O'BSERVATIONS - "THE FLASH"

When I was a kid, I didn't read many comic books (just couldn't afford them), but when I could find the dimes to do so, I'd always get the latest copy of "The Flash".  Sure, I loved the look and the powers of the Scarlet Speedster, but I was more fascinated by the members of his Rogues' Gallery - those costumed no-goodniks that bedevilled Barry Allen's hometown.

And it looks like we're going to get the 21st Century updates on many of those villains, with the Weather Wizard making a short first and last visit to the series' debut.  (Hopefully he either survived his encounter with Detective Joe West or there is the hint that there's another out there with the same powers.)

Thanks to casting notices being considered hard news, we know that we'll be getting Captain Cold and Heat Wave in upcoming episodes.  The pilot also had hints of Professor Zoom, aka the Reverse-Flash, all over the episode.  So we can probably look for that storyline to be explored in depth as time goes by.  

The producers of the show should remember Chekov's rule about the gun - if you show a gun in the first act, you damn well better use it by the third.  I bring this up because of that shot of the damaged cage at STAR Labs with the ID plate for "Grodd".  Maybe we won't get the same backstory as in the comics (Gorilla City?  I doubt we could find it in the main Toobworld!), but we damn well better get Gorilla Grodd in before the season ends!

And we already know that the Nuclear Man, Firestorm, will be in the show as well.  (I'm hoping that he'll still retain some of the outlandish physical features from the comic books - my one complaint about the look of this new 'Flash' is that everything has been subdued into a dark, minimalist hipster fashion sense.  So far, the Flash costume isn't working for me.  It would have been much better if it had the same design but was a brighter crimson.)

I have one "wish-craft" - I want to see Captain Boomerang on the show.  And even better, wearing that ridiculous costume as seen above.  Sure he was a hokey villain, but my nostalgia meter kicks into overdrive thinking about those days reading about his battles with the Flash.

PROFESSOR ZOOM?

Earth Prime-Time already has its own version of the Flash (with that show's Barry Allen now playing the father to this new hero), and so Grant Gustin (who plays Barry/Flash) must find a new home in the Toobworld Dynamic.  What better TV dimension than Comic Book Toobworld?  (Any better nicknames for that world are welcome!)  

'Gotham' already exists in that world, since - for better or for worse - the 1966 campfest of 'Batman' already occupies Earth Prime-Time.  And since Batman is already cited in so many other shows as exiting/having existed, there's no way a show about life before the Batman could share the same universe as those other TV series.  

'Gotham' airs on Fox, while 'The Flash' is on the CW, so there's no way they could ever cross over.  But at the very end of the debut episode, we caught a glimpse of a newspaper from ten years into the Future, which has a headline about a proposed merger between the Wayne Foundation and Queen Industries.  And this suggests that 'Gotham' and 'Arrow' - the series which helped launch 'The Flash' - share the same dimension.

Even though I can't use this for the main Toobworld, it looks to be a fun show to follow.  One bit o' trivia I did like - the TV channel that was seen for later news reports was 52 - the umbrella title for the latest streamlining revamp of the DC comics line.

BCnU!