A terrific Infantino cover shows the Flash doing battle with the Shade. The Shade’s appearance on the Flash stage again immediately evokes memories of the glorious “Flash of Two Worlds” days and is a welcome sight to long time flashinados who were lucky to experience that holy writ in their golden hour. The story opens with Barry and his dad visit visiting his mother Nora who remains in a coma in the hospital. In the parking lot they run into the boy whose driving caused the crash. The boy apologizes and, in what I suspect is a not inconsequential moment, is rebuffed by Henry before he can say everything that he wants to.
Upon leaving the hospital, Barry finds a city that is black and white without any other colors. As the Flash, he prevents some potential calamities due to the lack of color, and then heads over to the prison to check on the Rainbow Raider suspecting that he may be responsible for the color calamity. But Roy Bivolo aka the Raider is happily ensconced in his cell painting. When the black and white attack as it’s called returns, The Flash runs into the Shade, one of the coolest villains on either Earth One or Two. Shadey explains to the Flash that his criminal activities on his parallel world of Earth Two were being hampered by saturated curtains of pure color landing everywhere. Back in his lab, he finds that the color interference was being transmitted from Earth One hence his appearance in Central City. The Shade (great name, great look, you’ve gotta love it) and the Flash agree to team up to find out what’s causing the colors to go doodle whacky (spell check just informed me that doodle whacky is two words not one… which is interesting since I just made it up and was kinda thinking that would be my call). But I digress… the story closes with the Rainbow Raider in prison thinking that his dry runs with something called a color shifter were successful, and that he plans to use it to obliterate the Flash and make everyone on Earth his slaves, so I’m thinking it’s him.
The closing shot shows Barry’s dad entry in Barry’s apartment, holding a Flash uniform and vowing to end his son’s days. Henry’s got some issues.
