A wonderful Joe Staton/Frank Giacoia cover kicks off the third chapter in the Golden Glider’s revenge. To recap a bit: the Golden Glider wants to gain revenge against the Flash for his accidentally causing the death of her boyfriend the Top. She has put into play an elaborate plan using her mind controlling jewels to end the career of the Flash by creating a new superhero called the Ringmaster, causing Iris Allen to leave Barry/Flash for said Ringmaster, and driving the Flash to despair and defeat.
Cary Bates continues to ramp-up the intensity while leaving any actual advancement of the plot stuck in neutral. This issue takes us through a set of instances where the Ringmaster grows in popularity with the denizens of Central while they concomitantly lose faith in the Flash. With each episode the Flash loses more faith in himself and the situation until, at the end, he prepares to retire as the Flash. The issue closes as the Golden Glider finds that she’s falling in love with her own creation the Ringmaster, and vowing to manipulate a jealous Barry Allen into murdering his own wife. The next issue’s story is titled “Golden Glider’s Final Fling”, so, hopefully, we’ll finally get a resolution to this protracted story arc.
As I mentioned the last time, I was working on a new strip called Rusty that I was hoping to syndicate, and it was over this summer that I took the samples of the strip to my syndicate in Chicago. My wife Cathy came with me, and, after a lunch at the Berghoff (one of my favorite eateries in the whole wide world), I managed to leave my samples behind in the restaurant as we headed for the syndicate offices. Which I think just goes to show that we can all breath easy knowing that I’m not the person in charge of our nuclear arsenal.
