The fastest superhero to ever grace the pages of comics wears one of the most recognizable costumes, but as the role of the Flash has changed hands from Barry Allen to Wally West, the costumes over the years have incorporated some subtle changes. Of course, no one would be talking about DC Comics’ Flash at all without the original inspiration behind the modern day Flash if Golden Age Jay Garrick had not inspired the superhero’s more popular incarnations.

Iconic Flash Costumes

Golden Age (Jay Garrick)

• Red t-shirt with jagged yellow lightning bolt from top to bottom
• Blue pants
• Red boots with yellow wings
• Silver helmet with yellow wings

Jay Garrick’s Flash costume consists of little more than a set of blue pants, t-shirt, helmet and boots. It comes across as a bit dated by today’s standards (who wears a tucked in long sleeve t-shirt these days?), but it sets the groundwork for the future Flash costumes. The significance of this Flash incarnation is the beginning of the iconic yellow lightning bolt that we see on his shirt, which every other Flash has worn proudly on each of his costumes. The red and yellow color scheme also begins here. The winged helmet and winged boots were a befitting nod to the mythological messenger god, Mercury, who also wore winged footwear, which future embodiments of the Flash have kept.

Silver Age (Barry Allen)

• Red full body jumpsuit
• Redesigned lightning bolt in front of white background
• Yellow athletic boots with matching wings
• Lightning bolt around the waist and forearms
• Red cowl with exposed face and yellow wing accents
• Addition of gloves

Barry Allen begins the transition into the more iconic image of Flash that most comic fans associate with the DC speedster. Barry keeps the red and gold color scheme, but loses the blue pants and t-shirt for a jumpsuit that evokes a more heroic appearance. The lightning bolt theme makes a more prominent appearance on the chest, accented by a white circle to make even more of a focal point, while lightning bolts around the waist and forearms adds another charismatic touch. Barry wears a sleeker, more aero-dynamic cowl, carrying over the wing accents seen in the Golden Age Flash’s helmet. Barry’s boots are now yellow, with a much more fitted appearance and signature wings on the calves.

Crisis Era (Wally West)

• Darker red full body jumpsuit
• Same redesigned bolt on the chest
• Reshaped bolt around the waist
• Yellow boots without wings

Wally West may have started out as the sidekick, but after being thrust into the role of the leading speedster superhero, he brought some new changes to the Flash costume for the Modern Age. Wally’s Flash keeps the lightning bolt encased in a white circle on the chest, but he opts for a deeper red, which creates a sleek modern look. The lightning bolt around the waist changes into a dual lightning bolt, giving some more movement to the suit, while the lightning bolts around the forearms remain unchanged. Wally also gets rid of the wings on the boots. Wally’s changes may have been subtle, but the minor changes really do influence the mood and attitude of the character.

Here’s a side by side comparison of Wally and Barry’s costumes.

Other Flashes

Although the costumes above may represent the better known looks of the Flash, the speedsters have also assumed some other interesting costumes through the years and various sagas. From bright blue to black, Lantern stories to cartoons, the Flash has found himself in a whole myriad of different looks!

New 52 (Barry Allen)

All right, so the first Flash on this list may not be as wild or different as the classic Flash costumes, but with the new comics comes a redesigned suit. The New 52, released in fall 2011 is back to Barry, who wears a slightly modified version of the Wally West suit. The new Flash costume features most of the same features of the Modern Age costume, but now the lightning bolts around the forearms have a more pointed shape moving towards the wrist and the boots received a slight redesign, giving them an almost metallic armor appearance. A toned down, gold metallic accent color also replaces the bright yellows that once made up the lightning bolts and boots.

Blue Lantern Flash (Barry Allen)

Red may be the signature color of the Flash, but Barry Allen made an appearance in blue during the Blackest Night even. His Blue Lantern costume brings forth the style of the Blue Lantern Corps with a dual shading of light blue and dark blue, and a runic Blue Lantern symbol on his chest where the Flash lightning bolt would normally rest. He retains the Flash-style cowl wings, but now in white.

Young Justice: Kid Flash (Wally West)

Some people tend to forget Wally’s time as Kid Flash, but it was the genesis of his story to becoming the Flash. Cartoon Network brings Wally back to his role as Kid Flash in their Young Justice cartoon series. Wally wears the classic Kid Flash costume. As always, he wears a lightning bolt on his chest, but now in red with a white background. Notice that the lightning bolt has only one ripple, rather than two normally seen in the comics. Rather than a full cowl, his headpiece leaves the top open to expose his hair, while a set of goggles adds a new functional look. The Flash wings make an appearance on his headpiece, but in red. Red pants and gloves accent his yellow top and boots, while the boots have been redesigned to look a bit more athletic.

An interesting twist to his look from Young Justice is a “stealth mode” now incorporated into the series. The stealth mode version replaces his yellow and red with varying shades of black.

Whether it’s on the pages of DC comics, or on the TV screen, the Flash always has a unique look. The Flash is one of the few heroes who never made big changes to his costume, for one simple reason: he didn’t need to. The Flash costume has always done an excellent job of telling his fans what he’s all about, with perfectly matched color schemes, symbols that represent the Flash character and a look that no other superhero could replicate. But what do you think—which Flash did it the best?

This Flash costume retrospective was put together by Ryan Heuer. Ryan writes for an online Halloween costumes company that sells a wide variety of superhero costumes for men and women.

Update: Since the related-posts system doesn’t seem to be picking it up automatically, you may be interested in Speed Force’s previous article on Wally West’s costumes.

Flash Costumes: Speedster Style is a post from Speed Force.

»Flash comics at ComiXology.

The Mike Baron (#1-14) and William Messner-Loebs (#15-61) runs on The Flash have never been reprinted in trade paperback, and only the highlights of the extensive Mark Waid/Brian Augustyn run (#62-162, minus a year off for Morrison/Millar) have been collected. A lot of that is due to the changing market during the 1990s. When Waid started, collected editions were rare. Vertigo was seeing some success, but the idea that people would shell out for a whole series in graphic novel form hadn’t yet sunk in. (These were the days when studios weren’t sure there was a market for complete TV seasons on home video, either.) By the time Geoff Johns took over the title, DC was collecting full runs of a few high-profile series, but not all, or even most of their books.

Now, of course, everyone expects most comic books will be collected, and waiting for the trade is actually a workable strategy. But it’s not often that DC Comics goes back to fill in the gaps in their library — at least, not in print.

Gold and Bronze

With any luck, digital releases will also be the way we’ll finally get the Bronze Age and the Golden Age re-released. I’ve grumbled on a number of occasions that DC seems to keep reprinting the same early years of the Silver Age every time they come up with a new format, and never seem to get past the early/mid-1960s on Barry Allen’s series. (Even the upcoming Flash Archives vol.6 brings that series up to…1964.)

I’d really like to see more Golden Age Flash Archives. DC has only gotten as far as issue #24 out of 104, and the first super-villain (The Shade, as it turns out) doesn’t appear until #33…but these volumes seem to come out so rarely that I expect to die of old age before DC finishes collecting the series. In print, anyway. This is one of the reasons I went forward with my effort to hunt down the original comics, or at least as many of the key issues as I could find in my price range.

Restoration

The challenge with the Golden Age material is that DC didn’t keep copies of the original art, which means that they need to scan and restore a copy of the comic book. In the old days, they actually had to bleach the colors out of an original copy of the comic book, re-photograph the line art, and re-color the whole thing. The process has to be a lot easier (and less destructive!) now that it’s done with computers, but it still takes more effort to restore the artwork on these books than on the Silver Age material that’s seeing its 25th printing.

So what are they using now?

The one issue of Flash Comics that’s available digitally right now (added for last summer’s Flash 101 sale) looks like it’s the fully-restored version from the Golden Age Flash Archives.

Spot-checking a few of the later Barry Allen and early Wally West books suggests that they’re taking a simpler approach with the older books that haven’t already been restored. It looks like they’re just scanning them and running them through filters to adjust the color balance. Flash v.1 #155, which has appeared in several reprints over the last few years and runs $1.99, has clean, solid colors. Flash #215, which hasn’t, is being offered for $0.99, and the dots, printing imperfections and bleed-through are all clearly visible.

That means all DC needs to do to release the rest of the original Barry Allen series is scan it and break it into panels for the guided reading.

And they could do this with the Golden Age books!

Sure, it’s harder to find copies in good condition, but I’d bet DC has a full set in their library. And in my own collecting, I’ve occasionally stumbled across a copy where the colors are still bright, even after 70 years. They won’t look as nice as the issues they’ve restored already for the Archives series, but they’ll be comparable to what DC is putting out from the 1980s. (They’ll also be comparable in quality to the bootleg scans floating around the net, but they’ll be legal, and if DC prices them right, there will be a market for them.)

It’s going to be a lot cheaper for DC to do this than to fully restore 200 pages’ worth of Golden Age comics and do a hardcover print run, which means it’ll take a lot less for them to turn a profit, which makes it a much less risky proposition. And who knows? If they do this, and it’s successful, maybe they’ll decide there’s a market for that Golden Age Flash Archives vol.3 after all.

So what do you think? Will we start seeing DC fill in the entire 70-year history of the Flash in their digital storefront over the next few years?

Digital Comics, Wally West, and the Forgotten Gold & Bronze Flash Archives is a post from Speed Force.

First off, I don’t think keeping it at 52 is a great idea, because the first time they change their line-up to feature 51 books, or 52, or anything else, people will read way too much into it.

Anyway, the canceled books:

• Men of War and Blackhawks. War books are a tough sell these days. No surprise.
• Mister Terrific. A gamble from the beginning, and the only praise I’ve heard about it is from the skeptic community for portraying an atheist in a positive light.
• Static Shock. After all the effort DC went to to get Static (the only Milestone character they seemed interested in), what went wrong?
• Hawk & Dove. The series’ biggest selling point was Rob Liefeld. Make of that what you will.
• O.M.A.C. This always seemed to me as a — I don’t want to call it a vanity project — but basically, a chance for Dan Didio to have fun writing something. My guess is they didn’t really expect it to sell, but positioned it as an ongoing just in case people liked it.

And the new books, after the cut.

• Batman, Incorporated. We knew this was coming back for Grant Morrison to finish his Batman epic. The only question is: are they planning to keep this going past the end of that story, the way they kept Batman & Robin going after Morrison moved onto this one? IMO, they should let the series end when the story does, and make room for another title.
• Earth 2. The James Robinson/Nicola Scott Justice Society book DC has been hinting at for a while. It sounds like they’re going to get involved in the multiverse, which may or may not be a good thing. The JSA book might be better off focusing on them as the greatest heroes of their world. I wonder why they’re calling it “Earth 2″ instead of “Justice Society of America.” To differentiate it from the Justice League lineup? And where does it fit with the “Earth One” branding?
• World’s Finest by Paul Levitz, alternating George Perez & Kevin Maguire on art. The Earth-2 Power Girl and Huntress are “stranded on our world” and trying to get home. At first I misread the description as them lost in the multiverse, which sounded like fun, but if it’s set in one universe, I’m not interested enough in the characters to pick this up.
• G.I. Combat replaces the two canceled war books with a single book that will rotate through DC”s various war characters & settings. Not interested myself, but probably a better sell than the books it’s replacing.
• The Ravagers spins off from Superboy and Teen Titans, with super-teens on the run from an organization that wants to make them into villains. I’ll pass, but it sounds perfect for those who like what DC is doing with the other two books.
• Dial H, a more adult take on the “Dial H for Hero” concept written by science fiction author China Miéville. I have little interest in the basic concept, but I’m really curious to see what Miéville does with it. And Brian Bolland art doesn’t hurt.

No new Flash book (not that I’m surprised), though we should finally see Jay Garrick again in Earth 2. (No sign of Wally West either, but that’s to be expected.) Actually, there’s a strong nostalgia component here, bringing back the Justice Society, Dial H for HERO, all those old war comics from the silver & bronze age. Even Batman, Inc. is literally a continuation of a pre-Flashpoint series (though since so little has changed in the Bat-verse, it’s easy enough to just transplant it to the new universe).

Quick Thoughts: The New 52, Wave 2 is a post from Speed Force.

• Making the helmet
• Making the boots and shirt

My wife and I (OK, it was mostly her) made this for Comic-Con International 2009, and it worked out really well. Unfortunately the gold paint on the helmet wings has tarnished since then, and the boot covers have detached themselves from the shoes, so it needs some touch-up if I plan to wear it again. Maybe next year.

*Yeah, I know last week or even earlier in October would have been a better time, but I only came up with this “Wayback Wednesday” idea acouple of days ago.

Wayback Wednesday: How To Make a Golden-Age Flash Costume is a post from Speed Force.

Most comic book character indexes aren’t really interested in the supporting cast, or even one-off villains. If I want to find a major villain like the Fiddler, chances are I can find a complete list somewhere online. But if I want to know which issues featured Jay’s old college buddies, I’m on my own.

Speaking of Jay’s old college buddies, he runs into five of them during the issues featured in The Golden Age Flash Archives, Vol. 1….and four of them are named Jim. There’s Jimmie Dolan, Jim Evans, Jim Carter, and Jim Dane. (Interestingly, the fifth friend is named Wally.) Jim Carter and Jim Dane are both in silver mining. Jimmie Dolan and Jim Evans both know that Jay is the Flash, but Jim Carter and Jim Dane don’t. I suspect that Carter and Dane are the same guy, but the writer didn’t remember the name he used before and didn’t feel like looking it up. (Comics were episodic back then, and you didn’t have continuity police among the readers ready to pounce on every coloring error.)

Also interesting: In the 17 issues collected in that book, no super-villains appear. The villains are all gangsters, kidnappers, corrupt politicians, crime bosses, etc. Even the story with the giant lizards has gangsters creating them. Skimming one list, the first recognizable villain to show up is the Shade—in issue #33! For the first three years (or at least the first year and a half), most of the Flash’s enemies wore ordinary business suits!

Note: Since I originally wrote this, I have tracked down a number of Golden Age stories. You can read a follow-up in Completing the Set: Tracing the Origins of the Shade.

Early Flash (and Jim Membership) is a post from Speed Force.

Just a quick reminder for those anxiously awaiting for the last major Flash-related offering from Mattel’s Justice League Unlimited line. Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash will be on sale tomorrow in a three pack along with Alan Scott (the Golden Age Green Lantern) and the Golden Age Hawkman:

The three pack will officially go on sale at 9 a.m. Pacific (12 noon Eastern) time and will set you back around 20 dollars for all three. Not a bad deal at all, especially considering some prices for JLU at retail. Not to mention you get three all new action figures as opposed to the previous JLU three packs where we were lucky in some cases to get one (I’m looking at you Heatwave pack).

I personally had planned on getting two packs in order to support DC and the JLU line but this will probably be one of my last major Flash purchases for a while and I think I will only be getting one initially. I already purchased a prototype of the Jay Garrick Flash a few months ago and having three of the same figure would be overkill.

You can purchase the set tomorrow by following this link.

In any case happy hunting! I hope everyone gets a chance to grab one!

Thanks for reading,

-Devin Johnson

Reminder: JLU Jay Garrick on Sale Tomorrow at Mattycollector.com is a post from Speed Force.

A Sound of Thunder

The sound of thunder, a crack of lightning and in a flash everything is different. No, I’m not talking about Flashpoint; DC Comics’ current take on a “Flash-centric” Event. I’m talking about the Flash as a character and the profound difference he’s made in comics. Ever since I was a child, I always felt a deep connection to the Flash. Perhaps it was the sense of the character’s long history, reaching all the way back to World War 2 with Jay Garrick as the original Flash. Perhaps it was the idea that when I was at my most impressionable the Flash TV show had just begun and would capture my imagination. Or perhaps it’s because the Flash is the most important character of the DC Universe.

Yeah. You read that right. I typed it. The Flash is the THE most important character of the DC Universe.

Of course, I don’t expect to get away with saying something like this without a little backup.

So let’s take a moment and just go over the finer points of my argument. When the Flash began way back in the 40s, he was a character that was given his own book nearly as soon as he was established. In January 1940, Flash Comics began as a variety comic that would feature new characters and give them a chance to flourish. Some of the most famous of these characters would be Johnny Thunder, Hawkman, Hawkgirl and Black Canary. This began an eerie precedence of the Flash establishing ideas and characters that would last and break out of his book time and time again. The book ran nearly the entire span of the Golden age, ending just a few months shy of the “official” end date.

But this is not a sprint and the above argument certainly does not win the Flash the title of Greatest Character Ever. This is a marathon…and as we all know, the Flash is the Fastest Man Alive.

The Wild West of Continuity

I’m not making a convincing case so far, am I? Well worry not, we’ve just begun. The Silver Age “officially” began with the publication of Showcase #4 in October 1956. Who did it feature? The Flash! Well isn’t that a coincidence? The Flash kicked off the era of comics that would establish the archetypical characters that still have a stranglehold on their titles today. These giants can all trace their beginning back to the first issue of the Silver Age and see our guy “The Flash” literally bursting out of the page ushering in a new era.

During this time, we were also treated to one of the best stories ever told in the history of comics: Flash #123 – The Flash of Two Worlds. Prior to this book, DC comics were kind of like the wild west of comic publications. Everything “sorta” existed in continuity…when it was needed. But otherwise writers and their respective characters worked with impunity in their own corner of the DC universe and did whatever they liked because it usually had no effect on the rest of the world. But The Flash of Two Worlds began the core idea of a continuity that would become the cornerstone of DC’s Mythology. I’m of course, talking about “the multiverse”. In Flash #123, Barry accidently vibrates his molecules so fast that he passes into a parallel universe, where he meets Jay Garrick the Golden Age Flash. They have an amazing adventure and it’s established that everything that has ever happened in the “Golden Age Flash” was transposed to comic book form and existed to inspire Barry Allen, his Silver Age counterpart.

Thus in a very weird way, if there was never any Jay Garrick, we would have never had Showcase #4, “the comic” that acts as herald for the most iconic age in comics publication history.

Who’s Earth Is It?

From Flash #123 on everything from the Golden Age was considered part of Earth-2 and the “current” timeline was part of Earth-1. This simple precedent would carry over for nearly 50 years. A few years later the Flash would pass into another parallel world called Earth Prime that was meant to be a representation of “our” universe where he would meet the creators of the Flash. These two landmark ideas created something that DC had been poorly lacking up to this point: a strong sense of continuity and purpose. This allowed fans of certain eras to enjoy stories without feeling like their heroes were becoming defunct or at the very least: replaced. Instead, “their” heroes would always have a place where they were the star of their own show. Additionally, this also allowed DC to start playing with the concept of “what ifs” and “how comes”. If we wanted a universe where the Spirit of America (Uncle Sam) assembled a group of warriors to fight the never-ending war against the Nazis, we could (in fact they did, this was called Earth-X).

Years later, DC would create an entire imprint brand based on the idea of taking beloved characters and putting them in new situations that would radically change them, naming them Elseworlds*. For instance, what if Superman landed in the Soviet Union instead of America? Well because of the “multiverse” – in some corner of creation – it did!

This gave DC a marked leg up in the hypothetical market because they could literally do any story they wanted and have it still be considered canonical by simply stating “that’s on Earth (Insert Name Here).” This became so infused into the comics community that years later Alan Moore would declare that the Marvel Universe was technically an ‘earth’ as well – specifically Earth 616, forever and subtly branding the Marvel Universe as a subsidiary of the DC multiverse. All thanks to the Flash and the fantastic writer Gardner Fox!

*For full disclosure, the publication of the Elseworlds books would occur after the consolidation of the multiverse – so we must simply infer that the tales came before the multiversity consolidation or after the multiverse was “reborn”.

We Don’t Need a Flux Capacitor

Now let’s jump ahead to the very end of the Barry Allen run of the Flash, where he is convicted of the murder of Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash. Barry had been pushed to the edge of his rope. And once convicted of this crime, it was revealed to him that someone had been controlling the minds of the jurors from the 30th century. From this point Barry flings himself into the far realms of the future to find not only the mastermind of this plot, but also that the love of his life- Iris West had survived. In a heated reunion they end this volume of the Flash with Barry living happily ever after with Iris in the future…for a time.

This is all significant because it gives us a glimpse into something else that is very prevalent in the Flash and the DC Universe proper. Time Travel. While Barry had bounced around time once or twice in his normal run, the end of his book took him to the far reaches of the future where he could have a life and show that the world continued to spin and life for mankind eventually took a turn for the better. This point of view was usually not shown other than in the Legion of Superheroes as DC’s stance was always that of Yoda: “Always in motion is the future”. So for Barry to end up in the 30th century and given a definitive “happily ever after…for a while” was akin to saying that no matter what happens in today’s stories…we survive. This in retrospect was an incredibly bold move that always gave the reader hope that the future WILL be better. In a bitter twist of irony though, this would be the last time we’d see Barry happy for a long time.

The Best In All Of Us

The next time we see the Flash – we are in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, where a being called the Anti-Monitor was building a machine that would help him collapse reality where he could reshape it in his image. Barry, being one of the only people who could jump from dimension to dimension presented a threat to the Anti-Monitor’s plans and was pulled out of the future and back to the (then) present. Here he was terrorized by the Anti-Monitor and find’s out that he is developing a weapon that will destroy the Earth. At this point, Barry does something that Superman has never done, Batman has never done – in fact most heroes ever created have never truly attempted; Barry chose sacrifice his future to ensure that everyone survives. Certainly it can be argued that each hero risks their lives each time they put on the costume and certainly many have died and been resurrected. But those circumstances usually saved a city (Superman) or at the very best a planet (Green Lantern). This time had a major difference though because Earth-1 presented the Anti-Monitor with the most tangible threat in all of creation. It’s heroes could potentially stop him given the proper amount of time. Therefore by destroying Earth-1 he could destroy the best chance of resistance any dimension could muster.

Barry knew this. Barry understood this. Barry knew that not only was he running for his family and friends, he was running for every last person who ever existed, ever would exist or ever could exist. And because of this, Barry did what he did best: he put others in front of him and began to run around the giant weapon, creating a vortex that would draw in all of the cannon’s energy. But in doing so the energy would prove to be too much for his body to take and he began to decay, his entire person becoming infused with this burst of energy that would not only destroy the cannon but the surrounding area almost ensuring Barry’s demise one way or the other. He continued to run though. He ran through space, he began to run through time, and he began to literally run through his own life – flashing before his very eyes before he ran himself to dust. The last vestige of his power was converted to energy and thrown back in time to strike a young Barry Allen working in a police lab to create the Flash. A “perfect circle”, so to speak.

With this the Flash became our most cherished icon. Looking back on his run, we see that what made Barry so popular was his humanity and what made him a legend is what makes any hero great – self-sacrifice for the greater good. We see that in everyone around us. For firemen who risk their lives for perfect strangers and for police who try to keep us safe – these people encapsulate the best quality of man: our ability to make a difference for somebody else and to make a connection. Through the Flash we see a character that makes us want to be better and want to try harder.

Icons Never Die

At this point- I could try and point out all the other neat plot points that happened after Barry died and how the Flash has the coolest set of superpowers, but that’s not what this is about. Not really. This is about why “The Flash” Is the Most Important Character of the DC Universe. Not Barry Allen, Not Jay Garrick, Not Wally West or Bart Allen – but the icon – the Flash. He’s our hope. He’s what we want to see in ourselves. Time and time again, that name and costume brings out the best in humanity and in comic fiction. We always talk about the Trinity of the DCU, how Superman is the Legend, Batman the Myth, and Wonder Woman as the heart of the DC Universe; I would posit that the Flash would be DC’s soul, the very thing that makes this mythology so unique.

This is what marks the Flash as a character that stands alone from the likes of Superman, Batman or even Wonder Woman. This Trinity of Heroes has on multiple occasions been likened to gods. Superman, a being that is practically a god himself has a disconnect with humanity. While he embodies the perfection of form that we all strive to achieve and the morals to never abuse these gifts he’s been given, he has never been truly challenged to sacrifice everything in a way that would permanently change him. Even when he fought Doomsday, we all knew this would be a temporary death and to DC’s credit, they only kept him dead for about a year. Batman could conceivably come up with a way to change the world if he spend his fortune in purely altruistic ways – building a brighter tomorrow by changing the problems at their core, but he is so wrapped up in his own psychosis (yeah – I said it) that it becomes hard to see him give up everything, including the cowl unless he could be certain that the it would permanently solve said problem. Wonder Woman is the closest in heart and mind to the Flash and the ideals of change, but again – considering she is someone akin to a god, she has never been able to make any real changes in the world she so desperately wants to make right.

The Flash began as a narrative touchstone, a character whose very stories shaped the entirety of a publishing empire and ultimately has always been the herald of great change in comic books: Golden Age, Silver Age, Multiverse, Death of the Multiverse, Rebirth of the Multiverse and at least 2 separate reboots of DC.

Each time a major change happens in the DCU, we can always look to see the Flash standing there heralding the way. Just think about it – Crisis on Infinite Earths – the Flash was there sacrificing himself so that the cosmos may live. In Infinite Crisis – multiple Flashes were there to help stop Superboy Prime from destroying creation. In Final Crisis – the Flash was there to try and stop a time travelling bullet from triggering Armageddon (Ok that one is weird I admit, blame Grant Morrison). And finally with Flashpoint we see that because of one act, one change in the past, the entire DC Universe is about to be “irrevocably rebooted”. Not with thunder, not with lighting, but with a Flash. And thus he is the Most Important Character of the DC Universe.

Covers via comics.org. Shaun Rosado can be found at the Shauncastic! podcast.

Why the Flash is the Most Important Character of the DC Universe is a post from Speed Force.

United Underworld’s incredible gender-swapped Justice League, featuring Psykitten Pow’s Flash. Photo by John Austin.

It turns out that the Flash was the inspiration for the group theme:

“A couple of us like to do female versions of preexisting male characters. One of our friends, Psykitten Pow, she had a female Flash,” says Tallest Silver, who organized the group and who dresses as Batma’am. “One night, we were all hanging out and I said how funny it would be if we had a whole Justice League with swapped sexes.”

Photograph by Chuck Cook Photography.

The group previously appeared at WonderCon, and Psykitten appeared as the Flash last year.

Flash on a Segway. Again, Chuck Cook Photography. People were posting about this guy all over Twitter on Thursday and Saturday, and when a couple of influential people posted about him, they were retweeted so much I had to change my search terms to find anything else about the Flash at SDCC!

Jay Garrick. Photo by David Ngo.

Steampunk Flash, designed and built by Dustin Fletcher of Penny Dreadful and God Save The Queen Fashions. Photo by Jim3535. Keep an eye out — I’ve got a follow-up post planned for this one!

Captain Cold and the Flash (photo by me). These were the only two people who showed up to the planned Flash costume gathering and photoshoot.

DC group including the Golden Age Flash and the Golden Age Reverse Flash. And She-Ra. Photo by lady_wolf_star.

Flash and Power Girl by lady_wolf_star.

Crime Syndicate Jesse Quick and Power Ring, photo by Roddenberry.

I’m going to call this Green Lantern/Captain America/Flash trio the Las Vegas Showgirl superhero team (sequins and skin). Not enough feathers, though. Photograph by Jason Ozaeta.

There were at least two Cheetaras present.

Cheetara, photograph by uncle_shoggoth.

Cheetara, photograph by Nathan Rupert.

Flash Costumes at Comic-Con (2011) is a post from Speed Force.

After last week’s look at Flash #186, we’re jumping forward to Flash #237 and “The Thousand-Year Separation!”, a Tale of the Multiverse by Cary Bates, Irv Novick and Frank McLaughlin.  It is the conclusion of a three-part story featuring Jay Garrick, Doctor Fate, and a desperate search for Iris Allen.  Links to artwork and research are included throughout this post.  For previous annotations, click here!

COVER:  One of Ernie Chan’s 10 Flash covers from 1975 & 1976.  Flash and Zoom fight over Iris outside of 30th Century Central City.

PG. 1:  The opening page is much like the cover, though Zoom elaborates and reveals that Flash’s contact with Iris is destroying the world.  Iris is forced to concur, “…I’m his, not yours!”  Zoom had made previous “romantic” attempts on Iris in the classic Flash #165 and again, four issues prior to #237, in Flash #233.

PG 2 & 3:  Doctor Fate and Jay Garrick monitor Flash via crystal ball from Earth 2.  At the end of Flash #236, Fate and the Golden Age Flash helped Iris escape to her home era of the 30th Century (as established in Flash #203).  Iris had been stricken with an affliction that forbade her any physical contact with her husband.  Fate and Jay Garrick distracted Flash for much of issue #236 while they tried to cure her, and sent her into the far future after they were unsuccessful.

Fate attempts to stall Flash once again by disabling the Cosmic Treadmill, but Flash is able to build the momentum he needs to make the time-jump.  Flash arrives in the 30th Century incarnation of Central City, a self-contained metropolis.  It appears 30th Century science has also failed to cure Iris, and as a result she has accepted an “outrageous” offer from an ominous benefactor.

PG. 4:  After spotting his wife, Flash receives a lightning-fast mental transmission from Fate explaining the hows and whys of Iris’s disappearance and the “lethal energy flux” within her that “…would detonate on contact with the Flash’s super-speed aura!”

PG 5 & 6:  Already on a bee-line for Iris as she rides in her parents’ future-car, Flash sets off Universal destruction despite Fate’s attempted warning.  Flash tries to undo the damage with some super-speed cement mixing, but is one-upped by an oddly-gesturing Zoom.

PG. 7:  Zoom claims to have the secret of nullifying the destruction, but the only compensation he’ll accept is Iris’s hand in marriage.  Iris’s wedding gown is similar to Golden Glider’s gear, though the latter had not yet appeared in Flash (she first showed up in #250).  It is revealed that Zoom caused the harmful flux in Iris, planting the affliction via super-speed vibrations in Flash #233.  Flash deduces that Zoom planted the “doom-omen” that spurred Doctor Fate and Jay Garrick to “kidnap” Iris in issue #235.

PG. 8:  Zoom races off with Iris to Earth-East to finalize the marriage.  Central City is located in Earth-West.  As shown in issue #203, Earth-East is ruled by Sirik the Supreme, who also clashed with Flash over Iris.  A good recap of that story can be found here.  Flash figures out Zoom’s secret (“fingertips–”) and takes off in pursuit.

PG. 9:  Flash recovers Iris, which Zoom claims will “…set off the worldwide holocaust again!”  Flash and Zoom trade blows at super-speed.

PG. 10:  Barry eliminates Zoom, and stops the planet-wide destruction by mimicking Zoom’s odd hand gestures from the moment the Professor first appeared.  By doing this, Zoom had been able to temporarily neutralize the lethal energy flux in Iris.  Flash ventures that repeated applications would result in a complete, permanent cure.

PG. 11:  Zoom has escaped, but a reunited Barry and Iris happily return to the 20th Century and, Barry’s favorite meal , veal scaloppine.  Zoom’s next Flash appearance would come during “The Death of Iris Allen,” bringing his advances on Iris to a horrific close.

Functioning as a Crisis on Multiple Earths-style team-up, a time-travel story and a Zoom installment, Flash #237 is a short-and-sweet entry into the lethal history of Professor Zoom.

See you here next week for another session in the Zoom Room!

The Zoom Room: Flash #237, “The Thousand-Year Separation!” is a post from Speed Force.

Sorry it has taken me a while to get this up. I’ve been busy with work and family over the last few days so I’ve only been able to pop on the ‘net every once in a while. In any case there is a lot of good and not so good news spinning out of SDCC 2011 and not all fans are going to be too thrilled.

First up we had some major news as DC Direct announced and unveiled several prototypes for the Jim Lee designed DCnU Justice League action figure line including the redesigned Flash:

Thanks to Toynewsi.com for the pics

Next we got a great look at the Flashpoint Flash and SDCC 2011 Exclusive Reverse Flash Action Figures also from DC Direct (pictures also courtesy of Toynewsi.com):

Mattel had quite a few announcements of their own. First off the last wave of DC Universe Classics will be Wave 20 and after that the line will be rebranded and offered mainly through Mattel’s Collector web store, Mattycollector.com via subscription. There will still be a retail presence but for the most part, rare figures that would normally be doomed to shelf warmer status will be released primarily through the subscription. The remaining figures that are left over after all the subscriptions are filled will be released to the masses in the middle of the month. But there will be club exclusive figures released that will not be able to be procured without signing up for a subscription (or tracking them down on eBay for exorbitant prices).

Now how the subscription works is you pay 30 dollars for the club membership. After that you are locked in and guaranteed to receive every DC Universe figure that will be released in that years time. The only rub is that you are forced to buy into all of the figures released, whether you would normally purchase them or not. Now if you are a DCUC completist then this is a dream come true, basically all you have to do is sit and wait for your collection to be filled out nicely with relatively no bumps or snags. But more importantly no more ridiculous hunts. This hobby can take up not only a lot of money but a lot of time also.

Now on the opposite end of the spectrum someone like me could be completely screwed if I don’t sign up. I’m a cherry picker collector which means that I only ever collect Flash-related releases. Nothing that DC Universe Classics has shown me tells me that they have The Flash in mind as a primary interest. Yes we’ve got a couple Rogues and a few Flash repaints (none of which I actually cared that much about, why do we get one off costumes like Blue Lantern Flash when actual characters like Wally were constantly looked over?) but the vast majority is understandably but still annoyingly Batman, Superman and Green Lantern-related. The chances of me getting a good amount of Flash figures to justify the 300 or so bucks that I’m locked in to spend automatically are pretty slim. The cherry on this is that they have teased us with the first pictures of the DC Universe Classics style Jay Garrick, but instead of putting him in the JSA-themed DC Universe Classics wave 19 they decided to go with D-list characters like Magog. Really Magog gets a spot instead of highlydemanded Jay Garrick? The only explanation that I can think of for this is that they wanted to hold Jay “hostage” for subscriptions. Yes it makes sense from a business standpoint but from a fan standpoint this really sucks. In any case without further griping, Jay Garrick:

Picture courtesy of DCUC.INFO

Even though it looks like Jay has been using the Clear I still want this figure in my collection. Jay is my second favorite of the Flash family and to miss out on him because of some subscription nonsense would be terrible. I guess there is always eBay but I’m really getting annoyed paying all the crazy prices on eBay.

Now as for the last wave 20 we will be getting two Flash-related characters (and repaints): Professor Zoom and Mattel’s own version of the White Lantern Flash. There are no pics currently for White Lantern Flash but Toynewsi.com and DCUC.Info both have pics of Zoom:

Nice touch including the lightning staff even though he hasn’t used it in-story in quite a bit. At least it gives him something as opposed to the nothing that typically comes with Flash figures.

Speaking of which Mattel’s DC Universe Action League had some great announcements and some Flash goodness. We will be getting a new pack of two figures featuring The Flash with a new sculpt and Professor Zoom using the old Flash sculpt. Flash features an awesome accessory that makes it look as if he is whipping up a hand spun cyclone:

Picture courtesy of Actionfigureinsider.com

A Flashpoint Wave is also on the horizon and with that we will be getting a Flashpoint Flash (which is the old Flash sculpt) and Citizen Cold (which is essentially just like the regular Captain Cold):

Picture courtesy of Toynewsi.com

Last but not least is my favorite announcement of the show and one of the collectibles I’m most anxiously awaiting: Young Justice Six Inch Kid Flash (picture courtesy of Toynewsi.com):

WOW! Just look at all the cool accessories packed into this figure. I don’t think we’ve seen something like this since The Flash and Kid Flash Silver Age set from DC Direct that came with a Cosmic Treadmill and Costume Ring. We’ve got a hand spun cyclone, removable goggles and a display that simulates Kid Flash’s speed quite nicely. Great visuals. Only thing is we won’t be seeing this figure until Spring 2012. Phooey.

All in all a pretty solid SDCC this year with a number of great Flash collectibles forthcoming. The Jay Garrick/Subscriber thing has me a little worried, but I doubt it will be a huge hurdle to get one. Still not thrilled about never getting a Wally in the DC Universe Classics line but then again there were a lot of characters passed over so I can’t be too bitter. And at least we can count on Young Justice to keep supplying us with some Wally collectible love. Yeah it sucks that he has been marginalized and downgraded to Kid Flash again but hey it’s better than what we could be getting.

By the way if I missed anything new, please drop me a line here and let me know.

Thanks for reading,

-Devin “Flash” Johnson

Complete Flash-Related Collectibles News from SDCC 2011 is a post from Speed Force.