In every installment of I Love Ya But You’re Strange I spotlight strange but ultimately endearing comic stories. Feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you have a suggestion for a future installment!

Today, we look at the bizarrely awesome time that the Flash got out of a jam by hiding within his own costume ring!

Just the other day, I did an article about the history of Flash's costume ring and you can read that for a lot of information about the ring, especially the curious case of what happened to the ring after Barry Allen died, but the basic gist of the ring story is that Barry Allen (who apparently can create amazing chemical treatments out of nowhere) created a chemical that could shrink his costume down so small that it could fit into a little ring that he would wear on his finger and he only has to open it and the costume grows when exposed to air and Flash then uses his super speed to put the costume on and voila, he's right into business.

However, we really never learned all that much about the inner workings of the ring over the year. It was just sort of a given. The costume comes out, the costume goes on to the Flash and....it somehow gets put into the ring later on. The issue that revealed how the costume went back in was also an issue that showed Barry Allen pulling off a truly bizarre feat.

It all started with Flash #258 (by Cary Bates, Irv Novick and Frank McLaughlin), with an awesome cover by the late, great Rich Buckler...

This is one of those old school Julius Schwartz-style, "How does the hero get out of THIS mess?" covers.

The issue opens with the old Green Lantern villain, Black Hand, talking directly to the readers about how he caused the Flash's death...

Breaking the fourth wall was one of Black Hand's gimmicks at the time. His other gimmick was that he had a LOT of gimmicks. He was a parody of famed comic book writer, Bill Finger, who was known for carrying with him a notebook filled with "gimmicks" that could be used for comic book stories. Anything Finger found interesting, he would add to his little scrapbook for possible future use.

So Black Hand decides to leave Coast City because he is sick of dealing with Green Lantern. He sets up shop in Central City.

He shows up disguised as Green Lantern and shakes the Flash's hand and then attacks him. First off, check out how clever this sequence is...the Flash is literally running ON the laser blasts that Black Hand was shooting at him from up in the sky!!!

I have no idea if that even remotely makes any sense, but it looked pretty darn cool, right?

Okay, the Flash survived the attack, but then we learn Black Hand's TRUE plan...

Clever gimmick! And at the end of the issue, it appears as though Black Hand has succeeded in killing the Flash after having him chase after Black Hand throughout Central City...

But come on, we know that isn't the end! We haven't even gotten to the thing that the title mentions about the ring!

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The next issue (Joe Giella takes over on inks) opens with Black Hand looking to the news to see people talking about the Flash's death and he is quite irked that he doesn't see any coverage of the story. He cried, "Fake news!" and then looked to newspapers and still nothing. That is because the Flash survived! How? Through sheer insanity!

How amazing is that? It barely makes any sense, but whatever sense it DOES make it just great.

Okay, but the Flash's protective aura is gone, so how can he fight Black Hand? He cleverly moves their fight to the moon and since there is no air in space, there is no friction and without any friction, the aura is not needed and he knocks out Black Hand and wins the day!

Man, that was a really fun story by Bates. That guy came up with some awesome ideas!

If anyone has a future suggestion for I Love Ya But You're Strange, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!