because his mind is always faster than, well, I don't know what he's saying. He's a delirious, dying, time traveling, talking ape! I'm pretty sure he's just babbling nonsense.

Meanwhile Captain Cold and the Rogues are putting their plan into effect. They're going to begin transferring citizens into the Mirror Realm to keep them safe from the monkeys. And of course they're going to do it while punning on each others' gimmicks.

How many times a year do you think Weather Wizard hears this?

While Patty is taking care of Barry, Grodd has found his way back to Dr. Elias's lab to suck down some more Speed Force. Dr. Elias has been storing it in tubes for some reason that may or may not have been explained previously. Probably to help power the city so that they never endure another blackout caused by a time traveling EMP blast.

Iris West's brother and probably Wally West's father, is still running around the streets looking for his sister. But he can't find her because she's on vacation in the Speed Force. He's caught by the apes and sent to Ape School where he'll be part of the project projecting an image of Central City completely destroyed and irradiated to anybody outside the city limits.

Barry Allen lies in bed doing his stupid Speed Mind thing. I guess having access to the Speed Force allows him to see the future and with his Speed Mind deal, he can see every future possibility in nearly no time at all. Using this amazing ability to read the scripts of future issues, he awakens from his unconscious state with the answer to Central City's Gorilla Problem.

Love will find a way, bitches. That's a saying, right?

The Flash #15 Rating: No change. There just wasn't enough comic book in this comic book. Half a dozen pages were taken up by the Speed Mind scenario that might have looked interesting but since I already dislike the entire concept, they really didn't impress me much. Not that I totally dislike the concept of somehow seeing alternate timelines and dealing with those. I just don't like how it was incorporated into The Flash's speed power and somehow associated with his ability to "think fast!" It really is more of a psychic power since he doesn't know most of the stuff he sees in his future possibilities. But I guess that's why it's tied to the Speed Force and that place that seems to access multiple points across the timeline.

The Flash's Speed Mind is a lot like The Centipede's power from Dial H except The Centipede is cooler because he has to live every single possibility and rewind when it doesn't work out. So he's actively trying each one as he goes and people can see a weird blurry afterimage of all of his various tries to solve a problem. I wonder if The Centipede leaves corpses as well or if those just fade away as he replays the timeline over and over?

This power is also reminiscent of the new version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy from the final book, Mostly Harmless, where the guide manipulates the time line so that hitchhikers can get a lift precisely when they need one. Although it mostly just manipulates timelines so that it can get Arthur Dent to die on Earth like he was supposed to! Um, Spoiler Warning for the previous sentence!