2 trillion.

Did you use .0001 microseconds in your calculation or .00001 microseconds?

Even if you're right, it really doesn't do much to make the scene any less ridiculous.

I said that on the CBR forums, but then someone corrected me pointing out that the explanation for this predates the Speed Force by about 30 years.

No, you're right, decades before there was ever a Speed Force it has always been established that the Flash has a protective aura that protects him from wind and air friction. I think it even dates back to Broome. Although I don't know how it works when he's going 20 trillion times faster than the speed of light though.

I can’t remember exactly how the people survived the acceleration, but it has been explained. He has some kind of aura or something that covers it.

It’s the Speed Force.

I said that on the CBR forums, but then someone corrected me pointing out that the explanation for this predates the Speed Force by about 30 years.

I can’t remember exactly how the people survived the acceleration, but it has been explained. He has some kind of aura or something that covers it.

It's the Speed Force.

Then he reloads it, again at super-speed, just to drive home the point that he can!

I remember that scene. It was pretty cool.

The best example of Wally using his speed to full effect is one of his last against Vandal Savage… He removes the bullets from Savage’s gun, while talking to him… Utterly brilliant.

Then he reloads it, again at super-speed, just to drive home the point that he can!

So if the Flash can move a half million people in a millisecond (God knows how the people survived that kind of acceleration) how does Mirror Master or The Top fight him?

Actually it's not a millisecond, but .00001 MICROsecond, which actually translates to maybe one ten-millionth of a millisecond. But it's WAY more ridiculous than doing it in a millisecond.

My math may be off, but I think Kelly overestimated the speed of light by 2 trillion times, not 20 trillion, and I think the speed of light is over 186 miles per second, not 185 miles per second.

It's 186,000 miles per second, I hit "5" instead of "6." (typo) But whether its 2 trillion or 20 trillion times the Flash's established top speed (don't feel like redoing the math), that is still a lot.

For example let's do a thought experiment, and pretend it wasn't the Flash inexplicably operating at 20 trillion times his established power level but Batman. The book opens with Batman entering a village, seeing a 20 ton nuclear bomb times to detonate, and Batman casually and with one hand pitches the bomb into the sun. With no explanation. Then the story just carries on at normal. For all the people in this comments thread saying to just suspend disbelief, if they saw Batman operating at 20 trillion times his strength level without explanation I'm sure they'd raise an eyebrow.

And when i said "suspension of intelligence," I wasn't calling people stupid believe it or not. I just think they suspended their rational thought because they desperately wanted to like something. With DC fans for example, anything that can go under the "ICONIC" category or encourages godlike worship of the heroes' infinite goodwill and sense of civic duty is automatically a good story or scene and there's no need to think further about it. For example look at books like Superman for All Seasons. Weak plot, dialogue, characterization, motivation, pacing, etc, but it spends the whole time mooning over how all-powerful yet caring Superman is and it's considered one of the greatest Superman stories ever. Similarly, this scene shows "Wow, look how much Flash cares, he's all powerful but he's always willing to use that power to help as many people as possible and pose heroically afterward. ICONIC."

Being stupid is not being able to think about something. Suspending your intelligence is choosing not to think about something.

... oh, wait.

(The sequence does bring up my big complaint about Mahnke: occasionally, there'll just be a fugly panel tossed in for the hell of it. What the hell is up with Wally's lips in that second panel of the final page?)

So if the Flash can move a half million people in a millisecond (God knows how the people survived that kind of acceleration) how does Mirror Master or The Top fight him?

I can't remember exactly how the people survived the acceleration, but it has been explained. He has some kind of aura or something that covers it.

As for the other issue of how any villain ever poses a threat, well that's the same reason that Clark Kent's glasses work as an effective disguise. And that reason is "Shush - it's just one of those things you have to accept and not think too hard about"

The best example of Wally using his speed to full effect is one of his last against Vandal Savage... He removes the bullets from Savage's gun, while talking to him... Utterly brilliant.

I mean they have scenes in comics were he and the villian are talking to each other as Flash runs toward him. They'll have Captain Cold laying down ice. Water couldn't freeze fast enough. By the time the villian could say "A-ha!..." The Flash would have hit him with a fist going a million miles an hour like twenty times, reducing his face to goo.

That’s just suspension of intelligence.

If you think people are stupid, just come out and say you think they're stupid. I'd rather be called stupid for taking this scene at face value than running to get my calculator while reading comics.

So if Kelly had written that it took Flash about 2 minutes (I agree with 94 seconds at the speed of light) to clear everyone out of the city, the scene would have been flawless? Or would he had to have been so vague as to just say "Flash ran fast enough to save everyone in the city"?

My math may be off, but I think Kelly overestimated the speed of light by 2 trillion times, not 20 trillion, and I think the speed of light is over 186 miles per second, not 185 miles per second.

A man who can move at light speed threatened by a boomerang? Even if an invisible ninja snuck up behind him to shoot him in the head point blank, he could run away between the time the bullet touched his hair and when it would have hit his skin. It basically means that the only reason anyone in the world is a threat to him is because he's an idiot.

I can recall the exact instant I lost interest in Superman. I was reading a Superman comic back in the sixties. Somebody shot Lois Lane dead right in front of Superman. Oh noes! But not to worry. Faster than the human eye could see, Superman grabbed Lois, flew her to the Fortress, built a robot duplicate of her, flew back and placed the robot in the path of the bullet.

I didn't take this to mean Superman was really fast. I took it to mean that either Superman is retarded, the writer is retarded, or the writer thinks I'm retarded.

In any case, I was done.

It’s called soft sci-fi. Who cares if you break a few laws of physics. What matters is that it has internal logical consistency and emotional resonance.

I actually totally agree with your sentiments here. It doesn't matter if a scene breaks a few laws of physics as long as it has internal logical consistency and emotional resonance. That's why I don't like this scene, I don't feel like it has ANY internal logical consistency at all.

Since people act like it's a nitpick or that this is just a matter of moving a decimal place over just one place, let me spell out how mindboggingly ridiculous this feat is even by superhero standards.

532,000 people. Kelly says they were transported one at a time, sometimes two. Each person rescued requires two 35 miles trips to be run: one trip into the city to fetch them, another trip to transport them out of the city to safety. So 500,000 people equals at least 1 million 35-mile trips, meaning the Flash ran a combined 35 million miles AT LEAST to save those people. And he ran that 35 million miles in .0001 MICROSECONDS. Not .0001 seconds, .0001 MICROseconds. Keep in mind that a microsecond is 1-MILLIONTH OF A SECOND.

If you expand the math to see how far the Flash would have run going at that speed in one second, you come up with 3 QUINTILLION, 700 QUADRILLION MILES PER SECOND. Now what's the speed of light? ONLY 185 THOUSAND MILES PER SECOND. So basically, Kelly has him running at 20 TRILLION TIMES THE SPEED OF LIGHT with each human being, yet the captions say that he is only running NEAR light speed. That's not a minor nitpick or a small miscalculation, it's astoundingly bad math and horrible science even by comic book standards.

This is why you keep pseudoscience a little vague so that suspension of disbelief is easy for the reader, or if you can't even handle that, you make up fake science altogether like Stan Lee did with his "unstable molecules" and "vita rays." But if a writer is going to take upon himself the challenge of throwing out real numbers and real science in order to give a scene more gravitas, he is willingly opening himself up to valid criticism if he gets it outrageously wrong.

It’s called soft sci-fi. Who cares if you break a few laws of physics. What matters is that it has internal logical consistency and emotional resonance.

Shove it grampa!
Even those last two went out the window when Phillip Dick came on the scene.

FUCK YEAH!

Actually you're right, that would be kinda cool.