Flash comics. Pictures, back issues and more about Flash

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he Flash is a DC Comics superhero possessing super-speed. Created by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert, the original Flash first appeared in Flash Comics #1 (1940).
Thus far, three different people have assumed the identity of the Flash: Jay Garrick (1940-present), Barry Allen (1956-86), and Wally West (1987-present) Each of these individuals somehow gained the power of super-speed, which includes the ability to run and move extremely fast, use superhuman reflexes, and violate certain laws of physics.
The second incarnation of the Flash was among the first heroes of the Silver Age of comic books in 1956. The character featured in a short-lived live action television series in 1990. The Flash is also featured in the animated series Justice League.

Publication history
The Flash first appeared in Flash Comics #1 (1940). This Flash was Jay Garrick, a college student who gained his speed through the inhalation of hard water vapors, and who wore a winged metal helmet. He is notable for being the first speedster in comics, and one of the first to have a singular super-power as opposed to the multi-talented Superman. He was created by writer Gardner Fox.
Garrick was a popular character in the 1940s, supporting two different titles and being a charter and long-time member of the Justice Society of America, the first superhero team. Garrick's adventures in the Golden Age of comic books came to an end when Flash Comics was cancelled with the publication of issue #104 (1949), and the subsequent end of the Justice Society's adventures with All-Star Comics #57 (1951). Superheroes (and the entire comic book industry) had fallen on hard times in the 1950s, and the Flash was only one casualty.

Left to right: Wally West, Bart Allen as Impulse, Jay Garrick, Johnny Quick, and Max Mercury (background), from Flash #97. Art by Mike Wieringo.
A few years later, DC Comics decided the time was right to reintroduce some superheroes. Rather than bring back the Golden Age heroes unchanged, DC decided to recreate them as new, more modern characters. The Flash was the first such hero to be revived in a new incarnation. Showcase #4 (1956) introduced Barry Allen, a police scientist who gained super-speed when he was bathed by chemicals after a shelf full of them was struck by lightning. After several more appearances in Showcase, Allen's character was given his own title, The Flash the first issue of which was #105 (resuming where Flash Comics had left off).
The Silver Age Flash proved popular enough that several other Golden Age heroes were revived in new incarnations. A new superhero team, the Justice League of America, was also created, with the Flash as a prominent member.
The Flash also introduced a long-standing plot device into superhero comics, when it was revealed that Garrick and Allen existed on fictional parallel worlds. Their powers allowed them to cross the dimensional boundary between worlds, and the men became good friends; their respective teams began an annual get-together which endured from the early 1960s until the mid-1980s.
Allen's adventures continued in his own title until the advent of Crisis on Infinite Earths (The Flash ended as a series with #350). Allen's life had become considerably confused in the early 1980s, and DC elected to end his adventures and pass the mantle on to another character. Allen died heroically in the Crisis #8 (1986), though thanks to his ability to travel through time, he would continue to appear occasionally in the years to come.
The third Flash is Wally West, who was introduced in Flash #110 (1959) as Kid Flash. West, Allen's nephew by marriage, gained the Flash's powers through an accident identical to Allen's (this acquisition of powers has been criticized heavily by some fans), and adopted the Kid Flash identity and maintained membership in the Teen Titans for years. Following Allen's death, West adopted the Flash identity in Crisis #12 and was given his own series, beginning with The Flash vol 2 #1 (1987). As of 2005, he is the current holder of the title.

Flash latest reviews

Comic Reviews: Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint Featuring the Flash trade paperba...
30 Apr 2012 at 3:02pm
Some of the themes of the other Flashpoint tie-in collections have been harder to place -- the Wonder Woman volume was mostly about "Whatever happened to Europe," sure, but the Superman and Green Lantern books split the fate of the DC Universe aliens, and the Batman book quickly strayed from "Whatever happened to Gotham City?" World of Flashpoint Featuring the Flash, however, lives up to its tagline if not its title -- page after page this book details "Whatever happened to the world's greatest super-villains" in the Flashpoint universe.

What emerges is Flashpoint's super-villain crime book, the Flashpoint equivalent of Villains United or Salvation Run. The stories here run the gamut from beautiful and brilliant to tired and gory; as with the other Flashpoint books, collecting different series by different teams, what we end up with is a mixed bag.

[Contains spoilers]

DC comicbooks has given Wally West fans a lot to be upset about, and if you skipped the Flashpoint books and focused your ire solely on Wally's exclusion from the DC New 52, World of Flashpoint: Flash probably isn't for you. Scott Kolins's Citizen Cold miniseries collected here is brilliant, possibly the best Flashpoint tie-in I read and that includes surpassing Brian Azzarello's Batman: Knight of Vengeance, but Wally meets a quick and early demise in these pages.

Kolins handles it well -- I'm not sure whom else Kolins could have killed in this story to affect both Iris West and the Pied Piper -- but I imagine Wally's onscreen death might be more than some fans are ready for.

Wally fans can take heart, however -- it is a testament to just how engrained Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins's run on the Wally West Flash series has seeped into the comic books zeitgeist that ten years later, even despite DC's conscious shift from Wally to Barry Allen, they still have Kolins writing and drawing what is essentially another story, like Blackest Night: Flash, cut directly from the Johns/Kolins cloth. This is a Citizen nee Captain Cold story precisely in the style of the early Johns Cold stories.

In Citizen Cold, Leonard Snart is a greater anti-hero than he's already been, a "hero" secretly working toward his own ends and hiding his secret identity as a former criminal (an interesting concept in its own right). Cold knows he's in his last days, trying to entice love interest Iris West to leave town with him before someone discovers his identity, or the revenge-bent Rogues catch up with him.

Kolins's Cold and Iris are a wonderfully twisted Lois and Clark -- Cold's no "super" man, but rather a bad boy Iris can't help both find attractive and distrust. Like Blackest Night: Flash, this is a dark family story that tests Cold's bonds of love and loyalty all the way up to its inevitable, tragic end. I was riveted -- heck, even if you're still sad about Wally, you should still read this one.

Kolins also contributes the Reverse Flash one-shot here, rumored to have originally been the cancelled Flash #13 before the DC New 52 changed Flashpoint's direction. Nothing wrong with this issue per se, or Joel Gomez's "sketchy" art in the style of Francis Manapul, but neither does it tell an established reader anything new about Professor Zoom nor tie into Flashpoint in any substantial way.

On the other side of the spectrum from Kolins's Citizen Cold, I truly disliked Adam Glass's Legion of Doom miniseries, and it probably portends bad things for my enjoyment of his Suicide Squad. The biggest problem is wooden dialogue throughout ("Didn't your mommy ever tell you not to play with matches, Heatwave?" Cyborg quips; Heatwave replies that they should stop "yapping." At another point, a character says with no irony that they should "blow this popsicle stand."), but also Glass's Heatwave is mean-spirited and violent without any redemptive or at least villainously-attractive traits for the reader to latch on to. Rodney Buchemi's art seemed flat and unremarkable; all in all I was eager to finish reading this one.

On the other hand, I probably could have read more of Sean Ryan and Ig Guara's Grodd of War issues, instead of just a special. It's really a one-joke story, in which the absence of the Flash has made Grodd so bored he wants to die, but the depth of Grodd's boredom and the gory depths he plums to sate that boredom are also riveting. Ryan's attempts at making a political statement about Africa don't quite manifest, but it was interesting to see Grodd interacting with government buildings and riding in cars rather than the familiar rural Gorilla City. Guara's backgrounds are lush and his gorilla faces expressive; combine this with some great cameos (that's Catman, kids) and Grodd's a winner.

Finally, you all know I enjoy and appreciate Sterling Gates's work, but much as I wanted to like the closing Kid Flash miniseries, it just didn't congeal for me. Bart Allen and the new Hot Pursuit, long-time Flash character Patty Spivot, battle Brainiac in a Flashpoint-alternate future -- that's fine, though it might have gone on an issue too long.

Then, the third issue shifts completely to what I felt was a too-confusing romp where Bart is, then isn't, the deadly Black Flash. It's nice that Gates includes Bart's mentor Max Mercury, but does the last old DC Universe interaction between Bart and Max need to be where one kills the other? Gates is Bart Allen fan, no question -- he name-checks Impulse's Carol, for gosh sake! -- and he includes some nice visual nods to Crisis on Infinite Earths, but in all this one didn't move me. It lessens my estimation of Gates not a bit.

Again, I would direct any Flash fan to go pick up Scott Kolins's Citizen Cold miniseries; it's really very impressive work. World of Flashpoint Featuring the Flash, however, is an uneven collection that starts strong but doesn't finish that way -- the danger, perhaps, of multi-creator collections. In that way, maybe Flashpoint: Batman is the better collection -- but don't discount that Citizen Cold.

[Includes original covers. Printed on very thin glossy paper.]

Everything you know has now changed in a flash ... and it's time for Collected Editions' first reviews of the DC New 52! Go out tomorrow, pick up Justice League Vol. 1: Origin, and then come back here Thursday right and ready for the Collected Editions review. See you then!
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