#reference humor

For those not aware what it references, here the short explanation:

In 1961 DC comic writer Gardner Fox, who among other things created Jay Gardner, the Golden Age DC comic Flash, wrote the comic “Flash of Two Worlds”. In this book, then current Silver Age Flash Barry Allen manages to vibrate his molecules at such a frequency, that he breaks through a dimensional barrier into a parallel earth called “Earth-2”. An alternate reality in which Jay Gardner, whose only a fictional comic book hero in Barry’s world, actually exists. But his days as the Flash have been over for years, having retired and married his girlfriend. However, with three of his old villains on the loose and Barry trying to find a way home, Jay decides to help The Flash, taking up the old costume again, leading to a team up between the heroes of two major time periods in comic history.

This comic marks a major point in the development of DC comics in general. Not only was it a meta celebration/tribute of the Golden Age Flash who had been long replaced in the public eye by Barry Allen, its success led to DC eventually revitalizing a lot of their major but at that point retired Golden Age characters, by making them all part of the Earth-2 reality.

The concept of a parallel-earth next to the main heroes reality introduced in this story would also become the very foundation for the concept of the DC multiverse, starting with the JLA story “Crisis on Earth-One” in 1963, over time eventually leading up to the most defining DC crossover that ever came and one of the most important comic events in the history of superhero comics: Crisis of Infinite Earths from 1985.

As of 2020, Flash of Two Worlds has been referenced in nerd culture a lot. Particularly the iconic cover has been referenced and parodied by many, including DC itself.

And yes, that cover is iconic. And why shouldn’t it be? Two Flashes, unaware of the other because of the “wall” (aka the dimensional barriere) trying to save someone, creating a certain suspense for the reader if the guy calling for help can be saved by either of the two speedsters before he is hit by the steel beam? Begging the question, how either of the two heroes may react when exposed to the other one? It is a genuinely suspenseful scene within just one pic, featuring the heroes of two generations of readers.

A pic that does however also lend itself for easy referential humor. All you need to do is just look for a franchise where something like alternate versions of main characters exist and replace them accordingly with the characters on the cover.

Here, have some fanart someone drew based on it of Sonic e.g.

And now imagine what others could do by doing something like that with characters from Rick and Morty, the Marvel multiverse, Star vs., Super Sentai, Paper and Regular Mario… different possibilities are given. You can either make it just a “straight” alternate take of the cover with other characters, or you can poke fun of it by changing something in the pic up significantly (e.g. I could imagine a Rick and Morty parody simply having Rick on the left being too drunk to save him, while on the right he is just mumbling something about Morty not having to worry cause he can just revive him in a clone body).

 But the “joke” also only works if a certain context is still given.

 People need to be aware of what the pic is referencing overall (the Flash of two Worlds cover) but also of the fact that such alternate versions of characters on the pic exist within the franchise that replaces the Flashes. The Sonic pic e.g. works, because it shows both classic and modern Sonic as the heroes. Something we had seen able to coexist within Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces.

In Dobson’s take however, the joke falls flat because Dobson uses something that up until ONE sketch prior has not even existed before: Black Pam.

For the record, this pic was released in late March 2014. You would now think that this picture existing was related to something like Dobson mocking critics of him for turning his self insert from a human into alternate universe Augustus Gummi all of sudden, by exaggerating changes in the designs of his other characters. But that can’t really be it, cause Dobson had turned himself into a furball of failure already for a year. He had also mocked the change in comics prior, as seen e.g. here.

So, why does “Affirmative Traction” as the one with Pink Dobson and Disco Pam is titled, exist? And by the way, I don’t like to call Black Pam racist, cause she could be way more stereotypical, but you really didn’t need to go Cola Light Disco blacksploitation with her design, Dobson.

But back to “Pam of Two Worlds”; As said, the joke with “two Pams” doesn’t really work, cause one of them is essentially a non entity and could also just be replaced with any other race or gender swapped version Dobson could have thought off. Furthermore, why is Dobbear calling for help exactly? Because a copy pasted tradepaperback of X-Force, likely drawn by Liefeld, is going to hit him on the head? I know it is just meant to be a joke and not something to think of too much, but the thing about jokes is, they too need to make a certain amount of sense and have a certain logic to them in order to work. This doesn’t really work because the “danger” is 150 pages of distillated 90s Marvel trash going to hit him on the noggin.