“I guess this is the closest we get to background until our next DC crossover.”
The Trials Of The Flash
Tangent Comics (September, 1998)
“Making Light Of The Situation”
WRITER: Todd Dezago
PENCILER: Paul Pelletier
INKER: Andy Lanning
COLORIST: Joe Rosas
SEPARATIONS: Heroic Age
LETTERING: Comicraft
EDITOR: Eddie Berganza
CONCEPT: Dan Jurgens
After getting past another failed attempt by her father and his team to capture her, the Flash meets with Plastic Man, but Nightwing knows he’s working with her and sends Spectre to help capture them. Powell delights in torturing her with a light-draining trap while having Plastic Man on a shocking table…except at the restaurant where they were captured Lia and Gunther switched places. It’s part of a plan by the Secret Six to rescue Gunther’s real body, which ends up waking up so now he can go back and forth between his body and his Plastic Man body at will. The trio escape just in time for Lia to go to work…disguised as one of her father’s stooges.
What they got right: I wish I had gotten more of this round of Tangents. There’s more continuity with the Atom showing up in Joker’s comic last time and the entire Secret Six here in a plan to rescue their teammate. It will make their team-ups easier in the future.
What they got wrong: if they really wanted to do a twist, and the Tangents I have all seem to think they need one each story, why not have her father, who is apparently indestructible after their exposure, secretly protecting his daughter from Nightwing’s machinations and pretending to be a failure because he can take the punishment? That would have been better.
What I think overall: This was a really good story and makes me wish that Tangent Comics had gone on to be an actual imprint. Instead we got Superman’s Reign. I wonder if they’re ever going to release the rest of that in trade form?
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