Dan Liebke's Astonishing Tales

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This issue opens with the team-up for which everybody has been waiting! Namely, The All-New Question and The All-Original Frankenstein’s Monster. They’ve invaded the Dark Side club and found some kind of dying superheroine. Yawn! Dying superheroines are a dime a dozen – even in these troubled economic times, so instead we cut to Jay ‘Grampa Flash’ Garrick telling a long, rambling story of how he, Wally ‘Kid Flash’ West and Barry ‘Flash. Just Flash’ Allen were all too slow to stop a time-travelling bullet from killing Orion. “Dude, you guys are the mother-freakin’ Flashes!” says the poorly written 80 year old Joan Garrick. “How fast was this hella sick bullet trav’lin?”

Meanwhile, over in Legion of Doom headquarters, Libra and Lex Luthor continue to reprise their argument from previous issues. “I’m the baddest super-villain in town,” says Libra, putting a mind control helmet on The Human Flame, as some particularly lame kind of evidence of this. “Nuh-uh,” says Luthor. “Totally am!” says Libra. “In that case, I shall kill you!” says Luthor, springing his trap. Checkmate, Libra. Except Libra then reveals that within twenty-four hours everybody on Earth will be consumed by the anti-life equation and become mind-controlled drones of the forces of evil. So, uh, ‘Gin!’, Luthor.

Luckily, in defiance of both superhero ethics and the boundaries of traditional rules of fiction, Green Lantern has sneaked a quick peak at these pages and so is aware of what’s going on. His response? To draft all the superheroes, using a trick he learned from President Roosevelt (Question and Frankenstein, GL and Roosevelt, who says Morrison doesn’t deliver quality team-ups?!). This is, needless to say, not the Hal Jordan GL, who has been taken off planet for trial for the murder of Orion. Hal’s defence? “Hell, I was drunk and don’t remember a thing. And Lord knows I’ve murdered hundreds of superheroes in the past. So I can see where you’re coming from.” Which doesn’t please his lawyer (a hopelessly lost Matt Murdock) one iota.

When crisis comes to the DC Universe, who will answer the call? Black Canary's knockers, that's who

Anyhoo, a variety of superheroes are summoned, including such fearsome forces for justice as Tawny Tiger, Captain Marvel Jr. and, uh, Black Canary’s breasts. Do they save the day? Those sad sack losers? Of course not. Because, uh, Mary Marvel has infected Wonder Woman with, I dunno, something. Possibly the anti-life equation. Possibly tuberculosis. Either way, next thing we know, the Flashes are in a dystopian future, where evil reigns to such an extent that dalmations are used as horses! Oh, Morrison, you truly have plucked the nightmares from my subconscious and put it on the pages of a humble funnybook. Kudos to you and your heirs.

MVP: Iris Allen. Somehow, in the midst of Grampa Flash’s interminable tale of the three Flashes (which included such absurd lies as ‘It’s a little known fact that death can’t travel faster than the speed of light’ – whatever that means), she perks up sufficiently to notice that he’s off-handedly dropped in the tidbit that her husband, Barry, is still alive. “It’s not Barry from the past, is it?” she says. “No,” says Grampa. “Or one from a parallel Earth?” “No.” “A clone from Cadmus?” “No.” “His identical twin brother Malcolm ‘Blue Cobalt’ Thawne?” “No.” And so on and so forth. Iris Allen, people. Even in the midst of shameless DC history retcons, this is a woman who keeps her head.

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