"The Flash Is Born" killed the Flash

Having recently gained access to all the episodes of CW's Flash series, I decided to watch them to see just Where It Went Wrong.

The series was amazing is so many ways, I think we would all agree.  But it also shot itself in the foot many times. Many have opined on Where It Went Wrong, but I wanted to nail down my own opinion.  

It didn't take long.

It was Episode Six, which I had almost completely forgotten.

[Even before that, the choice of Multiplex as the villain of the week for the SECOND episode was definitely... non-ideal. But a villain with improbable powers does not immediately break a show whose premise is "believing in the impossible". Besides, it was overshadowed by Harrison Wells at his funniest ("... I eat.") and scariest (unexpectedly getting out of his wheelchair and stabbing Simon Stagg).]

In Episode Six, titled "The Flash Is Born", the villain of the week was Tony "Girder" Woodward, who had been a childhood bully of Barry's. Empowered during the particle accelerator event to turn himself into solid metal, Girder beats the crap out of the Flash a time or two and starts hitting on Iris (um, metaphorically). Barry fusses about being unable to defeat his now superpowered bully and the S.T.A.R. team determines that do so Barry must Run Faster Than Ever and hit Girder with a very precise punch.

Barry, eventually, does just that and Girder is imprisoned in the "Pipeline" at S.T.A.R Labs, newly renovated to contain supervillains, whereupon Barry unmasks and reveals to his bully that it was his childhood victim who defeated him.

The elements that are the downfall of the show are present only six episodes in. Sure there were other problems with the show (the proliferation of heroes, many more powerful that Flash; the intrinsic childishness and ickiness of his infatuation with Iris; the overuse of Evil Speedsters; the writers writing to keep the existing cast on the show, rather than let the direction of the storylines determine the casting).  But those aren't what doomed the show; These are.

Overpersonalization of Everything. In this episode,  that means a villain with a personal connection to the hero, which is a Marvel trope. We are interested in seeing the Flash do cool stuff and have to creatively defeat villains, not in seeing Barry wrestle with personal demons.  But it WAS a CW show and, although the Flash showrunner should be commended for never being embarrassed about it being a comic book show, they MIGHT have been better off being a bit MORE embarrassed about it being a CW show.

Barry overcomes self-doubt, again and again and again. Everyone who watched the show noticed and got tired of this pattern and this is the episode where it actually BECAME a pattern (after his crisis of confidence nearly stopped him from defeating freakin' MULTIPLEX).  Over on Arrow, Oliver Queen leads his team (even if it's often rough going); on the Flash, Barry Allen is always the one being lead by others.

Barry and his Team use his powers exotically (and stupidly) rather than simply. It is maddening to watch the writers have them insist that Barry MUST PERSONALLY PUNCH Girder (which MIGHT wind up atomizing Barry).  Geez, Barry; learn to THROW A ROCK.  Or just hit him with a BASEBALL BAT.  Such things are harder than your fist and you won't atomize yourself if they don't do the job.  

Is Jay really THAT much smarter than Barry?

Jay Garrick knew he wasn't confined to close combat attacks. And he BRANDED accordingly.

Barry, supposedly a scientist, is wildly emotional and has zero control over his emotions and make no attempt to keep them from determining his actions.  And, oddly, for someone so riddled with self-doubt, Barry NEVER questions whether his feelings are an appropriate guideline for action.  

I assume the writers intended for our hearts to swell with sympathetic joy and pride when Barry reveals his identity to Girder.  But any comic book reader naturally just shook their head; you don't EXPOSE your secret identity to a VILLAIN simply out of PRIDE.  Anyone who's ever read a Golden Age Batman story knows the inevitable fate of a bad guy who learns a secret identity: the bad guy gets killed, almost immediately. Sure enough, exactly that happens to Girder in the next episode.  This is where the writers started painting themselves in corners that made the plots predictable.

The Not So Secret Message of The Joker's Outfit

Okay, a YouTube video, professing to explain the history of all the Joker's costumes, made me mad enough to write this post.  Why am I continually surprised at the shoddy scholarship on YouTube?!  Why do I keep imagining that I will learn something by clicking on these videos?

BAH! FOOLS!

In this case I never got past 01:10, where the video describes the Joker's original costume as "straight out of film noir gangster films".

This, for those of you who are not familiar with sartorial history, is incorrect.

"Gangsters" did not wear TAILCOATS.  Nor flat-topped hats, nor vests, nor wing collars, nor string ties. These are elements of clothing from 40 to 50 years earlier than the "Gangster Era".

Nor dress gloves.

I get it. When you are a child every four-legged animal is "doggy" for a while, until you learn more terms and details to distinguish among quadrupeds.  So, too, if you are a contemporary unstudied person, you lump together decades worth of clothing styles in a big box labelled "OLD".

I am more empathetic than I sound. My husband is a costume designer (his work above), and compared to HIM, what I know about clothing can't fill a thimble.

So I will explain to you what the Joker's original outfit is meant to evoke (which would have been MUCH clearer to people in 1939). In short, the Joker is outfitted AS A CARDPLAYER.

Are you familiar with the Gambler, from the Injustice Society?
Does his outfit look familiar?

The hat that the Joker wears? It's not a "fedora"; it's literally CALLED a "Gambler's Hat".

Its top is FLAT and low, unlike a fedora or trilby.

The string tie? Its common name is a "Kentucky tie", and it's associated with Southern cardplayers (and those who drifted to the Wild West with their style intact).

Such as this guy in this Western film.

And WHY is the Joker dressed this way? It's obvious: he's coded as a CARD PLAYER. 

John Carradine ("Stagecoach"1939) would have made an interesting Joker.

And a sneaky one, not a good honest cowboy type, but a sneaky, sneering, aristocratic SOUTHERN one.

The first image of the Joker is from the splash page of his first story shows him...
dealing a hand of cards.

The time we see the Joker smile is when he self-identifies as a cheating card player.

The pinstriped pants and spats...

Or the "stirrup" pants, another old-school element 

...are also part of the look. Everything about the Joker's outfit says "shady gambler."

There are some echos of the Wild West UNDERTAKER, but the hat, the color of the suit, and pants and spats undercut that association severely, leaving "gambler" the only on-target association.

Thanks to period films and closer proximity to the era, the Southern/Western Gambler was a more familiar trope when the character of the Joker was introduced. This type of clothing (particularly in a usually "villainous" color) was really all the Joker needed to be thematically costumed.  

With due deference to the artists of the Bronze Age, a lot is lost by outfitting the Joker in contemporary styles and there is a reason these looks don't stick (despite their effective color scheme).

The Hardest Job in Comics

Having given it some thought, I think the hardest job in comics would be: writing for Doll Man.

Preserving his dignity being chief among the challenges.

First of all, it's not like writing for The Atom, who can vary his size from normal scale all the way down to the microscopic.  Darrell "Doll Man" Dane has two setting: normal-size and six inches.

With all due deference to the many who assert that "normal-size" and "six inches" are the same thing.

Now, sometimes, especially early on, Doll Man's powers weren't confined to being six inches. Some how, being shrunken can him "the strength of twenty men", no need for oxygen (as evidenced by underwater adventures), enough invulnerability to be shot of guns and get stepped on, and, occasionally, superior rationality.

Given that his original transformation literally drove him insane, that's counterintuitive.

He was more "double espresso man" than "doll man".  And his powers were wildly inconsistent.

Unlike the Atom, whose powers are just ... consistently wild.  
"Curses! Answering machines... my one weakness!"

So he's kind of crazy (and certainly reckless). He has unexplained powers (no one ever explained how he suddenly just started to WILL himself into changing size without the use of his original formula or how the heck his clothes came and went).

By the time "Doll Girl" came along, she skipped straight to WILLPOWERING her way into changing size.

And Doll Man has only one useful size.

By that I mean the six foot size. What good is a hero who gets knocked out by a cuckoo clock?
Ray Palmer would have shrunk out of harm's way or sliced it in half with his Sword of the Atom. Speaking of which, shouldn't Ray carry a microsword WITH him at all times, for such occasions?

Imagine trying to come up with villains for Doll Man to fight.

Cross-dressing Nazis, sure, but EVERYONE fights those.

They did their darnedest, though!

The Black Witch was an unusual combination of gangster and supernatural threat.

There was Quippo, the evil robot ventriloquist's dummy.  Sort of a M3GAN Beta test.

The Undertaker and Tom Thumb.
Man, the death/corpse-themed Undertaker could have been GREAT but... ZERO flair or stage presence.  He just seems like your disappointed trigonometry teacher.

Queen Mab was just a pretentious nit.

The Mantis. A little light animal-theme, but mostly just creepy and deadly.

Silver Dollar. Sort of an upscale Penny Plunderer.

The real, original HUNTRESS. She shoots men 'cuz men suck.

The real, original FOOL KILLER.
What, you thought Marvel came up with that?

The Skull. See, now THAT is what The Undertaker might have looked like.

I think you can guess what became of The Flame and why he only got one appearance.

THRAWN, lord of lighting.  He had style, but, like The Flame, his career was cut short by an ironic death.

The Minstrel is what you'd get if you asked ChatGPT to craft your nemesis.

Dr. Verne and IT.
One's a steampunk cosplayer; the other's a hairy Dino-thing.
Together, they commit crime.

"Who can stop the Radioactive Man? "
Who needs to? Just wait'll he keels over.

Evil puppets. I mean, that's just inevitable.

The DRESS SUIT. 
I just LOVE the Dress Suit. A natty nightmare.

The Masked Cement Salesman!  I must confess, that never would have occurred to me.

They even gave Doll Man an oddly-named dog, Elmo, whom he fed some super-serum to make him preternaturally strong and intelligent.

Great Dane and Darrell Dane.

Come to think of it, DC missed the boat when they inherited all of Quality's superheroes.  They should have ignored Doll Man and just REPURPOSED all his villains for the Atom, who surely could have used them (and to better effect).

Which Doll Man villain would you like to see make a comeback?

Heads Should Roll For This

 

 

It says "Eri's" instead of "Eris's".  I cannot fathom the depth of ignorance that made this error possible.

Everyone connected with this title should be fired immediately.

But how are they against magic?

Today I learned that there are two things that can protect Superman from Kryptonite radiation.

One: Lead.

Action #376, in case you were wondering.

and, two:

FISH.

All things considered, you think he'd be closer friends with Aquaman.

Hal's Call Sign

A "call sign" is radio transmission tradition; it's a nickname or code used to designate the speaker (either as a particular person, location, or vehicle).  

Like "14 Aelous Umbra", which still mystifies me.

Truckers with CB radios use call signs (or, as they call them, "handles").  

Like, "Razorback".

Ham radio operators use(d) them.

Like the discoverer of life on Mars, W6XRL4.

They remain popular in aviation, particular military aviation.

Like USAF aviator Captain Hal "Highball" Jordan.

I, for one, however, find Hal's call sign ambiguous and inappropriate.  Most people think it has something to do with Hal being a drinker. But really the only credible evidence for that is the slurring of his Filmation voice actor, Gerald Mohr.

"Eazhe ofph, To'-omm...."

In fact, it's certainly from the other, more obscure meaning of "highball": "to go at full or high speed", which you could easily imagine as applying to Hal as an aviator.

But I think DC really missed the mark when they chose "Highball" as Hal Jordan's call sign.  Hal "Head Injury" Jordan would be asking for too much, I suppose.

"Headstrong";
I meant to type 'Hal "Headstrong" Jordan'.

But watching Hal in the old Filmation cartoons made me realize there's another better call sign for him...

"Captain Obvious".