Thursday, August 04, 2011

The Ballad of Barry Allen


Get out your mandolins, everyone! It's time to sing along...

Sung to the tune of the "the Ballad of Barbara Allen"

In Central City’s late Bronze Age
There was a blond man dwelling
And every maid cried well away
For his name was Barry Allen

Twas in the comic book of March
The Iris fans were yelling
Iris West on her deathbed lay
For the love of Barry Allen

He sent her killer to his grave;
His issues still weren’t selling
Praying you must buy my new comic now
For Flash to stay Barry Allen

Quickly quickly he moved on
Quickly quickly he went running
And the only words that Barry said:
“Fiona Webb, you're stunning!”

As she was dating Barry then
She heard the church bell knelling
And every stroke it seemed to say
“You won’t be Mrs. Allen!”

Oh crazy crazy went Ms Webb
Escape from death was narrow
Reverse-Flash died for her today
With Flash’s trial tomorrow

They locked her in the old madhouse
They buried him in the future
And from her grave came Iris West
With Barry to retire

Then Barry died; then he came back
Reverse Flash he did likewise
And he untied their timeline’s knot
The Flash without his fishwife

11 comments:

  1. "Fishwife" is an automatic win.

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  2. Thanks; it's not a word we hear often enough.

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  3. Wow. That's an incredibly convoluted storyline, and somehow, putting it into verse really emphasizes that fact.

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  4. Yeah, those last two verses encompass... well, a lot.

    Over 20 years worth, in fact.

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  5. I'm taking a look at that second-to-last picture, where Infantino is trying to draw Iris again after 15 years. Oddly, it doesn't even look like any person's face so much as the abstract notion of a face. It's like Infantino had reached a point of, "Okay, a woman's head is this sort of round thing with a colorful bit on top, and there are eyes in the middle and a nose bump and a red mouth area below that".

    I know that's technically not Iris, but rather some future chick who died of no causes whatsoever -- but that only reinforces my point that, if future undead chick is supposed to look similar but not identical to Iris, hopefully the artist is capable of rendering "similar but not identical". With mid 80s Infantino, it's anyone's guess.

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  6. I think that this is where one of those "slow claps" are needed.

    Consider it clapped.

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  7. Thank you, Sally! I'll admit the idea is a pretty obvious one, and long overdue, but I've been waiting for the right moment...

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  8. Good stuff! Of course, I'm still partial to this version of the ballad of Barry Allen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TW4fLXWjgE

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  9. I never thought you'd parody a more obscure song than "The Pennsylvania Polka", but was I wrong.

    My experience with "The Ballad of Barbara Ellen" begins and ends with Robin Hood Daffy.

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  10. Yes, Roel, I've always liked that song, too. Although I frown severely at the person who made that video. That is song is titled "The Ballad of Barry Allen", NOT the "Ballad of the Flash"; it is NOT about Wally, for goodness sake.

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  11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Allen_(song)

    "Barbara Allen" is many things, but it is NOT "obscure". Its Roud number is FIFTY-FOUR, for heaven's sake. It's one of Western Civilization's most basic examples of What A Song Is.

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