The following is an excerpt from the upcoming book, The Flash Companion. The full article appears in the first section of the book. It is printed here with permission of the book’s main author, Keith Dallas.
The Flash Companion is scheduled for a July 23 release.
Lost Gold: The Unpublished Golden Age Flash Stories
By John Wells
The abrupt cancellation of Flash Comics left Julius Schwartz with no chance to burn off the inventory of completed material he’d assembled for future issues. Instead, each page was stamped “Written Off 9-30-49,” filed away and ultimately marked for destruction in the late 1960s. Unpublished samples of all five features in Flash Comics survived to the present. Most remarkably, there were five Flash stories — three preserved in their entirety! They are:
“Journey Into Danger”: A criminal discovers a formula capable of accelerating speed and motion — but not the means of controlling it. In an effort to force Jay Garrick to give up his own formula for slowing down energy, the Farmer unleashes his speed solution on an unsuspecting Keystone City and the Flash himself (published in The Flash #205: April, 1971).
“The Tale of the Three Tokens”: A stranger gives common objects to Jay and two other men that prove instrumental in saving each of their lives during the Thinker’s attempt to use a stolen time machine (published in The Flash #214: April, 1972).
“Strange Confession”: After the Flash’s third encounter with the Thorn, her “sister” Rose confesses to Jay Garrick that she and the villainess are one and the same. Her evil personality kidnaps Joan Williams in retaliation, and the Flash ultimately asks Green Lantern to transport Rose to the curative Transformation Island at the suggestion of Wonder Woman (pages 11 and 12 published in Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane #113: Sept.-Oct., 1971. Later published in its entirety in Robin Snyder’s fanzine The Comics [Vol. 6] #10: Oct., 1995.).