Chris and Reggie’s Cosmic Treadmill, Episode 134: Flash #268 (1978)

Chris and Reggie’s Cosmic Treadmill, Episode #134


Flash #268 (December, 1978)
“Riddle of the Runaway Comic”
Writer – Cary Bates
Pencils – Irv Novick
Inks – Frank McLaughlin
Letters – Mike Stevens
Colors – Gene D’Angelo
Edits – Julius Schwartz
Cover Price: $0.40
From DC Comics
Episode Published March 31, 2019


One of our oft-used taglines was that we put 40-hours of research into every episode of the Cosmic Treadmill.  Welp, I’m going to somewhat shatter that illusion here, and suggest that a time or two, what it actually took was one of us to handcuff ourselves to our computer for an 8-10 hour stint.


This was one of those times.

This episode would come out during a pretty “up in the air” time for the Channel.  Reggie was just recovering from a severe sinus infection that left him without a voice for the better part of a month and a half… and now, he was in the process of moving from his lifelong stomping grounds of Queens, New York out to Salem, Massachusetts.



Download


Now, if we weren’t such optimists, it probably would’ve been wise to announce a hiatus until things settled down.  But, we did not.  That’s one of those traits we shared… the inability to realistically gauge how long a project might take.  We look at a partially written Treadmill script, and figure… yeah, I can bang that out in a couple of hours.  This is almost never the case.


This was supposed to be the week where we released the snake-bit (many times over) Logan’s Run episode.  Logan’s Run would actually wind up being the final episode of the Cosmic Treadmill we would record together (in December, 2019).


As will happen during a move, especially one with a lotta miles involved, Reggie had many more important things on his plate than making sure the show got scripted.  Logan’s Run was a “Reggie book”, he was shouldering that script.  We usually recorded on Saturdays… and, so that Friday he let me know that it probably wasn’t in the cards for this week.  Understandably so.


Well, me being me… and realizing that our releases were sporadic at best during the months of February and March… asked if he’d have the time to record if I were able to “cram” a script together.  He was down if I could do it.


And so, I set an alarm for 4am that Saturday… put on a pot of coffee… and got to cramming.  By 1pm that afternoon, I had a complete script, which included a nine-page “hook” discussing the history of costuming and cosplay.  We recorded the episode that evening, and when it released, nobody was any the wiser.


—


Now, I know these pod-centric blog posts aren’t everybody’s cup of tea… and I apologize for having so many of them here.  Between Blogger being a piece of junk hindering my ability to efficiently insert images, and my desire to reflect on some more personal things… these sort of posts are probably going to pop up here with some regularity.  I can only hope that the 4+ years of daily content I’ve put out here has bought me enough trust and leeway to “get away” with posts like this.  If not, I understand.


If you’re still reading and you’d like to take a look at my text-n-pics discussion of this issue of Flash… you can click right here!