Not my favorite Neal Adams cover of all time, but, like pizza, any Neal Adams cover is, you know, pretty good. The lead story is a Mike Friedrich outing with art by Irv Novick and Murphy Anderson. Friedich brings back the Golden Age hero-turned villain Sargon the Sorcerer who we last saw in issue #186. He’s out to regain the Ruby of Life that he lost in his first tussle with the scarlet speedster. He does so by commandeering the music at a rock concert to lure the Flash so he can cast a spell and make the Flash do his bidding. His bidding just happens to be stealing the ruby from the Flash Museum where it’s been on display since, well, since issue #186. Unfortunately, Sargon also unleashes some demons like the one seen on the cover, but the Flash is able to overcome them by dipping into his hippy bag and using love, in this case his love for his wife Iris, to overcome evil. Friedrich was simply tapping the zeitgeist in the air back then when we all thought love could overcome evil. What the hell was everyone smoking back then anyway? Oh, yeah…
The Kid Flash tale, Phantom of the Cafeteria, is told by Steve Skeates with the art ably handled by Dick Dillin and Dick Giordano. When food starts disappearing from students trays in the Blue Valley High School Cafeteria, (*Semi-interesting sidetone here… when it came time in Crankshaft for me to come up with a school for Cranky’s arch school-bus-driving rival Max Axelrod, I decided to make it the Kid’s school Blue Valley High (Who knows? Maybe one day Kid Flash will show up in Crankshaft and I’ll show up in court). Kid Flash suspects another speedster at work who turns out to be a subterranean who gets trapped on the surface and has to steal food to survive. Kind of a clever bit there. Naturally, the Kid helps his get back home and the missing food problem is solved. If only someone had stolen the food from my high school cafeteria.
