Tom versus Flash number 209 or the DC Universe has a rather big rat problem.

Welcome back for the Flash number 209, the September 1971 issue featuring cover by Dick Geridano, edited by Julie Schwartz.

The first story in this issue is, Beyond the Speed of Life, not Light, Life, written by Carrie Bates, penciled by Irvnovick, inked by Dick Geridano. We're getting into the Carrie Bates era of The Flash. Len Ween writes a couple after this. I think Robert Cannigar writes one. There might be a few fill-ins here, but pretty much from here until the mid-80s, Kerry Bates writes the

flash, and he shapes the character quite a bit. He takes John Broome's love of the rogues, mixes it

with Canager's sort of weird quirkiness to generate his own unique flavor of the character. He also

modernizes a story a little bit by

introducing more continuity elements to it. He really builds up a cast around the flash.

Of, including, you know, the rogues show up a lot more often than they did when

Canager was writing a majority after Broom had left. You get to know some of the police officers.

It's interesting. It's a little

taste, a change of flavor to the Flash stories. Well, let's get right into this first one.

We start with the Trickster and Captain Boomerang. It's been a while since we've seen any of the

rogues. And they're running after the limp body of the Flash. He seems like he's just

fallen down and skidded across the desert. They're running up to limp body of the flash. He seems like he's just fallen down and skid it across the desert.

They're running up to him to finish him off with a heavily updated boomerang.

It looks like it has like razor blades on it and some sort of super trickster gun.

They're going to kill the flash.

And as they run up to the body, they look down and see that he's already dead.

That whatever just happened to him killed him. They didn't even need to blast him. So they sit there,

Captain Boomerang takes his hat off, puts him over his heart like he's, like there's a

tangent of sadness to the rogues that they, for a moment, seem to have beaten the flash.

They take it so personally. But yet now the flash is gone. What did they think? Well, how did we even get here? So let's roll the clock back six minutes, as we see in the Allen household, Barry and Iris, it's the morning, flashes us eating breakfast, now he's got to get to work, gives Iris a kiss, then pop. He's out of there at super speed. Iris

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