Not for the first time, this digital trade I’m reading from does not include credits for this issue. Sometimes the credits get moved to the inside front cover, and they don’t get reproduced in this collection, and that’s dumb. But I can go look them up, so I can tell you Marc Guggenheim is back, joined by the returning Barry Kitson, inked by Mark Farmer and colored by Studio F, to tell the tale of how Vietnam veteran Flash Thompson has now also fought in the Iraq war. Yes, Flash, just recently a brain damaged vegetable, has inexplicably run off to rejoin the service in the wake of Brand New Day, and been accepted, even, despite the brain injury and his last service being 40 years go. I guess the team couldn’t think of anything else to do with him. Of course, it wasn’t really 40 years ago, not anymore. I don’t know if I talked about it elsewhere, but Mark Waid (And/or his editors) came up with the solution for various characters’ war records a few years ago (But also something like 10+ years after this was published). In a sprawling miniseries that laid a unified history of the Marvel U, Waid took a little-known fake Asian country and moved everyone’s military service to a series of wars in that country. The country’s history is so wartorn that its name changes depending on who’s in power, but it’s called Siancong. And Reed Richards and Ben Grimm’s WWII service now happened roughly 20 years ago in Siancong. Tony Stark’s original heart injury that made him Iron Man happened in a conflict there about 13 years ago in a later conflict. And Frank Castle and Flash Thompson’s Vietnam service happened in yet another Siancong war something like 5 or 10 years ago, I don’t know. It’s a solution both comic book absurd and pretty effective. Now, instead of the 40s or the 60s, these events just happened in the recent past, always coming forward as needed, with no real world conflict to make them dated. The one outstanding problem is Magneto, whose origin loses its power if he wasn’t in WWII, even though it’s become impossible. But that hasn’t been done yet when this is published, so I don’t know how they’ll handle Flash’s military history. But, while I haven’t read it, I do know this story has dramatic, long term, possibly-not-entirely-foreseen, net negative consequences for the character of Flash, still negatively impacting the Spider-Man mythos to this day, so you know. I hope it’s worth it!
Of crucial interest to me is the fact that the “brain trust” is credited as Gale, Guggenheim and Slott this issue. Wells is out! Which is extra weird, because Gale is basically also out. He’s off the main book to do something else we’ll see eventually, only popping back in for a one-off here and then with large gaps between them. I assumed Wells was here longer. Internet tells me he has 7 stories between here and ASM 647, which is more than Bob Gale, but I guess Gale wasn’t planning to leave so quickly, maybe. I happen to know the Brain Trust era ends with ASM 647, and they had almost everyone back for a big finale. But until then, the brain trust needs more brains! Who will heed the call? Maybe I should get on with this issue already, jeez. Even for me, this is a lot of preamble.
That’s not a iPod. That’s a Zune. Peter Parker sent a failing knockoff iPod to his buddy in the war. That’s hilarious. Well, the general there asks Flash where he got his nickname, which gives us a one-panel flashback to him underperforming sexually in high school (!!!!!), then confirms he played football in high school and college before dropping out to sign up for the service. We see a panel of him in the jungle, “in the shit,” as it were. But there’s no real world conflict that could have been, at this point. Flash would’ve been in the desert, much as Tony Stark’s origin had been moved to the Middle East in the oft-referenced Extremis arc.
Note again the large bottom or top panels in this issue. It’s been going on a long time, maybe since BND started, I don’t know when it clicked that every artist was doing it. We touch on Flash’s abusive dad, and his Spider-Man fan club, which the General there says got him an FBI file, given Spider-Man’s status as a vigilante, and we see him kidnapped by Dr. Doom in ASM 5, which the FBI was also interested in.
So, they hit an IED, which flipped the truck and trapped them inside, the hatch jammed. The General asks Flash how he kept his cool, and he says sometimes you can get through things if you remember to stay focused. This is laid over a remake panel of Spider-Man lifting the heavy thing in ASM 33. Got to get Spider-Man in this somehow, I guess. So Flash shoulder charged the jammed hatch like he was playing football (hur hur hur) and got it open so everyone could pile out.
A guy then attacks Flash’s partner there, as Flash explains “the insurgents are hopped up on drugs” (Oy vey) so it can be “like trying to stop a tank” to deal with them (Over a panel of Spider-Man vs. Juggernaut). So this guy couldn’t be pried off Flash’s guy and punched Flash in the face, and then Flash tackled him, because football, and then killed him by suffocating him to death. Heroic!
Got a big top AND bottom panel in there…
Flash took down some of his assailants, and retreated before the others. Then he found some of the epinephrine the guy he suffocated earlier was using, and shot himself up with it to ignore the pain of his shot up legs. He says he wants to be clear that he wasn’t “doing drugs,” but sometimes you need an advantage, even an artificial one (Over a picture of the Iron Spider suit). So he was able to walk back to Santos, whose moaning had drawn the remaining attackers, and shoot them all before excavating his buddy and walking him out of there.
And there you have it. Flash has lost his legs. Now, that in and of itself certainly wouldn’t ruin Flash’s character, of course, not at all. It gives him a new aspect, it gives him a challenge to overcome, and it does reflect a real world experience, despite how weird, random and jarring it is for Flash to suddenly be a wounded veteran out of nowhere when he was a PE teacher last year. How did he get over there? Was he in the reserves? Did he sign back up? Seems like we should’ve been told here, the General going over his story was an easy way to get there, and we didn’t. At any rate, I just want to make it clear, I don’t think him losing his legs ruined the character. No, the ruining will come later… in stages… from several different writers. The first stage will seem well-intentioned. The 2nd stage is just a dumb disappointment. And the 3rd is an inevitable exacerbation of the 2nd. But that’s getting as much as 12 years ahead of ourselves, so we’ll leave it for now. Who will bring us ASM 547? Who knows? I won’t til I “turn the page” in this digital collection…