The Flash/Speed Buggy #1

Speed Buddies

Writer: Scott Lobdell
Penciller: Brett Booth
Inkers: Norm Rapmund (pgs. 1-10, 12, 15-18, 28, 36-38), Mark Irwin (pgs. 29-33, 35), Marc Deering (pgs. 20, 21, 24, 26, 27), Matt Banning (pgs. 11, 19, 22, 23, 25), John Livesay (pgs. 13, 14, 34)
Colors: Andrew Dalhouse, Pete Pantazis (pgs. 13, 34, 35)
Letters: Tom Napolitano
Cover: Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund & Andrew Dalhouse
Variant Cover: Dan Mora
Assistant Editor: Liz Erickson
Editor: Jim Chadwick
Superman created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster
Superboy created by Jerry Siegel
By special arrangement with the Jerry Siegel Family

Our main cover shows Wally West racing Speed Buggy in front of a crowd of DC and Hanna-Barbera characters. It's Brett Booth's usual mess of elongated characters and shapes, too many messy details, unbearable lettering and a complete disdain of having to draw anything in the background. Crowd scenes like this (and inside this issue) should be a lot of fun because of all the cameos and easter eggs. But with Booth, it's an exhausting chore to try to decipher with spiky blob is the New 52 Kid Flash. And so many people like Booth! I don't get it.

Our variant takes the same idea as the main cover, but outshines it in every way imaginable. The Hanna-Barbera characters look like Hanna-Barbera characters. The DC characters look like DC characters. There's a lot of energy, movement and unadulterated fun on this cover. I really wish Dan Mora handled the art on this issue instead of Booth and a legion of inkers.

The main story tells the horrifying origin of Speed Buggy. Instead of being a lovable car that can talk, Speed Buggy actually was a human being whose body was gruesomely fused into a car, and now the man's soul is trapped inside this vehicle. I find this terrifying, but everybody seems fine with it. Oh, and the car can tap into the Speed Force, too.

Anyway, we only care about the epilogue, where Wally and Speed Buggy stage a race for charity. Barry, Wallace, Iris and, inexplicably, Bar Torr, all show up to allegedly cheer Wally on, but they all seem to doubt his ability to win. Bar, who has never interacted with anyone here besides Barry (and that encounter did not go well), magically seems to fit right in.

And the issue ends right as the race begins. It certainly lacks the appeal of a Superman/Flash race, but Lobdell and Booth certainly tried to bill it as such. And since this story is out of continuity anyway, they had no problem shoe-horning Bar into this story, even though it makes no sense whatsoever. And I'm probably one of the only people who was bugged by this. I'm sure most people just said, "Hey, neat! The New 52 Kid Flash!" But I'm not like most people. Ugh. Let's just get out of here with the new ads:

We have another wedding invitation for Batman and Catwoman, but this time it's been defaced by the Joker. Again, it's a very clever advertising campaign — I just wish DC actually pulled the trigger on the marriage.

Supergirl: Being Super.

The DC Nation page shows Jim Lee's designs for Superman's new villain, Rogol Zaar.

Next time, we'll return to the Flash War with The Flash #48.