The Importance of Matching Frequencies

cover art by Carmine Infantino

One of the fun things about the Silver Age Flash stories was how the hero could use his super-speed in supposedly scientific ways to accomplish whatever plot-convenient thing he needed to accomplish.

For instance, Flash #168 (March 1967) has him using his speed to find something invisible by spinning at just the right frequency. He also spins his arm to form a cushion of solid air to stop a beam of radiation.

There was always a chance that this occasions could come across as a contrived deus ex machina, but writer John Broome and artist Carmine Infantino were so casual about it that it all just seems like a perfectly natural and logical extension of Flash's speed. Besides, if all Flash could do was run fast, his stories would lose dramatic edge pretty quickly.

This is, after all, the way science in a Comic Book Universe is supposed to work. If the laws of physics followed Real Life rules, then a world with superheros in it would be pretty boring.

The story begins with Barry Allen worried, because Hal Jordan was supposed to be arriving for a visit, but seems to have vanished. When a Guardian of the Universe pops up in Barry's home to tell him even Hal's all-powerful bosses don't know where he is, there is definitely reason to worry.

Adding to Barry's problems is Hjalmar Helms (I love that name), who has been trying to invent time travel, but instead accidentally invents a purple ray that can in turn create futuristic devises. By himself, Helms is harmless. But when crooks find out about the purple ray, then lock Helms in his own closet and become self-described "super crooks."

Flash has a run-in with the gang and nearly defeats them, but a lucky shot with a sleep ray puts him down long enough for the bad guys to escape.

In the meantime, Flash does find an amnesiac Hal Jordan working on a local fishing boat. One clue leads them to the hotel Hal had been staying at before losing his memory. Barry figures that if Hal uses his power battery to recharge his ring, that could fix his amnesia, but the darn battery (and Hal's ring, for that matter) are invisible and intangible until needed.

So we find out that Flash can see invisible things by spinning around really, really fast. It's stuff like this that make Flash's stories from this era so delightful.

Hal gets his memory back and we learn that a mysterious feedback from the battery is what gave him amnesia in the first place.  But there's no time to try to figure that out as the two must hurriedly team up to take out the super-crooks, with Barry using his superspeed once again in wonderfully weird ways to help win the fight. Along the way, he notices that a ray gun fired by one of the crooks has no effect on a yellow school bus. So, when Barry and Hal track down Hjalmar Helms and set him free, they are able to deduce that Helms purple ray machine matched the frequency of the power battery. This caused the feedback that zapped Hal's memory and gave the purple ray its power.

So the two seemingly seperate storylines tie together neatly. And we learn that just as SCIENCE is done in the Doctor Who universe by reversing polarity, SCIENCE in the DC Universe is done by matching frequencies. I wonder what would happen if you reversed polarity on something and then matched frequencies with it?

Next week, there will be a Honeymoon Break with no posts on Wednesday or Thursday.  I appreciate my small readership and usually work to be regular in my posts to show the proper respect for you all. But, well, it's my honeymoon.

In two weeks, Iron Man and Doctor Doom travel back to the days of King Arthur.