The Flash #329 – January 194

Following last issue’s reprinting of the wedding of Barry Allen and Iris West and the teaser about Superman’s decision about whether or not the Flash can remain in the Justice League, writer Cary Bates opens this issue with neither of those but instead opens with a call back to issue #327 and the return of the Flash’s arch nemesis Grodd. It basically establishes that Grodd has returned and has taken over a Central City street gang. It pretty funny to see what artist Carmine Infantino imagined a street gang looked like back then, and even funnier now. 

So now that Grodd is back on the reader’s radar, we cut to the Justice League satellite where Superman decides that the Flash can remain in the JLA until the outcome of his trial is determined. Cut to the arrival on the scene of high powered attorney N.D.Redik arriving on the scene in Central City looking to be the attorney for the Flash, cut to Barry’s parents watching the news on TV and showing their concern for him, cut to a man about to drive a car over a cliff. Up to now, I’ve eschewed the multitudinous non sequitur side plots that were constantly being introduced. So permit me to totally sort of contradict myself. All of these diversions don’t bother me this time around because they’re all threads to the same story – and that works.

The man in the car going over the cliff in the car is Peter Farley, a college roommate of Barry’s who happens to be a lawyer and who Barry as the Flash is on his way to see. Naturally, the Flash saves him and then hires him as his attorney. At this point, Grodd rears his ugly head again to mentally take over and recruit a young boy into his gang. As the issue closes, the Flash is leaving the home (a beautiful-modernistic-Infantino designed beauty built in to the side of a plateau-the varied topography surrounding Central City is simply astonishing in its variety) of his newly enlisted attorney, and, as he leaves, he writes ‘Why Me?’ on the desert (there’s a desert too) floor. The trials of the Flash continue.