The Flash: All I can do is run fast...

Cafe Society
1

…or so Adam Sandler made him out to say at Superman’s funeral. How right is he?

Unless someone has a terribly compelling argument, I’d say Flash is essentially the weakest of all of the Justice League members, Cartoon Network vintage.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the character, even if his writing is a bit hackneyed. And the man does some good. He seems to excel at saving tots from falling chunks of building in the nick of time, and he can whip up of whirlwind to break someone’s fall (occasionally teleporting them to another dimension in the process). And he did manage to subversively rewire Gorilla Grodd’s mind control helmet in between rapid baps on his head. But if you ask me, the fact that it worked was more luck than anything. Overall, he seems to have a support role, while your more marketable JLA heroes dish out the real hurt on the supervillains.

Being a comic foil, he lacks the brooding intesity of the other “I’m The Only One Of My Kind In This World” JLA members. The others tend to have this sense that destiny has burdened them with the role of superhero. I tend to like Flash, since he’s a guy with cool powers who happens to want to do good. In other words, he’s Marvel-esque. He doesn’t have the most popular superpower, but he’s the most easily accessible character. So I’m happy to see the little hornball when he’s on the show.

Anyway, this guy’s entire offensive tool belt seems to involve delivering rapid fire punches (which do little harm to anyone aside from amateur bank robbers), the whirlwhind trick, and the occasional rapid disassembly of machinery (which i assume is possible because of some kind of ultraquick vibration thing, rather than strength). Oh yeah, he can approach the speed of light. So he can take advantage of the Twin Paradox: he doesn’t lie about his age, he defies it.

But there’s got to be more. But I’m not really a DC comics guy, let alone a Flash guy. So, fanboys, what can this guy really do? Does he have any big gun attacks? How has he convincingly beat someone that matters?

2

Not only can he run fast, he can vibrate fast, too. He controls something called the Speed Force, which lets him move through object, pummel villains faster than they can move, etc. Before Crisis the previous Flashes were able to vibrate through the barriers between the various Universes.

3

C’mon, the Flash is the weakest superhero in the Justice League? What about Hawkman, whose only power is flying? The Atom, whose only power is getting small? Or Batman and the Green Arrow, who technically don’t even have superpowers? I won’t even get into the cliche of Aquaman’s powers.

But the Flash can move. He’s so fast he can prevent crimes as they occur. A murderer tries to shoot someone; Flash can stop the bullet in mid-flight and have the criminal in a jail cell before he can pull the trigger a second time.

The Flash is major league. Maybe not on Superman’s level; but easily the equal of Green Lantern or Wonder Woman.

4

Well, that depends on which Flash you mean…

The guy on the current Justice League cartoon seems pretty low-grade, as far as powers go. He had trouble catching up to a speeding truck last time I saw the show.

The classic Flash (mid-1950’s to 1986) was the most powerful. He could move FASTER than light (don’t ask me how he could see!), could phase through solid objects by vibration, could run up and down vertical surfaces and across water, and could travel through time and between dimensions.

Sometimes, the writers credited him with oddball powers that they had made up on the spur of the moment: the ability to emit radiation by exciting his atomic vibrations, the ability to move his atoms around at will, and so forth.

Combat-wise, I don’t remember him as a “duke it out” hero, but more as a thinker, figuring out creative ways to use his mastery of motion in all its forms to defeat his enemies. Still, I recall at least one story where it was acknowledged that a fist moving at thousands of miles per second would deliver one heck of a smack!

The post-1986 version of the Flash is allegedly the previous one’s nephew, and his powers are slightly different. The sillier stuff is gone, but he runs up walls and across water. He can’t exceed lightspeed, but it’s claimed that (in accordance with relativity) his mass increases as he gets faster, so that he can ram things with incredibly destructive results.
Also, when this one vibrates through objects, he leaves them with an enormous charge of energy, which causes them to explode after a few seconds. That’s a pretty good weapon, I would think!

Last time I read a Flash comic (about two years ago), he had developed the ability to add speed to other objects or suck it away. Thus, he could make YOU move at super-speed, or suck all the speed out of a bullet, then put it back in with the vector reversed, so that it would speed back to its origin.
( I guess this is “flashier” than just catching the bullet and throwing it back.)

I wouldn’t want to fight either version. Imagine a guy who could vibrate his hand into your skull, pull out your brain by vibrating IT, throw it on the ground and run away… all before you even realized he was there!

5

Actually Flash could likely beat anyone else in the Justice League in a fight. He has several moves, such as:

Speed steal. Flash steals all your speed, you become a statue.

Vibration. Flash vibrates through you, you explode.

Speedforce banishment. Flash gives you too much speed, and you are sucked into the speedforce.

Infinite mass punch. Flash moves so fast that his punch has infinite mass, a move that can beat almost anyone.

Selective speed add. Flash adds tons of speed to only selected parts of your body, when you move you rip yourself apart.

Molecular speed add. Flash ages you on the molecular level.

Cartoon Flash, of course, can’t do any of this.

6

Even the weakest speedsters can punch an opponent at a rate of some power of 10 times a second. Plus, it’s nigh impossible to land a hit on the guy.

There ain’t much that can stand up to that.

Flash only comes with one power, it is true, but with an imaginative enough writer, it’s one hell of a power. I admit though, the Flash on the current Justice League cartoon is sadly underpowered.

I also have to stand up for my man Arthur Curry. He’s absolute monarch of 2/3rds of the planet! Give the man the respect he deserves! Plus, he’s a tough bastard, and strong, even out of the water.

7

Hey, the Atom could just climb inside your ear and turn your brain into toothpaste, so I wouldn’t shortchange the whole getting small thing. He and Green Arrow took out Darkseid, rememeber.

What others have said is right on the money - in comics, classic or current, the Flash is one tough customer. Wally West leaves every other Flash in the dust, and his speed lending/borrowing powers are immensely useful to the JLA.

Cartoon Justice League Flash, however, is annoying and seems to be even slower than Quicksilver on X-Men Evolution. Don’t really care for that portrayal.

8

My theory is that they watered down all of the characters on the Cartoon Network Justice League because the writers aren’t able to handle the concept of writing them at full strength.

9

So how do the Flash’s powers work? I mean it’s all well and good to be able to cover 100 miles or search a building for stolen goods in a few seconds but that’s all relative isn’t it? It seems to us (moving at normal speed) to only take a few seconds but how long subjectively does it seem to the Flash? He still needs to actually run those 100 miles or run to the building, open the door, go into each room and look around right? How about when he cleans a room superfast? Great for us to have the room cleaned in a second but he actually had to do all the mopping and cleaning didn’t he? Sometimes I think being the Flash would be ponderous. People always asking you to clean up or paint the room cause “Hey, it’ll only take you a second!” It’s a second to us but to him does it feel like an hour?

10

I knew there was more to this guy than the Cartoon Network led on. It was kinda sad to see Supes and all them making a dent in those robots sent to retrieve Green Lantern, while the Flash was taken out essentially because they tripped him.

This is actually apparently why Marvel’s Quicksilver is such a cranky bastard all the time. When Peter David wrote X-Force, he had an entire issue dedicated to each member’s government-mandated therapy session with Doc Samson.

In it, Quicksilver explains how cranky regular people get when there’s a long line at the post office, or when the slow cashier at Burger King needs constant clarification for “Whopper with no pickles”. To Quickie, everyone is that slow cashier. All the time. So that’s why he’s a prick to everyone. Well, that and his dad isn’t exactly Mr. Popular.

11

The problem I’ve always had with the Flash is his basic power, running really fast. So how does this work? I mean, if I’ve got a power that enables me to run at super-speed, it’s still just running from my point of view. I hate when I see Flash run across the Atlantic Ocean or something because the comic book, early on in Infantino’s tenure, established that his point of view is that the world stands still and he can move (probubly how a hummingbird percieves us). So if the world stops and everyone is a statue I can see how I could grab all their guns and grab bullets in midair but I don’t want to run from Akron to New York and back again to get something to surprise the criminals with. So how do the writers get around this? Does the ‘speed-force’ allow the Flash to look down at his legs and see a blur and he’s running at a million miles an hour? It would be like riding a scooter or something. Or does he just move into speed-mode and take a 4 week hike (in his point of view) and get the thing he needs to surprise Dr. Cold or whatever, while writing poetry and enjoying the scenery (he’d need to pack a lunch and take a nap or something wouldn’t he?). All the while that bullet is just hanging in mid-air. He would have alot of time to think about things. And wouldn’t he get old at a different pace than us? Why doesn’t he look 80 years old or something?

12

wow, bafaa must be in touch with the speed-force himself. He just read my post over my shoulder, ran back to his computor and submitted his own, better written post before I could enter mine!

I feel like Dr. Cold on a bad day. :frowning:

13

Also, wouldn’t he need to consume enormous amounts of food to compensate for the energy used in super-speed mode? Why isn’t Flash constantly sucking on Pixie Stix or some other sugar source like a human hummingbird?

14

When Wally-Flash got retconned after Crisis, he did need to eat huge amounts of food to maintain himself. There would be thought balloons like “Ran 100 miles in 3 seconds, that’ll cost me six candy bars.” He won the lottery in one issue and I think most of it went to his food bill. I haven’t read comics regularly for several years but I think he’s been retconned again so that this “speed force” he’s in touch with is his energy source rather than calories.

15

Right, DC speedsters (with a few exceptions) derive their powers from an extra-temporal/dimensional energy field they call the “speed force”. Wally now has a direct connection to the SF, and thus is the most powerful speedster ever (Barry was still a bit cleverer, however).

If a speedster runs faster than light speed he or she risks being sucked inside the SF, and only Wally has been able to escape.

The SF keeps their metabolisms high, and thus keeps them young. Jay Garrick, for example, was Flash in WWII, but still looks like he’s in his fifties. There was an “alternate universe” Wally that used his powers to heal grievous injuries instantly, but aged himself as a consequence.

Wtriter flip flop on how speedster brains work. Impulse (Barry’s grandson from the future) definitely had a kind of ADHD due to his super-fast mind. Wally seems to cope. There was an Elseworlds book in which Barry was paralyzed but still made a name for himself as a scientist since his mind operated at super-speeds.

16

Can he prevent crimes before they occur? :wink:

I remember reading a issue of JLA in which the Flash was hit by a dart that caused him to go into a seizure. The dart was created by Batman and stolen by one of his enemies (among other things). After a few hours they were able to extract the dart from him. When he was freed, however, he said something like ‘Thank God, there were entire weeks when I just wanted to die’. This means he must experience time at a slower rate when he’s moving at superspeed.

17

In the live-action TV show (I have the origin episode on tape, and it’s pretty good - even has a realistic explanation for his costume), he had the “I have to eat tons of food” problem before he realized he even had super speed. Their explanation was that his body just adjusted to it. The Speed Source explanation, however, leads to much cooler storylines.

Now, the flash’s ability to lend speed makes him a great ally on top of his already impressive abilities when flying solo. While Superman can fly and has super strength and x-ray vision, he can’t travel at light speed. Flash can. One JLA story had Flash lending his speed to Superman to give him the extra boost that was necessary for Supes to beat a laser beam to its target and save the day.

Flash is one of the coolest out there. It’s just that team-ups are usually hit-and-miss with him. Teaming him up with Aquaman is usually a bad idea, since Flash can’t really hold his breath all that long . . .

18

Just wanted to toss out another vote of support for Aquaman, here – As Peter David pointed out (yes, the same PAD who psychoanalyzed Quicksilver), this is the monarch of 2/3rds of the planet, a guy who can dive into the Marrianas Trench unprotected, and everyone wants to mock him because he “talks to fish”? WTF?

Drop Aquaman into the Gotham slums at midnight, and he’d have no problems.
Drop Batman into the middle of the Atlantic, and wave bye-bye…

19

oh yeah, don’t take my remark as any criticism of Aquaman. Just because he and the Flash don’t mesh as the ideal superhero team, doesn’t mean Aqua’s any worse for wear because of it.

Still, gotta love The Flash. :cool:

20

All of the Justice League characters suck when compared to their originals. And with good reason too.

Look at their individual comics: a single superhero stops an intergalactic armada by their sheer badassness.

Compare it to JL: A team of superheros stop intergalactic armadas by their collective badassness.

Logically, if one could do it alone, then all of them would simply stop the armadas out of existence UNLESS their characters all got weaker, so that one superhero couldn’t do it alone, which would give them reason to work together. The mystery is solved.