Flash Fridays -The Flash #334 June 1984

After my praising Flash scribe Cary Bates’ straightforward story telling, he abandons linear storytelling completely and returns to his hopscotching ways giving us an issue that’s little more than a series of of clipped vignettes that are more of a list rather than a flowing story. That being the case, here’s the list:

• The chauffeur for the nationally renowned Lawyer N.D. Redik picks up a paper (A paper? What’s that?) so he can follow developments in the Flash murder case and Redik disparages the abilities of the Flash’s attorney Cecil Horton.
• The Flash runs around the countryside worrying about why his attorney hates him.
• Flash to a scene (I won’t do that again. Promise)  where the mayor’s hair stylist is put under a spell by the Pied Piper.
• The police chief, Darryl Frye arguing with this wife about the time he’s spending searching for Barry Allen. The ring of Barry’s that he found in his apartment is knocked off the table by a cat and carried under the couch.
• Disguised as the mayor’s hairdresser, the Pied Piper puts the mayor under his control with a musical spell while giving him a haircut.
• The Flash visits his former attorney, Peter Farley, in the hospital to try to find out why his current attorney, Cecil Horton hates him.
• A less than one page scene of the Mayor visiting the recently burned Flash Museum.
• District Attorney Webb and Cecil Horton facing off against one another in a preliminary meeting.
• The cat opening the ring under the couch and a small (because the enlarging fluid has lost its potency) Flash uniform popping out.
• Dexter Myles finding out that the Mayor has cut off city funding for the Flash museum.
• The Flash and Cecil Horton having fractious meeting during which the Flash runs out of her office. 
• The editor of the National Penetrator (I’m not kidding) (hereafter referred as the NP) sending a reporter named Winslow off the cover the Flash and his attorney.
• The Flash saves two window washers  from a fall telling them to put in a good word for him with the Mayor.
• The Flash caught by the reporter lashing out at the Mayor in Public.

  A motorcycle policeman rolling up the the Flash and having him talk with his radio dispatcher who turns out to be the Pied Piper telling him that bomb is under the desk of a TV newscaster that will go off while he’s on the air.

• The Flash arriving at the TV studio interrupting a story about him by smashing the news desk apart looking for the bomb.
• And finally, the Pied Piper gloating about how he’s destroying the Flash’s public image.

That’s a lot of threads to leave dangling for any storytelling medium let alone a comic book.