Flash Fridays – The Flash #124

Jan 22, 2016

The Flash no.124

It was a thrill to pull from its plain brown wrapper, this issue which featured not only the return of Captain Boomerang in a story that featured the Elongated Man, but a reprise of CB launching the Flash into space while strapped to a giant boomerang (still trying to get it right apparently). The thing about the boomerang launch was that it strengthened the idea of returning concepts. While intrinsically silly in and of itself, it paved the way for some more substantial continuity down the road. The story itself is a clever one in which The good Captain invents a time traveling boomerang which allows him to commit crimes and establish an alibi for himself at the same time. The problem is that as the boomerang travels through time it also traverses a neighboring dimension in which the inhabitants like to sit in the driveway and yell at kids to stay off their lawn. This arch attitude of theirs leads them to invade our dimension in order to cut off these presumed attacks. Meanwhile back in our dimension, the Flash has called out to his friend Ralph Dibny AKA the Elongated Man (their ongoing friendship being another nice continuing touch) to help him solve Boomerang’s crime spree. When the aliens invade, the Flash, Elongated Man and the good captain put their immediate differences aside to team up to defend good ol’ Mom Earth. Once the aliens are dispatched, all bets are off with, as mentioned above, Captain Boomerang once again trying to launch the Flash into space. The Elongated Man manages to save the Flash and Captain Boomerang’s short parole comes to and end.

With the Comics Code being in full force in the late fifties and early sixties and horror and bloodletting off the table, the writers of that era were forced to turn to science and cleverness to draw readers to their tales, and John Broome, aided and abetted by his SF grounded editor, became a true master at telling such stories. The second story in this issue is about a man who invents a device which allows him to use brain waves to control people on television. The people he chooses to control are the people who put him in jail such as the judge, the prosecutor and reporter Iris West. He then goes after the man who actually captured him, the Flash, and appears to have gained control over him as well. In a nice twist ending, it’s revealed that the Flash taped an episode where he only pretended to be under the villain’s control and thus saves himself from being unmasked and frees the captives as well. In a nice framing device, the story is told by Iris as she records the events in her diary.

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