Speed Demons, like much of the series, is a glorious tribute to the Silver Age of comic books. It takes its premise from a 1967 issue of Superman in which the Man of Steel and the Fastest Man Alive competed in a charity race. As the Flash would appear to rain on Superman’s parade, ever a cocky smirk on his face and never missing a chance to show off, the story thrives on clashes between their personalities. The judicious Boy Scout miffed by his competitor’s egocentrism and immaturity. As is predictable from the outset, the story isn’t about the race, as to crown a single winner runs contrary to superhero ethos, in which everyone who takes a stand against evil comes out a hero. And naturally by the end, Superman and Flash are best of friends, bound together by their unfailing heroism.
The episode is justifiably founded on the notion that buddy film conventions are all the grounding needed for a superhero team-up. The eye candy is the main attraction; Speed Demons is the most convincing demonstration of super speed in the DCAU. Instead of Justice League’s insisting on flashbulb repetitions of figure to relay rapidity to the viewer, which is counterproductive and merely clogs up the line of action with an all too noticeable ‘effect,’ Tokyo Movie Shinsha and director Toshihiko Masuda instead juggle the classical tradition of speed lines and abstract gusts of color with painstaking attention to the surrounding physics. From a distant vantage point we see the evocative stripes of blue and red and from a close-to-the-ground, worm’s eye perspective that views the figures first in long shot before they accelerate straight into the camera, we see the force with which their feet plant themselves into the earth and the resulting geyser of dust and gravel that spews out from under the friction. Wisps of wind, trailing eruptions of ocean water, flittering debris, and flailing of fabric are other examples of the appeal to the physical reactions of their hyper-fast sprinting.
In a lesser show, the villain who comes to pose a threat and thus spur our heroes to action would be an arbitrary no-good interventionist, or else a rogue overtly linked to the guest star (Reverse Flash would be the most prime candidate). The Weather Wizard occupies a gray area. He seems chosen because he’s a fairly well known Flash adversary, but I feel his link runs much deeper. He is predominantly associated with the elements, and since so much of the thrill of watching the Flash and Superman in action is how their enhanced speed is rooted in actual physics and how their deviation from what is scientifically normal affects their surrounding environment. The Weather Wizard is also concerned with altering the natural environment via acceleration of a similar kind, and so there is a certain theme of disharmony of nature whenever the two collide. To be even more analytical would be to observe that the Weather Wizard mans a man-made machine from a sterile enclosure, while Flash and Superman not only possess powers that are naturally ingrained, but are interact directly with the environment instead of digitizing it into holographic representations.
Finally, I don’t believe any of these strengths are necessarily compensation for the conventional story, as I don’t see anything wrong with this episode’s almost road-movie contrivances. Watching Speed Demons as a child, I didn’t mind the overbearing emphasis on duality: Superman vs. the Flash, streams of red vs. streams of blue, and the aforementioned clash of personality, neither getting the better of the other. I was excited to see the Flash, one of my favorite heroes, and such a bifurcated competition is the ideal, if a bit pedestrian, format for a superhero team-up. At the risk of sounding platitudinous, that’s the way it has to be.
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