Flash Fridays – The Flash #150-February 1965

Nov 18, 2016

the flash no 150

Barry Allen has been assigned  by his police department to escort the lovely Princess Maharanee of Jodapur to the grand ball much to his planned date Iris West’s displeasure. On his way to the ball, Barry has to stop by a jewelry store to pick up the royal jewels. At the store, he’s met by Captain Cold who, coinkadinkaly enough, is after the same gems. It seems that the bad Captain is smitten with her royal highness and wants to return the jewels to her himself. By keeping the cold Captain a dedicated ladies man, author Broome keeps him neatly in character and the readers in their comfort zones secure in the knowledge that the continuity of these characters is in safe hands. One day, as with pretty much everything else, continuity gets a bit overcooked. Eventually, the fealty to retentive continuity in the comic book world will be amped up to the point where only the most obsessive (and independently wealthy) comic book readers can keep up with it, at which point foolish consistency truly becomes the Green Goblin of small minds. But back in ’65, it was a welcome change from stories that invariably returned to “Go” with each new issue and was still something to be appreciated. Anyway, CC whisks the princess from the ball to an empty sports arena where he attempts to woo her with a display of his cold creations, various animated icy animals. The Princess gets to see an even better show when the Flash shows up and, after a few moments of well calculated uncertainty, defeats Captain Cold yet again. The Flash dances with the Princess at the ball and then changes to Barry Allen to dance with the mollified Iris.

The second story is an almost direct repeat of the story from the previous issue except that this time the Flash’s attempts to test the limits of his supper speed results in crooks on Central City being given special powers. It’s one thing to revisit common tropes, but in back to back issues?

However, the really interesting thing in this issue isn’t in either of these stories but in the Flash-Grams letter column. A young reader who lives on Sunbeam Avenue in Dayton, Ohio has sent in a letter that does a pretty thorough statistical breakdown of the Flash issues so far. Things such as how many two issue story issues there were as opposed to single story issues, or what the dominant colors were on each of the covers. The reader is obviously an intense Flash follower and he wins some original Flash art for his efforts. The young reader’s name is Cary Bates, and, down the road, he will be the writer who will write the final chapter in the story of the Silver Age Flash.

Some Other Posts We Thought You Might Like

Music Box Talk

Music Box Talk

Just a reminder that on Wednesday October 23rd I'll be at the Music Box Supper Club in Cleveland talking about all ...
Match to Flame 157

Match to Flame 157

Permit me a slight digression here because it’s relevant to some of the work collected in this volume. A question ...