The Flash #206

Thanks to Flash, a couple is given a second chance at life.

"24 Hours Of Immortality!"

An airplane being flown by aviatrix, Susan Logan, crashes into a car, being driven by Doctor William Kandel. Logan and Kandel survive, but Logan's son, Timmy, and Kandel's wife, Sylvia, are killed on impact. Logan and Kandel barter their own lives to bring their loved ones back from the dead. As fate would have it, their pleas are heard by a pair of aliens, Duus and Unuus. The aliens restore Timmy and Sylvia to life, while also granting Logan and Kandel immortality for the next 24 hours. At the end of which time, Kandel and Logan are to sacrifice their lives to the aliens. The aliens also restore Kandel's car, and Logan's plane, so that each may complete one final task.

Kandel races off to perform an urgent surgery, on a fellow doctor who may have discovered a cure for cancer. En route, Kandel comes up behind a running gun battle between police and a group of escaped convicts. Kandel takes two bullets in the chest, before the Flash can subdue the prisoners. True to the aliens' word, however, Kandel is unharmed. Explaining the situation to the Flash, Kandel is raced to the operating room by the Flash, who volunteers to scrub in on the surgery. With the Flash operating at super-human speed, Kandel is able to finish the surgery in record time, allowing him to spend that much more time with his wife, as the hours of the day wind down.

The Flash races off to assist with putting out a forest fire. As fate would have it, the Flash encounters Logan, who happens to be flying over the fire, on her way to compete at Alpine Meadows. After helping to propel Logan's plane away from powerful down-drafts, created by the fire, the Flash escorts Logan to Alpine Meadows. Logan is competing for a prize of $50,000.00 dollars, to put towards her son's college education. Her primary competitor in the aerial stunt competition is the greater experienced Mal Maynton. Logan finds Maynton matching her move for move. When Maynton dives from the plane into a dead drop to the ground, Logan knows she's all but beaten.

Counting on the alien's gift of immortality, Logan leaps from the plane's wing, too. Unlike, Maynton, Logan never pulls the rip cord on her parachute, landing on her own two feet on the ground, completely unharmed. Logan wins the competition. Refusing to allow two such gifted individuals to sacrifice their lives to the whims of aliens, the Flash puts himself between the aliens and their intended victims. After surviving three attempts, by the aliens, to murder the Flash, the aliens relent, allowing Logan and Kandel to live out their normal lifespan.

"Showdown In Elongated Town!"

The Elongated Man awakens, as if from a trance, to find himself hauling a buckboard through an Old West ghost town. Taking in his surroundings, the Elongated Man finds that all the structures are weirdly distorted, as if being seen through a funhouse mirror. The Elongated Man is called out by an equally distorted gunslinger, one whose weapon fires beams of reflected sunlight. In dodging the laser, the Elongated Man slams his head into a building outcropping.

By the time he recovers, and captures the gunfighter, the man has been replaced by a dummy. Strangely, the dummy does not appear distorted, as the gunfighter had. Suddenly, the Elongated Man is beset by a herd of stampeding animals. As he turns to run from them, the Elongated Man finds himself facing an enormous rattlesnake. Stretching himself upwards, the Elongated Man winds himself around a flagpole. Hearing the sounds of the stampede, and the rattlesnake, coming from speakers, the Elongated Man realizes they are naught but illusions.

Stretching out his eyeballs, the Elongated Man removes a pair of contact lens from them, restoring his sight to normal. Taking up a rifle, the Elongated Man steps back out into the street, knowing full well who his true foe is... the Mirror Master. As the Mirror Master closes and draws on the Elongated Man, the Stretchable Sleuth squeezes himself down the barrel of the rifle. Once the Mirror Master has come in close enough, the Elongated Man springs out of the barrel of the gun, slamming into the Mirror Master, rendering him unconscious.