Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Fast Talk: Mental Mirrors


Mental Mirrors: Utterly unappreciative of the effort undertaken by his public defender, Attorney Paul Barrett, supervillain Sam Scudder uses his time at trial to initiate a manipulative scheme that will allow him to escape from prison... again. Scudder later gloats, "No one suspects that at my trial I seized control of my lawyer's mind by tiny mirrors secreted on my person." The Mirror Master's villainous rants reveal that his latest trick with mirrors isn't simply an act of hypnotic suggestion, however. "From now on Barrett is in my power! Wherever he is, he will follow my mental commands! Even now I don't have to speak to tell him what I want!" Not only are these tiny reflectors impractically small, they're also clearly telepathic! Combine this pseudoscientific knowledge with last week's lesson in the coercive powers of super-speed radiation and we have to ask ourselves, are any of the crimson comet's foes incapable of jury-rigging some psychic powers at a moment's notice? One disappointing fact is abundantly clear: Central City's Rogues have absolutely no respect for the dedicated professionals who maintain this nation's great legal system. Still, it's all in a day's work for poor Paul Barrett, public defender to high-profile costumed supervillains!

Issue: The Flash #130 (August 1962)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Golden Glider and the Pied Piper showed one-time mental projection/telepathy, too. I dunno what to think about old Flash comics sometimes.

Dixon said...

Golden Glider and Pied Piper, too, eh? As I said, with the way these Silver Age stories throw around the scientific fast talk, I have a feeling every last member of the Rogues Gallery possessed telepathic powers at one point or another--so long as the story called for it!