Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Why House, M.D. Isn't A Big Hit In The DC Universe

It's sad what you find laying around, discarded in the streets of Keystone City...

Oh, no, not the Flash!! And he's not all:

That's Dr. Flura, the Golden Age Flash's scientist friend.

Well, this quickly turns into an episode of House, with a mystery disease that the best doctors in the world are completely helpless to diagnose (until, of course, Dr. House's fifth act epiphany, triggered by a random comment someone made. I wonder how many of his patients died the times no one was around to say the magic trigger phrase to inspire his train of thought...).

Is "not really dead" like "mostly dead?"

The doctor realizes that, in the absence of Miracle Max, he needs some serious help here:

Well, the scientists of the world listen!! So let's watch them travel in stereotype fashion!!

Sigh...

And how long, exactly, does it take to reach Keystone in a rickshaw, anyway?

Not that it matters, because the assembled stereotyped scientists are as clueless as House's "elite" team (seriously, why even keep these other doctors around? All they do is come up with 42 incorrect diagnoses per episode and stand around waiting for House to pull the answer out of his ass thin air...no wonder medical costs are so high...)...

"Every known method in medical history"?!? Leeches? Banishing the evil spirits? Sacrificing a cock to Asclepius? Balancing their humours?

Fortunately, this ends far more interestingly than any House episode:

Huzzah!! The Golden Age Star Sapphire somehow split them in two, leaving their "earthly bodies" behind but comatose, while their other bodies (?!) were transported to Star Sapphire's 7th-dimensional planet!!

You know, if House ever had a final diagnosis like that, maybe I'd watch more often...

From All-Flash #32 (1947/1948), as reprinted in Flash Annual #1 (1963). You know, when I started this, it wasn't intended to be a screed against House. Just sorta worked out that way...

2 comments:

  1. Was the Flash's comatose body still vibrating just slightly enough that nobody recognized he was Jay Garrick? Because that could be a problem.

    (Back then it would have hand-waved somehow. Today it would be a multi-part storyline that would be magically reset as soon as some writer/editor came along who wanted to write the Flash they knew as a kid.)

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  2. House has sadly gone downhill lately. Something like this would be just the thing to perk things up.

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