It's time to get back to this column of comic book reviews. I really should put a review order in place because this ain't Random Reviews or anything! That's my friend Dom's blog. You should check it out! It's good! Anyway I really should keep at least an order of what I do things in so I can know "This is time for you to find some weird comic book like Mighty Morphin Rump Rangers, a weird parody porn comic of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Yes, I'm sure I will get to it. I just remembered this story within the pages of the Flash that I have to talk about because it's really bad.
Anyway I will start the review off honestly saying that while I did not enjoy this story I did like a good majority of the stories done by Cary Bates. He started working for DC more or less when he was a teenager. He would create story ideas and covers for them. I believe his first was Superman #164 in 1964. You know the cover with Brainiac and Luthor looking at a Superman whos now tiny and stuck in a bird cage. It's a great cover. I don't know how the story within is but it's gotta be at least more fun than this.
Cary worked for DC for almost 3 decades. I believe his last comics were written around 1991 (until a return in like 2010 for an Elseworlds story), which he did with Greg Wiseman. He worked on Superman, Justice League, Flash (every issue from 218 to 350 was written by him.) He had some clunkers (like this story) but he genuinely wrote fun and entertaining Superhero comics and most of the time I was pleased with the story done by him.
Carmine Infantino was a big name in comics for decades. He worked during the Golden Age, The Silver Age, The Bronze Age. At DC and at Marvel. He was even the EIC of DC Comics during the 1970s. The man was an really great artist in his day. He had lost a little spark during this time but I'll get to that during the review. Sadly he passed away at the age of 88 in 2013, but his legacy lives on in probably the saddest place, comic book facebook groups. Sorry Carmine...
Now before I really get into this story I have to talk about the entire Trial of the Flash storyline. In one issue it looks as if The Reverse Flash (you know the guy in the yellow costume) was killed by the Flash. He was trying to kill the Flash' girlfriend and you know that sounds like a great story. Really great, even could have been a classic of the Bronze age. The problem was that the Reverse Flash died in issue 326 or so. This is a discussion of issues 339-340. It doesn't stop until issue 350. I believe I read somewhere, so I do not know if this is the God's honest truth or what, that they were already planning Crisis and Flash's death. It makes sense because The Monitor whos a big name in that story is mentioned in this one. DC Comics had him keep this Trial story going for 24 issues so they could get to number 350 and then cancel the book. Probably to get an extra 75 cents by upping the price for an anniversary issue or something. I don't know I don't own the issue.
That to be completely fair is all hearsay. I do not know a single person who worked at DC Comics at that time period or any other time period. I cannot speak for them, I can just read what's on the page and what the page says is that holy shit this was dragged out to hell and back because you can tell Cary would have liked to see this end at issue 340. Issue 338 continues from 338 where The Flash was fighting The Pied Piper. All you need to know about that issue is that the Flash defeats the Pied Piper and drives the Piper crazy. It's really forced even if later they were all like "oh hey the Piper was on the brink of insanity for months!"
Captain Boomerang and Mirror Master try to break him out of the looney bin and get really mad that The Flash drove him bonkers that they pick up a man named Dufus Ratchet (yes that's the guys name) and put him in a specially made suit to fight the Flash. This is what makes me remember this story you see, this guy Dufus, has the mental capacity of a child. Yes, they decided it was okay to have the Flash fight a mentally disabled man. Sure the fight isn't much but still it's in really bad taste to be like "Yeah let's have our hero fight this guy with the mind of an 8 year old". They get him to fight the Flash by saying he killed a mouse. Big Sir (Dufus' supervillain name) is shown that the Flash is a hero and he was duped when the Flash saves a bear cub. This takes place over 3 issues. It's totally maybe a 2 parter made into a 3 parter because they needed to keep the Trial story from ending.
The art in most places is really good. Carmine was almost 60 years old at this point and was still doing really good work. Most people seem to not like it but I like this cartoony style of his art at this point. Some stuff doesn't work as well but I assume he didn't have the time to fix it. Most of my issue is this weird splash page that just looks weird to me. I'm no art scholar but I don't think it works well. I dunno. I liked most of his stuff.
FINAL VERDICT: This is not a very good story. It feels like they are just pushing an overall story arc (the stuff that's interesting in this story is trial story arc stuff that's in the background and all). I also think that having the Flash fight a mentally disabled man even for a second is a bad idea. Just a comic to be avoided. Thankfully Cary Bates actually probably did the best work of his career with Greg Wiseman in the Captain Atom book. They would also go to work on episodes of Gargoyles too. As for Big Sir, they actually used him again but turned him into your regular Dumb guy for the Justice League International of the late 1980s. A good decision by the people behind that classic stuff, being seen as a comedic dumb guy is streets and avenues ahead of being a literally mentally disabled man. I still don't know what they were thinking.
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That's retarded.
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