To Absent Friends: Mason Trollbridge

Even superheroes request friends! And, conscionable similar friendships successful existent life, immoderate of those relationships past a beingness and others slice distant arsenic you prosecute your ain destinies. In this series, I’ll beryllium spotlighting immoderate of the broadside characters who person been near by the wayside.

Mason Trollbridge was a slum kid who came of property during the Depression. Decades later, helium came into the Flash/Wally West’s beingness erstwhile Wally was astatine a peculiarly debased ebb. He’d won millions successful the lottery and past mislaid it successful a banal marketplace clang (probably this one), past helium mislaid his powers and his girlfriend, leaving him with a upland of debts and a clingy, manipulative mother. (To beryllium fair, her hubby had conscionable tried to termination her.) In Flash #15, Wally was forced to determination into the aforesaid crummy flat gathering wherever Mason lived. They deed it disconnected quick.

He seemingly started dying his hairsbreadth brownish aft his debut, too.

Right from the start, Mason made a wont of popping up precisely erstwhile and wherever the Flash — whose existent individuality was nationalist cognition by this constituent — needed assistance. He made a earthy sidekick. As we larn successful Issue 20, there’s a crushed for that: during the Depression, helium worked with a leader named the Clipper, who got his sanction acknowledgment to his penchant for mutilating his opponents’ ears erstwhile helium didn’t termination them outright.

Mason had alternatively fonder memories of the Clipper, who was a transverse betwixt the Shadow and Bonnie and Clyde. At 14, helium became Clipper’s sidekick and thing of a reflector to Wally’s ain experiences arsenic a kid sidekick. “[T]he Clipper ever said that a kid who fights transgression is simply a kid with character,” Mason reminisces astatine 1 point.

While Wally’s mentor was arsenic squeaky-clean arsenic they come, the Clipper was a deranged drunk who had young Mason driving getaway cars and shooting tommy guns. But successful Mason’s rose-tinted view, the Clipper was a “great guy,” conscionable a small “intense.” So helium decides to instrumentality up the Clipper’s individuality himself.

(Interestingly, Mason’s illustration successful Flash Annual #3 casts uncertainty connected whether the Clipper truly exists oregon if Mason made him up. So there’s that.)

Alas, helium lone appears arsenic the Clipper 1 time, but helium continued to assistance Wally lick assorted crimes, sometimes portion wielding a whip.

Aside from sidekicking, Mason worked arsenic a carpenter and a motortruck operator earlier helium retired. Now helium does occasional transportation jobs for his son, Denny. He’s got different son, Donnie, who helium threw retired of the location and didn’t spot again for years. He besides has a girl named Susie, but they don’t look each that close. In fact, erstwhile Wally leaves New York and relocates to Keystone City, Mason goes with him.

(Some sources assertion helium lone has 1 son, I conjecture assuming “Donnie” was a typo for “Denny.” But similar I said, Mason kept successful interaction with Denny portion shunning Donnie, truthful that wouldn’t marque overmuch sense.)

Upon moving to Keystone, Mason started a “fix-it business” and volunteered astatine a section gym, teaching kids to box. Everything was going on usually capable until Mason learned a small thing astir his lad that helium wished helium hadn’t. While Mason was erstwhile an aspiring superhero, his lad Donnie besides had a concealed identity: the Last Resort, who charges radical exorbitant fees to marque their problems spell away, permanently.

Mason helps halt Donnie’s rampage, they hold to talk, and that’s the extremity of that storyline.

Mason past projected to his woman — Lenora McDonald, sister-in-law of the Icicle — and suggested they get joined close past and there…in the mediate of Wally’s mother’s wedding, which strikes maine arsenic truly rude. He disappears from Wally’s beingness not agelong after: presumably, helium was engaged mounting up location with Lenora.

Despite feeling a small underdeveloped — How did his narration with Donnie cookware out? Did helium truly marque up the Clipper? Why? If helium didn’t, what effect did hanging retired with specified a convulsive “hero” person connected him and his relationships? — Mason is simply a fun, grounded character. He likes and admires the Flash, but helium doesn’t fawn implicit him, alternatively retaining a practicality that the self-absorbed, not-yet-old-enough-to-drink Wally desperately needs. I wouldn’t spell truthful acold arsenic to telephone him a begetter fig — possibly a weird, grumpy uncle — but helium did marque for a bully counterbalance.

The CW’s Flash featured a mentation of this character, but they renamed him Mason Bridge due to the fact that the CW hates thing resembling originality oregon amusive (Stargirl and Legends of Tomorrow excepted). I don’t callback him ever becoming a vigilante, either, but I haven’t seen the amusement successful a while. I bash retrieve him getting killed, a destiny which the comic publication mentation seems to person avoided.

In immoderate case, if DC wanted to bring him back, I wouldn’t object.

Come conscionable our erstwhile absent friends: Eddie “Iron Man” March, Terry Berg, Harris Hobbs, Bridget Clancy, Willie Lincoln, Ed Indelicato, Roger Willis, Chanda Madan, and Glenda Sandoval!