The Flash #17

How much do you want to bet the next story featuring Grodd will also be called Gorilla Warfare?

This cover begins with a pun (an old, overused pun but still a pun), so I'm really excited to get back to the good old normal Scarlet Punster of yore! This whole gorilla invasion is getting too serious! I mean, as serious as an invasion of monkeys can get. Man. If Portland were ever invaded by monkeys I would just sit on the roof watching the chaos with a gigantic grin on my face. I may or may not be drinking sake, depending on whether or not I had any in the fridge before the monkey invasion began and kept me from getting to Fred Meyers.

The issue begins with Grodd and The Flash battling inside the speed force. Five pages of punching and kicking and bravado but not a single pun. My disappointment knows no end. See how disappointed I am? I can't even think up a pun of my own!

Meanwhile at Central City Stadium where the apes have half the population of the city hooked into their Illusion Matrix, Flash's father figure, the police detective, dives past the apes and unplugs the machine.

Stupid monkeys! Every super villain knows you're supposed to surround the power source with a force field! And that you're supposed to surround the force field's power source with another force field that is powered by a source inside the other force field! Impenetrable!

Turbine and the Rogues help out Flash's Father Figure since he only unplugs one of many transmitters. They send the machines into the Mirror World and save everybody from the Illusion Matrix!

Really, dude? Least imaginative thing you could have said. I bet whenever you're out sailing with friends and y'all get attacked by a shark, you're the first to scream, "We're gonna need a bigger boat!" Then you probably high five somebody.

The illusion over Central City drops and nobody makes a single fucking pun. I'm about ready to throw this comic against the wall! What a travesty! This is supposed to be a Flash comic book! I'm going to write DC an angry letter.

Dear DC,

I hope this letter finds you well. I've been reading and thoroughly enjoying your "relaunch" of your intellectual properties. I think you have been doing a bang up job and may I commend you (if I may) for your business acumen on screwing that creator Scott Shaw out of all of his royalties to your Captain K'rot character? I was wondering, though, how you got about the legalities of still using the name Pig Iron for his sidekick? Perhaps you owned that character outright? Anyway, I wasn't writing merely to praise you for your cutthroat business practices (well, not exclusively, that is). I was mainly wondering if you, perchance, had a moment to read your "The Flash" monthly serial recently? Mssrs. Manapul and Buccellato have been putting together this normally high quality serialization of your "Scarlet Speedster" character. (Oh, and before I go any further, might I say what a wise and unquestionable business move it was to replace that all too fallible "Wally West" with the much more stoic mother's boy, Barry Allen. Kudos!) While I have mostly been enjoying the tales of high adventure and bravado of Central City and Keystone City's protector (another brilliant move to merge the two cities of The Flash's origin so as to remove confusion from the minds of all but the most stubborn), I find myself having a moment of doubt as to the direction Mssrs. Manapul and Buccellato have been leading the serialization in the last couple of issues. While I laud their use of the always humorous title, "Gorilla Warfare," I must say I am a bit disappointed at the relative lack of puns throughout the monthly magazine. The puns have always been my favorite feature of the serialization and I feel the quality is sorely lacking when they are left out. I read this adventure series to relax after a long and stressful day of relaxing without reading illustrated tales, and I expect to be entertained with spasms of laughter from the frivolous tales told. The serious turn this title has taken has me severely rethinking my continuing purchase of your normally well-executed entertainment pamphlet. Please take Mssrs. Manapul and Buccellato to task for their failures so that I do not have to engage my local comic book store owner in a discussion on the number of titles he reserves for me each month.

Thank you, with kind regards,
Eee! Tess Ate Chai Tea!

I feel much better! Except I'm suddenly strangely melancholic about the loss of the art of letter writing! Oh well! Maybe The Flash has some puns waiting for me!

No sooner had I written the letter than DC responded with a positive change in their pun status! The illusion drops and the army moves in and the monkeys are defeated which causes one apt monkey to drop a pun bomb all over my face.

"Grodd has abandoned us!" Oh the existential goodness! Welcome to civilization, monkeys! Also, that dumber monkey on the right probably could have come up with a good pun for "prophets" but he didn't even try. Jerk.

With the sudden realization that Grodd cannot save them, the monkeys flee from Central City. They pack up in their pods and blast back to wherever Gorilla City is located. Maybe just outside Tinasha? While they flee, they round up Solovar who is still barely alive. Thanks for that! I was so worried for him when he died just a few panels after he was introduced and had become my favorite monkey character ever! Except for that chimpanzee that wears the Sherlock Holmes get-up and solves occult crimes. He's funny because he's a monkey that wears a hat!

Meanwhile in the Speed Force, Grodd gets run over by a Wooly Mammoth and they disappear deep into the Speed Force. The Flash grabs Iris and her friends and vibrates them back to Central City. The Flash claims he's the only one that can exit the Speed Force but I suspect Grodd has enough of an attachment to the place that he'll be able to secure his own exit. And I bet he exits six or seven years in the past to be a thorn in Green Lantern and The Flash's sides so that they can discuss fighting a gorilla together when they meet up again in Justice League #2! Everything works out!

Meanwhile meanwhile in Mirror World (sheesh, there are a lot of non-real dimensions in this comic book!), The Rogues recruit Turbine, the silly spastic loony tunes. Then they kick out all of the civilians they saved and begin to tinker with the technology they stole from the monkeys. I suppose that will be trouble later.

Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile in Dr. Elias's lab, Dr. Elias uncovers some unbroken Speed Force Tubes hidden in the floor and threatens The Flash. I suppose that will be trouble even later!

Barry Allen pretends to have been with the people trapped for three months in the Speed Force and voila! The Flash gets a secret identity again!

Everything is not fine! What about the puns, Barry?! WHAT ABOUT THE PUNS?!

One month later, Reverse Flash comes running out of nowhere talking about going in reverse but still running forward. What a stupid doody face! Maybe he'll create Reverse Flash Point and fix everything! Go away, Reverse Flash! Go home! You're not wanted here! Don't mess up my New 52 and return the universe to the one that all the people who love DC cartoons are missing! Leave my new chaotic mess that I love like an unborn child alone!

Unborn children are the easiest to love because you have yet to resent them for keeping you up all night. That's why I decided to not have five children. I love all of my children I'll never have! And any time I think five children to not have is too many, I can just not have three children! Or sometimes when I really want to feel all of their non-existent unconditional love, sometimes I think about not having five hundred children! And I do! I mean, do not. Umm. What?

The Flash #17 Rating: +1 Ranking. This comic book is nice to look at and has monkeys. Does Batman have a Reverse Enemy? Perhaps Manbat? Superman has Bizarro. And The Flash has Reverse Flash. Who does Wonder Woman have? Slacker Man? Not-So-Wonderful Woman?