Okay, now it’s bothering me, who the fuck married Leonard Snart in the DCAU?! Like, I said my personal headcanon is that the Cold we see is a fake, but also like the marriage thing won’t leave me alone. Like, who did he marry? And whoever he married has to know about the crime thing. He wouldn’t be able to hide being frozen solid and going to jail from her! Who is this woman?
okay so I watched that scene when my Captain Canary obsession started. Then sent an ask to the wonderful @dragongoddess13 and this amazing fic was the result!! (and it is part of a series!!!)
I’ll be attending HeroesCon in Charlotte, NC next weekend, June 14-16! Pre-show commissions are still available and can be ordered here! I hope to see some of you there!
We now turn our attention to Flash #193: “Captain Cold Blows His Cool”. The issue was published in December 1969. It was written by John Broome, drawn by Ross Andru, and inked by Mike Esposito. It also has what is quite possibly the best Pre-Crisis Captain Cold cover.
Apparently this issue was the first Captain Cold issue comic book writer Geoff Johns ever read, and the cover in particular helped make him the Captain Cold fanboy we all know today.
The story itself begins with five elderly crooks escaping from prison. The guards go out to search for them, and ask a group of young surveyors if they’ve seen anything. They young men respond in the negative, and the guards drive off.
As soon as they’re gone, the “surveyors” reveal that they are the old crooks who escaped, having been de-aged by a mysterious sixth man. Said sixth man also gives them a mirror so that they can fully see the results of their transformation.
The old criminals ask their mysterious benefactor who he is, how he de-aged them, and why he helped them escape. He responds by ducking behind a tree, taking off his surveyor clothing, and very dramatically popping out as Captain Cold.
Captain Cold: “Get set for a big surprise–as I doff my surveyor-garb–and make a spectacular appearance as–CAPTAIN COLD! Fellow criminals, I’ve made you young again! I’ve given you back your youth–but you still retain your old skills–a fact that will be of supreme benefit to us all!”
Yes, Captain Cold has created a way to DE-AGE people! And no, he will never use it again after this issue. Nor will it ever be mentioned again, even though it seems like it could be really useful.
Old Criminal #3: “Captain Cold! Now things are clearin’ up—he can do anythin’ with that Cold-Gun of his!” Even things that have nothing to do with temperature or motion, apparently.
Pretty Boy Lloyd: “Yeah–he’s a real razzle-dazzler, Pop–uh–I mean Harry!” It is interesting that these old criminals seem as impressed as they are by the Captain. I almost would’ve expected them to disapprove him him needing “new-fangled gadgets” to commit crimes or something.
Captain Cold takes the old criminals to his hideout, which he has decked out with lots and lots of pictures of Laura Lamont, an old-time movie glamour queen in her seventies. She’s is Len’s newest stalkee-girlfriend, and, in addition to her age, she hasn’t been seen in years.
However, Len’s not concerned. He has the power to make his new bride-to-be young again, after all, so all he has to do is find her. And while he’s doing that, he’s going to send the old-time criminals to steal her wedding presents.
Because of a newspaper article she recently wrote, Len knows that Iris Allen knows where Laura Lamont lives. As a result, he disguises himself as a lawyer in the hopes of being able to convince Iris to help him find her.
Len on Iris: “A week ago an article appeared in Picture News written by Iris Allen–whom I used to be in love with before she went haywire and married that no-account police scientist Barry Allen! With me should could’ve lived like royalty-bah! Who can figure women out?” And this, Len, is why you still don’t have a girlfriend.
Also, Len’s disguise consists of a wig, some glasses, and a very fake-looking beard and mustache.
Captain Cold drives to the Allens’ house (which he knows the location of for…some reason) in a pink car that I’m pretty sure he stole, and introduces himself as Mr. Pendergast. He tells Iris that his client died and left a fortune to Miss Lamont…if she can be found, then asks Iris to tell him where Laura lives.
Iris refuses, but she does promise to contact Miss Lamont and tell her about the inheritance. Len gives her his card and walks away.
Iris tells Barry that she’s heading out to see Miss Lamont and tell her the good news. Barry, for his part, thinks that the lawyer looks familiar. His suspicions are raised further when he notices that the lawyer waited in his car for Iris to leave and then followed her to her destination.
He changes into the Flash and tries to follow them both, but since he doesn’t know where Miss Lamont lives, he loses them.
Then he gets knocked off his feet by a super-sonic blast emanating from a nearby building. He runs inside to see what’s going on and finds two of Cold’s crooks stealing an incredibly valuable painting.
“Young crooks? But they blew that safe like seasoned professionals!”
In addition to being unusually experienced, the crooks are also armed with high-tech weaponry. Since it’s apparently a sonic weapon, maybe Len got it from Piper?
However, well-armed or not, Flash manages to defeat and capture both crooks and take them to the police station.
The next day, at the police station, however, he finds that their fingerprints match those of Pop Handley and Fargo Jones, both of whom are pushing sixty. This confuses everyone, as nobody knows about Captain Cold and his magic inexplicable de-aging powers.
The police also tell Barry that there were a rash of other robberies that night, with a gold ring, a tiara, and a fur coat all being stolen.
Barry goes out to investigate as the Flash and heads to the site where the old crooks escaped. Once there, he finds a frozen stump and leaf and naturally comes to the conclusion that Captain Cold is involved.
Barry attempts to follow the residual radiation from Cold’s gun, but it’s been too long since he was there. “Captain Cold’s trail is too cold!”
Barry proceeds to run around the city in hopes of picking up a new trail. He eventually finds it at the store the mink coat was stolen from.
Barry uses the trail to follo Cold to his hideout. Upon his arrival, Cold somehow manages to use his suit to project a proto-cold field to slow the Flash down long enough for him to “reach my absolute weapon!”
Said absolute weapon is “this special attachment to my Cold-Gun!….It lowers the blast-temperature of my gun to below absolute zero!” SCIENCE!
Amusingly, Len even seems aware of how much science is breaking in this issue. “I know that sounds impossible-but then, everything I do is impossible! I don’t know what will happen when I hit you with this–but it’s bound to be absolutely horrible-oh, absolutely!” Was this a pun on “absolute zero”?
As it turns out, the below absolute zero weapon “not only knocked Flash to pieces like a jigsaw puzzle–it embedded the pieces right into the wall!” Um…uh…SCIENCE!
Len puts a picture frame around the Flash’s pieces, checks himself out in the mirror (”I must look my best tonight–my very best!”) and then goes out to propose to the woman he’s never met.
“I’m as nervous a a cat! I’ve waited so many years for this moment! Sometimes it seems to me that I’ve been in love with lovely Laura Lamont all my life!…But what if she turns me down?—-Bah! She can’t turn me down-not with what I have to offer her!” Oh, Len….Interestingly, this is the first time that Len has considered the possibility that his stalkee-girlfriend might reject him.
Thus assured, he dramatically breaks into her cottage.
Captain Cold: “Please be calm, my dear! You have nothing to fear! I am Captain Cold! Perhaps you’ve heard of me!” Len, if you didn’t want her to be freaking out, maybe you shouldn’t have broken into her house and dramatically proclaimed yourself as a well-known criminal.
Laura: “Oh, yes–I’ve heard of you! You’re an evildoer–a ruthless criminal!”
Captain Cold: “Nothing of the sort–I’ve gotten a bad press, that’s all! Deep down, my heart is filled with love-especially for you, darling! I want you to be my wife! But before you reply, listen! To begin with, as one of your wedding presents, I’m prepared to give you back your youth–your beauty of years ago!” Question: What would Len have done if she was okay with marrying him, but asked him not to make her young again? Would he have been on board with marrying a woman who’s probably at least forty years his senior? That might’ve made for a more interesting story than what we got, actually.
Back to the actual story, Laura thinks that he’s making fun of her. In response, he pulls out his cold gun, points it directly at her face, and shoots her with it! Way to calm her down, Len.
He tells her to go look in a mirror, and when she does, she sees that she’s young again. She asks him how he did this, and he replies that he’ll tell her after they’re married. Then he takes her back to his hideout.
Once they arrive (and she changes or he makes her change into a red dress for some reason), he presents her with the crown, the mink coat, and a bunch of other treasures and jewelry. He leaves her alone with all of the stuff while he goes to phone the justice of the peace, because this marriage is going forward even if they’ve known each other for less than two hours! This is why no one will date you, Len.
Instead of calling the Justice of the Peace, Len accidentally calls Mick instead. “By the Aurora Borealis–I know that voice! I absent-mindedly dialed Heat Wave’s number–instead of the Justice of the Peace!”
Cold invites Heat Wave over to his hideout so he can show him the defeated Flash (and also have him be the best man at his wedding to a woman who’s forty years older than him who he’s known for two hours).
However, when Mick arrives and Cold shows him the defeated Flash, Mick totally freaks out for some reason (I guess because he won’t get to have his last fight with the Flash) and blasts the frozen Flash pieces with his heat gun. Somehow, this undoes whatever Cold’s below absolute zero gun did to the Flash, and Flash goes back to normal.
Captain Cold and Heat Wave get into a brief scuffle over who’ll get to kill the Flash the second time, and then Barry knocks them both out and takes them to the police.
The issue ends with Barry and Iris discussing the case. Iris says that Laura told her that she hadn’t wanted Cold to make her young again; aging had been too painful for her the first time. Therefore, she’s just going to put on a wig and makeup and pretend to be old until she actually is old again. This seems like a potentially interesting bit of characterization; it’s too bad Laura didn’t get very much focus in the rest of the issue.
After Iris tells Barry about what happened to Laura, Barry tells Iris that the reason Captain Cold called Heat Wave instead of the Justice of the Peace was because he managed to use telepathy to make sure that it would happen. So yeah, apparently Barry has telepathic powers that he never uses again.
In speaking of things that never appear again, what happened to the Cold Gun’s ability to make people young? Why did Cold never use that again, especially once he himself started getting older?
And what happened to the de-aged criminals? Did they stay young, or do the effects eventually fade off?
I have so many questions about this issue. It’s an entertaining story overall, but there are just so many questions that never get answered and so many powers that never get brought up again.
It’s also a pity Laura Lamont never appeared again. She and Ayesha, the Maharanee of Joadpur (from Flash #150) are easily the most interesting of Len’s non-Iris stalkee-girlfriends.
After a long hiatus, I have decided to return to my summary of Len Snart/Captain Cold’s tumultuous Silver Age love life. Today, we will be looking at the second story in Flash #166: “Tempting Target for the Temperature Twins”. As the title suggests, this story will also feature Captain Cold’s frenemy, Mick Rory/Heat Wave. The issue was published in December 1966, and the story we’re looking at was written by Gardner Fox, drawn by the inimitable Carmine Infantino, and inked by Joe Giella.
Although we won’t be looking at it in detail, the first story in issue #166 is called “The Last Stand of the Three-Time Losers” and features the Flash fighting some random crooks, all of whom have already been arrested, convicted, and sent to prison three times and will go to prison for life if they’re arrested again. It was drawn and inked by the same men who drew and inked the Captain Cold story, but it was written by John Broome.
This story also raises a very pertinent question: if Central City follows a “three-strikes” crime policy as this story implies, how are the Rogues always managing to get out of prison on parole with no apparent difficulties? All of them have presumably been arrested and convicted way more than three times each. Does the law just not apply in the same way to people who take up costumed aliases for some bizarre reason? Do they just assume there’s no point since they always break out anyway? Or are the Rogues secretly a big enough tourist draw/advertising point that the city doesn’t want them to be put away permanently? This story’s premise raises way more questions than I think it intended to.
But enough about the legal system of Central City…it’s time for ten pages of never-ending temperature puns!
The story begins as it means to go on: “Once more those desperadoes of degrees come into Central City with a hot idea for chilling cold tricks! Yes, Captain Cold and Heat Wave are back at the old stand, dealing out frostbite and heat-prostration at one and the same time! But now they find their nemesis the Flash in cold storage–because of a red-hot injury–making him a tempting target for the temperature twins!”
Captain Cold: “Cool it, Heat Wave! You don’t have a chance of overcoming the Flash before I do!”
Heat Wave: “That’s a lot of hot air, Captain Cold! I’m putting a heat-hex on your cold calculations!”
Yes, the whole story is going to be like this. Brace yourself.
The story proper opens on Barry Allen, who STILL hasn’t decided to tell his wife (of almost one month) that he is the Flash. Before we can spend much time on his stupidity, however, he notices a factory that’s on fire and rushes to the rescue as the Flash.
However, in the process of saving the people trapped inside, he sprains his ankle (as a result of landing hard after the floor collapses under him). A doctor on the scene confirms the injury and tells the Flash that he’ll need to stay off his leg for a few days.
The Flash is given some crutches and heads for home, thinking about how this is going to be the end of his secret identity. (Seriously, this is what he’s worried about. He’s got an injury that is supposed to put him out of commission for a couple of days and might make him a target, and his biggest concern is his wife finding out his secret identity.) Also, it must be a slow news day, because a reporter on the scene thinks that a picture of the Flash on crutches is going to make for a great story. (Okay, it’s probably really the whole story about him saving people from the fire, but still!)
Meanwhile, Captain Cold and Heat Wave are standing outside the “ultra-fashionable house of gems”.
Heat Wave: “Fire away, Captain Cold! My blood’s burning for a little action!”
Captain Cold: “Cool it, Heat Wave! Ever since we first teamed up as the Temperature Twins, we’ve just about had it made!”
The two successively fire their “tricky temperature-triggers” at the wall, making it contract and expand repeatedly until it crumbles.
Heat Wave: “We make a terrific team of Thermologic Twins, CC!”
Captain Cold: “I hope that’s a compliment, HW!”
The “Frosty Felon” and the “Caloric Crook” step through the debris and make some truly menacing threats.
Heat Wave: “Don’t move, folks! There’s going to be a hot time in the old town tonight, so stay loose!”
Captain Cold: “I’ll keep you as cool as cucumbers!’
Cold freezes most of the people in the store in place, leaving only the models who are wearing the jewels free. They’ve stolen most of the jewels when “their fingers freeze while their hearts catch fire.” The last of the jewelry models is, evidently, attractive to them both.
Cold: Heat Wave, did you just cause a mirage with that hot-rod of yours? Ooooh!”
Heat Wave: “She’s for real, Captain Cold! Miss Fashion Gem of Central City! Oooh! I want a date with her!”
Cold: “ Cool off, Heat Wave! If that choice morsel of frozen dessert goes out on a date with anyone–it’ll be me!” Smooth, Len. Smooth.
Heat Wave: “That’s a lot of hot air! She’s for me-”
Cold; “Why, you hothead! I’ll freeze you so cold you’ll think an iceberg is a bonfire!”
Heat Wave: “I’ll put you in cold storage!” Mick, honey…you’re getting yourself confused. Len makes the cold-based threats, not you.
At this point, Heat Wave realizes that they shouldn’t be fighting, and they propose a friendly competition. Whichever man wins gets to date Miss Fashion Gem (no, she does not get an actual name in this issue). What does Miss Fashion Gem think about all this? Who cares! Not Captain Cold and Heat Wave!
“And so these partners in plundering pyrotechnics–those deadly desperadoes who deal in degrees of heat and cold (but are pushovers for a pretty face) stalk out into the street.” This may be the greatest bit of narration in any comic book ever.
Random Male Citizen: “It’s Captain Cold–and Heat Wave!”
Random Lady Citizen: “What gall–robbing in broad daylight! Somebody call the police!”
Heat Wave: “Nobody interferes with our game of hearts and flowers!”
Random Expository Citizen: “Encircled by tongues of heat–keeping us rooted to the spot!”
After preventing the bystanders from calling the police, Captain Cold and Heat Wave move on, looking for an appropriate challenge. Luckily for them, the Flash (still on the crutches) shows up at exactly this moment. Both Rogues are delighted.
Captain Cold: “Shivering spines! Here comes the answer to our problem—the Flash!”
Heat Wave: “Oh, torrid degree days! Whichever one of us puts our arch-nemesis out of action wins the prize!”
I’m not sure why an injured Flash is a more worthy challenge than those random people from before, but whatever.
Both of them promptly attack the injured Flash, but, after a few seconds of peril, Flash notices that the “alternate doses of heat and cold–are having shock-effect on my sprained ankle! Easing the pain–a little more of this and my ankle will be back in shape!”
Yes. Captain Cold and Heat Wave’s blasts are healing Flash’s sprained ankle. SCIENCE!
Flash: “Got to make them keep hitting me with these medicinal temperature treatments–so I’ll pretend to still be injured and run on my hands!”
Cold: “Ha! Ha! What a sight!”
Heat Wave: “Flash–just before you pass out–tell us whether it’s due to my heat or his cold!” I love that Heat Wave apparently thinks that Flash would be totally on board with doing that.
Flash: “This breeze I’m causing while rotating on my hands is forming a buffer between me and that heat-and-cold—except for my ankle which needs it most!” Flash comics, everyone: where science goes to die!
Once his ankle is fully healed, Flash manages to get Captain Cold and Heat Wave to shoot each other, and both are knocked out.
Flash: “In a way, I’m grateful for this double-barreled attack! It safeguarded the secret of my double identity!” Thanks for trying to kill me, Captain Cold and Heat Wave! Now I can keep lying to my wife!
Barry drops the crooks off at police headquarters and then goes home to celebrate his one-month anniversary with his wife.
Iris: “Oh, Barry–Darling! Happy anniversary!”
Barry (thinking): “My identity secret is still safe–but for how long? Only time will tell!” TELL YOUR WIFE, YOU IDIOT!!!!
Total panel time for Miss Fashion Gem? Two panels. By the time the Flash shows up, Captain Cold and Heat Wave don’t even seem to remember that they’re presumably fighting over her at all! That definitely makes her the least relevant stalkee-girlfriend so far.
Also, if this story is to be believed, Heat Wave and Captain Cold could make a mint selling their technology to hospitals. Flash’s sprained ankle gets healed in what seems like less than a minute!
Heat Wave and Captain Cold’s never-ending puns are a lot of fun, and they do a good job of carrying the issue. Watching Barry work around his injury is also interesting (even if the solution makes science weep). However, the issue is slightly undercut by Barry’s rather frustrating refusal to just TELL HIS WIFE HE’S THE FLASH ALREADY! (Worse, it’ll take eight more issues before he finally tells her the truth.)
When Mark Mardon was a kid, his brother, Clyde, had a dog named Thunder. In most families, the dog would have belonged to both children, but Mark’s parents made it pretty clear that the dog only belonged to their golden child.
Mick Rory’s family owned three cows, two Clydesdale horses, a donkey, a mule, two dogs (Spot and Rover), four cats (Fluffy, Stripey, Mouser, and Mr. Tuxedo), nine sheep, six goats, six to ten pigs (at any given time) and many, many chickens, ducks, and turkeys. They also raised bees.
Digger didn’t have any pets growing up, but his family did raise a LOT of sheep. His legal father (Ian Harkness) also had a dog named Fang, who liked Digger about as much as Ian did. Digger speculates that Fang was at least part dingo.
Roscoe Dillon’s mother, Rosa, owned a Persian named Priscilla (an anniversary gift from her wealthy husband). Unfortunately for Rosa, Priscilla was even less fond of being hugged than Roscoe was. Roscoe, by contrast, got along splendidly with the cat. Both hated crowds, loud noises, and being touched. Roscoe remembers Priscilla fondly as his most understanding family member.
Neither Sam nor Evan had any pets as kids. Sam’s apartment didn’t allow pets; Miss McCulloch would’ve loved for her kids to be able to have pets but didn’t have enough room for them in the orphanage.
Hartley’s parents owned a number of thoroughbred horses, several show dogs and show cats, and a wall-sized aquarium full of exotic fish. Most of these were more for show than anything else; Hartley wasn’t supposed to touch any of them without explicit permission. On the one and only occasion a rat made it inside the Rathaway estate, he befriended it…only for his mother to promptly have it killed when she discovered it. Now, of course, Hartley is the proud owner of at least six rats.
James Jesse didn’t exactly have pets growing up…but since he got to spend time with lions, tigers, elephants, camels, bears, monkeys, and horses in the circus, he didn’t really care all that much. Putting your head in a lion’s mouth is cooler than having a puppy any day.
Leonard and Lisa Snart once made the mistake of bringing home a kitten from a neighbor. Lisa named it Gabriela and was thrilled with her new pet….but when Larry Snart came home and saw the kitten, he promptly drowned it in front of his children. A few years later, Larry brought home a pit bull puppy…and predictably abused it until it was the nightmarish guard dog he wanted. The dog didn’t have a proper name (Larry just called it “you mutt”), but the neighborhood nicknamed it the Hellhound. It lived for a few years before Larry tripped over it whilst drunk and killed it in a rage (although not before the dog did a number on him). This dog is also the reason that both Leonard and Lisa are scared of large dogs.
Barry Allen owned a cat named Fluffernutter and a dog named Streak the Wonder Dog (after Green Lantern Alan Scott’s dog).
School headcanons:
Mark and Clyde Mardon both ended up being placed into a Spanish I class in their Freshman year of high school (one of Clyde’s classes was cancelled abruptly shortly before the start of the school year, and Mark hadn’t been able to decide what electives he wanted to take). This was the only high school course Mark ever earned an A in, mainly because, unbeknownst to the school, both he and Clyde were bilingual and could speak Spanish better than their Spanish teacher. The only downside was that both of them spent a lot of time being bored out of their minds.
The one and only time Barry Allen got detention was due entirely to the fact that he got a tardy slip every day for three months. Once the school caught on to the fact that Barry never missed out on any work, they eventually stopped giving him tardy slips at all, instead simply accepting that Barry being late to everything was a fact of nature.
Wally West once got detention for using his super speed to leave the school grounds in order to get Indian food…from India.
Leonard Snart never once passed a course (he slept through or outright skipped almost every class), but he was never held back a year. This was because most of the faculty wrote him off as a lost cause by the time he was seven years old. This is why Len can barely read and write and knows almost nothing about literature or history. That being said, Len doesn’t have any particular animosity towards the school system. It did give him and his sister free food, after all. (This free food also resulted in Len having a nearly perfect attendance record before he dropped out. He might not have learned anything, but he wasn’t going to miss out on lunch.)
If Sam Scudder had gone to a better school, he probably would’ve been put in either a gifted program of some sort or have been skipped a few grades ahead; he is and always has been extremely intelligent. As it was, he went through all of school (until he dropped out) believing that he was just reasonably clever and kind of a nerd; he still doesn’t really realize how intelligent he actually is.
Roscoe was likewise very intelligent, although the fact that he was on the autism spectrum before it was widely recognized meant that he often got himself into trouble at school. When he had teachers who liked him and were understanding of his quirks, he did very well in school, but most of his teachers were demanding and critical. As a result, he didn’t always perform as well as he would have been able to under optimal conditions. Also not helping matters was the fact that his father would denigrate his son for any grade less than an A (no matter the context). He still did well enough to graduate high school with a strong GPA and be accepted into college, but it wasn’t until college that he ever felt comfortable in school. He graduated college (a year early, due to his desire to please his father) with a B.S. in engineering…only for his father to criticize him for not having a high enough college GPA, for not graduating at the top of his class, and for having changed his major from business school (which he had hated) to engineering. Shortly afterwards, Roscoe fell into a particularly bad manic episode, which in turn was a major influence in his decision to become the Top.
If the Golden Glider had debuted in the Silver Age (and/or an untold Silver Age story from the time before Lisa became the Golden Glider).
The story would play off of Silver Age Captain Cold’s habit of romancing various pretty women. When Lisa “Star” arrived in Central City to perform with her professional skating company, she would disappear not long after Captain Cold escaped from prison. The Flash (Barry) would naturally assume that Captain Cold had fallen in love with her and had kidnapped her. In reality, of course, Captain Cold is Lisa’s brother. He had broken out of prison to secretly send her some gifts and ended up having to rescue her from a different group of criminals, who had actually done the kidnapping.
Once Cold saved his sister, the two siblings would go to Cold’s latest hideout, Cold would give his sister his gifts…and then the Flash would show up. (Lisa might or might not know about her brother’s career as Captain Cold at this point. If she doesn’t already know, this story would have her find out.) When Flash announces that he’s there to rescue her, Lisa would ask Flash why she would need to be rescued from “Lenny”. After all, they love each other. Flash, still under the impression that she’s Cold’s latest crush, would be surprised and ask her what on Earth she sees in him, at which point Lisa would reply that it would be strange if she didn’t love her own brother–especially after he rescued her from the thugs who kidnapped her. After doing some super-speed research, Barry discovers that she’s telling the truth about Cold being her brother and about him rescuing her from the actual kidnappers. However, Captain Cold is still a wanted man, so Barry has to take him back to prison. He’s expecting a fight, but, much to his surprise, Cold actually surrenders…but makes it clear that he’s only doing so because he doesn’t want his sister to get hurt. He also asks Barry to keep Lisa’s relationship with him a secret in order to protect her career, which Barry agrees to do. Barry takes both Cold and the kidnappers to jail and he and Iris have a cute couple moment. The issue ends in Lisa’s apartment…with the reveal that Lisa is on a date with the Top!
I asked my criminology professor if I could do my final exam (a paper analyzing a movie or TV show through the lense of a particular theory of criminology) on the 2014 Flash episode “Family of Rogues”. Much to my surprise and pleasure, she said yes. So, if anyone’s interested, here is my almost 8-page college essay on Captain Cold and Golden Glider.
The Flash, based on the comic book of the same name, is a live-action television program that follows the adventures of Barry Allen, a forensics scientist who gets struck by lightning and gains superhuman speed. It started airing in 2014, and, due to the fact that its protagonist is not only a superhero but also a member of the police, focuses extensively on crime of all stripes, from fairly realistic shootings and thefts to acts of superpowered terrorism to the main character’s own vigilante activities. However, of all the characters on the show, perhaps the most interesting from the perspective of criminology are Leonard and Lisa Snart (alias Captain Cold and the Golden Glider), a brother-sister pair of professional criminals who use fantastic weapons to carry out their crimes. While they appear in a number of different episodes in the show’s first two seasons, the one that provides us with the most information about why they act the way that they do is the third episode of the second season. Entitled “Family of Rogues”, this episode, more than perhaps any other in the series, examines why certain people choose to enter into crime.
“Family of Rogues” contains four plotlines that interweave throughout the episode, none of which are directly connected to one another. Of these plotlines, three of the four feature no criminal behavior in the present day, and thus can be ignored for the purposes of this paper. All of the present crimes occur in the final and main plot, which focus on Captain Cold, his sister, the Golden Glider, and their father, Lewis Snart. The plot kicks off when the Golden Glider comes to the Flash and his allies (Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow), claiming that her brother has been kidnapped. They are skeptical of her claims, since both she and her brother are career criminals, and become even more skeptical when the Flash tracks down Captain Cold and finds him working alongside their father to steal some blueprints, seemingly of his own free will. Also not helping matters much is the fact that Golden Glider admitted that her brother disappeared whilst the two of them and their frequent partner, serial arsonist Mick Rory (alias Heat Wave) were in the middle of an attempted robbery when she was knocked out and he disappeared. However, when Golden Glider is informed that her brother is working with their father (another known career criminal), she becomes alarmed, insisting that her father is “a bad guy” whom her brother would never work with. When Flash and his partners display skepticism, she pulls her shirt down far enough to reveal a large scar near her collarbone, which she got when her father hit her with a bottle at the age of eight. Evidently, the elder Snart was abusive to both of his children. This is enough to convince the Flash that something might be wrong. He seeks out Cold a second time, with similarly unsuccessful results. Cold is unhelpful, providing little information as to why he’s working with his father and telling the Flash “not to save people who don’t want to be saved”. A few scenes later, Cold, his father, and his father’s lockpick are making plans to steal a well-guarded collection of diamonds when the lockpick, who has already mentioned that he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to break through the high-security lock, insults Captain Cold. Lewis, insistent that only he can speak harshly to his son, promptly murders the man by using a detonator to blow his head off, much to Captain Cold’s obvious horror. The next day, the man’s corpse is discovered by the Flash in his role as Barry Allen, forensic scientist. Since the dead man is a known associate of Lewis Snart, and he seems to have had his head blown off by a thermite bomb that was injected into his neck, Barry comes to the conclusion that Lewis Snart put a bomb in his own daughter’s neck in order to coerce his son into helping to steal the diamonds. While Cisco Ramon and Caitlin Snow, Barry’s allies, work to remove the bomb from the Golden Glider’s neck, Barry again meets up with Captain Cold, tells him he knows how Lewis is keeping him in line, and poses as a criminal named “Sam”, who is an expert at cracking locks, so that he can accompany Cold and Lewis on the crime and prevent Lewis from stealing the diamonds or killing the Golden Glider. After disguising themselves as janitors and bluffing their way past security, Barry uses his super speed to remove the guards from the scene to prevent Lewis from murdering them, and then breaks the code on the lock to the vault. Once this is done, Lewis Snart promptly shoots him. While Barry is able to use his speed to catch the bullet, he plays dead in order to be able to change into the Flash. Captain Cold uses his specialized gun to freeze the laser grid, and Lewis Snart unlocks the vault and starts stealing the diamonds, only for the Flash to arrive on the scene. Lewis immediately orders Cold to kill the Flash, threatening to murder his sister if he doesn’t, but Flash and Cold manage to delay just long enough for the bomb to be removed from the Golden Glider’s neck. As soon as he hears that Lisa is safe, Captain Cold fires his gun straight into his father’s chest, killing him in revenge for the years of abuse his sister suffered at his hands. Notably, he offers no resistance when the Flash takes him to prison, and Barry later visits Cold in prison to tell him that he believes that there is still good in him. After all, if there wasn’t, he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to protect his sister.
The episode Family of Rogues, and, more specifically, the behavior of Leonard and Lisa Snart, is perhaps best looked at from the perspective of differential association theory. Differential association theory suggests that people who commit deviant acts are influenced to do so by primary groups and intimate social contacts, such as family members, neighbors, and close friends. It was proposed and developed by Edwin Sutherland in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and stresses the impact that other people have on an individual’s view of deviant behavior and the law. Individuals learn deviant behavior in the same way they learn non-deviant behavior: they watch it being modeled by their close friends and family members, and eventually come to imitate it. While people do not become delinquent solely by associating with a criminal, when an individual is exposed to a greater number of people who act as though obeying the law is unnecessary or irrelevant than to people who act as though the legal system is important and just, they are more likely to engage in deviant behavior. If an individual grows up around people who teach them that crime is natural or desirable in some way, such as by telling them that victims of assault “got what they deserved” or that people who leave their property unguarded deserve to have their property stolen, they may internalize these views and be more likely to engage in deviant behavior. The theory also states that a person’s ratio of favorable to unfavorable opinions about the law can change over time as a result of an individual’s changing circumstances. As a result, if a formerly deviant individual finds themselves surrounded by people whose views of the law are generally favorable, their own views on the law and deviant behavior are likely to change, and the individual will often become more law-abiding. (Holland, 2021)
Throughout the episode, the main characters go out of their way to discuss the ways in which Leonard and Lisa Snart adopted the deviant tendencies they saw modeled in the behavior of their father. As a career criminal who was convicted of a number of violent crimes, there seems to be little doubt that Leonard and Lisa would have been exposed to deviant behavior, from both their father and his criminal associates, from a very young age. While both siblings seem to view their father as a monster, with Lisa pointedly describing him as “a bad guy” and Leonard displaying obvious distaste for his willingness to rely on violence and murder rather than on methodical planning, it also seems clear that their deviant behavior stems in large part from having no other real role models. Lisa claims that her brother “practically raised her”, and that, if he hadn’t been there, that she would’ve turned out even worse than she did, something that seems to acknowledge the role her father played in the siblings’ decisions to turn to crime at all, and Barry similarly notes in a conversation with Joe West that he believes that Leonard’s criminal behavior is in large part a direct result of growing up with Lewis Snart as a father. Even if both siblings hate their father for his abusive treatment of them, Lewis Snart still served as their most important role model during their formative years, and it seems probable that his deviant behavior, as well as the apparent lack of punishment he received for abusing them, played a huge role in shaping the way that they view crime. Ironically enough, it was through Lewis Snart’s example that his son was put in the position to murder him. By setting the example that it is normal to harm one’s family members to achieve your own goals, Lewis Snart sowed the seeds for his own demise.
However, it isn’t just the siblings’ relationship with their father that reinforces their deviant behavior. While this is indeed a major factor, especially in the particular crimes that Leonard is shown commiting in this episode, their relationship with one another also seems to reinforce their criminal behavior. While the two siblings do genuinely love one another, the criminal behavior of each reinforces the criminal behavior of the other. Since they are far closer to one another than they are to anyone else, this means that both look primarily to another criminal when evaluating their deviant behavior. As a result, their already unfavorable opinions about the law are constantly being reinforced by the person to whom they have the strongest emotional ties, and they are both more likely to continue to pursue deviant behavior. For example, the two worked together during the attempted robbery where Leonard was kidnapped, and each sibling no doubt was supporting the other’s decision to go forward with the crime. Furthermore, with the exception of Flash and his team, the only characters the siblings are ever shown interacting with are criminals, such as their partner Mick Rory, who naturally would provide yet more reinforcement for their beliefs about deviant behavior. In other words, their social milieu is uniquely designed to not only accept but encourage criminal activity.
It is also worth noting that both Snart siblings display less deviant behavior when they spend time with the broadly law-abiding Flash and his team. Lisa, who spends the entire episode in the company of Flash, Cisco Ramon, and Caitlin Snow, actually commits no deviant acts over the course of the episode itself, something that is a stark contrast to the way that she behaved when she was with her brother and Mick Rory. Far from seeking out further opportunities for deviance, she actually seems noticeably ashamed of her previous criminal activity (“How could I get any worse?”) and, even when under extreme stress, manages to remain remarkably polite and friendly towards Cisco and Caitlin. In other words, when she is surrounded by people who are generally law-abiding, her own propensity towards deviant behavior decreases substantially, and, by the end of the episode, she seems to have decided to abandon a life of crime entirely, as she never troubles the Flash or his allies again. Similarly, once Captain Cold becomes convinced that the Flash really does want to help him, he becomes increasingly less hostile and dangerous towards everyone except his father. Furthermore, after he kills his father, he willingly lets the Flash arrest him and take him to prison, whereas in previous episodes he had fought tooth and nail to avoid being captured. When faced with a law-abiding man who actually cares about the well-being of himself and his sister, Captain Cold becomes more willing to question the basis for his own deviant behavior.
I would argue that differential association theory is the best way to explain the behavior of Leonard and Lisa Snart in this episode primarily because the episode focuses so heavily on the themes of family and relationships. Not only is the role Lewis Snart played in the lives of his children heavily emphasized, but the differences in the way the Snart siblings behave when they work with the largely law-abiding Team Flash and when they work together as criminals are palpable, and reflects the theory’s argument that people’s attitudes towards deviant behavior can change based upon the people with whom they interact. A number of research studies exist that support the idea that frequent association with deviant peers can affect an individual’s likelihood of engaging in delinquent behavior. Tittle, Burke, and Jackson tested their model of differential association with data from people aged 15 and older living in the United States and found that associating with criminals fostered motives for certain crimes, which in turn increased a willingness to consider offending at some future date (McCarthy, 1996), a 1996 study by Eliott and Menard concluded that associations with delinquent peers usually precede delinquent behavior, and a 1994 study by Smith and Brame concluded that delinquent peer associations increase the likelihood of an individual continuing to commit delinquent acts (Holland, 2021). Conversely, studies of the Danish halfway house Skejby, where prisoners and non-offenders live together in the hopes that the non-offenders will instill non-criminal norms in the prisoners, reveal that the recidivism rates for offenders who live here is 21.1% lower than that of prisoners who were sent to halfway houses that did not use this model (Minke, 2011). In other words, the presentation of criminal activity in the episode lines up quite well with the way that researchers have evaluated similar behavior in the real world. Furthermore, the fact that Leonard, who broadly seems to have a longer criminal record and more criminal associates than his sister, is more resistant to abandoning deviant behavior than his sister, something that would also make sense when one considers that his greater involvement in criminal behavior would provide him with more peers who would reinforce his deviant activities.
However, differential association theory does have limitations, one of which is that it does not adequately explain crimes of passion (e.g., the husband or wife who murders their spouse after discovering them with a lover). Because crimes of passion are usually done in the heat of the moment, the lessons about crime that a person has learned from their associates are unlikely to be a major factor in their decision to commit the crime. Since these are usually acts of violence committed in moments of extreme anger, jealousy, and/or fear, they are not generally affected by one’s attitude towards crime as a whole. I would argue that this does serve as a problem for this particular analysis; albeit not a major one. The last crime of the episode, Captain Cold’s murder of his father, is in effect a crime of passion. While he’s clearly hated his father for a long time, there’s nothing in the episode that suggests that he was actively plotting the man’s death from the start; the killing instead seems to be motivated predominantly by the fact that his father had threatened his beloved sister with imminent death only seconds before. Many people, even those with no particular criminal tendencies, would be at least tempted to kill someone who had threatened to murder their sister; therefore, his murder of his father really isn’t attributable to differential association theory.
Overall, however, “Family of Rogues” serves as a surprisingly complex examination of the ways in which one’s family members can encourage people to engage in criminal behavior. While the crime presented in the episode is not wholly realistic-no real-world criminal has a gun that can freeze laser beams, after all-the interpersonal dynamics between the characters do have a basis in real-world research. For all their comic-book-inspired weirdness, Leonard and Lisa Snart are surprisingly complex characters and do a good job of demonstrating the basic tenets of the differential association theory.
Citations
Holland, D. (2021). Differential Association Theory . Salem Press Encyclopedia .
McCarthy, B. The attitudes and actions of others: Tutelage and Sutherland’s theory of differential association. British Journal of Criminology. 1996; 36(1):135. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.bjc.a014062
Minke, L. K. (2011). The Effects of Mixing Offenders with Non-Offenders: Findings from a Danish Quasi-Experiment. Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology & Crime Prevention, 12(1), 80–99. https://doi.org/10.1080/14043858.2011.561624
Captain Cold & Heatwave unleash their respective weapons on the Flash during this week’s episode. Also, the comic cover from “The Flash” issue 140 - the comic version is getting a similar hot/cold treatment from his enemies!
