I am wondering right now, if ahn roh man title as president of roan in earth 3 is being theretened because he is a symbol of the past, would lee soo hyuk have the same fate as him?
I mean like, i know he is not the president, but he is the team leader of team 1 in the company.
Will the people want to replace him with someone new to get rid of their past as the people in earth 3 did to ahn roh man?
Because both ahn roh man and lee soo hyuk did something magnificent in order to help the world and saving other people left and right until they become the symbol in that apocalypse time.
The people still respect him, but in order for people to forget about the past (the apocalypse), they will have to get rid of the symbol aren't they?
So... Do you guys think Kim Roksoo's teammates used to go batshit like Cale's party do when he gets hurt? Like, when he overloads after using Record and has a nosebleed, or when he gets multiple cuts on his body from using Instant, and maybe more. Do you think Kim Minah, Jung Sohoon, Agent Cha and others all used to get super frustrated and wreck everything?
Remember the time Choi Han and Mary wrecked havoc in the palace during a celebration because some audacious nobles looked down on Cale? Do you think Kim Roksoo's subordinates used to fight people from other teams when they talked trash about their beloved team leader?
Because I think they did do all of that. Kim Roksoo may have avoided getting close to them, but he could do nothing to mask his natural charisma that warrants respect and loyalty.
Flash #123. The comic that created a multiverse. The story that opened the door to infinite potential. Next to the actual golden age debuts of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, this may be one of the most influential issues in the history of the superhero as a genre. I'm here to tell you: The hype is real. Welcome to the Gutters!
Flash #123 didn't just create the DC multiverse, it might well have created the very concept of a multiverse. It existed as a theoretical physics exercise, of course, but those don't move the needle. Outside of Portal Fantasy stories - which the kids today call isekai - such as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or The Chronicles of Narnia, one of the first writers to use the concept of a network of interconnected alternate universes was Michael Moorcock, who made it the basis of his sprawling Eternal Champion series. Moorcock was the first to use the term "Multiverse" in a story published years after this issue, but speculation about who originated the theory is an errand far beyond the scope of this fool.
Before we actually get to the starring feature, we have some ado to do. I want to briefly touch on issues #121 and #122, because they're actually pretty alright. I was a bit hard on this series in my last post, which I think might be a symptom of overexposure. Watching one Michael Bay movie can be a fun evening, watching Michael Bay's entire filmography can make your eyeballs bleed. Whatever faults these comics may have - and there are many - when done right, they can be a fun kind of dumb and a dumb kind of fun.
Flash #121 features the return of the Trickster, who's always fun to have around. There's a very different dynamic than Batman has with the Joker because the Flash has enough of a sense of humor to trick him right back. Flash always seems to enjoy encounters with the Trickster, which foreshadows the congenial relationship he has with most of his recurring villains, one of my favorite characteristics of Flash stories.
I also believe this issue is the first time that the Flash uses his speed to effectively appear in two places at once during the same conversation, an ability that strains credulity to the point that I have to laugh at the unrestrained audacity of it. Like, the other guy should be able to feel the wind, right? I'm not the only one who sees the secondary effects? Whatever, Speed Force did it.
Flash #122 introduces a new supervillain, Roscoe Dillon, AKA the Top. For the most part, he's just a gimmick villain with weapons and traps hidden in kids' toys, but he has an amazing superpower: spinning! That's a good trick! He apparently was able to teach himself how to spin at speeds comparable to the Flash on his own, because apparently it's as easy as riding a bicycle.
Over the course of an singel isseue, the Top escalates his schemes from spinning real fast and robbing armored cars to constructing a spin-powered atomic bomb capable of destroying half the planet and then being fully prepared to let it end the world. The Top does not give a single fuck, my dudes. Flash defeats this maniac the only way he possibly could: even more spinning. He spins so fast it flies out into orbit.
I enjoyed these issues a bit more than the last few. I don't know if I just needed to get something out of my system, but I think these are doing more things right. There's just that bit more focus on Barry's chemistry with Iris, and on Flash's chemistry with his villains. There's a kind of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure quality to Flash's villain encounters, where they each have a narrow ability with a lot of potential applications and it's all about each character navigating the mechanics of their powers to gain advantage over each other. I love reading that, and it's magic when it works.
With that out of the way, we proceed to our main event. Flash #123, The Flash of Two Worlds. The story begins as Flash is doing a demonstration of super-speed stage magic, when, in an attempt to vibrate himself invisible, he instead vanishes completely. Which, according to international standards of magic, is a separate thing entirely. Flash finds himself not in his hometown of Central City, but Keystone City, a city he's never heard of, where nobody recognizes him as the Flash.
Flash soon puts the pieces together and realizes where he's heard the name Keystone City. He goes to a phone book - which was a kind of hard-copy doxxing database available on every street corner in small kiosks called "payphones" - and looks up the name Jay Garrick, the Golden Age flash. Do you remember how Barry Allen was reading an issue of the Golden Age flash all the way back in his first appearance? Foreshadowing is a literary device-
Unlike many stories of a similar genre, Barry Allen hasn't just stepped into an issue of his favorite old-school comic, he's actually stepped into a living universe. Jay Garrick is presented as a person every bit as real as Barry Allen, and his universe isn't treated as a work of fiction, but a parallel and valid universe. Barry Allen creates the hypothesis that Gardner Fox, the real writer who created the Golden and Silver age Flashes, and wrote this very issue, was receiving telepathic visions of Jay Garrick's earth - and by extension the same thing is happening on the real world, a thing that is true in DC Comics.
What sells Jay's world, later referred to as "Earth-2" is that the world hasn't just been in limbo since the golden age comic stopped. The world didn't stop existing just because the comic was no longer being published, the comic stopped being published because Jay retired. He got married to his longtime girlfriend Joan and settled down to live a quiet life in a peaceful world. He's aged a full twelve human earth years in that time! Look at the sides of his hair! Later comics would flesh out Jay's private life to a greater degree and make him a distinct character from Barry, but that's for later.
Coincidentally, while all of this multiverse nonsense has been happening, three of Jay's old supervillains have broken out of prison. I guess the Speed Force brought Barry to help. We have the Shade, who controls living darkness; the Fiddler, who controls minds with his hypno-violin; and the Thinker, whomst thinks real good. The Flashes split up to investigate, but the villains get the better of both of them. The Thinker is able to use his mental powers to confuse Jay with his illusions, having him run around in circles until he runs out of stamina, because he's an old man with tired old man knees. Meanwhile, Barry is able to use his superior speed to counter the Shade, but wasn't prepared for him to have a second gimmick in his arsenal.
This is very much the antithesis of the powerscaling question from last time. On paper, all three of these villains - together or separately - should be no match for a single Flash, let alone two. But they're able to get the better of their respective speedster through clever strategy and an understanding of their foe's capabilities. These may be old white men in silly hats but they've been fighting the (a) Flash for over a decade and they know what they're doing.
By the time the villains figure out that there are actually two The Flashes, Jay and Barry have joined up to fight the Fiddler as a team. However, it looks like they were defeated so quickly and easily that they didn't even bother to show it. Despite able to move faster than sound, the Flashes are somehow weak to hypnotic sound. Look, I just review this stuff. The Fiddler hypnotizes the two Flashes to rob the museum, and then commands them to not to move at all for 24 hours. How do the heroes get out of this fiendish predicament? Through the flimsiest of loopholes.
See despite having apparent complete mental control over the Flashes two, they were able to escape because the Fiddler didn't explicitly tell them not to try to escape. That is just bullshit. You could sooner fit a camel through the eye of a needle than you could fit this plot through that narrow justification. But honestly, it almost doesn't matter, because the venn diagram of dumb and fun for this story is a perfect circle. I'm honestly able to overlook everything for the sake of the pure joy I get from this issue.
I wanted to recapture the experience of a silver age audience reading this comic without assuming any knowledge of the golden age Flash. To that end, I didn't go back and look at any issues featuring Jay Garrick, and relied on my existing cultural osmosis of these characters. I wanted to be completely free of nostalgia. And I had an absolute blast. You can tell that Gardner Fox has a lot of affection for these characters he created and is loving the chance to bring them down off the shelf. Jay and Barry have such a great chemistry, and all of the villains are absolutely dripping with charisma. I wasn't just entertained, I wanted to see more of them.
I naturally compare this to what I am reluctantly going to call "slopstalgia" that's been showing up in a lot of Superhero movies of recent years. Spider-Man: No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine, and ironically, The Flash (2023) all feel like nakedly pandering attempts to appeal to the familiar by propping up the corpse of long-defunct intellectual property like some necromarionette. We're not going to get another movie with Michael Keaton as Batman. That ship has sailed, docked, been put up into a museum, and had every individual component replaced with identical copies five separate times by now. Theseus would not recognize this ship if you read him the VIN number.
Contrary to pretty much every other example of unabashed nostalgia bait, this adventure was actually the start of something new. Jay Garrick wouldn't just be a passing of the torch, he and his whole universe would open up wide new avenues for storytelling. This would not just affect Flash comics, but the entire DC Universe, which still to this day is telling stories across multiple dimensions, creating bold new worlds that mix the familiar and the unfamiliar together. Recently it's even come back around to the point that the characters themselves are aware that their universe has been reboooted from the ground up several times, and at time of writing, the current storyline is about them fighting against the forces of multiversal resets to preserve the world they love. That conflict has taken the form of a fighting game complete with non-canon DLC characters, but you can't have everything in this life. Until next time!
Is anyone interested in Lee Soohyuk’s/ Sui khan’s history???
Like you mean to tell me this handsome charismatic slacker/ failed actor somehow meet the Choi Junggun?? Choi Junggun gave him his most useful ability for some reason at the beginning of the apocalypse?? Like who are you???
And Sui khan??? Bro what do you mean your body wasn’t your own for the past 13 years?? What exactly were you doing with the black hawk tribe??? What exactly were you doing with your work from the god of death???
This person doesn’t seem that mysterious at first but istg if you look a bit deeper this man has to have some of the most confusing, hole ridden past.
And don’t even get me started on his own tragedy??? What do you mean you were extremely depressed and confused if you should continue to save people selflessly?? What do you mean you ended up dieing young?? Only to end up never being able to rest in piece despite all the running around you did while you were alive?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CHOSE TO BE ABLE TO ASSIST YOUR DONGSAENG IN YOUR NEXT LIFE?? RATHER THAN WORRYING ABOUT YOURSELF YOU STILL CHOSE TO DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO HELP KRS???
Honestly I need a spin off of tcf following Lee soohyuk and all his experiences from pre-apocalypse LSH to 13 y/o Sui khan.
