Oops!
If you're seeing this, you'll need to:
Click Here to Refresh
or swipe down to refresh...
Still not working?
Check your Internet connection or restart your phone
Need more help?
Email us at
support@hipcomic.com
The Flash #140 The Heat Is On... For Captain Cold!
Cover Date: November, 1963
The Heat Is On... For Captain Cold! Police Forensics Scientist, Barry Allen, and Picture News reporter, Iris West, are enjoying a nightcap in her apartment. West abruptly turns her television off, jealous over Allen's riveted attention on the television ...
Issue Description
The Heat Is On... For Captain Cold!Police Forensics Scientist, Barry Allen, and Picture News reporter, Iris West, are enjoying a nightcap in her apartment. West abruptly turns her television off, jealous over Allen's riveted attention on the television personality, "Dream Girl". Allen explains that he was merely waiting for "Dream Girl" to turn around, then explains further. It seems the Flash had been summoned to the law firm of Willens and Kohl, on an urgent matter. The senior partner, Henry Willens, laid it out for the Flash. A wealthy mining magnate, Wilson Varner, had been involved in a catastrophic ship-to-ship collision. Though Varner survived, his daughter, Priscilla, was lost at sea. Varner searched for his daughter until the day he died.
The law firm was tasked with locating her, and bestowing upon her an inheritance worth millions of dollars. Varner, however, imposed a deadline on the search. A deadline the law firm is 24 hours away from reaching. To keep Varner's millions from going to undeserving relatives, Willens asked for the Flash's aid in finding Varner's daughter. The only thing they had to go on is a baby picture of Priscilla, one that shows she has a star-shaped birthmark on the back of her neck. Allen states that he was merely trying to help the Flash out with the search. Appeased, West turns the television back on, just in time to catch a news cast regarding Captain Cold's escape from prison. Allen, as the Flash immediately goes on patrol, searching not only for Varner's daughter, but now for Captain Cold, too.
As it turns out, Captain Cold's motivation for escaping prison, this time, is to win the hand of "Dream Girl". According to the tabloids, "Dream Girl's " affections rest solely with the Flash. Captain Cold sets out to humiliate the Flash with a string of unstoppable crimes. Captain Cold strikes first at the Central City Railway Station, where exiles from the government of Guanador are arriving with their country's treasury. Captain Cold deals with the heavy police presence by firing his Cold Gun at low-hanging clouds, triggering an ice storm. Captain Cold is just about to get away with the Guanadoran bank notes, when the Flash arrives. The Flash races around Captain Cold prompting the freezing felon to fire upon one of the Flash's after-images.
The Flash is just about to deliver the knockout blow, when he is shot from behind by Central City's newest villain, Heatwave. The Flash is blasted into unconsciousness. Thankful for the timely assist, Captain Cold invites Heatwave back to his secret lair. The two villains make plans to enter into a felonious partnership. When Heatwave reveals that he embarked on a life of crime to win the hand of "Dream Girl", Captain Cold turns on him. The two villains instead begin a rivalry, each committing crimes to show the other up. Any time they encounter one another, an epic battle ensues, with Central City suffering millions in property damage, as a result. The Flash encounters the two criminals, blasting away at each other, in the middle of the street.
Suspending their rivalry long enough to deal with the Flash, Captain Cold and Heatwave light the Scarlet Speedster up, with their respective weapons. Vibrating his molecules at super-speed, the Flash conducts Captain Cold's cold attack to the left side of his body, and Heatwave's heat attack to the right side of his body. The two opposing energies cancel one another out. Waving his arm at super-speed, the Flash generates a powerful vacuum that slams the two villains together, knocking them unconscious. With the two criminals in jail, the Flash meets with "Dream Girl" and confirms that she is, in fact, Priscilla Varner. With only minutes to spare before the deadline, the Flash carries Varner to the law firm, where her identity is verified. When West learns that the Flash's involvement in the case led to millions of dollars of donations to Central City's poor, she chastises Allen for not doing as much as the Flash.
The Metal-Eater From The Stars!On his way to keep a lunch date with his girlfriend, Picture News reporter Iris West, Police Forensics Scientist, Barry Allen, is pulled over by the police. Allen is informed of a mysterious object that has fallen in Central City. Allen investigates, as the Flash. Arriving at the scene, the Flash finds that the object is protected by an impenetrable radiation field. After multiple attempts fail to penetrate the field, the Flash circles the globe, to achieve the speed of light. Upon penetrating the field, the Flash finds that, though he is still moving at light speed, he can barely walk at a snail's pace. A gaseous entity rises up out of a crashed space ship, and tries to destroy the Flash.
Barely able to dodge the entity's attacks, the Flash hits upon a novel solution for dealing with it. Activating his Flash costume ring, the Flash shrinks the gaseous entity down, compressing and confining it within his ring. The Flash, as Allen, keeps his lunch date with West. For actually arriving early, West rewards Allen with a kiss. The passions stirred up by West's kiss revive the gaseous entity. Suddenly, all the metal in the room begins disappearing. Allen realizes that the metal-devouring alien is absorbing metals in their order on the periodic table. West goes to report the story to Picture News. Allen realizes he has only minutes before the alien begins absorbing gold, freeing itself from his costume ring.
The gaseous entity emerges from the costume ring, and resumes it's attack on the Flash. The Flash spins and waves and whirls his arms about at super-speed, in an attempt to dissipate the gaseous entity. All to no avail. Finally, the gaseous entity devours the gold of Flash's costume rings, destroying itself. The Flash had actually been speeding up the atoms of the rings so that when the alien absorbed them, the gaseous alien would vibrate with the atoms of the ring, dissipating it. Allen returns to West, stating that not only has the Flash solved the case, but he's offered to give West an exclusive interview. For arranging this minor miracle, Allen is rewarded with another kiss.
The Flash (1959)
- Publisher
- DC Comics
Volume Description
The Flash Volume 1, (continued from Flash Comics).
House AdStarring Barry Allen as the Flash and Wally West as Kid Flash. After 4 try-out issues of "Show case" - the first being #4, which is widely accepted as being the comic that launched the Silver Age - the Flash returned to star in his own title with #105 in 1959. The numbering of the title continued from the Golden Age "Flash Comics," which had come to an end as Super Heroes went out of fashion in the early 1950's. When Police scientist Barry Allen was doused with a variety of chemicals along with a bolt of lightning, the accident endowed him with Super Speed, and he donned the famous red Flash uniform we are all familiar with. Barry was seeing reporter Iris Allen, and to ensure he kept his identity as the Flash a secret from his girlfriend, he always turned up late for their dates. During his Showcase appearances, the Flash had battled the first of what was to become his rogues gallery when he clashed with Captain Cold, and his range of costumed opponents was about expand almost as rapidly as his uniform expanded from his ring when it came into contact with air. In his opening issue, the Flash battled the Mirror Master, and in the following issue, readers were introduced to Gorilla Grodd, Solovar, and the inhabitants of Gorilla City in a trilogy of tales that ran through issues #106 - 108. Also starring in #106 was another costumed villain, the Pied Piper. The Mirror Master obviously proved a hit with fans as he was back in #109 for a re-match and in #110 the Flash encountered the Weather Wizard for the first time. The Trickster brought his tricks to Central City in Flash #113, while Captain Cold returned in #114 and another Captain - this time Captain Boomerang debuted in #117.
However, it wasn't just super villains the Flash was encountering in the early issues of his own series. In #110, Kid Flash made his debut, when Wally West was caught in a freak duplicate of the accident that had given Barry his super speed. Wally's original costume was a duplicate of Barry's (only smaller of course) but sidekicks were "in" at the time and Wally would often feature in back up stories in the Flash as well as sometimes teaming up with his mentor - such as in #120. Later (#135) Wally would receive his more familiar yellow and red costume, which would serve him for the best part of two decades. Shortly after the introduction of Kid Flash, the Flash encountered Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man in #112. At first, Barry thought the Elongated Man was a criminal, but by the end of the lead story in this issue, Ralph was exonerated, and the two men became firm friends. Editor Julius Schwartz was developing a number of friendships across the books he edited and chief among them was a friendship between Green Lantern and the Flash. The two first teamed up in Green Lantern #13 and the friendship was cemented during several shared adventures including the ones in Flash #131 and #143.
The most far reaching team -up of Barry's career was to come about in the classic Flash #123, "Flash of Two Worlds" in which the Scarlet Speedster met his "hero" Jay Garrick, the original Flash from the Golden Age of comics, and the concept of Earth Two was launched. Subsequent team ups between the two Flashes included the reintroduction of the Justice Society of America in #137's "Vengeance of the Immortal Villain," as the heroes pitted their wits against Vandal Savage. In the meantime, the villains just kept coming, as Abra Kadabra - a magician from the future made his debut in #128, Heat Wave made things hot for the Flash in #140, and the Top put him in a spin in # 141. However, it was the introduction of Eobard Thawne - the Reverse Flash (or Professor Zoom) in #140 that would have the most far reaching and long lasting effect upon Barry Allen's future.
When Barry and Iris finally got around to tying the knot, (#165), the Reverse Flash tried to take his place at the altar. Although Barry foiled his arch -foe on this occasion, history would repeat itself later in the series. After the death of Iris (accidentally shot at a costume ball), Barry was about to get re-married. Thawne was about to kill his fiance, but in order to prevent that happening, Barry snapped the neck of his enemy - an event which led to the two-year plus "Trial of the Flash," which concluded the series and led to the seeming demise of Barry Allen in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
With science-based stories by the likes of Gardner Fox, John Broome, and Robert Kanigher, and the sleek angular artistic lines provided by Carmine Infantino, the Flash became one of the most popular and attractive books in the DC line throughout the Silver Age and indeed its impressive 246 issue run. The series ended with issue 350 and was continued a little more over a year into The Flash Volume 2.
Collected EditionsFlash Archives Vol. 1 (#105-108)Flash Omnibus (#105-132)Showcase Presents: The Flash vol. 1 (#105-111)Flash Archives Vol. 2 (#109-116)Flash Archives Vol. 3 (#117-124)Showcase Presents: The Flash vol. 2 (#120-140)Flash Archives Vol. 4 (#125-132)Flash Archives Vol. 5 (#133-141)Showcase Presents: The Flash vol. 3 (#141-161)Flash Archives Vol. 6 (#142-150)Showcase Presents: The Flash vol. 4 (#162-184)Absolute Green Lantern/Green Arrow (#217-219 & 226)Showcase Presents: The Trial of the Flash (#323-7, 329-336, 340-350)Please first Sign In before leaving a review.