Episode 22: The Golden Age Flash. Jay Garrick’s Wild Debut

Simon Carver

Welcome to the show everybody! I am Simon Carver, broadcasting to you once again from a cold, damp, and completely blacked-out London. It is Saturday, May 31st, 1941. If you step outside our temporary studio near the Thames tonight, the night air is quiet, but it is an uneasy quiet. We are still reeling from the massive air raids of this month, but we keep our chins up, and tonight, we are sending our signals across the Atlantic to find some light. Joining me from our warm, fully illuminated Chicago studio on KDCR is my patriotic partner, Robert Reed. Bob, how are things looking on the shores of Lake Michigan?

Robert Reed

Well, Simon, Chicago is bright and sunny, though our hearts are heavy hearing those shortwave reports from your side of the water. Over here, we are trying to keep the gears turning. Yesterday, of course, was Memorial Day, and we had the magnificent spectacle of the Indianapolis Five-Hundred! Gosh, what a race, with Mauri Rose and Floyd Davis pulling off that incredible co-victory! But down on the local newsstands, the kids are looking for a different kind of speed to cut through the heavy headlines. Tonight, we are diving headfirst into our third look at All-American Publications, operating out of 225 Lafayette Street in lower Manhattan, to talk about the absolute marvel of the Golden Age: the fastest man alive, the Flash!

Simon Carver

Speed indeed, Bob! But speaking of speed, our technical producer, that mysterious Mr. Moore who claims to be transmitting from the twenty-first century, sent us a rather chilling note. He says that because of this looming war, the Indianapolis Five-Hundred is going to be completely cancelled after this year, and the brickyard will stay silent for four long years! I can't even fathom a world where they shut down the greatest spectacle in racing. It makes you realize how serious this national emergency really is.

Robert Reed

A silent Brickyard, Simon? No race at Indianapolis for four whole years? That is a sober, heavy thought. If Mr. Moore's prediction is true, the next few years must be incredibly rough for the country, and for the whole world. But it also shows why a character like Jay Garrick is so vital on the newsstand right now. He is a hero of pure, relentless energy, someone who can outrun the darkness of the times. And to bring this incredible, fast-paced world to life in Flash Comics, it took the brilliant minds of writer Gardner Fox and artists Harry Lampert and Everett Hibbard!

Simon Carver

He really is a master of mechanics, Robert. He pairs beautifully with Harry Lampert, a young New York cartoonist who started when he was only sixteen, inking and helping produce those legendary Betty Boop, Popeye, and Koko the Clown cartoons for Max Fleischer. Lampert brought that clean, rubbery animation style to the printed page, giving the Flash an incredible sense of fluid movement right from the start.

Robert Reed

And Lampert was very candid about how they put the character together, Simon. He recalled that the original idea was entirely Gardner Fox's, who wanted to base the hero on the ancient Roman messenger god, Mercury. Lampert actually went into the dictionary, looked up Mercury, and then superimposed Fox's Flash concept right on top of the classic illustration. The pose, the winged helmet, the sheer speed -- they were almost identical!

Simon Carver

They really were. Let's open up the ink-stained pages of Flash Comics number one and look at this origin panel by panel. We start at Midwestern University, where Jay Garrick is introduced as a complete football scrub. He's sitting on the bench, and the coach is yelling at him. Jay tries to ask Joan Williams, the beautiful co-ed of his dreams, to the victory dance, but Joan turns him down flat! She says "a scrub is just an old washwoman" and tells him to put his mind to football.

Robert Reed

An old washwoman! Talk about a cold shoulder, Simon! That sends poor Jay straight to the research laboratory, where he is a brilliant chemistry student. He's been studying the gases emanating from "hard water" for three years. It's late, three-thirty in the morning, and Jay says "I need a smoke!" He reaches for a cigarette, but his hand is too slow, and he accidentally knocks over his beakers and retorts, which crash onto the metal floor!

Simon Carver

The retorts shatter, releasing those powerful, gaseous elements of hard water! Jay is overcome by the fumes and collapses onto the floor. He lies there unconscious all night, inhaling the vapors, until Professor Hughes finds him in the morning. Jay is rushed to the hospital, where he hovers between life and death for weeks. But his healthy young body fights back, and the doctors are absolutely baffled by his recovery.

Robert Reed

Baffled is right! One specialist from New York says that the hard water elements sped up Jay's reflexes to the nth degree, making him a "freak of science" who can walk, run, and think faster than a bullet! And Jay discovers this power almost immediately when he sees Joan Williams outside the hospital window. He zips out of bed, runs past the nurses like a hurricane, and catches up to Joan before she can even finish taking a single step!

Simon Carver

It is a stunning visual, Robert. He appears before her in a blur, and then he immediately consents to play in the big state football game. He starts on the bench, with Midwestern losing thirty to zero. But when the coach finally puts "Leadfoot" Garrick in, Jay goes on a tear! He runs touchdown after touchdown in a zig-zagging, lightning-fast path, leaving the defense looking at empty air. They win sixty-five to thirty!

Robert Reed

Sixty-five to thirty! That is what I call a comeback! But Jay doesn't stay to celebrate. He graduates, moves to New York to help Joan's father, Major Williams, with his secret scientific research on an "atomic bombarder." But things get dangerous fast when a group of ruthless foreign agents known as the Faultless Four kidnap the Major to steal his plans!

Simon Carver

The Faultless Four! Led by a sinister bald fellow named Sieur Satan, alongside Serge, Duriel, and Orloff. They shoot at Joan from a speeding car to scare her, but Jay leaps into action! He matches the speed of the bullet, plucks it right out of the air in front of Joan, and then dashes off as the Flash, wearing his iconic red shirt with the yellow lightning bolt and his blue trousers.

Robert Reed

And don't forget that winged metal helmet, Simon! He tracks the Faultless Four to their apartment hideout. When Serge fires a pistol at him, the Flash simply runs forward, catches the bullet in his bare hand, and sneers "Wouldn't try that again!" He rescues Major Williams from the secret trapdoor in the apartment, carrying him away so fast the kidnappers can't even see them escape.

Simon Carver

But the battle isn't over yet. The Faultless Four plan a desperate, chaotic distraction the next day at a crowded Coney Island beach, sending a pilot in a red plane to strafe the sunbathers with machine-gun fire! Jay sheds his civilian clothes in a split second, runs along the sand, and actually leaps high into the air, grabbing the wing of the plane and fighting the pilot mid-flight until the craft crashes into the ocean!

Robert Reed

Talk about high-flying action! Then, Sieur Satan tries to make his getaway in a massive black speed car. The Flash pursues him on foot, running easily alongside the vehicle at seventy miles an hour! He climbs onto the running board, grabs Satan through the window, and begins to spin himself like a gigantic top, creating a localized cyclone that makes Satan so dizzy he cries "I'll sign anything, just don't do that again!" The car crashes down a ravine, ending the threat of the Faultless Four forever, and Major Williams' secrets are safe!

Simon Carver

It is a breathtaking debut. And the pace doesn't slacken in the subsequent issues. In Flash Comics number two, we see the Flash facing a group of theatrical blackmailers who are terrorizing the entertainment industry, shooting performers right on stage. Jay uses his incredible speed to slip into Lord Donelin's apartment and grab a secret packet of evidence right under the nose of a bald thug named Goll!

Robert Reed

And then in issue three, cover-dated March 1940, Joan's father is framed for being a spy! It's all over the front page of the Town Cackle newspaper. Jay has to run sixty miles an hour to the county jail, vibrate his body to appear invisible, and snatch the keys right off the guard's desk to free Major Williams. He eventually tracks the real culprit to the Empire State Building and clears the Major's name!

Simon Carver

Issue four, from April 1940, takes us out to the harbor, where a steel magnate's son, Jimmy Norton, is kidnapped on a gambling ship called the Seven Seas. The Flash actually swims so fast he churns the harbor water into bubbles of hot steam! He slips aboard, plays roulette to win thousands of dollars as a distraction, and then vibrates his body to look like a ghostly apparition, tricking the gamblers into releasing their prisoners.

Robert Reed

The "ghost" trick! I love how Fox uses Jay's speed to create optical illusions, Simon. And that science-meets-art theme gets even wilder in issue five, where the Flash protects an old, prize-winning painter named Boleau from a hooded villain named the Vandal! This vulture of a collector is stealing valuable statues, including the famous DeLacy Peasant Statue, and killing artists to drive up the value of their paintings!

Simon Carver

The Vandal! He wears a dark, medieval hood and operates out of a sprawling New York mansion. Jay actually sneaks into a sculpting school, grabs a molding stand and some wet clay, and uses his super-speed to craft a perfect duplicate statue in the blink of an eye, leaving the students screaming "It's dead Michelangelo!" He swaps the fake for the real one, and when the Vandal's thugs try to shoot him, he tie-dyes them in a tangle of rope in a fraction of a second.

Robert Reed

And how about issue six, Simon? Jay attends a pre-Olympic track meet with Joan, only to discover a crooked assistant sports commissioner named J. Edwin Dorn is working with gamblers to drug the runners' shirts with a chemical that constricts their lungs when they perspire! Jay enters the mile run himself, starts racing, but then reverses his field to run backward and rescue a struggling runner named Wally Stevens before finishing the race in a blur!

Simon Carver

He ran eight laps in less than thirty seconds, Robert! The radio announcer actually fainted! Then in issue seven, from July 1940, Jay travels all the way to Duluth, Minnesota, where an inventor named Henry Smith has created a metal-dissolving machine. A racketeer named Black Mike steals the device to sabotage a five-hundred-mile auto race, but the Flash runs onto the track, fixes Jimmie Dolan's tires mid-race, and then uses his speed to literally shake Black Mike's machine until it falls apart in a shower of gears!

Robert Reed

That Minnesota trip was a real barn-burner, Simon! But Jay's world gets even bigger when we hit the summer of 1940 and All Star Comics number one lands on the stands. The Flash joins forces with the green-clad Sandman, the magical Spectre, Hour-Man, and Hawkman.

Simon Carver

It completely reshapes the publishing landscape, Robert. In All Star Comics number two, we see the Flash teaming up with his fellow mystery men to stop a ring of saboteurs. In his solo adventure in that issue, Jay has to protect the Daily Column newspaper from a mob that has kidnapped the staff. He literally sorts the copy, check-rewrites every page, and runs the printing presses all by himself in a fraction of a second to get the paper out!

Robert Reed

He's a one-man printing plant! Meanwhile, in his own book, the threats are getting more sophisticated. In Flash Comics issue ten, Jay exposes a corrupt school board led by a politician who is stealing taxpayers' money. He plays soccer with a guard's hat to distract him, runs into the boardroom, and snatches the voting slips right out of their hands so they are forced to take an honest oral vote!

Simon Carver

And the villains are starting to adapt to his speed, too. In issue eleven, cover-dated November 1940, a bearded kidnapper who calls himself "the Chief" invents a pair of strange, red-lensed glasses that automatically adjust to rapid motion, allowing him to actually see the Flash! He fires a submachine gun right at Jay, forcing the Flash to retreat to the local library's physics section to study how the lenses work before returning to defeat him.

Robert Reed

He went to the library mid-battle! That is pure Gardner Fox right there! But my absolute favorite, Simon, has to be issue twelve, from December 1940. The Flash is summoned to the Kurtavian Embassy, where the ambassador begs him to save his war-torn country from the invading Nuralian army. Jay dives into the ocean and swims all the way to Europe in nine minutes!

Simon Carver

Nine minutes to cross the Atlantic! When he arrives in Kurtavia, he finds a fleet of enemy submarines preparing to launch torpedoes. Jay runs into the naval commissary, grabs a massive box of paper bags and some rubber bands, and swims out to the fleet. He swims down and places a paper bag over the periscope of every single submarine, completely blinding the crews and forcing them to surface, where he captures them!

Robert Reed

Paper bags and rubber bands to stop an entire submarine fleet! That is the kind of practical, blue-collar American ingenuity I love, Simon! He then runs through the enemy trenches, snatches the rifles right out of the soldiers' hands, and literally undresses the invading Nuralian army so they are forced to flee in their underwear! He single-handedly wins the war and brings peace to Kurtavia!

Simon Carver

It is a wonderfully absurd, highly energetic era of storytelling, Robert. But we also have to talk about how the look of the strip evolved. By Flash Comics issue three, Harry Lampert left the feature to pursue his preference for humor work, and he was replaced by the great Everett Edward Hibbard -- E. E. Hibbard.

Robert Reed

Everett Hibbard! Now he was a proper professional. Born in Oklahoma, he studied at the Chicago Art Institute and actually played the saxophone in a touring big band during the Depression before coming to New York. Hibbard brought a much more detailed, academic style to the Flash. He upgraded the look of the speed lines, used heavy, dramatic shadows, and really made that winged Mercury helmet look like a solid piece of protective gear.

Simon Carver

He did. Under Hibbard's pen, the Flash's speed became a physical presence on the page, leaving beautiful, swirling white vortexes in the black night. And the character of Joan Williams grew, too -- she became a real partner to Jay, helping him investigate cases and keeping his double life a secret, even if they had to keep their celebratory kisses a secret from her father!

Robert Reed

It's a beautiful dynamic, Simon. Now, before we sign off tonight, we have to mention our upcoming broadcasts. Our next shortband exclusive will cover the very first appearance of Hourman in Adventure Comics issues forty-eight through fifty-seven, alongside All Star numbers one and two. And for our next standard broadcast after that, we will be diving into the grand, winged debut of Hawkman in these very same early issues of Flash Comics!

Simon Carver

A packed schedule indeed. And as always, we must acknowledge our technical producer, that mysterious "Mr. Moore," who claims to be sending us shortwave messages from the distant twenty-first century. He's been badgering us to tell you to send your letters, your questions, or your favorite Golden Age panels to our electronic mail address: distinguishedcomicsradio@gmail.com.

Robert Reed

That is distinguishedcomicsradio@gmail.com! Write in, folks, we love reading your letters under our warm studio lamps over here in Chicago.

Simon Carver

Keep your dials tuned, keep your courage high in these dark times, and from a resolute, blacked-out London, this is Simon Carver saying good night.

Robert Reed

And from Chicago, where the lights are bright and the Cubs are ready for a great season, this is Robert Reed. Good night, folks, and keep the faith!