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The Greatest Stories Ever Told
The Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told
From 1992: Three strange accidents transformed police scientist Barry Allen, college student Jay Garrick and young Wally West into super-speedsters -- but it was no accident that made them heroes! This fast-paced volume finds The Flashes locked in battle against their greatest foes, including Gorilla Grodd, The Reverse Flash and many others. These titanic stories also feature the Flash's allies against evil, including Johnny Quick. Includes Comic Cavalcade 24; DC Special Series 1; Flash Comics 1, 66, 86; Showcase 4; The Flash 107, 113, 119, 124-125; 137; 143; 148; 179; The Flash (1987) 2!
288 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1992
2 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
About the author
Gardner Francis Fox
1,192 books90 followersGardner Francis Cooper Fox was an American writer known best for creating numerous comic book characters for DC Comics. Comic book historians estimate that he wrote more than 4,000 comics stories, including 1,500 for DC Comics.
Fox is known as the co-creator of DC Comics heroes the Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate and the original Sandman, and was the writer who first teamed those and other heroes as the Justice Society of America. Fox introduced the concept of the Multiverse to DC Comics in the 1961 story "Flash of Two Worlds!"
Pseudonyms: Gardner F. Fox, Jefferson Cooper, Bart Sommers, Paul Dean, Ray Gardner, Lynna Cooper, Rod Gray, Larry Dean, Robert Starr, Don Blake, Ed Blake, Warner Blake, Michael Blake, Tex Blane, Willis Blane, Ed Carlisle, Edgar Weston, Tex Slade, Eddie Duane, Simon Majors, James Kendricks, Troy Conway, Kevin Matthews, Glen Chase
Fox is known as the co-creator of DC Comics heroes the Flash, Hawkman, Doctor Fate and the original Sandman, and was the writer who first teamed those and other heroes as the Justice Society of America. Fox introduced the concept of the Multiverse to DC Comics in the 1961 story "Flash of Two Worlds!"
Pseudonyms: Gardner F. Fox, Jefferson Cooper, Bart Sommers, Paul Dean, Ray Gardner, Lynna Cooper, Rod Gray, Larry Dean, Robert Starr, Don Blake, Ed Blake, Warner Blake, Michael Blake, Tex Blane, Willis Blane, Ed Carlisle, Edgar Weston, Tex Slade, Eddie Duane, Simon Majors, James Kendricks, Troy Conway, Kevin Matthews, Glen Chase
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 30, 2016
THE WORLD'S FASTEST HUMAN CATAPULTS AFTER HIS QUARRY...
Here is the classic lightning and chemicals Barry Allen. But did you know his origin involved Jay Garrick in a Flash comic book? That's right. The Flash might be the only hero with a metafictional origin story. Instead of Jay handing off his costume to Barry, DC decided to move all Golden Age heroes to Earth Two and heroes thereafter to Earth One, which means both Flashes had never meant to coexist. Barry reads Flash Comics, and after his accident he adopted The Flash persona. Little did he know that when he accessed the multiverse through the Speed Force that he would essentially break the fourth wall and meet the real Jay Garrick in Flash of Two Worlds, a comic which is idiotically not included here. But I think what's so important about these early Flash comics is not only the unique science fiction approach to storytelling, but the impact they have had on the entire DC Universe, like creating the multiverse and interdimensional travel, is simply incomparable.
What's great about these Silver Age comics is how they create shticks that still appear in Flash comics today, like Barry always being late, the waitress dropping food, the costume in his ring, or even the cosmic treadmill, a fairly campy idea at its origin.
There are early appearances of Gorilla Grodd, Mirror Master, Captain Boomerang, Elongated Man, Kid Flash, Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Justice Society of America, and Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. Interestingly, Kid Flash co-stars in one time travel story with Barry Allen but he isn't from the future as we know him in modern comics, but from 1961.
It pisses me off to see 1 or 2 star reviews for compilations like this for many reasons, most of all that our modern Flash comics wouldn't even exist without them, and many brilliant ideas, if not fully formed, originated long before comic writers thought of themselves as clever. Don't like the writing? I'd be surprised unless you're a ten year old boy, in the 1960s, during the Comics Code Authority, when writing was so strictly censored they could barely show anything remotely violent. Don't like the art? Get over it. It's 60 years old. It was hand drawn. But I love both the writing and art, my eyes lit up like firecrackers, because this is where it all began. It might not always have the tension or humor of later comics, but this is the grandfather of all Flash comics. Do you hate your grandfather? How dare you. You bastard.
Here is the classic lightning and chemicals Barry Allen. But did you know his origin involved Jay Garrick in a Flash comic book? That's right. The Flash might be the only hero with a metafictional origin story. Instead of Jay handing off his costume to Barry, DC decided to move all Golden Age heroes to Earth Two and heroes thereafter to Earth One, which means both Flashes had never meant to coexist. Barry reads Flash Comics, and after his accident he adopted The Flash persona. Little did he know that when he accessed the multiverse through the Speed Force that he would essentially break the fourth wall and meet the real Jay Garrick in Flash of Two Worlds, a comic which is idiotically not included here. But I think what's so important about these early Flash comics is not only the unique science fiction approach to storytelling, but the impact they have had on the entire DC Universe, like creating the multiverse and interdimensional travel, is simply incomparable.
What's great about these Silver Age comics is how they create shticks that still appear in Flash comics today, like Barry always being late, the waitress dropping food, the costume in his ring, or even the cosmic treadmill, a fairly campy idea at its origin.
There are early appearances of Gorilla Grodd, Mirror Master, Captain Boomerang, Elongated Man, Kid Flash, Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Justice Society of America, and Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. Interestingly, Kid Flash co-stars in one time travel story with Barry Allen but he isn't from the future as we know him in modern comics, but from 1961.
It pisses me off to see 1 or 2 star reviews for compilations like this for many reasons, most of all that our modern Flash comics wouldn't even exist without them, and many brilliant ideas, if not fully formed, originated long before comic writers thought of themselves as clever. Don't like the writing? I'd be surprised unless you're a ten year old boy, in the 1960s, during the Comics Code Authority, when writing was so strictly censored they could barely show anything remotely violent. Don't like the art? Get over it. It's 60 years old. It was hand drawn. But I love both the writing and art, my eyes lit up like firecrackers, because this is where it all began. It might not always have the tension or humor of later comics, but this is the grandfather of all Flash comics. Do you hate your grandfather? How dare you. You bastard.
August 8, 2014
This book from the early 1990s takes a look at the best Flash stories ever told. The introductory materials are solid. The stories themselves are a bit of mixed bag and not quite as good as either the Golden Age, Superman, or Team Up greatest stories book from this era.
The book features four stories from Jay Garrick's Flash including the widely reprinted origin story from Flash Comics #1. One of the nicer ones was, "The Slow Motion Crimes" which showed the golden age version of the Silver Age Flash's first villain, "The Turtle."
The Silver Age version of Barry Allen defines the book, with pages 68-243 being stories from the Silver Age of comics. While I usually think these books tend to stack the books with too many modern stories this one almost has too few. Still, it has fun with the Silver Age concept with stories featuring top flash villains like Gorilla Grodd, the Mirror Master, and Captain Boomerang (who joins a truce and teams up with the Flash and Elongated Man.) At the same time, the Flash's key allies including Kid Flash, the Green Lantern, and of course, Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash (this story has them teaming up against Vandal Savage.)
The weakest of these was, "The Trail of the False Green Lanterns," which had the Flash and Green Lantern teaming up against three duplicate Green Lanterns who are committing crimes. It's confusing and hard to follow story that's not really a highlight for either character.
The best of the silver age stories is "The Flash-Fact or Fiction" which has the Flash travelling to our universe in an accident caused by fighting a strange alien. A lot of fun, particularly when the Flash comes to DC comics Editor Julian Schwartz to get a treadmill built.
The book then features one single story from the 1970s which really feels like an imaginary story and is kind of weak. The Flash took many historic and memorable turns in the 1980s before Crisis on Infinite Earths, but it was decided not to actually show any of these stories but to have writer Cary Bates do a 10 page text summary of the last 75 issues of the Flash Volume 1. That's really a ripoff for readers who don't buy these books for text summaries.
The book closes with the second issue of the Wally West Flash comics which has Wally fighting Vandal Savage, winning the lottery, and inviting his girlfriend to shack up with him. This wasn't even all that good of an issue and definitely very flawed for what's supposed to be just Issue 2.
Still, if you can get this cheap enough, the Gold and Silver age material make it a worthy read.
The book features four stories from Jay Garrick's Flash including the widely reprinted origin story from Flash Comics #1. One of the nicer ones was, "The Slow Motion Crimes" which showed the golden age version of the Silver Age Flash's first villain, "The Turtle."
The Silver Age version of Barry Allen defines the book, with pages 68-243 being stories from the Silver Age of comics. While I usually think these books tend to stack the books with too many modern stories this one almost has too few. Still, it has fun with the Silver Age concept with stories featuring top flash villains like Gorilla Grodd, the Mirror Master, and Captain Boomerang (who joins a truce and teams up with the Flash and Elongated Man.) At the same time, the Flash's key allies including Kid Flash, the Green Lantern, and of course, Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash (this story has them teaming up against Vandal Savage.)
The weakest of these was, "The Trail of the False Green Lanterns," which had the Flash and Green Lantern teaming up against three duplicate Green Lanterns who are committing crimes. It's confusing and hard to follow story that's not really a highlight for either character.
The best of the silver age stories is "The Flash-Fact or Fiction" which has the Flash travelling to our universe in an accident caused by fighting a strange alien. A lot of fun, particularly when the Flash comes to DC comics Editor Julian Schwartz to get a treadmill built.
The book then features one single story from the 1970s which really feels like an imaginary story and is kind of weak. The Flash took many historic and memorable turns in the 1980s before Crisis on Infinite Earths, but it was decided not to actually show any of these stories but to have writer Cary Bates do a 10 page text summary of the last 75 issues of the Flash Volume 1. That's really a ripoff for readers who don't buy these books for text summaries.
The book closes with the second issue of the Wally West Flash comics which has Wally fighting Vandal Savage, winning the lottery, and inviting his girlfriend to shack up with him. This wasn't even all that good of an issue and definitely very flawed for what's supposed to be just Issue 2.
Still, if you can get this cheap enough, the Gold and Silver age material make it a worthy read.
October 24, 2015
First things first; this collection commits the cardinal sin of not collecting, "The Flash of Two Worlds", one of the most seminal, award-winning, and historic Flash tales of all time.
(They admit that it was collected in "The Greatest Team-Ups" of all time, which was vol. 4 and this is vol. 6. However when both books are out of print, that doesn't help the reader too much. Just sayin'.)
It features the origin, some fun team-ups, and for some reason an early issues from the Baron-West run. (It was fine, but "great"?)
The vast bulk of the book is taken up by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino, and for good reason. They worked on the first two Flashes (Garrick and Allen), and it is impressive that their return to the title only improves the speedsters. Infantino's covers especially maintain the inventiveness and luster that fans have been praising for decades.
If you like the TV show, you'll find plenty of continuity to appreciate. If you're a comic fan, this is some of the Silver Age's finest.
(They admit that it was collected in "The Greatest Team-Ups" of all time, which was vol. 4 and this is vol. 6. However when both books are out of print, that doesn't help the reader too much. Just sayin'.)
It features the origin, some fun team-ups, and for some reason an early issues from the Baron-West run. (It was fine, but "great"?)
The vast bulk of the book is taken up by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino, and for good reason. They worked on the first two Flashes (Garrick and Allen), and it is impressive that their return to the title only improves the speedsters. Infantino's covers especially maintain the inventiveness and luster that fans have been praising for decades.
If you like the TV show, you'll find plenty of continuity to appreciate. If you're a comic fan, this is some of the Silver Age's finest.
February 7, 2018
(Whatever Goodreads says, Robert Block did not write any "Flash" stories. But it's basically impossible to correct the information on books here.)
So, superhero comic books are goofy. This is no surprise: They were originally written for children, with an eye toward month-to-month sales and hardly a care for continuity. If they made any sort of sense, it was an aesthetic sense that supersedes sort of traditional logic like how Superman (in his current, nigh-invincible, nigh-omnipotent form) could ever lose to anyone under any circumstances.
But! They also used to be fun. And The Flash was about as fun as it was goofy. Which was very. Flash can run 10s of thousands of miles per hour, at least, but there's always something he can't outrun. He can, however, vibrate the molecules in his body so fast that things pass through him. (Not a real speed, mind you, but a pop-sci theory back in the day—like alternate realities today—and what can you do when your character is based around such established pieces of lore.) Flash's inability to fly is another thorn in his side, though he can run up the sides of buildings and spin so fast that—well, let's not call it flying.
I have a theory that every superhero eventually becomes Superman (i.e. with powers increasing to the point where they're essentially invulnerable, can fly, etc.), starting with Superman himself (who was not as all-powerful back in 1938 as he became later), and Flash certainly fits that mold. Nonetheless, the writers are to be credited with some ingenious ways of telling stories that had to have certain elements.
A lot of the early stories made me smile, not just from their wonderfully straight-up scenarios, but also from their very direct clarity about the world. Garrick/Allen/West have it all over Clark Kent. Garrick's first use of super-speed is to win over his girl, Joan. See Garrick's good at football, but he doesn't focus on it, being more into science, and that disappoints her. Allen, meanwhile, scientist though he be, is also the kind of guy who's out there with the regular cops.
I was particularly amused by the fact that my childhood memories of Iris (Lois to Barry's Clark, if you will) were that she was really bitchy: And this seems to hold up in the stories here. When I was a kid, she was always bitching at Barry for being the Flash. Apparently, before she knew he was The Flash, she bitched at him for not being the Flash. It's kind of nice they have a sort-of fairybook ending here (as told in a written encapsulation of several dozen stories leading up to DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths).
It's also nice the way everything sort of improves over time, perhaps because the audience aged or broadened by the late '80s. But it still manages to be fun, which was, of course, the point.
I see some folks complaining because the collection is far more heavily weighted toward Flash 2.0 (Barry Allen) than Flash 1 (Jay Garrick) and Flash 3 (Wally West), but Barry was Flash for nearly 30 years, to Garrick's 7-8 year run and Wally's 5 years (at the time this book was published). The balance seems appropriate.
Worth a look if you have any interest in classic comix.
So, superhero comic books are goofy. This is no surprise: They were originally written for children, with an eye toward month-to-month sales and hardly a care for continuity. If they made any sort of sense, it was an aesthetic sense that supersedes sort of traditional logic like how Superman (in his current, nigh-invincible, nigh-omnipotent form) could ever lose to anyone under any circumstances.
But! They also used to be fun. And The Flash was about as fun as it was goofy. Which was very. Flash can run 10s of thousands of miles per hour, at least, but there's always something he can't outrun. He can, however, vibrate the molecules in his body so fast that things pass through him. (Not a real speed, mind you, but a pop-sci theory back in the day—like alternate realities today—and what can you do when your character is based around such established pieces of lore.) Flash's inability to fly is another thorn in his side, though he can run up the sides of buildings and spin so fast that—well, let's not call it flying.
I have a theory that every superhero eventually becomes Superman (i.e. with powers increasing to the point where they're essentially invulnerable, can fly, etc.), starting with Superman himself (who was not as all-powerful back in 1938 as he became later), and Flash certainly fits that mold. Nonetheless, the writers are to be credited with some ingenious ways of telling stories that had to have certain elements.
A lot of the early stories made me smile, not just from their wonderfully straight-up scenarios, but also from their very direct clarity about the world. Garrick/Allen/West have it all over Clark Kent. Garrick's first use of super-speed is to win over his girl, Joan. See Garrick's good at football, but he doesn't focus on it, being more into science, and that disappoints her. Allen, meanwhile, scientist though he be, is also the kind of guy who's out there with the regular cops.
I was particularly amused by the fact that my childhood memories of Iris (Lois to Barry's Clark, if you will) were that she was really bitchy: And this seems to hold up in the stories here. When I was a kid, she was always bitching at Barry for being the Flash. Apparently, before she knew he was The Flash, she bitched at him for not being the Flash. It's kind of nice they have a sort-of fairybook ending here (as told in a written encapsulation of several dozen stories leading up to DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths).
It's also nice the way everything sort of improves over time, perhaps because the audience aged or broadened by the late '80s. But it still manages to be fun, which was, of course, the point.
I see some folks complaining because the collection is far more heavily weighted toward Flash 2.0 (Barry Allen) than Flash 1 (Jay Garrick) and Flash 3 (Wally West), but Barry was Flash for nearly 30 years, to Garrick's 7-8 year run and Wally's 5 years (at the time this book was published). The balance seems appropriate.
Worth a look if you have any interest in classic comix.
March 23, 2015
This is a book from my childhood that I can not divorce my emotional attachment from. I've had it since I was a small child, and to this day it remains a really fine collection of Flash tales (for the first 3 Flashes). Barry gets the most love here (including a very interesting text piece on his final adventures by Cary Bates), with a nice mix of straight up super hero action and fun science fiction adventures. Flash squares off against some of his best Rouges like Trickster, Grodd, and a very creepy Vandal Savage. Also it has the origins for the first two Flashes which are both fun issues, and it has one of my all time favorites, Flash: Fact or Fiction (in which Flash crosses into an alternate world where he is a fictional character). Wally get the short straw with only one tale, but is understandable since he had only been the Flash for a few years at this point.
I'd also recommend the other Greatest Stories ever told collections of this period (both the Joker and Batman ones are terrific). Nostalgic nirvana.
I'd also recommend the other Greatest Stories ever told collections of this period (both the Joker and Batman ones are terrific). Nostalgic nirvana.
November 14, 2014
The Flash is a comic book character that has seen three different incarnations at the time of publication. They are referred to in the form “Jay (Flash) Garrick” and all three, including Kid Flash, appear in this collection. Green Lantern appears in a major role in one story and there are very brief cameos of some of the other super heroes.
The stories are all major ones starring at least one Flash and take the reader to the transition where Barry (Flash) Allen dies. Some of the major villains that the various Flashes faced appear to provide the powerful foe that quality stories always need. No story of heroism can be possible without the presence of a villain worthy of heroic deeds.
If you have never followed the Flash this book is an excellent introduction to this staple character of the DC line. If you have found your attention waning recently then this book will help rekindle your interest in one of the flashiest (sorry) and most entertaining characters in the DC line.
The stories are all major ones starring at least one Flash and take the reader to the transition where Barry (Flash) Allen dies. Some of the major villains that the various Flashes faced appear to provide the powerful foe that quality stories always need. No story of heroism can be possible without the presence of a villain worthy of heroic deeds.
If you have never followed the Flash this book is an excellent introduction to this staple character of the DC line. If you have found your attention waning recently then this book will help rekindle your interest in one of the flashiest (sorry) and most entertaining characters in the DC line.
July 25, 2011
It's always a toss up with vintage comics for me. Sometimes I can get into the retro vibe and other times it just comes off as cheesy. This collection had it's share of cheese, but overall I really enjoyed it. The earliest of the Jay Garrick stories were a little too Golden Age, but I did get into the Silver Age Barry Allens. I wish there were more of them! I thought it was odd that they ended with one random Wally West story. I feel like they either should have done a few different stories or just left it alone. Anyway, I'd say check this out if you like old school comics or The Flash in general. Probably not for the casual fan.
October 30, 2013
As a collector sinc
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