Comics Flash is the REAL Job of the Spider-verse.

[JJJ's Ulcer]

A lot of people say the string of unfortunate incidents in Peter's life makes him a walking, talking tragic-comedy. A version of Job from the Bible, who can't catch a break, but if the spoilers I read about this week's ASM are true, I gotta say Flash is the REAL Job.


Okay, spoilers follow... so turn back if you haven't read the upcoming issue or don't want spoilers...




A caveat... I have not actually read the new ASM with Flash in Iraq and from all accounts I've read it is a great and emotionally touching issue. I just read the spoilers about what happens to him. I'm not tackling that story, but rather looking at Flash's ridiculous amount of bad luck....

Let's see...

Flash has physically abusive, alcoholic father whose poor treatment of him leads him to be an alcoholic later in life too. He struggles with this for years and is often seen morose and pathetic in Spider-Man issues in the 90's and 00's as he tries to overcome his addiction. He often complains that the peak of his life was being a highschool football champ. In the 80's he's framed as the Hobgoblin and goes to jail and basically loses all his friends and relations, with even Peter doubting his innocence for a time. After a string of terrible luck with women, from Sha-Shan(?) to a married Betty Brant, he gets used as a toy by Felicia Hardy as merely a tool to get back at Peter to break his heart. He then gets beaten up by Tombstone. Felicia then breaks up with him while he's still recovering. He then holds a string of dead-end jobs, usually revolving around being a gym-teacher.

A while later, after being in a car-crash and finally managing to overcome his alcoholism, he is taken under the wing by one Norman Osborn. Norman looks out for him and feeds his self-esteem. Until he abducts Flash coming home from an AA meeting, feeds him a fifth of Jack Daniel's and straps him behind the wheel of a mack-truck. Flash crashes... again. Into a school. This time, it's more serious, and Flash is a comotose vegetable, who can't even talk and is confined to a wheelchair. He's forced into being an object of pity, and needs constant attention and care.

Eventually after an undisclosed amount of time, he recovers, but still with brain-damage and memory loss. He thinks of Peter still as the wimp he used to beat up in highschool and has another unfortunate relationship with a woman called Miss Arrow who tried to impregnate him with thousands of spider-eggs. More bad luck.

Now he has his legs blown off in Iraq. I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of other stuff. Can this guy catch a break?

(FWIW I think Mephisto will retcon his legs back one day)

 

[stillanerd]

Also in this week's issue

Spoiler

When the General talks to Flash in the hospital, he asks Flash how he got his nickname. We then cut to a flashback of both himself and Liz Allen in the backseat of his convertible. Flash is looking away and Liz putting a hand on his shoulder saying "It's okay, Eugene. It was nice. Really." Followed by a scene in the present where Flash says "High school football." It's pretty obvious what the scene implies and a easy laugh, really the only oft-putting moment in the whole comic.

So that's another thing one can chalk up to that Job mentality I suppose.

 

[bryanss3]

AMS 574 is really a WHAT IF story and lets all believe that so he has his legs.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

I have not read it, but his Wikipedia page says he lost his legs and the comicboards people writing about it are all treating it as in continuity.

 

[UA-Archangel]

A lot of people say the string of unfortunate incidents in Peter's life makes him a walking, talking tragic-comedy. A version of Job from the Bible, who can't catch a break, but if the spoilers I read about this week's ASM are true, I gotta say Flash is the REAL Job.


Okay, spoilers follow... so turn back if you haven't read the upcoming issue or don't want spoilers...




A caveat... I have not actually read the new ASM with Flash in Iraq and from all accounts I've read it is a great and emotionally touching issue. I just read the spoilers about what happens to him. I'm not tackling that story, but rather looking at Flash's ridiculous amount of bad luck....

Let's see...

Flash has physically abusive, alcoholic father whose poor treatment of him leads him to be an alcoholic later in life too. He struggles with this for years and is often seen morose and pathetic in Spider-Man issues in the 90's and 00's as he tries to overcome his addiction. He often complains that the peak of his life was being a highschool football champ. In the 80's he's framed as the Hobgoblin and goes to jail and basically loses all his friends and relations, with even Peter doubting his innocence for a time. After a string of terrible luck with women, from Sha-Shan(?) to a married Betty Brant, he gets used as a toy by Felicia Hardy as merely a tool to get back at Peter to break his heart. He then gets beaten up by Tombstone. Felicia then breaks up with him while he's still recovering. He then holds a string of dead-end jobs, usually revolving around being a gym-teacher.

A while later, after being in a car-crash and finally managing to overcome his alcoholism, he is taken under the wing by one Norman Osborn. Norman looks out for him and feeds his self-esteem. Until he abducts Flash coming home from an AA meeting, feeds him a fifth of Jack Daniel's and straps him behind the wheel of a mack-truck. Flash crashes... again. Into a school. This time, it's more serious, and Flash is a comotose vegetable, who can't even talk and is confined to a wheelchair. He's forced into being an object of pity, and needs constant attention and care.

Eventually after an undisclosed amount of time, he recovers, but still with brain-damage and memory loss. He thinks of Peter still as the wimp he used to beat up in highschool and has another unfortunate relationship with a woman called Miss Arrow who tried to impregnate him with thousands of spider-eggs. More bad luck.

Now he has his legs blown off in Iraq. I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of other stuff. Can this guy catch a break?

(FWIW I think Mephisto will retcon his legs back one day)

Flash hasn't lost his legs. Marvel only borrowed them. He'll get them back some day.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

Now that I think about it, didn't 'Doonesbury' already do this with B.D?

Take a beloved, established comic character who has been running in strips for 40 years and have him lose his leg or legs in Iraq.

I'm being a bit glib, I don't really think Guggenheim ripped off 'Doonesbury', but the coincidence is kinda funny (not "ha ha" funny obviously).

I'm sure it's a good issue. But I do think if he lost them, he'll probably get them back in 20 years when the Iraq conflict is (hopefully) long over. It'll probably be something dumb like magic too. Anyway, didn't Ben Grimm AND Reed Richards both have horrible facial scarring that was later retconned? Granted this is coming from more emotional storytelling, but still.

 

[iloveclones]

Until it's referred to by another character, or he appears with the rest of the cast, I don't think you can 100% say it's in-continuity. But I certainly think it is. I don't see any evidence otherwise.

The MU has had plenty of instances of "miracles of medicine" starting with Tony Stark. Forge, Box, even Spider-Man in the Spider-Girl series.

I'm sure that some time in the future, some supervillain will offer Spidey's Greatest Fan his legs back if he agrees to destroy Spidey (oh, crap, I just gave them an idea, didn't I?) But for now, I'd like to see how it goes.

 

[UA-Archangel]

Until it's referred to by another character, or he appears with the rest of the cast, I don't think you can 100% say it's in-continuity. But I certainly think it is. I don't see any evidence otherwise.

The MU has had plenty of instances of "miracles of medicine" starting with Tony Stark. Forge, Box, even Spider-Man in the Spider-Girl series.

I'm sure that some time in the future, some supervillain will offer Spidey's Greatest Fan his legs back if he agrees to destroy Spidey (oh, crap, I just gave them an idea, didn't I?) But for now, I'd like to see how it goes.

Maybe Flash will become the new Ghostrider.

Crap, gave them another one.

 

[bryanss3]

I didn't mean it actually was a What if.
I meant it shouldn't be in continuity cause its ridiculous.
Flash wouldn't be in Iraq. its a good story but its not flash's story.
they could have just made a comic that wasn't spider-man with this story, but they decided to make ASM 574 not even have spider-man in it except for showing past images when flash says something like "it was me again six and I overcame the obstacles" while showing the sinister 6 around spider-man and so on.
this isn't even a spider-man comic I hate the spider-man Braintrust there ideas are crap.
they don't care who any of the supporting cast is in these comics they just make them who ever they want. did you know Robbie Robertson used to do illegal street races in his youth now?*see secret invasion 2 of 3 with jackpot.
I can't wait for some BRAND NEW WRITERS!!!!

 

[iloveclones]

Well, I have to say I completely disagree with you, in particular with this issue. If you mean that Flash had no business being in Iraq because he was in Vietnam, well, you either accept the sliding timescale or you don't. I'm not going to argue it. The fact that he was a soldier, and on IRR in the MU, and the fact that the Army in the real world is stretched very, very thin, I think it makes complete sense.

I have no problem with Robbie having participated in street racing.

 

[bryanss3]

I don't think they send soldiers who have had memory losses back into war.

but the reason I don't like this issue is cause it doesn't feel like its about a spider-man character its suppose to feel like its about a real person cause this **** has happened to real people its real... my problem is they took a real story and just put Flash Thompson in it.
they could have made their own comic about Soldiers in Iraq with this same story.. but here's the truth I'd bet a good amount of people wouldn't buy it.

but this says spider-man on the cover and thats the real reason we bought it.

 

[moraldeficiency]

Well I'd say this had more to do with spider-man than the entire SI tie in (god people were suckers on that one), and I'd say this is without a doubt the best spider-man tale since the team took over. It's a pretty severe decission they made (and it's a slap in the face to any vet if he gets his legs back) but this wasn't just a war story, it was how spider-man's influence took a high school dick and made him into a hero, gave him dimension and could very well start the beginning of giving him real character development until the time he sells his yugo to mephisto to get his legs back and return to being a dick because having a grown up crippled friend might age peter parker.

You're gonna have a weird reaction to this issue. I'd say about half the people will see it as brilliant and the other half are going to cry ********.

bryan, you're right about the military not taking head injuries, though you'd have to say since there's guys like thor running around the military probably wouldn't have been needed in the MU for Iraq so you've got to give some suspension of disbelief. I mean right now the entire planet's been mindwiped by peter parker's spiderdickery so by those standards no one could be in the military.

 

[bryanss3]

I'm not saying it wasn't actually good surprisingly, but it just makes me mad that they used Flash for that. it woulda made more sense story wise if he was i dunno with peter and harry or was that to cliche for these writers?

 

[Jack O Lantern]

Yeah, Peter loses his legs. That's great.

 

[The Bruce]

They removed Flash's legs? That's great

 

[imdaly]

Irony: A man losing both his legs because of a selfless act saving somebody as he's learned from a 2-legged man who's running around with the theme of an 8-legged creature.

 

[JJJ's Ulcer]

That's.... really stretching to find irony.

 

[imdaly]

That's.... really stretching to find irony.

Probably. But I'm extremely bored at work and wanted to post something.

 

[moraldeficiency]

Irony: A man losing both his legs because of a selfless act saving somebody as he's learned from a 2-legged man who's running around with the theme of an 8-legged creature.

That's not irony. (five cool points for getting the robot devil reference)

 

[farmernudie]

Maybe Flash can deal with the devil, if he knows any married couples, and get his legs back and make everyone see his legs, even if he loses them again, even if they're not there!

Yeh, they might as well have taken Pete's legs, of made MJ a pirate with a wooden peg leg.

If Jackpot had a peg leg too, there'd still be fanboys who wouldn't believe that the ladt who talks and looks like MJ and has peg legs wasn't her somehow.