Disguised in his overalls, Speed advances carefully through the counterfeiters' lair.
Guess they got a new door after Speed atomized the previous one.
I like to stop and wonder where Speed got overalls. You know he doesn't own any. I bet he simply walked into the very first store he passed, which turned out to be a garden center, and bought the first thing he saw in his size. Think of the time he saved!
No closet jokes; Speed deserves better.
Right on time, Central Casting sends in the least reputable-looking counterfeiter-type on their books.
SURE HOPE NO ONE IS IN, SAY, THE CLOSET, LISTENING TO ME COMPLAIN ABOUT MY OCCASIONALLY INTERRUPTED COUNTERFEITING JOB.
Oh, I see now. Speed's wearing the SAME outfit as the counterfeiter. Like the extra-terrestrial saying "I SHALL PASS AMONG THEM UNDETECTED." As if anyone's not going to recognize Speed Saunders!
Huh. I guess he doesn't recognize Speed Saunders. Must be the overalls.
Again, Speed reassures the crook that he won't get hurt. Speed's actually pretty nice when he's not shooting you.
Then Speed does what he certainly could have done the first time he entered the room; looks for he secret catch that activates The Revolving Wall, because OF COURSE there is a revolving wall.
If Speed says that something MUST BE, then the universe will make sure it happens, because the universe is not ABOUT to get on Speed Saunders' bad side.
Turns out it's... pretty easy to spot. It's the thing that looks like a secret latch.
Ace Investigators can distinguish SUSPICIOUS wall buttons from innocent ones with practiced ease.
After all, this isn't Speed's go round with
secret
panels.
Suddenly a rotating section of the wall magically has NO SEAMS.
In yesterday's post we challenged you to guess which of his traditional methods Speed would use to track down the counterfeiters' hideout. Did you pick:
A. wake the Dean / consult a counterfeiting expert;
B. do some research at the Central Library;
C. happen upon a Useful And Attractive Female Informant; or
D. use his Face Of Judgement on Grogan to get him to spill the beans?
Well, if you picked any of these answers, you are, of course, completely incorrect. The answer is E. None of the Above. Remember, the hint was: Speed always chooses his actions in the interest of TIME. And the most time-saving move is simply:
to happen immediately upon the hideout completely by accident. Yes, really.
Sounds like a printing press? What does THAT sound like? How do you know this, Speed? Is it the anti-crime computer hat?
Despite what you may think, I didn't skip any panels here, but Speed sure did. He is simply immediately pictured wandering down some alley, overhearing the apparently unmistakable Sounds of A Counterfeiter's Printing Press. Think of the time he saved!
Time he spent getting a warrant? BWHAHAHAHa. No.
He just climbs the fence and pokes his nose in the window.
I think I'd be more interested in the story behind the abandoned bra and panties in the garbage can. Because a DRAG counterfeiting gang is DELIGHTFULLY apropos.
And what does Speed see? Exactly what he had hoped!
Not only is the counterfeiter making only $10 bills, he seems to making them one at a time. Tsk tsk; so time-wasting!
Speed is HYPED. He'll just bruise in and arrest the guy and the case will be solved in record time. Think of the time he'll save!
Well, technically, counterfeit bills aren't "goods", Speed. They are "bads", if anything. You USE them to buy goods. But we get your gist.
And what does he find? Is it:
A. The counterfeiter he saw through the window, with his machine;
B. Dave Grogan, still nursing a sore jaw;
C. Papa Bodega, turning out to be the mastermind;
D. The counterfeiter, but without any bills or equipment.
The answer is E. None of the Above. He finds exactly nothing.
I am just going to assume that the act of Speed "bursting in" with his accustomed vigor obliterated the door into sawdust and shattered the wall plaster. Possibly it atomized the counterfeiter and his equipment, too.
Well, that's strange. Speed tesseracts immediately to Commissioner Nameless's office to complain about having wasted his time bursting into an empty room.
"Glad to see you had the walls painted, Commissioner; I guess I was wrong about you."
Commissioner Nameless doesn't provide any insight or help or back-up. Not even a "good luck". Obviously an ELECTED Police Commissioner.
Realizing that his usual purple Glenurquhart check suit is perhaps not the best outfit for stealth, Speed dons a clever disguise!
Oh, DOES it, Speed? Because THAT's what matters; how your disguise FEELS.
Speed may be an Ace Investigator but he's no Madame Fatale. He's not accustomed to disguises because everyone ALWAYS recognizes Speed Saunders.
Yesterday, Speed Saunders announced that he was going to The Bantam Club "at once", meaning he's there in medias res in the very next panel:
Hm. I guess their Beyond Earth faction chose the Harmony Affinity because they look quite at home in all that miasma.
Why is an (apparently) well known felon like Dave Grogan voluntarily playing cards with the best known (and possibly only) Ace Investigator of all time, Speed Saunders? Well, it's unlikely and odd but... think of the time it saves!
Speed is there to win some fake tenspots in a poker game from Grogan.
The size of a standard poker card is 2.5"x3.5", meaning Grogan's got some mitts on him.
Next we learn that Speed is greedy (at least for evidence).
When say a character "sees" something while he plays poker, are you being wittily ambiguous, writer Fred Guardineer?
Then we learn that Speed cheats at cards.
It's delightfully humanizing that, although Speed uses his god-like reality-manipulating powers to give himself a good poker hand, he flubs it by giving himself five Five Of Clubs.
Quick with his wits, Speed lampshades the absurdity of his five of a kind, and confuses Grogan by claiming that he, TOO, is the victim of some card-dealing shenangigans.
Just kidding. Actually, he simply socks Grogan in the jaw.
I don't know why Speed would bother to cheat, except that it gives him an excuse to halt the game. It's needlessly violet, but, hey, think of the time he saves!
Probably cause? Um; yeah; sure. It's sure faster than getting a warrant.
I doubt that Speed himself has the Tier 3 "Alien Hybridization" tech that would allow him to breathe that noisome miasma which seems native to the felons. So I imagine that Speed has simply chosen NOT TO BREATHE for the duration of his visit to The Bantam Club, because as an instantiated abstract ideal, breathing is optional for him. Anyway, Speed breathlessly snags the evidence he wants from Grogan's billfold and backs out the door like a Western bandit robbing a frontier bank.
"Um, it's a little late for that, Speed, you already socked Grogan SO HARD in the left side of his face, that even the RIGHT SIDE appears to be in pain."
Speed takes the bills to an Unnamed Authority Figure whose job it is to confirm Speed's rightness and emit exposition.
Ignoring the Commissioner's statement of the obvious issue, Speed gives him a stern off-panel lecture about the atrocious color of his office walls, warning him to get that fixed soon or Speed will be taking his evidence to some OTHER unnamed authority figure with better taste.
What does Speed do next to track down the mastermind behind the counterfeit ring? If you are a reader of this blog, you have some familiarity with his methods; take a guess! Does Speed:
wake the Dean / consult a counterfeiting expert;
do some research at the Central Library;
happen upon a Useful And Attractive Female Informant; or
use his Face Of Judgement on Grogan to get him to spill the beans?
Reminder: Speed's decisions are always made with the desire to save time.
For some reason, the Smiler Grogan Case is filed under "W".
It begins with that most unseemly of locations: a bodega on the Lower East Side.
Look, Speed doesn't have TIME for you to figure out the plot, so it's front-loaded in exposition. AND MAKE IT SNAPPY!
Our rushed Runyonesques may be rough-hewn, but nothing seems amiss.
<William Dozier voice>: "Or DOES it?! What's THIS?!"
"C-c-cash? I'm sorry, did you forget your phone or your credit card? I...I am not sure what to do with th is, how was it called.... 'bill'." Okay, you got me, this is 1937 and people still recognized paper currency. The clerk's hesitance is because the bill seems... DUBIOUS.
This is Dave "High Dudgeon" Grogan, Smiler's much touchier cousin.
The customer (he's the Grogan the case is named after) is peeved and who can blame him? If you were wearing a hat two sizes too small shoved onto you enormous cranium like Sam Simeon, you'd be crabby too. But Papa Bodega is quick on the uptake and takes the safe course:
"I apologize, sir; it just took me by surprise because counterfeiters seldom have such bold fashion sense."
SO, someone is trying to get rich quick using phony sawbucks, eh? Naturally, Papa Bodega immediately contacts
SPEED SAUNDERS. PERSONALLY.
"Yes, 'at once'. you ninny, it's Speed Saunders, everything must be done IMMEDIATELY."
My first reaction is: really? I'm not surprised Papa Bodega knows Speed Saunders, because EVERYONE knows Speed Saunders.Speed Saunders, finder of corpses, locator of giant jewels, savior of rare Oriental artifacts, and scourge of middle eastern death cults. But this is who you need to deal with your fake ten-spot? Still, it's hard to gainsay, since, as an Ace Investigator, Speed's purview and authority are universal. Tear that tag off that mattress and you may find yourself taking the Big Sleep after Speed exposes you and pumps you full of lead five pages later.
And, sure enough, Speed does show up, no doubt tessaracting immediately to the scene, in the interest of time.
I think this caption provides the key, not to this story, but to Speed Saunders AS A WHOLE. It's a mistake to think of Speed Saunders as a PERSON. He's more like an instantiation of the CONCEPT of law enforcement. This is why his authority is recognized and accepted everywhere and why he outranks any OTHER authority figure he encounters: he is not AN authority figure, he is The Figure of Authority. A sort of "Speed Force", as it were, because Justice is swift.
And terribly dressed.
Papa Bodega lays out the case:
In all seriousness, it's important to remember that ten dollars had a lot more purchasing power in 1937. Online inflation calculators put the value at some $217 in 2024 dollars, which is... insane, because who buys some cigarettes with two $100 bills?!
Naturally, Speed Saunders is way ahead of Papa Bodega because Speed Saunders is way ahead OF EVERYONE.
Speed Fact: Speed's hat is actually a powerful mobile anti-crime computer, feeding such information directly into his brain and empowered by the sheet circuitry visibly woven into his purple Glenurquhart check suit). You don't want to know what the tie does.
Speed already knows who the criminal is and exactly where he can be found because that simply SAVES TIME. He's the Vernon "Hinesy" Hines of law enforcement.
Today is the day he disappears from the CW universe.
Trapped forever in the otherworldly dimension called "Broadway".
Fortunately, in the DCU Proper Barry hasn't disappeared!
Oh, wait....
He kind of has. Into DCU's upstate farm of "the multiverse".
He's not DEAD (any more). But recently the forces for Wally-nostalgia have won out, and, in the DCU's most recent multiversal soft reboot, "The Flash" title (both the name and the series) have (once again) gone to Wally West. And his wife and his kids and some girl in China and Max Mercury and (*snort*) "Inspector Pilgrim" and Impulse and (<eyeroll>) Ickto, and the Linear Men and a whole lot of other nonsense being spewed by some writer (Si Spurrier) who CLEARLY read (and worshipped) too much Grant Morrison in their youth.
"What?" indeed.
Thanks for whatever that is, Lovecraft-lover who wants to write The Doom Patrol.
Hermes save me from writers with a Kirby-pun fetish. "This trade" is one no sane person will be buying in the future (which you have erased).
But even in literary world lousy with speedsters,
Somebody needs to outlaw new speedsters. I mean, someone in OUR world, not Amanda Waller, who for the first time in my life, I agree with.
Unlike many of our comic book friends, I am not given readily to gasping.
The Battle of the Empty Costumes
But gasp I did upon seeing "THE REVEAL" of who the mysterious "Legionnaire" was in the most recent Justice Society.
Literally the last person you'd expect. Or is it...?
I assume most of you already know, but Mordu is an evil sorcerer who was introduced by writer Jim Shooter as a foe for the Legion in Adventure Comics #369 (JUN 1968). He is generally considered their most powerful single enemy, because the Time Trapper is too passive-aggressive.
This cover strikes me as odd, since sealing Mordru in an airtight container IS the way to defeat him. Because magic.
Mordru's original design was, to put it kindly, of its time.
Although I suppose seeing anyone THAT unconcerned about fashion-norms is going to be pretty disturbing, especially in the 30th century where fashions norms are already quite ... broad.
He had repeated dust-ups with the Legion. And by dust-up, I mean "and now Mordru has All Teh Magickz in the Universe" or "history has been rewritten and now Mordru is the ruler of the Universe." Mordu is a not a "poison Gotham's reservoir" level villain.
In the 1987, a redesigned Mordru was repurposed as a foe for the Justice Society of America.
Because in the '80s "The Dark Lord" was deemed cooler than "The Merciless". These things go in cycles.
It's involved, of course, because JSA arcs are involved and Legion arcs are involved and Mordru is a Legion villain.
All I will tell you is: it's completely Jean Loring's fault, which should surprise no one, because nothing that lives OR HAS EVER LIVED is safe from Jean Loring.
So, on the one hand, the LAST person you would be expect to be a Legionnaire is effing Dark Lord Mordru the Merciless. Even a mysterious metal-masked Legionnaire in the present.
The Legion has a history surprisingly rich in mysterious masked members, because the Legion is what happens when comics are actually written for kids (or BY them, in Shooter's case).
Especially given that the redacted bio for "The Legionnaire" clearly shows him with a different, non-Mordru-ish haircut.
On the other hand...
OF COURSE it's Mordru. Even if Geoff Johns isn't writing this storyline, his DNA is all over much of what goes on at DC, especially anything that smacks of repairs to damage that Dan Didio has done to the timeline.
Theory: Dan Didio is the Glorith of our universe.
And Geoff Johns always relies on making organic connections between characters in unexpected but reactively logical ways. If you create a "The Legionnaire" character to connect the Legion to the JSA, you make it an already-existing character who already-connects them:
Okay. Fine. YES, Starboy/man would have been a much more obvious choice. But it's been done; it was TOO obvious.
And (setting aside Starboy), MORDRU is the best known character with strong ties to both the JSA and the LSH. EVIL ties, yes, but strong ones.
And DCU is not averse to using strong evil ties.
Plus, the current arc for the JSA (as is being made PAINFULLY REPEATEDLY LOUDLY CLEAR) is second chances for the redemption of villains. And few characters are more irremediably evil than Mordru. He's got no Arkham-crazy excuses; he's simply a terrible person.
With a terrible hair-care routine.
So redeeming HIM would be the ultimate impressive feat for the JSA. What I find interesting here is that several Mordru stories in the past have implied that it is POWER that corrupts Mordru and that in the JSA story he mentions "these new powers". Are we going to watch the battle for Mordru's soul happen right before us...?
