The cover to this issue is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it’s just a bit deceptive because although the Golden Age Green Lantern does appear in the book, it’s really a crook dressed like him. So there’s no way GL would be flying as shown. Second, unless I miss my guess, the Flash editor Julie Schwartz is pictured just to the left of Wildcat’s head. DC artist Sid Greene used to put Julie in the science fiction stories he did, and apparently Al Milgrom figured that flattering the editor couldn’t hurt, adopted the idea himself.
The story revolves around an issue of the Golden Age Flash that keeps disappearing and showing up in other places. It starts when Barry’s next door neighbor Barney has his copy disappear and show up next door at Barry’s house. It then shows up at a comic con where two crooks dressed as Wildcat and Green Lantern steal it from a dealer’s table. It turns out that a scientist had created a formula called XCV that, when sprayed on an object, would allow that object to be teleported to someone who pictured it in their mind. The scientist died without revealing his formula, but the crooks knew that he had used the Flash issue in question in a demonstration. Thus the crooks were hunting down that comic so they could reverse engineer that formula from the residue on the book and use it to commit crimes. But they’re caught by the Flash, and the story ends with both Barry and Barney each get a copy of the book for their collection from a stash that the crooks had bought during their search. They probably ordered extra copies on Amazon without realizing it. Happens all the time.
