By Gardner F. Fox, Harry Lampert, E.E. Hibbard, Hal Sharp & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-0784-7 (HB)
The innovative fledgling company that became DC published the first ever comic book super-speedster and over the decades has constantly added more to its pantheon of stars. Devised, created and written by Gardner Fox and initially visually realised by Harry Lampert, Jay Garrick debuted as the very first Monarch of Motion in Flash Comics #1. He quickly – of course – became a veritable sensation.
“The Fastest Man Alive†wowed readers of anthologies like Flash Comics, All Star Comics, Comics Cavalcade and other titles – as well as solo vehicle All-Flash Quarterly – for just over a decade before changing tastes benched him and most other first-generation costumed crimebusters in the early1950s.
His invention as a strictly single-power superhero created a new trend in the burgeoning action-adventure Funnybook marketplace, and his particular riff was specifically replicated many times at various companies where myriad Fast Furies sprang up such as Johnny Quick , Hurricane, Silver Streak, the Whizzer, Quicksilver and Snurtle McTurtle – the Terrific Whatzit amongst so many others…
After half a decade of mostly interchangeable cops, cowboys and cosmic invaders, the concept of human speedsters and the superhero genre in general was spectacularly revived by Julie Schwartz in 1956. Showcase #4 revealed how police scientist Barry Allen became the second hero to run with the concept. We’ve not looked back since – and if we did it would all be a great big blur…
This charmingly beguiling deluxe Archive (sadly not available in not-quite-faster-than-light digital) edition collects the first year and a half – spanning January 1940 to May 1941 – of the irrepressible Garrick’s whimsically eccentric exploits in 17 (regrettably untitled) adventures from the anthology Flash Comics, revealing an appealing rawness, light-hearted whimsy and scads of narrative experimentation in tales of a brilliant nerd and (ostensibly) physical sad-sack who became a social reformer and justice-dispensing human meteor.
Following a fulsome Foreword from sometime Flash scribe Mark Waid, the fast fictions commence with the debut of ‘The Fastest Man Alive’ speedily delivering in 15 pages an origin and returning cast, and staging a classic confrontation with a sinister cabal of gangsters.
It all started years previously when student Garrick passed out in the lab at Midwestern University, only to awaken hyper-charged and the fastest creature on Earth thanks to the “hard water fumes†he had inhaled whilst unconscious. After weeks recovering in hospital, the formerly-frail chemist realised the exposure had given him super-speed and endurance. He promptly sought to impress his sort-of girlfriend Joan Williams by becoming an unstoppable football player…
Time passed, the kids graduated and Garrick moved to New York where, appalled by rampant crime, he decided to do something about it. The Flash operates mostly in secret until one day, whilst idly playing tennis with himself, Jay meets Joan again, just as mobsters try to kill her in a drive-by shooting.
Catching the storm of bullets, Jay gets reacquainted with his former paramour and discovers she is a target of criminal combine the Faultless Four: master criminals set on obtaining her father’s invention the Atomic Bombarder. In the blink of an eye Flash smashes the sinister schemes of the gang and diabolical leader Sieur Satan, saving Joan’s life whilst revelling in the sheer liberating fun and freedom of being gloriously unstoppable…
In his second appearance The Flash stumbles upon a showgirl’s murder and discovers that Yankee mobster Boss Goll and British aristocrat Lord Donelin plan to take over the entire entertainment industry with ruthless strong-arm tactics. The speedster is as much hindered as helped by wilful, “headstrong†Joan who begins her own lifetime obsession of pesky do-gooding here…
Everett E. Hibbard began a decade-long association with Flash in #3, when Major Williams’ Atomic Bombarder is targeted by foreign spies. The elderly boffin framed for treason prompts Garrick to come to his future father-in-law’s aid, before Jay and Joan smash an off-shore gambling ring graduating to kidnapping and blackmail in #4.
During these early adventures, Flash seldom donned his red, blue and yellow outfit; usually operating invisibly or undercover to play super-speed pranks with merciless, puckish glee. That started changing in #5, when the speedster saves an elderly artist from hit-men to foil mad collector Vandal who uses murder to increase the market value of his purchases.
Flash Comics #6 found Jay and Joan at old Alma Mater Midwestern, foiling a scheme to dope athletes trying to qualify for the Olympics, before #7 saw a stopover in Duluth lead to the foiling of gambler Black Mike who was industriously fixing motorcar races with a metal melting ray. For #8, the Vizier of Velocity tracks down seemingly corrupt contractors building shoddy, dangerous buildings only to find the graft and skulduggery go much further up the financial and civic food chain…
In issue #9, gangsters get hold of a scientist’s invention and the Flash finds himself battling a brigade of giant Gila Monsters, after which #10 depicts the downfall of a political cabal in the pocket of gangster Killer Kelly and stealing from the schools they administered. For #11, Garrick meets his first serious opponent in kidnap racketeer The Chief, whose sinister brilliance enables him to devise stroboscopic glasses to track and target the invisibly fast crime-crusher…
With the threat of involvement in the “European War†a constant subject of American headlines, Flash Comics #12 (December 1940) had the heroic human hurricane intervene to save tiny Ruritanian nation Kurtavia from ruthless invasion. His spectacular lightning war sees Garrick sinking submarines, repelling land armies and crushing airborne blitzkriegs for a fairy tale happy ending here, but within a year the process would become a patriotic morale booster repeated ad infinitum in every American comic book as the real world brutally intruded on the industry and nation…
Back in the USA for #13, Garrick assists old friend Jim Carter in cowboy country where the young inheritor of a silver mine is gunned down by murdering owlhoots. Jay then heads back east to crush a criminal combine sabotaging city subway construction in #14 and saves a circus from robbery, sabotage and poor attendances in #15.
Throughout all these yarns Jay paid scant attention to preserving any kind of secret identity Рa fact that would soon change Рbut as Hal Sharp took over illustrating with #16 (Hibbard presumably devoting his energies to the contents of the forthcoming 64-page All-Flash Quarterly #1 Рto be seen in a succeeding Archive collection), Joan is kidnapped by Mexican mobsters aware of her connection to The Flash. Rushing to her rescue, Garrick battles a small army, not only saving his girlfriend but even reforming bandit chief Jos̩ Salvez.
This initial high-energy compilation ends with another light-hearted sporting escapade as the speedster intervenes in a gambling plot, saving a moribund baseball team from sabotage even as Jay Garrick – officially “almost as fast as the Flash†– becomes the Redskins’ (a nickname now thankfully consigned to history’s dustbin of insensitivity) star player to save them from lousy performances…
With covers by Sheldon Moldoff, Dennis Neville, George Storm, Jon L. Blummer, Hibbard and Sharp, this book is a sheer delight for lovers of the early Fights ‘n’ Tights genre: exuberant, exciting and funny, although certainly not to every modern fan’s taste. Of course, with such straightforward thrills on show any reader with an open mind could find his opinion changed in a flash.
© 1940, 1941, 1999 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.