Flash Fridays – The Flash #344 April 1985

Picking up immediately on the heels of the previous issue, the splash page shows Kid Flash taking the stand in the trial of the Flash as a witness for the prosecution. Writer/editor Cary Bates then does something rather cool. Before any action can take place, he takes us back to Kid Flash’s origin… quite literally. Rather than choosing to recreate, he chooses to reprint. And it works like a charm. Seeing the story again is a real tug at the heart of older fans (me), and it tells the story better than any modern retelling really could. We momentarily slip back to the courtroom for more of Flash’s thoughts before we’re off to another reprinting of the cover story from issue #149 where the Flash helps Kid Flash to recover from amnesia. Which neatly takes us to the very last page in this book where the prosecutor asks Kid Flash if it was necessary for the Flash to kill the Reverse-Flash… to which Kid Flash replays in a whisper… “no, no it was not necessary to kill him”. This issue, thanks to the reprints, only covers about two minutes time in the courtroom, but a direly impactful two minutes.

A couple of last thoughts. The issue plays brilliantly with the reprinted material beautifully buttressing the current work. Not a cheat at all. That being said, if it was contrived to make up some time on the schedule it couldn’t have been done any better. 

Finally, I can’t help but wonder what Carmine Infantino thought about seeing his older work and his newer efforts being printed side by side. As readers of this blog, you know my thoughts on the matter, but what were his. The mind boggles.