Just Stay at Home

I love the fact that at DC, everything old is new again. As it is in heaven, so shall it be on earth-prime, so today is the return of an old favorite here at the Absorbascon: Haikuesday.

As we've long since learned, heroes like to show their mettle not just by saving the innocent, protecting society, and stopping evildoers. They like to do those things while spouting haiku.

Why? Because they can.

Or, at least, some of them can. Interstellar dullard Hal Jordan probably couldn't command his ring to compose a haiku for him, and can only understand 575 as the sector where that brick-shaped Green Lantern is stationed or some kind of new plane he's yet to wreck.

By contrast, Barry Allen is an ingenious scientist, the kind who invents revolutionary expandable micro-fiber costumes, casually and off-panel. I mean, even the Spectre had to sew himself a costume.

No wonder these two police officers made such a natural comedic duo in the Silver Age, Barry the brainy, low-key stone-faced straight-man and Hal the brain-dead, accident-prone, eye-rolling slapstick comedian. Barry and Hal are the Tango and Cash of the DCU.

So, while Barry is analyzing the evidence at a murder scene that could threaten all the speedsters of the DCU, Hal is all "hey, let's go to a party tonight and I'll ring up lampshades for everybody!"

Barry puts Hal in his place with a firm haiku, as if to say, "Wally, like you, you moron, is merely a tool in my personal fight against crime. For I am the crimson-hued avenger, I am the lightning bolt that illuminates the dark night of crime, I am the Batman of the Mid-West. Particularly now that I'm driven by my heretofore unmentioned father's false imprisonment for murdering my mother." Not that Hal would notice, of course...