Why Did An Immortal Caveman Kill A Thermopolis Detective In A 1987 Flash Comic?

Thermopolis, Wyoming, turns up in odd places. 

Daffy Duck fights Bugs Bunny for the right to sell books there in the 1982 film “1001 Rabbit Tales,” and one of the biggest villains in the DC Universe traveled there to personally tear someone’s heart out in 1987.

Former Thermopolis resident Brett Belleque was shopping for comics at a Goodwill store in Salem, Oregon, when he picked up the oldest one it had: 1987’s The Flash (Volume 2) No. 2: “Savage Showdown!,” written by Mike Baron.

“I’m a Batman and Flash guy, so I picked it up and started looking through the pages,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “Lo and behold, there was Thermopolis, Wyoming. I had to read it twice. It blew my mind.”

Thermopolis is a genuine point of contention in this comic book clash between Wally West, the third Flash, and perennial DC Comics villain, big-bad Vandal Savage. 

In a story where a supersonic speedster fights an immortal caveman, Thermopolis might be the strangest thing in the story.

Some Context

Before dissecting the exciting plot of the Flash’s “Savage Showdown!,” some context is needed.

The Flash is the fastest person in the world and one of the biggest heroes in the DC universe. He can run hundreds of miles an hour and has even gone fast enough to break the time/space continuum, changing the past and future (something DC Media has repeatedly used whenever it wants a clean slate after a convoluted storyline).

Vandal Savage is a 50,000-year-old immortal caveman. He gained his powers after being exposed to radiation from a meteor, and several storylines have him making cameos throughout human history as the world’s greatest conquerors.

Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan? They’re all Vandal Savage. Savage even supplanted Hitler so he could win World War II and rule the world with the Nazis in the DC Animated Universe.

Savage’s storied, megalomaniacal history and determination to stay off the grid create the conflict between him and the Flash in 1987’s “Savage Showdown!” 

There was a private detective in Thermopolis that Savage decided knew too much and had to go.

Savage Showdown!

In Flash No. 1, the hero ran from New York City to Seattle to deliver a heart for an urgent transplant. He runs through Wyoming on his cross-country medical mission, and witnesses Vandal Savage strangling a man but can’t stop to save him.

Flash No. 2 starts with Flash returning to his apartment in Brooklyn to find Vandal Savage, fabulously dressed, waiting inside. Savage has his own organ delivery to make, presenting Flash with a human heart in a box (that was revealed on the final page of the previous comic).

“Whose heart is this?” Flash asks.

“The private eye from Wyoming,” Savage answers. “So much care I take to hide my tracks — he finds me out. Then you. Now I must have your heart.”

Savage expresses his disappointment that he’s antagonizing Wally West instead of “his greatest enemy,” Barry Allen, the second Flash. 

Allen had sacrificed his life to save the DC multiverse the year before during the landmark comic arc “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” but explaining that saga is far beyond the scope of a Cowboy State Daily feature.

Savage uses his magic powers to confine the speedster within his cramped Brooklyn apartment while expressing his shylock-esque desire for a pound of flesh from the Flash, threatening to tear out and “squeeze your heart like a grapefruit.” 

This will allow him to recharge his powers by drinking the Flash’s blood (even though Savage isn’t a vampire).

The fast man and the caveman immediately get into a fight. Savage breaks Flash’s wrist before breaking his own confinement spell by jumping out of the door (which immediately explodes) to escape.

Thermop Cop Killed By Caveman

After receiving medical attention and doting care from his superhero colleague and girlfriend, Francis Kane (who would later become the jealous Flash rogue Magenta), Flash decides to investigate the murder of the detective whose heart was delivered to his apartment.

Francis plays Atari and Flash noshes on a pizza while calling the Thermopolis Police Department. They apologize to “Mr. Flash” for not believing that an actual superhero was calling them about a local murder.

“The victim’s name is Harold Halston,” the Thermopolis PD tells Flash. “We went to his office, but it had been ransacked. All the files were taken.”

Flash uses his computer skills to “play such sweet music on the keyboard that it must fall to my charms.” He learns that Halston has made several calls to an antique shop on NYC’s Fifth Avenue, owned by Mr. Burt Villers, supposedly a Belgian immigrant.

Like Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan, Burt Villers is another pseudonym of Vandal Savage. Flash deduces that Halston deduced Savage’s true identity, and Savage was “crossing nationalities to cover his ancient trail.”

Naturally, Halston had to die.

How and why a Thermopolis private detective was tracking the movements of an international criminal and immortal caveman, and what he intended to do with that information, is anybody’s guess. Savage would most certainly be out of Wyoming’s jurisdiction.

Flash doesn’t pursue the matter further. There are more super-heroic things to do.

Flashy Ending

Flash runs off to shake hands with the New York Governor Mario Cuomo and take Francis to the trendy Club Neon. 

When a bottle of champagne and a Villers Gallery business card are delivered to his table, he knows the villain is in the club and a Savage showdown is imminent.

Savage proceeds to trash Club Neon, tossing tables and people everywhere and forcing Flash to change into his iconic costume and save defenestrated civilians. Francis finds herself at Savage’s mercy after using her powers of magnetic manipulation to lob a fork into his face.

“Your boyfriend has cost me my antique shop,” Savage says menacingly as he attempts to strangle Francis.

Slamming into Savage with a kick “that would shatter a buffalo’s spine,” Flash prevents a Spider-Man redefining character moment and successfully prevents his girlfriend’s death. Perhaps the “buffalo” analogy was an avenging reference to the brave Wyomingite who Savage killed.

After a brief tussle, Savage — spine intact — gets defenestrated by Flash, plummeting several stories but never hitting the ground (somehow) and eluding capture. Savage’s improbable escape ensured he could continue menacing Flash and the Justice League into the present day.

Flash reflects on his showdown with Savage by giving Francis a negligee, visiting the Teen Titans to tell his fellow heroes Savage won’t resurface anytime soon, and buying a lavish mansion on Long Island (he had won the lottery in a previous comic).

That concludes Wally West’s not-so-savage showdown with Vandal Savage. 

The story doesn’t mention what he did with Halston’s heart, but he presumably did the heroic thing and reunited it with its deceased owner in Wyoming.

For the record, nobody named Harold Halston has ever lived or worked as a detective in Thermopolis. Also, there are no open warrants for Vandal Savage, Burt Villers or Genghis Khan in Wyoming.

“I lived in Thermopolis in the 1970s, and I didn’t even know they had detectives,” Belleque said. “There was only one murder the whole time I lived there, and my mom was on the jury for the trial. It was really weird and exciting to see Thermopolis pop up on the page.”

Comics Career

Mike Baron always wanted to be a writer but never envisioned having a career in comics.

“I wanted to write novels ever since I was a kid,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I didn't start thinking about comics till I got to college, and my friends showed me comics by Neil Adams and Jim Steranko. I’d never seen anything like that in my life, and how superior it was to most of the comic art I'd seen.”

Baron’s storied comic career includes 14 issues of Flash #2 and issues for several other DC heroes including Batman, Green Lantern and the Justice League. He was also the first writer on Marvel’s ongoing Punisher series.

Baron’s other comic achievements include Nexus, an award-winning comic series he co-created with Steve Rude, the costumed crimefighter Badger, a Vietnam War veteran with multiple personalities that he continues to write for today, placing it among the most successful and longest-running independent superhero comics.

“Badger’s only superpower is that he can talk to animals,” he said. “Jeff Butler wanted to draw Druids, but Capitol Comics wanted a costumed superhero. So, I thought, ‘why would anybody put on a costume and fight crime? They have to be crazy.’ And bam!”

Serious Start

When Mike Gold was hired as an editor by DC Comics, he hired Baron to write for Wally West’s version of the Flash. With an immense toy chest of characters, settings and plots at his disposal, he wrote Flash with the same approach he always used when writing comics.

“I take their characters very seriously, try to stay in character, and honor the heritage,” he said. “I approached Punisher as a straight crime comic. There was no time travel or dinosaurs or nonsense like that. 

“I ripped stories from the headlines, so Punisher went up against drug smugglers, serial killers, motorcycle gangs, and crooked reverends and bankers. He fought Daredevil and Kingpin, but those are also fairly realistic characters.”

Baron took Flash seriously too. Even with the superpowers, magic and the immortal caveman, the story is pretty grounded for a comic.

One of Baron’s lasting impacts on the Flash was his voracious appetite, which was a natural result of his grounded approach to the character.

“My one big insight was that Wally was burning 1,000 calories a minute while running around the world at 800 mph,” he said. “In order to do that, he’d have to eat constantly.”

Baron said he’s always written comics the same way: sketching out each page before adding the dialogue and text boxes.

“I draw each page by hand first, then put all the words, captions, and directions,” he said. “This is an invaluable exercise I would encourage anybody who wants to create comics to try, whether they can draw or not. I’m not a good artist, but I’m good enough that anybody can understand what I’m drawing. It teaches you about the pulse and the rhythm of a comic.”

A Stop Along The Way

So, why did Vandal Savage go to Thermopolis to kill a private detective and then deliver the Wyoming heart to the Flash in Brooklyn? Even Baron had to consider that one for a moment.

“I haven't read those books since I put them out,” he said. “I'd have to reread them to see what I wrote, and when I do go back and read a comic I wrote from that era, it's like reading a new book. It’s like something I've never seen before, because I don't remember what I wrote.”

Baron concluded that Thermopolis must have been along the route he had the Flash run to Seattle, somewhere Savage could be seen as he raced by.

“I had Flash running from coast to coast, so when I have anything like that, I look it up on a map and see where they're actually going to make the story as credible as possible,” he said. “I looked at a map and picked Thermopolis.”

Belleque was elated to see his hometown appear in a DC comic.

“Thermopolis coexists with Gotham City in the DC Universe,” he said.

The Next State Over

Baron wrote 14 issues of The Flash before moving on to other projects. Even in the infinite possibilities of the DC Universe, there were only so many places he felt he could take Wally West.

“The only reason I gave up Flash was that I didn’t know what to do with the character,” he said. “That would not happen today, but I gave it up because I didn’t know what to do with the character.”

A pseudo-adaptation of Baron’s story appears in the first season of the DC animated show “Young Justice.” In the episode “Coldhearted,” Wally West (in this universe, he’s Barry Allen’s sidekick Kid Flash) is running across the country to deliver a heart for a transplant in Seattle.

Along his route, Wally encounters a squad of police officers being trounced by Vandal Savage. However, no cops are killed, all hearts remain intact, and South Dakota is as close as Savage gets to Thermopolis.

Another DC supervillain, T.O. Morrow, uses the android Red Volcano to set off an eruption of Yellowstone from his subterranean laboratory at Old Faithful in a later episode of Young Justice, but that’s another story.

Baron found it ironic that he included Thermopolis, Wyoming, in “Savage Showdown” Flash given that he lives in “the next state over.”

“I live in Fort Collins, Colorado,” he said. “I had no idea I was going to be living out here when I wrote that comic.”

Contact Andrew Rossi at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com

Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.