[Dr Kain]

It is getting hard to hold these back to one a day.



I am a 90’s kids for the most part. Yes, I was a child in the 80’s, but most of what I know about outside of cartoons is from the 90’s, which I feel had superior cartoons compared to the 80’s. However, comic books, are another story.

Nevertheless, when I was growing up, Wally West was the Flash, but his stories were not the first Flash comics I read. I started to read Flash right around 89-90, but my dad had bought me several issues of Flash that were from the late 70’s and early 80’s, so they all featured Barry. He is the Flash I came to know and love, and the live action TV show helped cement Barry as the Flash for me. While I do not remember much about the TV show outside of the Trickster episode being interrupted because the president had a heart attack or something (and it was so annoying at boring at 8 years old), I remember Barry and nothing but Barry. It was not until Justice League and a few comics throughout the 90’s that I really came to know Wally. As such, Barry is the Flash to me and I am glad to have him in the spotlight once again in the comic world despite his sacrifice in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” being diminished because of it. Then again, when you think about it, being dead in comic books is like calling in sick in the real world. You call in dead for a year or two so you can come back in top notch shape later.

Now Flash has an interesting set of rogues because unlike Batman, whose rogues tend to have some type of tragic past, or even Spider-Man whose enemies seem to be science experiments gone wrong, most of Flash’s rogues are just bank robbers. They just want to rob a bank and reap the rewards from it. Outside of a few like Grodd and Reverse Flash/Thawne/Zoom/whatever you want to call him, his enemies are jut petty criminals. Captain Cold is just a man wearing a coat. He does not have the body of ice. He does not have a dying wife frozen forever. He is just a normal person. Heat Wave is just a psycho path that plays with fire. Mirror Master is just a scientist using his talents for his own greed. Same goes for Weather Wizard. Captain Boomerang is just a man with an abusive father when he was a child who found relief in tossing boomerangs. Trickster is… well Trickster.

Another reason I fell in love with the Flash from the start is because of his powers. It would be so cool to just run at the speed of light and always get there within seconds!!! The time traveling aspect, however, can get hokey if it is not written well, especially during the Silver Age with Flash’s Cosmic Treadmill. That was a little awkward and is something I am glad does not happen in the current comics.

Nevertheless, it was a neat idea for the time.