A Shade of Doubt

Having watched the final episode of Stargirl, I was left with few questions, since great effort was made to wrap up all the plot threads (including ones not even introduced yet, thanks to its non-renewal for an anticipated fourth season). Even Mike (whom they quickly had to GIVE an unresolved plot thread, just so they could resolve it and give him An Emotional Arc) and Jakeem (if "finally realizing he should stop letting himself be bossed around by his objectively stupider friend, the one who was too bad at using the Thunderbolt to keep it in the first place" counts as an emotional arc).  

The dei were FLYING ex their machinis (except for that falling car, which was, I suppose more machina de deo than deus ex machina) to wrap up loose ends I didn't even know we had.

I certainly didn't see THAT coming. I assumed that part of next season's journey would be Rick and Cameron finally, ya know, working out The Big Thing Between Them.
And I don't mean Grundy.

I had completely forgotten about The Search for Becky, but Courtney didn't because she's a better than I am (and, you know, than just everybody).  Courtney didn't get told "you shit marble" by anybody and finally was able to say "Hey, I shit marble!" herself, which I suppose was her character arc.  The arcs were full of pairs during the finale as Everyone Got to Face Off with whoever they needed to, and I was most satisfied by Beth and Sofus simply going, "Can we just NOT fight? Great."

As for me, well, I got to see Joel McHale strapped down half-naked to a table with Neil Jackson whispering in his ear.

Dreams CAN come true.

Even Sir Justin, the janitor from Season 1, was not forgotten, since the "recap of the future" let's us know that the JSA eventually rescued the missing Soldiers of Victory from the Nebula Man.  

Imagine Stephen Amell and Colton Haynes in even ONE SCENE
 dressed up as the Golden Age shelf-elves. 

But the final scene, between Jay "The Flash" Garrick and The Shade, was the real mystery.

John Wesley Shipp played a superhero when that was the hardest thing to do on screen and deserves every resultant perq in perpetuity.

I don't mean Jay's reference to "some adventure we all need to do!"  I mean Jay semi-ironically calling the Shade "old friend".  Because that's when it hit me: the idea that the Shade was a recurring Flash villain in the Golden Age had been repeated again and again and again in continuity since 1961.  And I knew immediately that, therefore, it must be completely false. Why else would it be so often repeated but the stories never re-printed or any of their conflicts used a seed for a modern plot?

Do ever get the feeling that you're slowly but surely turning into...
Speed Saunders?

This idea is (of course) regurgitated endlessly on the internet.  Whoever those people who write the internet are, they will believe ANYTHING they read in a comic book (or elsewhere on the internet).  So, just like with Hippasus of Metaponum, I decided to check, this time with help from the DCU Guide's Chronology of all the Shade's appearances (which must be correct, since it's on the internet).

Naturally, just like a Golden Age Hero, my hunch was correct. The Shade appears in exactly ONE story in the Golden Age, which I then read at Speed Saunders' library after donning some appropriate bracelets.

I mean, how many people own ALL the issues of Detective Comics before Batman debuted?

The Golden Age Shade is different from his later versions, and his story is just as terrible as most Jay Garrick stories.  I don't have the patience to 'read' it with you (nor do you deserve such punishment). But I will share some of what I learned from "The Man Who Commanded the Night!"

The Shade wears normal, if old-fashioned, black clothing. As opposed to his hilarious "beano with top hat" outfit from the Silver Age.

How many years was it before The Shade finally said,
"Look, I'm just going to wear my pajamas from now on. It's not as if anyone SEES me."

The Shade is pure (comic book) science; he brings darkness to the city with a machine (more on that later). That darkness has a scientific antidote: cosmic ray–based flashlights called "cosmoray guns".  

Cosmo Raygun? "Cosmo Reagan" would be a great pseudonym. Anyway, it's the Starman Era and "cosmic rays" were still pretty mysterious, so comics writers enjoyed the opportunity to use them as plot devices.

But the Shade is not up against Starman (who would clearly kick his hinder and give him a lecture about the responsible use of cosmic rays and ridiculous headgear); he's up against Jay "The Flash" Garrick. Who's a lunatic.

Allow me to clarify.  MOST of your impressions of Jay Garrick from post-Golden Age comics are pretty consistent with his actual portrayals in the Golden Age.  Friendly guy, science-smart, DILF-y vibe, unflappable and light-hearted in his heroics, happy with his knowing bombshell girlfriend.  What you DON'T know without reading original Jay Garrick stories is:

Jay Garrick was not only 10 times more light-hearted than Barry Allen but 100 times more savage.

10 times more light-hearted.

100 times more savage.

Yes. Read it again.  Jay could – and did – uses his vibrational powers (which the writers didn't know how to name) to embed those men's bodies into solid objects. And then make them PAY for it. Jay may not sweat when he runs, but he exudes nightmare fuel.

I think Geoff Johns is wrong...

if there is hero who clearly should NOT have had kids, it was Jay Garrick.

Imagine having your head embedded in a spouting fire hydrant. But Jay always played such horrors for laughs. Jay spent a lot of energy using his powers to humiliate his (criminal) victims, because, as we have discussed, humiliation was a highly favored tactic in Golden Age crime-fighing. And the Flash was a light-hearted (Golden Age style) series, so light-hearted it's CRUSHED under the weight of frequent comedy-relief characters and passages. The Shade gets less screen time in his own story than the Happy Drunk who winds up being Jay's unintentional partner in Shade's defeat.

Guy never gets a name.  I bet it's "Cosmo Reagan", because comic book irony.

Jay, being a scientist, deduces that The Shade is generating darkness by... removing dust.

Apparently, Golden Age writers didn't understand how LIGHT worked, let alone cosmic rays.

Dust; remove it and all is in darkness. Well, as hilariously, insanely wrong as that is, it is The Premise of the story. So how is The Shade–

a super-dust-filter machine, of course.

Hard to imagine, but Shade's original gimmick is way less believable than "a magic cane". 

It actually WASN'T a "magic" cane in the Silver Age, because, just as for Shade's first story, Gardner Fox was STILL the writer.  He didn't do "magic", just vague "science" that might as well be magic.  Only later writers finally gave up and retconned it:
"Yeah, this damned thing is obviously just MAGIC."

 

Well, the science Premise may be stupid, but the criminal Scheme is ingenious: instead of running out to loot the city during the blackout, Shade has his gang CAPTURE THE ENTIRE CITY'S POLICE FORCE, station by station.  Only afterwards do they loot.  

Bane steals all his plans from Golden Age Flash comics, because he knows no one reads them.

When Jay does eventually confront Shade & Gang, he continues his reign of speed terror/humiliation in a way that poor dull Barry Allen would never imagine.

With paper airplanes

Paper airplanes thrown so fast as become like bullets; that's both playfully humiliating and pants-wettingly terrifying.  Jay may not have regularly consorted with talking dinosaurs or been turned into a puppet, but the imagination he brought to the mundane task of fighting Guys-In-Ties was manic. The man was a lunatic performance artist and every storylines has "power-using passages" that seem lifted from the Emperor Joker storyline.

Fact is, seeing Jay use his powers simply and efficiently would be painfully boring, especially for kids, so the writers had Jay use his powers in ways that KIDS would use them, or at least would be entertained by.  But with the ten zillion speedsters, good and evil, that Flash writers have insisted on generating over the decades, not ONE of them uses their powers the way Jay did. 

ASIDE: THAT's what I would do to distinguish a speedster (maybe even Wally/Wallace).  Imagine a Flash (or another speedster) who stopped focusing on RUNNING.  

Can you imagine how terrifying the Flash would be if he just learned to use a bow and arrow?

SHOOT, BARRY, SHOOT!

It's been done on occasion. Remember Lieutenant Boomerang? Or the version of Zoom who'd learned to weaponize HIS FINGER-SNAPPING?  

A trick he taught the Reverse-Flash.

Imagine a speedster confined to a wheelchair!

Nah, that would never seem threatening.

None of these stories 

ever confronts the actual issue

of what Flash or another speedster could / would do

if the condition were actually permanent.

ASIDE OFF

Jay Garrick appears in only three panels with Shade, depicting the traditional three-stage final face-off between a Golden Age hero and villain: 

    1. the Intro ("I've come to punch your face repeatedly"), 

    2. the Fight ("Here's a joke about punching your face repeatedly"), and

    3. the Remanding ("Now that his face has been punched repeatedly, take him away, officer.").

I'VE COME TO PUNCH YOUR FACE REPEATEDLY.

I'M PUNCHING YOUR FACE REPEATEDLY.

HERE YOU GO, OFFICER

Congratulations; with those three panels you have now experienced the totality of Jay Garrick and the Shade's ACTUAL INTERACTION in the pre-Silver Age comics. Realize that everything else is just modern retcon to make the character usable or interesting.

I learned some other things from the rest of Flash Comics #33, but I'll save those for another day. Now that this matter has prompted me to (finally) learn to edit Wikipedia, I have to make sure there's no wrong information on the internet. Plus, thanks to Wikipedia's automatic suggestions, I don't have to patrol Wiki City; Commissioner Crowdsource just asks for my help with a Scipio-signal and is telling me a hero needs my help!

I mean, how hard could it be?

Per Degaton, Part 2: "And that's not good!"

Poor Professor Zee has been shot (twice) by Per Degaton! His life hangs by a thread and he's the JSA"s only hope of reversing The Change which is steadily eliminating all modern technology! And the advanced modern superscience needed to save his life has disappeared: penicillin.  

....Who puts penicillin in a time capsule? It's got a shelf life of 3 years, TOPS.

Really, I'd imagine something a bit, um, stronger? Surgery, maybe? would be required to cure an old man who's been shot twice, but, hey it's 1947, and Penicillin is The Premise.

That ... is NOT how Time Capsules work. They aren't pocket dimensions, Dr. Time Trapper.

So, Jay uses the map app on his phone to search for Time Capsules Containing Penicillin Near Me and heads to Colossal Caves, which is, of course, where Per Degaton is hiding.

Special Metal (trademark pending).

It's no coincidence. The Time Capsule is made of "Special Metal" to protect the contents from the ravages of time; that's the same Special Metal that Degaton is using to protect his weapons from the effects of The Change.  Which makes no sense at all but follows comic book logic perfectly.

Jay encounters Degaton's Diabolical Forces and begins to fight them off, until Degaton beans him with a stalactite.

JAY, WHAT'S THE POINT OF WEARING A STEEL HELMET THEN

Degaton talks about having planned for a long time, which doesn't jibe with the timeline of when he (first) shot the professor, but I suppose he did a lot of his dirty work in the past.  

I can't believe Roy Thomas never referenced Special Metal again, like having the JSA sleep in coffins of it, to explain why they don't look 148 years old.

Anyway, Jay is too Jordaned to used his superspeed until AFTER Degaton snidely seals him in the Time Capsule (with the penicillin) for the oddly specific time of 6000 years, because, as previous noted, Degaton is a ****.

You can tell Jay's TRYING to compose a haiku in the final panel, but between the head blow and the lack of oxygen, he just can't pull it off.  

Say, you ever see a time capsule? Well, they are BULLET-SHAPED.  It's just a tradition, I guess; perhaps it helps protect them from the ravages of time.

Once Jay's head clears, he suddenly remembers, "I'm the Flash!" and just decides to do something ridiculous, like always.

Jay, I'm pretty sure that'll just squish your head up into your helmet. Wasn't the stalactite enough?

Then, in utter defiance of at least one of Newton's laws:

"Just as". Metaphor is the most common means of escape from Golden Age death traps.

Flash captures some of Degaton's men but not materiel.

Jay Garrick, Master of Deduction.

But his main mission was getting the penicillin, which he accomplished.

Note that the story gives Jay an assignment that's time-sensitive, which is appropriate for the Flash.  Golden Age stories may have Absurd Premises but they are good about things like that.

Observe the pattern:

• Hero goes on Assignment. 
• Encounters Degaton & Co.
• Hero notes Degaton's weapon's are unaffected by The Change.
• Gets put in Death Trap. 
• Escapes Death Trap. 
• Accomplishes Assignment. 
• Degaton Escapes.  

You'll see it again.

Tomorrow: Al Pratt, the Golden Age's most presumptuous hero, enacts his plan to run around in the streets in his weird gimp/fetish outfit, just shouting Degaton's name til he gives himself up. What could possibly go wrong?