[Meeting…] Flash (Jay Garrick)

Lately, the superhero Flash is experiencing a second youth in terms of recognition by the general public. His inclusion in the future Justice League movie and his new television series has made many people who have never read a Scarlet Runner comic now feel interested in the character.

But as I explained at the beginning of the article USAgent, there are many superheroes who have been played by various different characters, and in the case of Flash I would dare to say that the most popular version is not the original since it had a fate similar to that of the original Human Torch, being completely surpassed by a more current and younger version of himself, although in the case of DC Comics this happened to many superheroes at the same time for the reason that I will explain below.

Flash in the Golden Age

Between the late 1930s and early 1940s, DC Comics had created many of the company's flagship superheroes, such as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman and Green Lantern (which is why this period is known as the Golden Age).

If we compared these versions with the current ones, we would see how in many cases there is not much difference in the appearance or history of the heroes, but a deeper look would begin to reveal important differences, such as, for example, that Flash or Green Lantern not only do not wear the same suit as the current versions, but they are not even the same people, nor do they have the same history.

The original Flash is Jay Garrick, a college student who, after inhaling the gases from an experiment, was left in a coma for a few weeks. When he recovered, he discovered that he had speed and reflexes superior to those of any human, he had become the fastest man in the world.

At first, Garrick decided to use his ability to be a good American football player, but he soon saw that he could help the world by doing greater good, at which point he became a superhero by wearing a red shirt with a yellow lightning bolt and modifying an old helmet of his father (a combatant in the First World War) to resemble that of Mercury, the Roman God, in addition to serving as a weapon and shield at specific times.

That said, I suppose that now many have realized that the appearance and history of this Flash is not exactly identical to the superhero dressed all in red with yellow thunder that they know, and that also has an explanation that I will try to summarize.

Same characters in parallel worlds

In the 1960s, DC Comics updated and relaunched the collections of most of its characters, creating a new, more modern version of them. At the same time, the company continued selling comics of some of the original characters, thus creating several collections for the same character (which could lead to confusion for the buyer).

Some characters like Superman, Wonder Woman or Batman hardly changed in appearance, but their stories were different (the Batman of the 1940s had married Catwoman and had a daughter called The Huntress, and Robin was already an adult); others, like Flash or Green Lantern, changed in every way, leaving only the name and the type of powers they possessed as the only similarity between both versions.

To try to fix this, DC differentiated both stories into parallel worlds, on the one hand we would have the new versions (from the 60s) that would live on what was called Earth 1, and on the other the originals (from the 40s) that would live on Earth 2.

The idea of ​​keeping both earths separate was quite logical, but the writers loved the idea of ​​mixing them in special events, with the original Flash (Jay Garrick) and the 1960s Flash (Barry Allen) being the first to manage to cross from their universe to the other. The idea was well received and crossovers between characters from the 40s and 60s became increasingly common, at the same time that DC continued to create parallel Earths with different characters (like Earth 3, where superheroes were villains and villains were heroes).

In the 80s, in a risky editorial decision, DC decided to create the event known as Crisis on Infinite Earths, where all the Earths would become unified, thus disappearing many versions of specific characters and leaving a single earth, for the benefit of the reader.

Unfortunately, logic doesn't last forever and DC writers have resorted to the idea of ​​parallel earths on many occasions.

Jay Garrick mentor of heroes 

In the 1940s, the superheroes formed the first superhero group, the Justice Society of America (JSA), which was later imitated by their 1960s versions in the Justice League of America (JLA).

When the worlds were unified in Crisis on Infinite Earths, both groups coexisted in the same world, although the members of the JSA were several decades older than those of the JLA, which forced the retirement of most of them.

Of that group, only three veterans remained: Wildcat, Green Lantern and Jay Garrick, who thanks to their powers had managed to delay the effects of their advanced age (which was already close to 70 years old) so that they were forced to include younger superheroes in the team, thus becoming mentors for a new generation.

At the same time Jay Garrick became the advisor of the new versions of Flash, since there are several heroes who have worn the Flash suit of the 60s after the apparent death of Barry Allen, and I say apparent, because the speedsters are united by a force known as the Speed ​​Force and when they die, they end up in a kind of "Valhalla of the speedsters", from which it has been shown that they can return in one way or another.

One of the speedsters who returned from that “Valhalla” was Rival, one of Jay Garrick's enemies, who imitated him in appearance and powers and who had apparently disappeared years ago. Rival was in turn an inspiration for the writers to create more evil versions of the Flash, who are commonly called Reverse Flash (mainly because they wear the color-inverted suit to the Flash of the 60s).

Conclusion and Recommendations

I've never been much of a Flash fan, although I admit that I have a certain priority for some of his enemies (the Rogues) and for this specific version of the character, which I discovered while reading the JSA comics, where I loved the concept of “senior superhero” carried by its founding members, still active.

Despite not being able to reach the speed of the new versions of Flash, Garrick has shown how to handle himself well against tremendously powerful enemies, which shows that "the devil knows more about being old than being a devil."

The recommendations about this character are quite simple, on the one hand his original stories from the 40s, which have been compiled on more than one occasion in volumes such as The Golden Age Flash ArchivesOn the other hand, his adventures with JSA, both the old ones and those from the 90s and 2000s, where we see the apparent end of the veteran group.