To start February we are running back through time to look at the origins of one of DC comics most famous superheroes and founding member of the Justice League – The Flash (Jay Garrick).

We start out at Midwestern University in the late 1930s where a student was involved in a laboratory accident in which he inhaled some “hard water gas” fumes, putting him in a coma for two weeks. The student, Jay Garrick, makes a complete recovery, and soon was back at Midtown University and on the school’s football team. Noticing a weird after-effect of the fumes, Jay found that he could now think and act at tremendous speeds. He soon graduated from college and moved to New York City to become an assistant professor at Coleman University. Here is where the hero is born, as at age 21, Garrick adopts a secret identity known as the Flash. From here the Flash embarks on a super heroic career, starting with the dismantling of a local protection racket.

Jay’s college sweetheart, Joan Williams, visits Jay and enlists his help in locating her missing father, Major Williams, who has been kidnapped by Sieur Satan and the rest of the Faultless Four, a group of scientists working for a foreign power. They are seeking the plans for the secret new Atomic Bombarder. Flash rescues the major from the spies, who in an attempt to fight back, make a distraction – sending an aircraft to strafe a nearby beach. The murderous tactic backfires on them when the Flash simply follows the fuel-depleted plane back to the site of the gang’s new hideout, which he immediately storms into. To save his own skin, Sieur Satan electrocutes all three of his partners, then flees in a car. In a desperate attempt to evade the Flash, Sieur tries to bump The Flash off the road, in turn losing control of his car and plummeting to his doom.

At the Williams home, the Major is amazed by the Flash and wonders who this individual really is, while Joan knowingly repeats the question to Jay.

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