Ending With Iris

Over at Silver Age Gold, there's a post on what a bee-yatch Iris West (later Iris Allen) could be. As I mentioned in the comments, that's true on one level. But if you look at it from the writer's viewpoint, she's a perfect comedic foil for Barry. She thinks he's the slowest man on Earth, while we know (from the cover) that he's secretly the fastest man alive. I noted that this gave the writer a nice little ending for his story.

How common was this ending? I was surprised when I looked.

In Flash #105 the first story is Conqueror from 8 Million BC; here's the ending panel:

The second story is the Master of Mirrors. It too features an Iris finale:

The typical setting is Barry and Iris having dinner at a restaurant, so I won't keep posting those.
In Flash #106, the ending to the first features Barry and Iris at the zoo; the ending to the second has them at Iris' apartment. Flash #107? The opening story ends with Barry alone at home, but the second story ends with the Flash visiting Iris at her office. In Flash #108, the opening story ends with Iris and Barry eating a picnic lunch in the park, while the backup tale has them at a restaurant. In Flash #109, the ending of the opening story shows Iris angrily checking her watch, as Barry is late for another date. The closing to the second story does not feature Iris at all.

In Flash #110, Barry screws up and the Flash arrives for a date with Iris:

The second story is the first Kid Flash tale, but it too has an Iris ending.

The ending to Flash #111's opening tale has Barry getting a rival for Iris' affections:

More on Dr. Summers later. The second story in this issue is a solo Kid Flash tale, so Iris is not featured at all.

Flash #112 has the introduction of the Elongated Man, and ends with the Ductile Detective and the fastest man alive at a banquet, shaking hands as only superheroes can do:

But in fact the panel before shows her introducing the two heroes to the attendees at the banquet. The second story again doesn't count as it stars Kid Flash.

Flash #113 has two stories, both ending with Iris. Here's the first:

And in the second, Barry reclaims his woman from the wiles of Dr Summers:

In Flash #114 Captain Cold gets the, err, hots for Iris, but the first story ends with her and Barry, and the second is another Kid Flash tale.

So putting it all together, in the first 10 issues of Flash, there were 20 stories. Three of those were Kid Flash solo tales and therefore I'll deduct those from the total leaving 17. Fifteen of those stories, or 88% of the total, ended with Iris. And it's not like it stopped, from 115-120 Iris only missed the denouement of one Flash solo story.

So it appears obvious that Julius Schwartz and John Broome approached Iris as essentially a character who told us the story was over. That's not to say that she didn't have some significant scenes early in comics, but in a lot of cases that was to establish the basis for the final conversation between Barry and Iris.

How does that compare with some of the other DC girlfriends? I'll try to take a look at it in the near future.

Update: I meant to mention as well that closing a story with a domestic scene like those is a very common practice. For example, every episode of Welcome Back, Kotter, would end with Kotter telling his wife a joke about one of his uncles, just as every episode of Hill Street Blues would conclude with Daniel J. Travanti and Veronica Hamel sharing a quiet moment together.

The Other Woman

I had a fairly good collection of the Flash in either original or reprint, but I confess I had never read the first two stories about Daphne Dean earlier, so I thought I would discuss them here. We learn in Flash #126 that Barry is on his way back to his hometown of Fallville to visit his parents, which means that Mr Allen is one of the very few heroes of the Silver Age with a living mom and dad.

By plan, a young Hollywood starlet who grew up in Barry's hometown and who was his childhood sweetheart is also on the train. Her publicity agent thinks it would make a great story for her to fall in love with her former beau. So they are thrown together and revisit some places they used to frequent in the past:



But when they see a tree behind the schoolyard where Barry had carved their initials, they become lost in a weird sort of daydream:



What the heck? But actually this turns out to be a night-time dream that Barry's having in his parents home. The next day, a masquerade ball is planned at which there will be a reenactment of a key scene from Daphne's latest movie (which sounds like a mixture of Gone with the Wind and Mata Hari). A band of union soldiers captures her at the ball and takes her away with them.

But it turns out the reenactment has gone awry, as crooks have taken the place of the actors playing the soldiers, kidnapping Daphne to steal the fabulous jewels she's wearing. Fortunately the Flash comes to her rescue. In the end, Barry tells Daphne about his engagement to Iris and she accepts it, but:



Comments: Barry's parents only appear as shadowy figures as Barry is having his dream about Daphne in the pasture with the bull.

Daphne returned in Flash #132's The Farewell Appearance of Daphne Dean. Iris is initially worried to see that Barry's former girlfriend is in town, but learns that she is not longer in love with Barry, but with the Flash. This may relieve Iris, but it still leaves her fiance in hot water, as we know he's really the Flash.

Reasoning that Daphne's probably in love with his powers, Flash decides to convince her that he's not really all that fast:



But trouble arises as the Flash spots some crooks about to rob a bank. He distracts Daphne:



And takes care of the crooks, but Daphne suddenly decides to leave Central City. It turns out that she saw Flash dashing off in the reflection of the store window, and realized he was fibbing about his speed in order to let her down easily.



She did pop up one final time in the Silver Age:

Single Issue Review: Flash #156

These panels set the stage:



I love that little gag in the opening panel. Of course, the representatives are unconvinced until the alien demonstrates his powers, by turning everything in the room to gold. Somehow the representatives manage to restrain themselves from grabbing up everything in sight long enough to put out a call for the Flash. But he refuses to turn himself in.

The alien reveals that Barry Allen is the Flash in an effort to assist the authorities in their effort to capture him. Well, of course we pretty much assume that somehow now everybody will forget that Barry Allen is the Flash, so it creates an interesting puzzle for the reader: How do they get him out of this one?

At this point I'm thinking that the alien must not be who he appears to be; the most obvious candidates are Professor Zoom and Abra Cadabra. Since they are from the future they would know the Flash's secret identity. The turning the room into gold looks like a magic trick, which says it must be the latter.

Well, it made sense, but in fact the story is quickly revealed to be quite different. The alien is part of a group of tyrant aristocrats who have been defeated in a battle by their former serfs. They realize where they went wrong in the crucial moment, and plan to go back in time using the Flash and rectify that mistake.

They initially tried to take over Flash's mind, and came close. But he realized that their mind control only worked on him when he was traveling at very high speeds. So he had to slow down enough to prevent the mind control from working, while still going fast enough to accomplish his goal of creating a machine to defeat the mind control mechanism.

But now the alien's time limit is running out:



Wow. That is characterization done right! Kid Flash comes through:



So that Barry can use his full super-speed to foil the plot of the tyrants. But there remains the problem of everybody on Earth knowing Flash's secret identity.



Double wow. As you can probably guess, Iris gives her consent and the Flash eliminates the memory of his identity being revealed to everybody on the planet. As I covered in the past, Barry doesn't quite live up to his promise, but in another way he does.

Comments: A terrific story, absolutely a classic. Wonderful characterization in this story for Barry, Wally, and Iris. The usual superior artwork from Infantino combines perfectly with John Broome's fascinating script.

I've Got Something to Tell You, Honey...

In Flash #165 (Nov 1966), Barry Allen and Iris West finally get married. This was not DC's first wedding; Aquaman and Mera had finally tied the knot in Aquaman #18 (Nov-Dec 1964), Hawkman and Hawkgirl had been married when they arrived on Earth, and Ralph and Sue Dibney were wed immediately before the Elongated Man story in Detective #327 (May 1964). Reed Richards and Sue Storm over at Marvel had also married in Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965).

But this wedding was different because it was the first time a superhero had gotten married without his wife knowing his double identity. This created some additional tension for the Scarlet Speedster:



So for the next year we would periodically see Barry musing his dilemma.

Ironically, this point had supposedly been settled before in Flash #156. An alien had arrived on Earth, letting everybody know that Barry Allen was the Flash. But at the end Barry has a chance to go backwards in time and change that memory. But he asks Iris for permission:



Despite that pledge, he finally decides to do the big reveal on their first anniversary. Of course there are only two real ways to go with this kind of moment from a plotting perspective, and DC chose the more amusing one:



The story (as it happens) was also Carmine Infantino's swan song on the Flash, so this is an especially poignant moment.