I have never been a great fan of the Flash. I
remember reading some of his stories around the time CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS was redrawing the DC Universe, but surely
not enough to tell Barry Allen from Wally West at first sight, or to care much
about it. And not even FLASHPOINT (2011),
which I read from cover to cover, and to which Flash was central, did anything
to draw me into the fold of Flash fans. And maybe, just maybe, it was due to this excellent cover by Jack Abel and Rich
Buckler that haunts me from the time I was eight or nine.
And I’m sure it was not just any child’s natural
fear of the fire that consumes Flash’s flesh, exposing the skull beneath. Nor
the realization that superheroes are mortal after all, as much flesh-and-blood
as any of us – a scary thought for any kid, used to believe that heroes live
forever and cannot be defeated by second rate villains like Black Hand (not
that I had even heard of him before). That the cover is gruesome (although
brilliantly so) cannot be disputed, but it has remained an object of fascination
for me since then. And there are several reasons for that, pilling one over the
other, building a graphic edifice of macabre grandeur. Some of those elements
are of clear intention; others however, result from fortuitous circumstances,
like the darkly morbid humor that results from the juxtaposition of the hero’s
sobriquet – the fastest man alive! – with a cover illustration where the Flash
is everything but:
Then we have all the macabre trappings of the
Flash being devoured by flame to the very bone, his skeleton sticking out from
charred flesh and burnt costume, the shadows on the musculature of his torso
looking nothing as much as fire-blackened roasted flesh. I guess death as never
been rendered so viscerally in a super-hero comic book cover, something I
believe can be attributed to Abel’s experience inking horror stories for MISTER MYSTERY (#2 -3 , 1951-52) and JOURNEY INTO UNKNOWN WORLDS. And what
can one say of the look – the hopelessly desperate look on Flash’s eyes, still
alive in the exposed caves of their orbits? In truth the progression of terror patent
in Flash’s eyes in the last three steps of his deflagration tell unheard tales
of unexpected horror and despair.
All this is fostered by the cover’s extremely
dynamic layout: the reader’s own eyes are subtly dragged from the cover lower
right along with the Flash’s curving trajectory, past where it’s intersected by
the fatal beam from Black Hand’s gizmo-rod (C), and finally to the hovering
villain himself, gloating like a mad-angel of death, in the right upper-corner
of the page, there to be sent again along the beam of the rod to where it hits Flash (C), igniting him, a dramatic circularity that subliminally convinces
the reader that there is no escape for our hero.
At least, that was the idea that held me in its
unbreakable grip for all these years. So much so, that it kept me from reading
any more Flash stories. Maybe I should make a short parenthesis in here: it is
true that a good cover must be able to stand for itself – and this one surely does
that. But in this particular instance, besides being effective from a dramatic
and commercial point of view, the cover really had something to do with the
story inside. And in that story, “The Day Flash Ran His Last Mile!” (by
veteran Cary Bates, penciled by Irving Novick and inked by Frank McLaughlin),
the villain Black Hand addresses the reader through the fourth wall, putting
forth a clever explanation for his sinister plan:
I must admit that the idea of a “protective
aura” shielding Flash from the friction-heat of his speed seemed cleverly logic
to my young mind. After all, how would he be able to run at such speeds (even
light-speed if one’s to believe his earlier stories) if it wasn’t so? And how
clever of Black Hand to devise a way to neutralize said aura. That’s the stuff great adventure is made of.
However, the story at hand was a two-parter, to be concluded in THE FLASH #259 the following month.
And, thanks to the erratic distribution of Brasilian-printed comic books in
Portugal, where I then lived, I never got to read its conclusion (not for a few
decades anyway, but it was enough delay for the effect to from the cover to dig
deep in my mind). As such, the last I heard of the Flash was the final gloat of
Black Hand assuring me that our hero had ran his last mile.
The truth is, I could not see how could the
Flash escape such a tragic destiny. And I don’t mean in the story per se. Even at such a tender age one knows that he must have found a
solution, or else there would not be any more stories featuring the Flash – and
I knew there were (although I kept away from them). But I couldn’t see how
could he escape such a tragic destiny forever.
If he truly depended on that aura to survive such speeds, how could he run that
fast without ever thinking that his aura could fail from one moment to the next?
That someone else would discover the same gizmo as Black Hand did. Or, what the
heck, what’s to say it wouldn’t just fail by freak accident? And I kept hearing
Flash’s voice panting in panicky effort in my brain “I can’t slow down… fast enough…”
I guess it was this existential dread that killed
my taste for the Flash. When one relied solely in comic book logic, it was easy
to accept the workings of his powers. But as soon as one tries a scientific
approach to it (an acquired taste from Julius Schwartz, who was then ruling
editor on the book), the unavoidable cold equations take hold… and the universe
is indeed a cold and indifferent place. One can run, but one can’t hide. And to
err in the side of caution, better not run as fast as the Flash.
