It's helping me get a better sense of how much of everything there is, but also allowing me to get rid of some of the smaller boxes as things start falling into their appropriate categories. And of course many covers are familiar and ring distant memories of great stories (or in a few cases, real stinkers), while others seem brand new to me. What fun it will be to re-read them all (well, most of the them...) once they've fallen into consecutive order.
I also managed a quick trip to Hyannis yesterday to pick up a package of backing boards and a fresh supply of polybags, so I'll be able to begin rehabilitating those issues I come across which have suffered some in storage.
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Tonight, I'll feature this issue, Flash #241, from May 1976. By then I was twelve and had gotten a pretty good introduction to Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, and my attentions turned to some of their peers. This was a great two-for-one issue, since it featured both Flash and Green Lantern for my thirty cents (YEESH!).
This issue features the story, "Steal, Flash, Steal" by Cary Bates, with art by Irv Novick and Frank McLaughlin.
It's a fun little tale from the Barry Allen days. Mirror Master has created a trick mirror which hypnotizes Flash into believing he's a villian and the MM has decided to build public support for himself by posing as the hero who's trying to bring the theiving Flash to justice...
At home, Barry's wife Iris burns through shirts as she attempts to iron while watching the news, and enlists the caretaker of the Flash museum to go to Barry's aid...which he does, disguised as another of Flash's rogues, Heat Wave. Eventually, Barry figures out what's happening, when he realizes that he is never nervous when the police appear on the scene (being a police scientist himself), but the Mirror Master always gets fidgety. A simple tale, to be sure, but definitely an enjoyable one.
As I mentioned before, there's a Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) back-up solo story, also. It's typical outer space fare, really (story by Denny O'Neil, with excellent art by Mike Grell), about a minor mission of mystery GL is sent on by one of the Guardians, in which he witnesses the extinguishing of a distant sun and must rekindle its fire.
It's an odd little tale...made no less confusing by the fact that GL is accompanied on his journey by a little flower creature on his shoulder, called (appropriately) Itty. And when Hal has completed the task, he falls asleep in the vacuum of space, protected, we assume, by the power of his ring and then we're out of panels.
I wonder how well you can sleep, drifting out there in the cosmos...?
