Flash #70 (November 1992)

The Free Speech crowd attacking two people (and a dog) on Twitter because they had pronouns in their bio.

I wouldn't hate on people who are actually pro-free-speech but we currently live in the stupidest time where people fully do not understand free speech. It's possible they understand it but after fifty years on this planet, I've finally stopped giving people the benefit of the doubt. So when they're all for banning books because the targets of the ban are people they fundamentally disagree with and they see the ban as a punishment but cry their snowflake asses off about censorship when a twelve year old girl on tumblr demands that they stop saying "retard," you kind of have to either believe they don't understand free speech or they're just hypocritical assholes. Oh, wait. I just realized that by concluding they don't understand free speech, I was giving them the benefit of the doubt! Sorry, they're just assholes! My bad!

Ha ha. I'm still laughing about "incelorillas."

Flash spends the first three pages of this issue explaining what happened in the last piece of the story arc for the readers who couldn't afford the extra $1.25 to purchase Green Lantern #31 this month. That doesn't seem like much but I'm not even sure how I was able to afford it in 1992. I guess I played one less game of Cyberball down at 4th Street Bowl at two in the morning that week.

Green Lantern spends the fourth page trying to grab some bananas with his ring. Recently having devolved into a caveman, Hal Jordan has been reduced to the basest male actions: eating, fucking, and killing. Luckily for Flash, Hal has yet to realize how horny he is.

If I were Wally, I'd shove one yellow boot into my asshole and one over my cock.

I bet Wally, having a way bigger brain than I have and being far less concerned about Hal's new caveman sexual desires, will throw one of his boots over Hal's hand to incapacitate him. Rex will probably just piss all over himself to become invulnerable to Green Lantern.

The duo's real threat is Grodd and his new mega-brain. But they probably don't have to worry about Grodd taking over the world. Once Grodd's Incelorilla Army realizes he's not a Chad but a disabled Beta Cuck, they'll abandon him to look for a real Alpha to tell them how to trick women into banging them.

I'm not sure what's up with Hector. I guess he's become a caveman too. He's probably off angrily fucking a rock which he'll eat afterward.

Who would have guessed this would be Wally's solution? Oh yeah! Big brained me!

Using his newly acquired telepathic powers, Wally takes over Hal's mind and uses the ring to return them both to their normal forms. But in doing so, Wally saps the last of the meteor's power. They won't be able to use the same trick on Grodd and Hector. Speaking of Hector, he finally turns up on page 7.

Danny is playing the part of that rock I mentioned earlier.

Danny is Rex's military buddy. Or was? Doesn't matter. He was never important to this story.

Rex the Wonder Dog can now speak normally due to the meteor's power which makes Danny superfluous anyway. He tracks Gorilla Grodd back to Gorilla City where they find Grodd has used his new mental powers to possess and control every single ape in the city. Now even the apes who get laid regularly are fighting for him.

Meanwhile, Danny doesn't get fucked and eaten because Bobo parachutes out of the sky in the nick of time to save him.

Damn, Bobo. Just gonna throw around the casual slurs, hunh?

Good thing Vandal Savage wasn't around to hear Bobo speak this shit. Speaking of Vandal Savage, didn't he gain his intelligence and immortality from a meteor like this? How many of these meteors are there in the DC Universe? Was Metamorpho's Orb of Ra one of these things? Where did these meteors come from?

While Hal and Wally hide inside a giant green bubble to protect themselves from Grodd's psychic blasts, Rex the Wonder Dog sneaks up on Grodd and attacks.

Once again, Grodd freaks the fuck out when he's attacked by a dog. But this time, his body is too weak to punch the shit out of Rex and he's mauled to death.

Grodd actually defeats Rex but in doing so, he uses up too much of his power. Bobo drops out of the sky again to save Rex while Flash kicks Grodd in the face. After that, Rex is able to destroy Grodd's mind, rendering him as idiotic and devolved as Hammond. Rex, on the other hand, gets to maintain his newfound powers without anybody saying a word. I guess that's because he's a good boy?

Grodd and Hammond become prisoners in Gorilla City where Solovar will continue to attempt to make them useful to Gorilla City. First, they're learning how to push buttons for bananas. Later, they'll probably be trained to clean the Gorilla City septic tanks. Bobo decides to spend some vacation time in Gorilla City fucking lady apes even though he's a chimpanzee. So gross. This book is depraved.

The Flash #70 Rating: C. Average story with really nice art except when it came to Flash's buttocks. I don't know what Greg LaRocque was going for when he was drawing Flash's ass but I suspect it derived from a kink somewhere in Greg's subconscious. It was more upsetting to me than the ten minutes I spent after reading the comic book thinking about Bobo the Chimpanzee fucking lady gorillas.

I suppose the ass of a man who runs at the speed of light is going to develop strangely.

Flash #69 (October 1992)

Are these the same two kids Green Lantern saved from drowning in Green Lantern #27?

Don't answer that! I know they're not! I probably shouldn't have even suggested that I thought that. I should have written something like, "Hector Hammond has more forehead than eighteen balding Harvard alumni!" Except funnier and more cutting and probably mentioning four or five penises. Some nights, I'm just not on my game. But I still need to read these fucking comic books or else how am I going to get through the other twenty short boxes cluttering up my bedroom?! You think I want to read one old comic book every day?! You think I don't realize how little respect I get from the people in my life watching me waste my precious time on this shit?! I should be out in the world making new experiences! Instead, I'm reliving old comic books that I don't even remember from the first time I read them and won't remember at all, again, in three months.

When I first picked up this comic book and saw Mark Waid's name on the cover, I thought, "Oh boy! I'm in for an intelligent experience! This guy made quite a name for himself for some reason! Maybe Mark will make it worth it that I'm not re-reading something I truly want to re-read, like Barth's The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor. Or something I've never read like Barth's The Sot-Weed Factor! At least I won't be embarrassed reading this in public because I'll be able to point out any page I'm reading to somebody looking on aghast at an aging man reading a comic book and say, 'See how philosophical this is? See how this writer really respects women and also the reader? See how smart I am to read this!'"

Goddammit! I just showed this to a woman sitting next to me and she slapped me!

Well, fuck you, Mark Waid! I'm assuming your script read, "Page One. Splash page. Focal point: Power Girl's huge tits. Minor focal point: hint of camel toe." At least when the woman was storming out of the café, I had the wherewithal to yell, "But I've read Gravity's Rainbow!" That way she knows she missed out on a real smart cookie! Hmm. Maybe I should have yelled, "I read Gravity's Rainbow and understood at least 3/5ths of it!" I bet she would have dragged me out of there by the dick after that revelation!

I'm hesitant to flip to page two because, man, Power Girl's tits look fucking awesome!

Power Girl who?

Mark Waid's script: "Page Three. Crimson Fox approaches Hal Jordan, tits first. She looks so good that readers should be able to imagine they smell her freshly washed butthole in the same way real estate agents want the smell of baking permeating houses they're trying to sell. Maybe not all readers will imagine that specifically. But some fucking pervert will, I'm sure. Make it clear she looks like she's telling Jordan he's free to explore her every crevice. Especially the butt crevice. You have to draw all of this because if I write any of it out, people will never respect me as a writer."

Do you think people will respect me as a writer for writing all of that out? I only did it because I was pretending to be Mark Waid! He's the fucking pervert!

See? Ralph smells it. His nose isn't twitching because it ain't no mystery where that fresh breeze is coming from.

Sue also smells it and seems particularly intrigued. Crimson Fox's super power is pheromones, by the way. I just wanted to point that out to anybody reading this and thinking, "Why the fuck would anybody even think Crimson Fox's butt smell tantalizes everybody?" Even those that remembered Crimson Fox has pheromone powers, they probably finished up that thought with "It should be her V-hole, no?" Maybe for some of you dorks. But for real men like me, Elongated Man, and Mark Waid, we know where the real attraction pheromones come from!

The Flash doesn't get to see how things turn out between Hal and Crimson Fox (I'd use her first name but I can't remember if she's currently Vivian or Constance) because he has to go inside to pick up the phone and get screamed at by Linda. I think Linda is the woman he eventually marries. But don't hold me to that. What the fuck do I know about Wally West? I have exactly two of his comics from the '80s and '90s!

Wally teleports back to the States because he's too slow to run across the Atlantic Ocean in two minutes. Barry could have done that! Sure, sure. He also would have caused fifteen different Crises while doing it. Wally uses one of those two minutes to build the teleporter (which is linked to one in the basement of his new home). He then has one minute left to microwave some pizzas and burritos in 15 seconds (I guess he likes them mostly frozen), check his messages, eat the frozen pizza and burritos, take a shower, shave, dry off, read the paper, and run across town to the studio where Linda is going to interview him on live television. I'd say he showers in the fifteen seconds it takes to heat up his food but how exactly does Flash shower faster than a normal person?! It's not like the water comes out of the showerhead any faster?

Reading along a little further, and, yes, he does do all of the stuff while the food is heating up. Three seconds to check his phone messages on fast forward. Seven seconds to shower, shave, dry off, and read the paper. He must have some sort of pressure washer set up in his bathroom that blasts him full force for two seconds as he spins like a maniac and soaps up.

More like "Still frozen, frozen, frozen!"

The problem with Flash doing everything at superspeed because he's on a time crunch is that most things in the real world don't work on his super fast time scale. I already had to devise a way to explain how he showered in two or three seconds. Now I've got to imagine that Kilowog built him a special microwave that actually heats that much food in fifteen seconds? I was going to suggest maybe he got them out of the regular fridge and not the freezer but I just checked and, well, he took them out of the freezer. But now let's say Kilowog did make him a nuclear microwave that heats things up that quickly. Wally just pulled them out of the microwave at temperatures that even he can't handle while holding them. And he's going to eat them in less than 45 seconds? This fucker gonna scald his larynx which is going to swell up on him. Wally's going to lose consciousness from lack of oxygen in the middle of the interview and die. I'd say paramedics save him but he's super fast! He probably dies fast too.

On the way to the interview, Wally notices Hector Hammond shaking all of the tourists out of a bus using the power of his mind. That's too bad. Mark Waid wrote all of that unbelievable shit just for West to fail to make it to the interview!

I have no idea why Hector Hammond is shaking tourists out of a bus like a little kid emptying a piggy bank. Maybe he's just a fucking dickhead. It think there's a forehead/foreskin joke in there somewhere but I'm not willing to come up with it because I keep thinking about that microwave that cooks so much food in fifteen seconds. The time I could save! Fucking stupid 21st Century microwaves that take multiple minutes!

Wasn't "Girlfriend Having a Poodle" a Smiths' song?

Hector Hammond wants the bus for transportation. To Africa? Can't he just float over in his floaty little chair? Maybe he just wants it for the radio.

Turns out Hector just wanted to dump people into the streets from an unsafe height to attract the attention of Flash. He needs Flash to piggyback him to Africa.

Now who's having a poodle?

Hammond forces Flash to carry him all the way to Africa to meet up with Grodd and his gorilla fighters. Wally only has a tiny mind so he has trouble fighting off Hector's control. Plus there's the issue of being in the middle of the Atlantic without a map. But once in Africa, Wally speeds up as fast as he can until Hector Hammond, freaking the fuck out because he's the least physical person on the planet being run at tremendous speeds, orders Flash to stop. This causes Hector to slingshot across the sky and deep into the forest while yelling, "You tricked me!" What a fucking embarrassment. If I were Hector, I'd retire from supervillaining after that. Wally West got the better of you in the brain category? Get the fuck out of here. Your reputation is fucking nuked, man.

Once free of Hector Hammond, Flash sees a familiar green light and runs over to stumble upon Green Lantern to end this issue the same way as Green Lantern #30 ended.

Flash #69 Rating: Nice. You didn't think I'd end this review with a stupid reference to the issue number, did you? So innocent and naïve. This issue was fine, I guess. I have two main problems with Flash comics which probably always kept me from reading Flash: the stupid puns and his wildly out-of-control power level that's never really utilized correctly. I wonder if the DC Universe Who's Who has an entry for "Wally West's House" that explains how all of his technology has been amped up to allow him to use it all faster?