Flash Fridays – The Flash #249 May 1977

Apr 10, 2020

To recap: Daphne Dean, Barry’s childhood sweetheart has come to Central City to try to cure her amnesia. When she arrives at Barry’s house, a vaporous alien who hitched a ride in her car, goes next door and brings to life a villain that a young boy named Barney is drawing. The villain comes to life as Master Villain and proceeds to battle the Flash to a draw.

As this issue opens, Barry is talking about Daphne in his sleep much to Iris’s consternation. Master Villain shows up in their bedroom threatening to reveal that Barry is the Flash unless the Flash agrees to battle him. The Flash races off to take him on and during the fight Master Villain turns into a flying fist that chases after the Flash trying to run him to exhaustion. In a cute touch, the Flash runs to Metropolis, finds Clark Kent/Superman walking down the street and runs the fist into Clark/Supes in a perfect pick play that splatters the fist.

It turns out that the Allens play cards cards with the neighbors next door (ah, those simpler pre-internet days) and Barry meets Barney. Barney shows him his master villain drawing and a new superhero (named Super-Hero). Barry starts putting two and two together and when the time comes to battle Master villain again it’s Super-Hero who shows up. Master Villain is confused and to who this new guy is, gets soundly beaten, the alien wish gets bored and leaves Master Villain, and surprise, surprise, Super-Hero turns out to be the Flash.

Meanwhile, Iris went skulking after Daphne and her phony doctor friend. And as they sit on a park bench Daphne says that she wants to “ring down the final curtain on Barry Allen”. That can’t be good. It looks like we’ll have to wait to next issue to find out Daphne is up to. Beware the childhood sweetheart.

Flash Friday Extra: When I was getting ready to send Vol. 10 off to Black Squirrel Books AKA The Kent State University Press, I saw that the book will include a couple of strips where Lisa and Holly and Lisa and Cindy meet in a coffee shop called Jitters. When the The Flash tv show introduced a coffee shop with the same name, I wondered if it was simply a coinkydink (you know, great minds and all) or if one of the writers had remembered it from Funky.

I think it would be so cool if it was the latter, but as every History Channel show ends, perhaps we’ll never know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some Other Posts We Thought You Might Like