Evil space-robots, Max Lord arrives, and the secrets of Superboy

The Flash #3; Firestorm #62; Justice League #4; Legion of Super-Heroes #38; Superman #8; Action Comics #591

Flash #3 by Mike Baron and Jackson Guice

After two issues building a new life for The Flash and Frances Kane, we reach this issue and things take a turn. While the last issue saw Wally get a fancy new house and a planned life with Frances, she seemed not quite as ready as he did. This issue opens with the Flash getting a speeding ticket in his Lamborghini in what I’m pretty sure is meant to be a joke, but falls flat on its face. He comes home to a note from Frances saying she still loves him but needs some space.

That space would last for about four years before she actually shows up again in the pages of The Flash. It’s incredibly unclear why this happened. She would make a couple of appearances in Teen Titans books after this, so it’s possible that she was meant to stay in that corner of the universe. But I suspect she’s written out simply because Mike Baron wanted to create his own love interest for the character. Whatever the case, that simple letter is the end of Frankie making appearances in this book. Wally won’t miss her so I guess we shouldn’t either.

Art by Jackson Guice and Larry Mahlstedt. Owned by DC Comics and used for review purposes.

The Flash heads to the STAR Labs in Salt Lake City to meet with researchers about the current nature of his powers. He meets Professor Schmitz, the head of the research project for his speed, and then he meets the young raven-haired Doctor Tina McGee. Exactly four pages after the note from Fran, the Flash has a new love interest. He almost immediately notices the ring on her finger, but that does nothing to stop him from hitting on her. Nor does it stop her from flirting back.

When the Flash goes on his test run, he sees something as he approaches the speed of sound, a strange metallic lifeform, not quite in sync with the current timeline. It uses him as an anchor to pull itself into our reality.

The strange lifeform attacks them, but Flash’s assault back causes it to retreat back into a perfect orb. Professor Schmitz touches the side of the metal, only to have his finger ripped off by it. The Flash takes everyone back inside the facility. They seal themselves inside. The lifeform speaks to them through their computer systems and identifies itself as Kilg%re. (Don’t ask me how to pronounce that name, although the TV series turned him into a human and simply said “Kilgore.”) It’s an electromagnetic intelligence that already destroyed its homeworld and wants to drain the energies from Earth next.

It has no particular use for humanity and almost immediately kills a man, even as it takes the form of Max Headroom on the facility’s monitors. (It was the 80s.) It seems ready to destroy all of humanity but simply disappears instead.

The Flash collapses after so much exertion and wakes up ten hours later to Tina McGee’s care. The National Guard frees them from the facility and with no sign of Kilg%re anywhere, things start to normalize again. Schmitz downplays the threat of the alien intelligence, surmising it might have died in Earth’s atmosphere. Flash goes on his next test run, but this one is interrupted by the arrival of a federal agent.

Kilg%re made its threat fifteen minutes earlier: it gives humanity until May 10th to evacuate all of North America and leave it in Kilg%re’s control. It launches a missile at a New Jersey city to show its power, but the missile turns out to be faulty and explodes in the sky. It warns that the weapons it’s building will not be faulty.

The agent takes Flash, Tina McGee, and Professor Schmitz to aid with the threat, but as they leave, the Flash notices that Schmitz’s missing finger has returned as if nothing had happened…

And that’s where we leave it until next issue.

This issue feels strange as the only throughline from issue one to this one is Wally’s continued issues with his powers. The first two issues feel almost nebulous. Arguably, they could have been left as backstory and this could have just as easily served as issue one. It’s actually frustrating, as the Wally of the first two issues was slightly more likable than the one presented in this issue. Wally immediately flirted with a married woman only a day after his breakup only serves to present him as kind of gross. They even confirm he’s around twenty at this point, which does nothing to stop him from hitting on Dr. McGee (who has to at minimum be five or six years older than him) or slow her from flirting back. While we will soon get to why she feels comfortable not acknowledging her husband’s existence, Wally knows none of that yet. He’s just a rather gross horndog here.

Kilg%re’s debut is incredibly random as well. There’s very little reason why it should be here outside the convenience of creating a new villain for Wally to face. The escalation of its assault on mankind should almost immediately take it beyond simply a Flash villain as well. Its threat was supposedly broadcast worldwide. The agent mentions the Titans are unreachable, but where are the Outsiders, Superman, Booster Gold, or Infinity Inc — the last two of which literally have a public hotline to hire them?

That question will likely not be answered next issue. We’ll have to see if the new Flash’s second adventure vastly approves in those pages in a few weeks.