Tag Archives: Jesse Quick

A Brief History of Jesse Quick

Justice League of America #46 variant cover by Francis Manapul featuring Jesse Quick/Liberty BelleJesse Quick first appeared in a 1992 revival of the Justice Society of America. It only lasted a year or so, but it introduced Jesse Chambers, a college student who inherited powers from her superhero parents: Johnny Quick, a speedster who used the spoken formula “3X2(9YZ)4A” to unlock his power, and the super-strong Liberty Belle.

Her parents had split up over super-heroics — her mother wanted nothing more to do with them, but her father wouldn’t give it up — and Jesse found the idea fascinating enough to write a dissertation on the subject. It was inevitable that she’d be called into action alongside her father.

Jesse Quick got on well with Flash Wally West at first, but they had a falling out over his keeping secrets. As she became more active as a hero, they continued to be allies, but it would be hard to call them friends.

A workaholic, Jesse took over her father’s business after his death.  She and her mother eventually reconciled, and she even took on the Liberty Belle identity for a while when she lost her speed. She met Rick Tyler (Hourman) through the new Justice Society of America, and they married.

Jesse has not yet appeared in the post-Flashpoint DC Universe, though she did appear as the Flash in the Ame-Comi Girls universe.

All-Star Squadron #65 Justice Society of America #8 (Liberty Belle II)

Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle

Johnny Quick was created in 1941 in response to the Flash’s success. Jay Garrick was owned by All-American Comics at the time, published through DC, and DC wanted a speedster their owned outright.  Debuting in More Fun Comics, Johnny Chambers’ gimmick was the spoken formula which unlocked his super-speed.

World War II heroine Liberty Belle debuted in 1942. She was an American athlete who escaped occupied France by swimming the English Channel and used her new fame to support the war effort and fight Nazi saboteurs on the home front.

Both characters vanished in the late 1940s, and neither was revamped when DC began rebooting their old characters in the 1950s and 1960s.  They eventually came back in the 1980s series All-Star Squadron, which followed the adventures of DC’s WW2 heroes and established a romance between the two of them. These stories initially took place on Earth-Two, but when DC combined their multiverse into a single continuity in 1986, they were re-set in the new, combined history.

Side Note: The Crime Syndicate

DC kept the “Johnny Quick” name alive in the 1960s by using the name for the Earth-3 evil version of the Flash. The Crime Syndicate of America has featured a Johnny Quick in all of its incarnations since then, including the animated film Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths and the New 52/Forever Evil version.

Covers via the Grand Comics Database.

Jesse Quick Cast for Flash Season 2

jessequick

CW has cast another speedster: Violett Beane will play Jesse Quick. According to TV Line:

Jesse — who will appear in multiple episodes of the CW smash — is characterized as a brilliant but quirky college student who gets caught up in the battle between The Flash and Season 2 Big Bad (the not-yet-cast) Zoom.

Jesse Quick was introduced in the early 1990s Justice Society of America series as the daughter of golden-age heroes Liberty Belle and Johnny Quick (not to be confused with the Crime Syndicate villain of the same name). When her parents split up, she followed her father’s legacy, using his super-speed formula as a hero and taking over his business when he died. She became a recurring guest in the Flash comics. She eventually reconciled with her mother, and when she temporarily lost her speed, she took on the Liberty Belle persona for a while. She has yet to be seen in the New 52/DC You, though a version of her did appear in the Ame-Comi Girls digital-first series a few years back.

Jay Garrick, Wally West, AND Jesse Quick! They’re going to need a team name by the end of the season!

Image via The Flash Podcast.

Classic Wally West & Family Return in Convergence: Speed Force

DC has started announcing the tie-in miniseries for Convergence, the spring 2015 event that will see the new 52 line go on hiatus for two months while we look in on fragments of various other realities tossed together…including the reality formerly known as the DC Universe. The 40 two-issue miniseries will run April and May, along a 9-part weekly Convergence series.

Among the titles revealed at IO9:

Speed Force / Convergence

SPEED FORCE

Wally West and his kids are separated from Linda, which was bad enough, but when the dome falls, Flashpoint Wonder Woman comes for them. Tony Bedard (W), Tom Grummett and Sean Parsons (A).

JUSTICE LEAGUE

When Supergirl, Zatanna, and Jade went to Jesse Quick’s baby shower, they didn’t expect to be taken to another planet for a year, or to be attacked by Flashpoint Aquaman. Frank Tieri (W), Vicente Cifuentes (A).

Wally West and the kids — not just pre-Flashpoint, but pre-Rebirth, it appears — and Jesse Quick. It’s been a while.

Update: DC announced Convergence in an article at USA Today last week. Here’s how they describe the in-world premise:

Convergence spins out of the April 1 finales of the Earth 2: World’s End and The New 52: Futures End weekly series. The alien supervillain Brainiac has trapped cities from various timelines and planets that have ended, brought them in domes to a planet outside of time and space, and is now opening them for a great experiment to see what happens when all these folks meet.

“We’re picking up at points of their lives where we left them and finding out what’s gone on with them since then,” says DiDio.

Black Flash in Ame-Comi Girls & Smallville Haunted TPB

Two items from DC Comics’ September solicitations, both from their digital-first line:

AME-COMI GIRLS
Written by JUSTIN GRAY and JIMMY PALMIOTTI
Art by HORACIO DOMINGUES, EDUARDO FRANCISCO and RUBEN GONZALEZ
Cover by EDUARDO FRANCISCO
On sale SEPTEMBER 4 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US • RATED T • DIGITAL FIRST

Meet the Hellions—a team of misfit Ame-Comi Girls out to have fun and save the world. It’s not easy for Black Flash being the only undead, crime-fighting teenager in school. But when she meets Red Raven and her badass besties, she may have finally found a place to fit in.

The Black Flash statue was originally a repaint of the Jesse Quick-as-the-Flash statue. I find it interesting that the Ame-Comi comics have expanded to include the repaint characters. Presumably the chapters featuring her will appear digitally in August. Does anyone know if Jesse Quick/The Flash has had a spotlight story in this series?

SMALLVILLE SEASON 11 VOL. 3: HAUNTED TP
Written by BRYAN Q. MILLER
Art by JORGE JIMENEZ
Cover by SCOTT KOLINS
On sale OCTOBER 16 • 144 pg, FC, $14.99 US

In these stories from issues #9-12, mysterious speed storms have struck across the globe, and a familiar face returns to help Clark to stop them. Then, Lex moves against Tess to reveal what she knows about The Man of Steel, and the secrets of Earth-Two Chloe are revealed!

This collects the full story that quest-starred Bart Allen as Impulse and Jay Garrick as the Flash of the Justice Society in the Smallville universe.

Smallville: Haunted

High Speed Hauntings: 4 Ghost Stories Featuring the Flash

Flash Annual #11: Ghosts - Cover

Ghost stories seem a natural fit with some superheroes. Not so with the Flash. An origin based in science, scientifically trained alter-egos, villains who use technology. Even the “magician” villain, Abra Kadabra, is more of a techno-mage, using highly advanced future technology to carry out transformations that seem like magic to our experience. The closest the Flash mythos gets to the supernatural is the metaphysical nature of the speed force, and even that is described in terms of energy and the nature of space-time.

So it makes sense that for 1998’s “Ghosts” annuals, the Flash story would feature not a traditional ghost, but one tied to the speed force: Johnny Quick, who had vanished into the speed force two years earlier during Dead Heat.

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