This issue is a particular treat for us old schoolers who first saw the Flash and Kid Flash travel back into the past in issue #120 of The Flash. In that issue we encountered Dr. Robert Manners and Gail Manners as they were thrown back into the past along with Flash and Kid Flash and Iris West by the vibrations from an earthquake. Writer Cary Bates pays his due respects to that story as he creates the circumstances to send them back again. I can tell you from personal experience as recent as last week that revisiting an earlier work in this way is an incredibly fascinating and enjoyable experience. I’ve no doubt that writer Bates was experiencing much the same thing which no doubt explains why this story is so much fun.
We kick things off with Gail in a coma that her father Dr. Manners is convinced is due to her trip to the past. He has decided that the only way to find a cure for his daughter is to precisely retrace the original course plotted years ago to the South Atlantic just off the Coast of South America. The difference being that, instead of an Earthquake, the Flash would be the one to provide the vibrations this time around. And, what do you know… it works. Except that this time around the dinosaurs are way more intelligent that they should be. And, instead of golden giants, we find blue lizard aliens who are trying to turn the Earth’s dinos into the dominant species. They are using something called remma rays to make this happen. The Flashes decide that the remma ray gizmo has to go and they destroy it. When they return to Dr. Manners yacht, they find that those remma rays were the cause of Gail’s coma, and that she is now doing well. The Flash vibrates the ship back to the present (or 1979) and we find that humans are now the dominant species. Which is good because I don’t know how I would have typed this with those tiny T-Rex arms.
