It's been slow around here lately, so let's ... SPEED IT UP, ho ho!

In honor of Geoff Johns crafting what is possibly the dumbest supervillain M.O. in the history of comic books - already a medium which can't support a lot more weight resting upon the stupid shelf - how about we take a gander at what else Professor Zoom has done to Barry Allen in his insane quest for vengeance. Outside of (gasp) pushing a six-year old kid down the stairs, traveling across the gulf of time to metaphorically stuff Barry's mom in the refrigerator and probably writing cuss words on Iris Allen's car with soap - EVIL FUTURE SOAP - I reckon it's likely that Zoom was also responsible for this scathing parody of the Flash which was produced by Topps trading cards back in the 17th century or something.

Hotess Heroes Presents: The Flash versus Old Dudes

The Flash in "Marathon Madman"
The Flash is the Fastest Man Alive, according to the teensy little words which appear underneath his name, and yet his Hostess Snack Pockets ads keep putting him up against old dudes. Very old dudes. Oh, and also that hot bitch Stony-Eyed Medusa, who admittedly had white streaks in her hair but so do the Bride of Frankenstein and Stacey London, so it doesn't necessarily mean that she's incredibly old or anything, even if Stacey London in particular totally is.

But anyway, mostly old dudes, such as in this adventure where Barry Allen evidently allows himself to be bullied into partaking in a Central City marathon which - I'm sure he must suspect, as do we all - that it's just another machination on behalf of his police captain to subject Barry Allen to relentless but undue humiliation. Some reward for the hero, huh folks? Really makes you think...

Anyway, The Flash ends up encountering Dr.Sorcery, which is admittedly not a discipline in which I thought someone could earn their doctorate. I half-suspect that the fellow's real power is the awesome might of the non-sequitor; he could as easily be "Captain Grocery" or "The Living (sound of a car horn, a man shows you a picture of a basket)".

Naturally, as is always the way, the Flash up-ends Doctor Sorcery's evil plan (he was turning a bridge to butter using his reality-altering magic stone) by way of a mountain of Hostess Cup Cakes. The weird thing about it, though, is that the Flash seems to contrive a ploy to convince Dr.Sorcery to repair the bridge by promising the villainous old fart that there were a ton of Hostess Cup Cakes awaiting the runners on the other side of the bridge, and the Doctor could have some.

And that sounds like a really bald-faced lie, but no there totally were a bunch of Hostess Cup Cakes waiting for the runners at the finish line. This is how the marathon was run, with cup cakes as an incentive for the participants. Central City's a weird place.

The Flash Meets The Bureauc-Rat
I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think this comic is actually a transcription of a teabaggers' nightly dream (Except it leaves out the part where the Bureac-Rat is part of a Nazi Socialist agenda on behalf of the Zionist Bilderberg Group and the Flash's lightning bolt insignia is replaced with a bumper sticker that reads "I Am John Galt" on an American flag and he's got an open-carry license and a half-naked Sarah Palin feeds the Hostess Fruit Pies to the dreamer after the fight is won).

You have to admire the Bureauc-Rat, he seems pretty aware of the level of his evil; he's not the scion of darkness, he's just a fuckin' rat. "Oh, I've stymied traffic on the crosstown overpass, teehee, I'm such a rat ... a BUREAUC-rat, that is!"

I'm sort of fascinated by the red tape gun, because it basically looks like one of those old-school hand-operated labellers you used to see in the Walgreens stationery supply section, you know? The one with the dial on the top to spell out the content, and you had to roll the damn thing around for each letter and pull the trigger until you lost sensation in your hand and then do it again for all the remaining letters just so you could end up with a little plastic adhesive strip that you could stick on a classmate's backpack when he wasn't looking, thereby informing everyone that "KIETH IS A HOMO". Remember those? Yeah.

Anyway, they only had about thirty-six inches of tape in each loop, so I'm totally baffled as to how this guy is getting the entire city bogged down. You think he has to stop between each hydrant or umbrella stand, refill, and then cover a quarter of a percent of a bank building's front facade before running out again? I bet he does.

The Flash "A Flash In The Dam"
You know how in comics whenever someone makes a really bad joke or pun, everyone else rolls their eyes and goes "*groan*"? Like, a little word balloon which actually reads "grown" with some little squiggly symbols on either side? I basically kind of did that after reading the title to this one.

The Flash faces off against The Destroyer, who looks like a really old Gallagher and dresses like either a hippie Darth Vader or an Obi-Wan Kenobi who's into casual BDSM.

Out of all of his elderly antagonists, The Destroyer is the Flash's most elderliest; his motivation is pretty much that he';s cranky and miserable and envious of the youth, joy and enthusiasm of others, and thus he wants to hurt and destroy everyone in order to make them feel as bad about themselves as he feels about himself. In a way, isn't the Destroyer a little like all of us? Isn't he more than just a little ... a little like me? *sobs*

Honestly though, this villain's motivation is almost literally "YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!" Flash wisely defuses the situation by taking him to a buffet restaurant, because that calms the fuck out of old people. After that it's game shows until 4:30 and then a nap. Nighty-night!

Presented without comment.

I submit that this 3-cent newspaper is a flawed news source.

It suggests a slow news day when the most print-worthy thing they could discover about a malevolent, supernatural giant hell-bent on the destruction and domination of all life on the Earth was that he and Hitler didn't see eye to eye.

(From some old comic, I've gone and forgotten which one specifically ...)

Safe - Sure - Sanitary ... DAINTY!

Able to Ben Steel and his bear, Hans!

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings ...

...er, hold on Superman, I think you got that wrong.

It's BATMAN'S APPARENTLY A WEAK-ASS FAT GIRL COMPARED TO JIMMY OLSEN TUESDAYS!

Ohhhhh, I see how you defeat the Joker ... you walk up behind him and punch him in the stomach! Take notes, Batman!