Flash Fridays – The Flash #279 November 1979

Jun 25, 2021

The cover to this issue picks up exactly where the last book ended with Yorkin about to do away with the Flash. Yorkin is succeeding as the Flash begins to slip into a delirium. When the Flash does so, he begins to conjure loving images of Iris. The images in Flash’s mind cause a feeling of revulsion in Yorkin who then releases him and runs away.

Shaken but not stirred, Barry shows up at the police lab with a surprise for Detective Frank Curtis. Melanie is there and she’s using her psychic powers the Sandman costume from the masquerade ball to see if she can help track the person down. They do and Barry and Frank confront the man in his flophouse hotel. Barry and Frank corner the guy in his room and he confesses to dosing Barry with the angel dust. The hotel is being spied upon from across the street, and just as Barry and Frank are about to get a confession from their man as to who set Barry up, the guy across the street sets off an explosion. The flophouse man is killed and Barry is just able to save himself and Frank as the Flash.

Yorkin proceeds to go on a rampage and proceeds to kill more people than I’ve ever seen killed in a Flash comic before. I had to look on the front of the book to see if the Comics Code Authority stamp was still there. It was, but obviously things had changed. A lot! In fact, when I first showed up on Marvel’s doorstep looking for work, my stories were aimed for their horror mags (I aimed low figuring that they would immediately move me to Spider-Man once they saw how well I could write) and I had a lot of stuff like vampires, werewolves and some people dying, all of which I was informed were verboten by the Comics Code. My timing was just a little off, because not long after the code was revamped to the extent that you could not only mention vampires… they could have their own book for Jiminy Cricket’s sake. Shed no tears for me, gentle reader, because my timing would improve. But it is interesting to see the comic book I loved more than any other begin to embrace the growing darkness.

The story cliffhanger this time is provided by Melanie as she tracks down Yorkin… and finds him!

 

 

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