Flash #263 – “Nobody Stays a Flash Forever” – Cary Bates/Irv Novick/Frank McLaughlin
This one starts with a news report reminding us what’s been going on for the last couple of issues: Ringmaster, a new super hero showed up out of nowhere and caught Golden Glider, who Flash failed to stop. Now everyone’s speculating that Flash may be all washed up. Barry (Flash) Allen is watching the report and gets all huffy about it. He goes for a run on the cosmic treadmill, but his exercise is interrupted by Golden Glider popping up on the TV and taunting him about how she arranged for Ringmaster to steal Flash’s thunder—and his wife. That night, Barry has nightmares about Iris leaving and begs her to come back. The next morning, we see Iris hanging out—and making out—with Ringmaster at his place. We see Golden Glider hanging around Ringmaster’s apartment too, but he and Iris are
unaware of her because Glider is using a hypnotic gem to hide her presence … the same hypnotic gem she used to make Iris fall in love with Ringmaster. Ringmaster and Flash (who agreed to team up last issue) go on patrol to look for Golden Glider, but end up rescuing a couple of inattentive kids instead. As they’re hanging out at a café, Glider hits them with some ice crystals that cause intense pain. Ringmaster and Flash both get clear and Glider gives Ringmaster a kick in the head to make things look good. Flash pops up and grabs her boots, leaving her to land on her ass. But the boots activate by themselves, sending Flash down into the ground as Ringmaster recovers and grabs Glider. Flash vibrated as he was pushed into the ground, but Glider’s skates are vibrating at the same frequency and have interlocked with his hands, so the only way to let go is to become solid—miles underground. Flash manages to change direction without turning solid and the boots bring him back to the surface. When he gets there, he shakes Ringmaster’s hand to congratulate him for catching 
Golden Glider. But some residual vibrations from Glider’s skates emerge from Flash’s body, disrupting Ringmaster’s hold on Glider. She uses her gems to create a smokescreen and escapes. Naturally, the crowd blames Flash for letting her get away after Ringmaster caught her, and says it’s time for Flash to retire. Flash apparently takes that to heart, as we see him later at home preparing to send his costume to the Mayor along with a recording saying that he’s quitting. He hears someone come in and thinks it’s Iris, but it turns out to be Stacy Conwell, so he has to keep running at super speed so she doesn’t see him. Who’s Stacy Conwell, you ask? She’s a student who supposedly boards with the Allens, but only seems to show up when it’s convenient for the plot. At Ringmaster’s place, he and Iris are getting frisky as Golden Glider watches again. We learn Glider has fallen for Ringmaster herself and now wants Iris out of the way. But instead of just killing her, Glider plans to manipulate Flash into doing it for her. We’ll see if he does next issue.
Noticeable Things:
- Golden Glider says she appears on Barry’s TV through telepathy, but I don’t think telepathy works that way.
- We see Iris showing up at Ringmaster’s apartment in the morning; I guess the implication is that she’s not spending the night with him, although that doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t banged.
- If Iris and Ringmaster are banging, and Golden Glider is hanging around without them knowing, I wonder if she’s sitting right there watching as they get it on?
- It’s said that Golden Glider uses her gems to “teleport” away, but that seems pretty high-tech for a gem. We’re getting into magical territory there.
Wonder Woman #245 – “Vengeance-From Ice to Fire” – Jack C. Harris/Jose Delbo/Vince Colletta
This one starts right where last issue left off, with Wonder Woman and Steve Howard at the North Pole. They’d brought terrorist leader Sorkhan to trade for Dr. Selkirk, but were ambushed by Sorkhan’s thugs as Sorkhan took off with Selkirk. The ice they’re on starts cracking, so Wonder Woman uses her invisible jet to rescue herself, Steve, and the two thugs. When Steve threatens to toss them off the plane, the thugs say they were told to attack whoever showed up with Sorkhan. Since Wonder Woman showed up in her civilian identity, she uses her lasso to make the thugs forget that part. Steve wonders if her aversion to people knowing her secret might extend to him one day. We see Sorkhan and Selkirk escaping in a sno-cat and they don’t seem too adversarial. Turns out Selkirk is part of Sorkhan’s network and has been advising him on how to use various inventions that Selkirk came up with. The whole “prisoner exchange” thing was a fake-out. Wonder Woman drops Steve and the thugs at the UN, saying she’ll
meet him there later. She changes to Diana Prince, but when she shows up at the UN a couple of Army officers tell her they have to talk to her about something important. These are the same guys who were snooping through top-secret files last issue. They tell Diana they’re trying to figure out what happened to her old boss, Steve Trevor. She can’t tell them the truth—that he was killed and resurrected by Aphrodite, with a new name and face—and before she can come up with a good story, the Citicorp Building it hit by lightning and starts raining concrete. Diana takes off and changes to Wonder Woman, making her way up the building to find a strange electrical tornado is causing all the havoc. She uses her invisible jet to produce a counter-vortex, neutralizing the twister. A cop tells her Sorkhan is behind the attack and she heads over to the UN, where she runs into Steve. He takes her on a submarine ride to a secret base in 
the East River, where she finds out the government once tried to launch a weather control satellite that didn’t work. They figure the satellite is now working and that’s what caused the weird tornado—and the satellite was invented by Dr. Selkirk. We see Selkirk and Sorkhan (still in the sno-cat, though it’s been converted for space travel) in orbit, arguing politics. Selkirk says he left his wife and son in the “old country” because the government wanted to use his technology for warfare. He thought Sorkhan was a true revolutionary, who wanted to improve the world for everyone, but now he knows Sorkhan is just an asshole with delusions of grandeur. Wonder Woman and Steve use her invisible jet to reach orbit and put on spacesuits in case they have to do some extra-vehicular activity. Steve goes to disable the satellite and Wonder Woman goes after the space sno-cat. She sees Selkirk and realizes he’s helping Sorkhan, but assumes he must’ve cracked under the strain of being kidnapped. Sorkhan tries to blast her (and
Steve), but she uses the invisible jet to catch them after deflecting a blast back at Sorkhan’s craft. It catches on fire and Wonder Woman grabs it with her lasso, trying to ease it down to Earth without destroying it. She mostly succeeds, but the space sno-cat is still pretty burnt up. They find Sorkhan safe inside, since he grabbed a protective suit and let Selkirk burn. Wonder Woman asks Selkirk why he helped Sorkhan and Selkirk says he felt guilty for leaving his family and didn’t want his son to go to prison; yup, Sorkhan is Selkirk’s son. His family apparently changed their names and moved to a different country, though I have no idea how Selkirk knew that. At least Sorkhan has the decency to look somewhat guilty as Selkirk dies.
Noticeable Things:
- Wonder Woman doesn’t tell Steve about the Army investigating him; I wonder if that’ll come back to haunt her?
- The cop who tells Wonder Woman about Sorkhan offers her a ride, saying “You gotta be freezing running around in that bathing suit.” Nice to see someone finally mentioned it.
- Wonder Woman’s spacesuit is way more high-tech than Steve’s and ends up being invisible later. To me, it looks like one of those full-body condoms from Naked Gun.
- The space battle is a bit strange. The lack of gravity and the effects of inertia are mentioned, but I’m not sure how Wonder Woman can stand on the wing of her jet and haul on the crashing sno-cat without being pulled off. Also, they seem to be talking quite a bit, even though we all know sound doesn’t travel in space.
Green Lantern #106 – “Panic … in High Places and Low” – Denny O’Neil/Mike Grell/Bruce Patterson
This one starts pretty much immediately after last issue; Green Lantern is in Modora, taking Sonar to justice while Green Arrow, Black Canary, and a beauty queen are on a crashed plane in the mountains. Unfortunately, the plane had a stowaway, the huge mutated monster that we saw crawl out of Itty’s grave a couple issues ago. Green Arrow puts a couple of arrows into it, but that has no effect, so everyone heads out of the plane into the snow. The creature teleports outside, blocking their escape and they scatter, reasoning it can only chase one of them. That ends up being Black Canary, who twists her ankle (of course) and has to crawl away from the creature. She runs into someone else who wants to help her, but she tells him to get away as fast as he can. In Modora, GL is returning Sonar to stand trial for attempted kidnapping when the Army tries to blast him. He evades their shells, but doesn’t have to worry since they ran out of ammo anyway. Ah, Modora, the joke of the world. Sonar is immediately
exonerated and GL is taken into custody for violating their airspace. Sonar knocks him out (of course), tosses his ring aside, and rigs his cell with dynamite. In the mountains, Black Canary’s rescuer turns out to be Air Wave. Green Arrow shows up and tells him to go get help, but Air Wave says he rode a stray radar beam there and there aren’t any radio beams for him to leave on. But the beauty queen has a walkie-talkie (a present from her boyfriend), so Air Wave figures he can ride the walkie-talkie’s beam until he can gran onto something bigger. The others keep trying to evade the creature. In Modora, GL is trying—and failing—to activate his ring from a distance. Sonar shows up and says the shells the Army fired earlier have started an avalanche that’ll bury half the country if it’s not stopped. GL says he’ll do it as long as he gets a full pardon … in writing. His pardon comes in (really fast) and he averts the avalanche with a giant fan before heading home. On the way, he passes Itty’s grave and finally realizes 
the creature that attacked Carol’s house last issue is Itty, in some mutated form. Carol gets a phone call from Air Wave—who’s in Paris—just as GL gets back. Air Wave tells him about the plane crash. In the mountains, Green Arrow is about to get devoured by Monster-Itty when Lantern shows up to save him. Lantern gives Itty a big pile of calcium, which is apparently what he’s been seeking all along. Itty slurps it up and metamorphoses into a bigger form, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Itty says the calcium helped him gain his true form and he’s sorry for all the shit he caused (like almost killing a bunch of people), then he heads off into space. And that’s it for Itty; he’s probably hanging out with Poochie on some distant planet.
Noticeable Things:
- I’m not sure why (or how) Air Wave ended up in France; if the plane crash was in the Western United States—most likely the Rockies—why would the only radio beam take Air Wave all the way across the Atlantic? Wouldn’t there be closer beams he could latch onto? Maybe it was some kind of short wave thing? But wouldn’t he have found another beam before getting to France?
- The phone both that Air Wave uses in Paris says “Telefon” on it, which isn’t how they spell “telephone” in France.
- Since pure calcium is metallic, I’m assuming the powder GL gave Itty was a compound of calcium, though I have no idea where he got it from.