Issue 35: Superhero Information Initiative
By The Rambler

The Record Setter

So…stuck in traffic again, running late to pick up the flowers, the paycheck, the kids from school, and now home is going to be a wreck for the evening. Now would be the time for a chemical accident of some sort to either melt your skin off or give you some sort of super speed, even if just for the moment. Please, help the loser out, be on my side, the side of the little guy. Well, that’s who the Flash is for, the loser for the losers.

This is a multiple part series for the Super Hero Information Initiative covering The hero for the Blue Collar, The Crimson Comet, Sultan of Speed, The One Who Rides Lightning… The Flash.

Part 1: I Want an All-American

Jay Garrick, science geek extraordinaire, skinny, slow, and non-athletic. He was trying to win the heart of a college cheerleader- Joan, who wanted an All-American, not an oaf. After getting rejected, Jay goes to the lab to work on Hard or Heavy Water. Leaning back, and taking a puff of a cigarette, he passes out due to the vapors of the Hard Water. After a week passed-out in the hospital, Jay wakes up and, in the heat of a drive-by shooting of a group who is trying to kill Joan to get to her dad, Jay moves so fast that he catches the bullet and saves her. He then joins the football team of Midwestern University of Keystone City and becomes a star. His adventures were against gangsters, kidnappings, robberies, and common criminals. But Jay was the hero of the patient people of Keystone, the flatland, the wheat-field.

Jay wore the metal helmet of his father from World War I, putting golden wings on the sides, and he wore a red shirt with a yellow lightning bolt coming out of the belt line of his jeans. He also wore winged shoes, like the Mythical Hermes/Mercury. However, the extent of his powers ended with super speed. He could just run really fast, catching bullets and outracing cars. His top speed was 700 Miles an hour. Eventually he married Joan and worked as a chemist, joining the Justice Society along with the original Hawkman and Green Lantern. They fought the Nazis in World War II and championed the causes of truth and justice. This was the Golden Age. The Hero could do no wrong. This was Jay Garrick.

However, the comic companies of the time tanked and the heroes died with them, until DC rediscovered them. Jay’s villains- The Fiddler, (played a mind controlling fiddle), The Shade, (manipulated Shadow to blind people), and the Thinker (had a thinking cap that made him a genius, and later became Jay’s good friend)- all put the city in suspended animation, and it passed out of existence from the rest of the world. Jay was read in the comics by Barry Allen, the Next Flash, and Original of Earth 1. Barry discovered Jay on Earth 2, and helped revive the city and beat the villains. So Jay returned- now a mentor and aid for the Flashes to come.

Thus, the First Chapter, the Flash that starts it all, fulfills our dreams of the every-day person becoming what we all wish: fast enough to accomplish the every-day tasks, bring home the bacon, and save at least a city full of people in under a day’s time. So next time you’re stuck in traffic and feeling like a failure, remember: all we want is an All-Star. Maybe lightning will strike us and give us our dreams.