With this issue The Flash moves back to what DC called monthly publication (actually eight times a year) from its bi-monthly status. So the work that Cary Bates and Irv Novick were putting in on the book was apparently showing some sales dividends. The book features the return of Professor Zoom – the Reverse Flash. Again the appeal is to the Flash cognoscenti with a tale that hews tightly to the old Flash formula and to continuity. Professor Zoom still has the hots for Barry’s wife Iris, and, much like he did on their wedding day and he returns once again to disguise himself as Barry in order to take his place with Iris. When Iris figures out who he is, things take a sinister turn when PZ decides to kill Iris (as he appeared to have done with the Flash earlier in the story) if he can’t have her for his own. This foreshadows the darker things to come with this character down the road. A road, as I’ve previously noted, which will which will lead to Professor Zoom becoming the Flash’s most sinister arch foe. The story could have benefited with a little more room to unfold as everything is resolved at a dizzying speed on the very last page.
The reason for the limited space is of course due to the Green Lantern back-up story about two aliens who gather weapons of war from various civilizations to see who can best the other. It’s an interesting premise and writer Denny O’Neil has to work pretty hard to find a pretext to shoehorn Green Lantern into the story. O’Neil doesn’t even bother trying to wrap thing up in done-in-one and, instead, offers us another continued-next -issue tale. An interesting side note is that Terry Austin pops up along side Dick Giordano as one of the inkers on the story no doubt thanks to his association with the Neal Adams/Giordano Continuity Associates studio.
