American comic book
An American comic book is a thin periodical originating in the United States 32 pages, containing comics content. While the form originated in 1933, American comic books first gained popularity after the 1938 publication of Action Comics, which included the debut of the superhero Superman; this was followed by a superhero boom that lasted until the end of World War II. After the war, while superheroes were marginalized, the comic book industry expanded and genres such as horror, science fiction and romance became popular; the 1950s saw a gradual decline, due to a shift away from print media in the wake of television and the impact of the Comics Code Authority. The late 1950s and the 1960s saw a superhero revival and superheroes remain the dominant character archetype in the 21st century; some fans collect comic books. Some have sold for more than US $1 million. Comic shops cater to fans, selling comic books, plastic sleeves and cardboard backing to protect the comic books. An American comic book is known as a floppy comic.
It is thin and stapled, unlike traditional books. American comic books are one of the three major comic book schools globally, along with Japanese manga and the Franco-Belgian comic books; the typical size and page count of comics have varied over the decades trending toward smaller formats and fewer pages. In recent decades, standard comics have been about 6.625 inches × 10.25 inches, 32 pages long. While comics can be the work of a single creator, the labor of making them is divided between a number of specialists. There may be a separate writer and artist, or there may be separate artists for the characters and backgrounds. In superhero comic books, the art may be divided between: a writer, who creates the stories. A penciller, who lays out the artwork in pencil. An inker, who finishes the artwork in ink. A colorist, who adds color to the comics a letterer, who adds the captions and speech balloons; the process begins with the creator coming up with an idea or concept working it into a plot and story, finalizing the preliminary writing with a script.
After the art production, letters are placed on the page and an editor may have the final say before the comic is sent to the printer. The creative team, the writers and artists, may work with a comic book publisher for help with marketing and other logistics. A distributor like Diamond Comic Distributors, the largest in the U. S. helps to distribute the finished product to retailers. Another part of the process involved in successful comics is the interaction between the readers/fans and the creator. Fan art and letters to the editor were printed in the back of the book until the early 21st century when various Internet forms started to replace them. Comic specialty stores did help encourage several waves of independently-produced comics, beginning in the mid-1970s; some of the early example of these - referred to as "independent" or "alternative" comics - such as Big Apple Comix, continued somewhat in the tradition of underground comics, while others, such as Star Reach, resembled the output of mainstream publishers in format and genre but were published by smaller artist-owned ventures or by a single artist.
The "small press" scene continued to grow and diversify, with a number of small publishers in the 1990s changing the format and distribution of their books to more resemble non-comics publishing. The "minicomics" form, an informal version of self-publishing, arose in the 1980s and became popular among artists in the 1990s, despite reaching an more limited audience than the small presses; the development of the modern American comic book happened in stages. Publishers had collected comic strips in hardcover book form as early as 1842, with The Adventures of Obadiah Oldbuck, a collection of English-language newspaper inserts published in Europe as the 1837 book Histoire de M. Vieux Bois by Rodolphe Töpffer; the G. W. Dillingham Company published the first known proto-comic-book magazine in the U. S; the Yellow Kid in McFadden's Flats, in 1897. A hardcover book, it reprinted material—primarily the October 18, 1896 to January 10, 1897 sequence titled "McFadden's Row of Flats"—from cartoonist Richard F. Outcault's newspaper comic strip Hogan's Alley, starring the Yellow Kid.
The 196-page, square-bound, black-and-white publication, which includes introductory text by E. W. Townsend, measured 5×7 inches and sold for 50 cents; the neologism "comic book" appears on the back cover. Despite the publication of a series of related Hearst comics soon afterward, the first monthly proto-comic book, Embee Distributing Company's Comic Monthly, did not appear until 1922. Produced in an 8½-by-9-inch format, it reprinted black-and-white newspaper comic strips and lasted a year. In 1929, Dell Publishing published The Funnies, described by the Library of Congress as "a short-lived newspaper tabloid insert" and not to be confused with Dell's 1936 comic-book series of the same name. Historian Ron Goulart describes the 16-page, four-color periodical as "more a Sunday comic section without the rest of the newspaper than a true comic book, but it did offer all original material and was sold on newsstands". The Funnies ran for 36 issues, published Saturdays through October 16, 1930. In 1933, salesperson Maxwell Gaines, sales manager Harry I.
Wildenberg, owner George Janosik of the Waterbury, Connecticut company Eastern Color Printing—which printed, among other things, Sunday-paper comic-strip sections – produced Funnies on Parade as a way to keep their presses running. Like The Funnies, but only eight pages, this appeared as a newsprint magazine
All-American Publications
All-American Publications is one of three American comic book companies that merged to form the modern day DC Comics, one of two largest publishers of comic books in the United States. Superheroes created for All-American include the original Atom, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman, all in the 1940s' Golden Age of Comic Books. Max Gaines, future founder of EC Comics, formed All-American Publications in 1938 after seeking funding from Harry Donenfeld, CEO of both National Allied Publications and sister company Detective Comics; as Gerard Jones writes of Donenfeld's investment: Harry had agreed on one condition: that take Jack Liebowitz on as his partner.... Jack would be tempted to form a competing company if there was nothing to hold him, and it may well have been a way for Harry to keep Gaines under control. Gaines became Jack Liebowitz the minority owner of All-American. While All-American, at 225 Lafayette Street in Manhattan, was physically separated from DC's office space uptown at 480 Lexington Avenue, it used the informal "DC" logo on most of its covers for distribution and marketing reasons.
In 1944, Gaines sold his share of the company to Liebowitz, keeping only Picture Stories from the Bible as the foundation of his own new company, EC. As Jones describes, Gaines saw the end of the superhero fad coming and wanted to get into something more durable, like children's books and magazines.... In 1944, he decided, he let Jack Liebowitz buy him out with a loan from Harry.... Liebowitz promptly orchestra the merger of All American Comics and Detective Comics into National Comics, of which he was the junior partner, vice president, publisher. Next he took charge of organizing National Comics, Independent News, their affiliated firms into a single corporate entity, National Periodical Publications". Before the merger, Gaines first rebranded All-American with its own logo, beginning with books cover-dated February 1945: All-Flash #17, Sensation Comics #38, Flash Comics #62, Green Lantern #14, Funny Stuff #3, Mutt & Jeff #16, the following month's All-American Comics #64 and the hyphenless All Star Comics #24.
Liebowitz merged his and Donenfeld's companies into National Comics Publications. During All-American's existence, much cross-promotion took place between the two editorially independent companies, so much so that the first appearance of the Justice Society of America, in All Star Comics #3, included in its roster All-American characters the Atom, the Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman, the National characters Doctor Fate, Hour-Man, the Spectre, the Sandman — creating comics' first intercompany crossover, with characters from different companies interacting — although National's Sandman and Hour-Man had appeared in solo adventures in All Star Comics #1. With Gaines as editor, assisted by Sheldon Mayer, All-American Publications launched its flagship series All-American Comics with an April 1939 premiere. Like many comics of the time, All-American debuted with a mix of newspaper comic strips, reprinted in color, a smattering of original, comic-strip-like features. Among the strips were three hits of the era: Mutt and Jeff, by Al Smith ghosting for strip creator Bud Fisher.
New content included a semiautobiographical Mayer feature about a boy cartoonist. All-American Comics lasted 102 issues through October 1948. Debuting that month was Movie Comics, featuring simple adaptations of movies using painted movie stills, as well as cartoonist Ed Wheelan's popular Minute Movies comics; the first of its six issues through Aug. 1939 adapted no fewer than five films: Son of Frankenstein, Gunga Din, The Great Man Votes, Fisherman's Wharf, Scouts to the Rescue. The next two comics were Mutt & Jeff, which ran 103 issues from Summer 1939 - June 1958; the Golden Age Green Lantern, from Batman writer Bill Finger and artist Martin Nodell, debuted in All-American Comics #16, followed by the original Atom, created by Bill O'Connor and penciler Ben Flinton, in All-American #19. Wonder Woman was introduced in a nine-page story in All Star Comics #8, the product of psychologist William Moulton Marston and Max Charles Gaines, drawn by artist Harry G. Peter; the Atom Doctor Mid-Nite The Flash The Gay Ghost Green Lantern Hawkman and Hawkgirl Hop Harrigan The King Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys Mr. Terrific Sargon the Sorcerer Johnny Thunder Gary Concord, the Ultra-Man The Whip Wildcat Wonder Woman The Black Pirate Gunner Godbee Red and Blue Bulldog Drumhead The Red Tornado Scribbly the Boy Cartoonist DC Comics, The Justice Society of America at Don Markstein's Toonopedia DC Comics Timeline, SupermanArtists.comics.org
Gardner Fox
Gardner 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. Gardner was a science fiction author and wrote many novels and short stories. Fox is known as the co-creator of DC Comics heroes the Flash, Doctor Fate and the original Sandman, was the writer who first teamed those and other heroes as the Justice Society of America and recreated the team as the Justice League of America. Fox introduced the concept of the Multiverse to DC Comics in the 1961 story "Flash of Two Worlds!" Gardner F. Fox was born in the son of Julia Veronica and Leon Francis Fox, an engineer. Fox recalled being inspired at an early age by the great fantasy fiction writers. On or about his eleventh birthday, he was given The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, books which "opened up a complete new world for me." He "read all of Burroughs, Harold Lamb, Talbot Mundy," maintaining copies "at home in my library" some 50 years later.
Fox received a law degree from St. John's College and was admitted to the New York bar in 1935, he practiced for about two years, but as the Great Depression continued he began writing for DC Comics editor Vin Sullivan. Debuting as a writer in the pages of Detective Comics, Fox "intermittently contributed tales to nearly every book in the DC lineup during the Golden Age." He was a frequent contributor of prose stories to the pulp science fiction magazines of the 1930s and 1940s. A polymath, Fox included numerous real-world historical and mythological references in his comic strips, once saying, "Knowledge is kind of a hobby with me". For instance, during a year's worth of Atom comic strip stories, Fox referred to the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the space race, 18th-century England, miniature card painting, Norse mythology, numismatics, he revealed in letters to fan Jerry Bails that he kept large troves of reference material, mentioning during 1971, "I maintain two file cabinets chock full of stuff.
And the attic is crammed with books and magazines.... Everything about science, nature, or unusual facts, I can go to my files or the at least 2,000 books that I have". During his career writing for DC Comics, Fox wrote novels and short stories using a variety of male and female pseudonyms for a number of publishers, including Ace, Gold Medal, Tower Publications, Belmont Books, Dodd Mead, Pocket Library, Pyramid Books and Signet Books. During the mid-to-late 1940s, into the 1950s, Fox wrote a number of short stories and text pieces for Weird Tales and Planet Stories, was published in Amazing Stories and Marvel Science Stories, he wrote for a diverse range of pulp magazines, including Baseball Stories, Big Book Football Western, Fighting Western, Football Stories, Lariat Stories, Ace Sports, SuperScience, Northwest Romances, Thrilling Western, Ranch Romances for a number of publishing companies. Fox wrote a pair of science fiction novels titled Thief of Llarn. From 1969 to 1970, Belmont Books published a series of sword and sorcery novels by Fox, featuring the barbarian character Kothar.
These were Kothar: Barbarian Swordsman, Kothar of the Magic Sword and the Demon Queen and the Conjurer's Curse and Kothar and the Wizard Slayer. These were followed in 1976 by another series featuring the barbarian Kyrik: Kyrik: Warlock Warrior, Kyrik Fights the Demon World and the Wizard's Sword and Kyrik and the Lost Queen. Kothar and the Conjurer's Curse was adapted by Marvel Comics as a six-part Conan story starting with Conan the Barbarian #46 with scripter Roy Thomas and artists John Buscema, Joe Sinnott, Dan Adkins, Dick Giordano. Fox's earliest stories for DC Comics featured Speed Saunders with art by Creig Flessel and Fred Guardineer beginning at least with Detective Comics #4. Speed Saunders was credited to "E. C. Stoner," which many believe to be a Fox pseudonym; as the 1930s progressed, Fox added writing credits for Steve Malone and Bruce Nelson for Detective Comics to his workload, as well as Zatara for early issues of Action Comics. During World War II, Fox assumed responsibility for a variety of characters and books of several of his colleagues, drafted.
He worked for numerous companies including Timely Comics. With the waning popularity of superheroes, Fox contributed western, science fiction, humor and funny animal stories. During July 1939, just two issues after debut of the character Batman by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, Fox wrote the first of his several tales for that character, introducing an early villain in the story "The Batman Meets Doctor Death". Alongside Kane and Finger, Fox contributed to the evolution of the character, including the character's first use of his utility belt, which "contain choking gas capsules," as well as writing the first usages of both the Batarang and the Batgyro, an autogyro precursor to the Batcopter, two issues later. Fox returned to the Batman in 1964. During 1939, Fox and artist Bert Christman co-created the character of the Sandman, a gasmask-wearing costumed crime-fighter whose first appearance in Adventure Comics #40 was pre-empted by an appearance in New York World's Fair Comics. Fox is credited with writing the first three of six stories in the inaugural issue of Flash Comics, including the debut of the titular character, The Flash.
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Western (genre)
Western is a genre of various arts which tell stories set in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West centering on the life of a nomadic cowboy or gunfighter armed with a revolver and a rifle who rides a horse. Cowboys and gunslingers wear Stetson hats, neckerchief bandannas, spurs, cowboy boots and buckskins. Recurring characters include the aforementioned cowboys, Native Americans, lawmen, bounty hunters, gamblers and settlers; the ambience is punctuated with a Western music score, including American and Mexican folk music such as country, Native American music, New Mexico music, rancheras. Westerns stress the harshness of the wilderness and set the action in an arid, desolate landscape of deserts and mountains; the vast landscape plays an important role, presenting a "...mythic vision of the plains and deserts of the American West". Specific settings include ranches, small frontier towns, saloons and isolated military forts of the Wild West. Common plots include: The construction of a telegraph line on the wild frontier.
Ranchers protecting their family ranch from rustlers or large landowners or who build a ranch empire. Revenge stories, which hinge on the chase and pursuit by someone, wronged. Stories about cavalry fighting Native Americans. Outlaw gang plots. Stories about a lawman or bounty hunter tracking down his quarry. Many Westerns use a stock plot of depicting a crime showing the pursuit of the wrongdoer, ending in revenge and retribution, dispensed through a shootout or quick-draw duel; the Western was the most popular Hollywood genre from the early 20th century to the 1960s. Western films first became well-attended in the 1930s. John Ford's landmark Western adventure Stagecoach became one of the biggest hits in 1939 and it made John Wayne a mainstream screen star; the popularity of Westerns continued with the release of classics such as Red River. Westerns were popular throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Many of the most acclaimed Westerns were released during this time, including High Noon, The Searchers, Cat Ballou, The Wild Bunch and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Classic Westerns such as these have been the inspiration for various films about Western-type characters in contemporary settings, such as Junior Bonner, set in the 1970s, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, set in the 21st century. The Western genre sometimes portrays the conquest of the wilderness and the subordination of nature in the name of civilization or the confiscation of the territorial rights of the original, Native American, inhabitants of the frontier; the Western depicts a society organized around codes of honor and personal, direct or private justice–"frontier justice"–dispensed by gunfights. These honor codes are played out through depictions of feuds or individuals seeking personal revenge or retribution against someone who has wronged them; this Western depiction of personal justice contrasts with justice systems organized around rationalistic, abstract law that exist in cities, in which social order is maintained predominately through impersonal institutions such as courtrooms.
The popular perception of the Western is a story that centers on the life of a semi-nomadic wanderer a cowboy or a gunfighter. A showdown or duel at high noon featuring two or more gunfighters is a stereotypical scene in the popular conception of Westerns. In some ways, such protagonists may be considered the literary descendants of the knight errant which stood at the center of earlier extensive genres such as the Arthurian Romances. Like the cowboy or gunfighter of the Western, the knight errant of the earlier European tales and poetry was wandering from place to place on his horse, fighting villains of various kinds and bound to no fixed social structures but only to their own innate code of honor, and like knights errant, the heroes of Westerns rescue damsels in distress. The wandering protagonists of Westerns share many characteristics with the ronin in modern Japanese culture; the Western takes these elements and uses them to tell simple morality tales, although some notable examples are more morally ambiguous.
Westerns stress the harshness and isolation of the wilderness and set the action in an arid, desolate landscape. Western films have specific settings such as isolated ranches, Native American villages, or small frontier towns with a saloon. Oftentimes, these settings appear deserted and without much structure. Apart from the wilderness, it is the saloon that emphasizes that this is the Wild West: it is the place to go for music, gambling, drinking and shooting. In some Westerns, where civilization has arrived, the town has a church, a general store, a bank and a school; the American Film Institute defines Western films as those "set in the American West that the spirit, the struggle and the demise of the new frontier." The term Western, used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th-century popular Western
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is an American comic book publisher. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. since 1967. DC Comics is one of the largest and oldest American comic book companies, produces material featuring numerous culturally iconic heroic characters including: Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern,Aquaman,Martian Manhunter, Green Arrow, Hawkman and Supergirl. Most of their material takes place in the fictional DC Universe, which features teams such as the Justice League, the Justice Society of America, the Suicide Squad, the Teen Titans, well-known villains such as The Joker, Lex Luthor, Darkseid, Brainiac, Black Adam, Ra's al Ghul and Deathstroke; the company has published non-DC Universe-related material, including Watchmen, V for Vendetta, many titles under their alternative imprint Vertigo. The initials "DC" came from the company's popular series Detective Comics, which featured Batman's debut and subsequently became part of the company's name.
In Manhattan at 432 Fourth Avenue, the DC Comics offices have been located at 480 and 575 Lexington Avenue. DC had its headquarters at 1700 Broadway, Midtown Manhattan, New York City, but it was announced in October 2013 that DC Entertainment would relocate its headquarters from New York to Burbank, California in April 2015. Random House distributes DC Comics' books to the bookstore market, while Diamond Comic Distributors supplies the comics shop specialty market. DC Comics and its longtime major competitor Marvel Comics together shared 70% of the American comic book market in 2017. Entrepreneur Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson founded National Allied Publications in autumn 1934; the company debuted with the tabloid-sized New Fun: The Big Comic Magazine #1 with a cover date of February 1935. The company's second title, New Comics #1, appeared in a size close to what would become comic books' standard during the period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books, with larger dimensions than today's.
That title evolved into Adventure Comics, which continued through issue #503 in 1983, becoming one of the longest-running comic-book series. In 2009 DC revived Adventure Comics with its original numbering. In 1935, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the future creators of Superman, created Doctor Occult, the earliest DC Comics character to still be in the DC Universe. Wheeler-Nicholson's third and final title, Detective Comics, advertised with a cover illustration dated December 1936 premiered three months late with a March 1937 cover date; the themed anthology series would become a sensation with the introduction of Batman in issue #27. By however, Wheeler-Nicholson had gone. In 1937, in debt to printing-plant owner and magazine distributor Harry Donenfeld—who published pulp magazines and operated as a principal in the magazine distributorship Independent News—Wheeler-Nicholson had to take Donenfeld on as a partner in order to publish Detective Comics #1. Detective Comics, Inc. was formed, with Wheeler-Nicholson and Jack S. Liebowitz, Donenfeld's accountant, listed as owners.
Major Wheeler-Nicholson remained for a year, but cash-flow problems continued, he was forced out. Shortly afterwards, Detective Comics, Inc. purchased the remains of National Allied known as Nicholson Publishing, at a bankruptcy auction. Detective Comics, Inc. soon launched a fourth title, Action Comics, the premiere of which introduced Superman. Action Comics #1, the first comic book to feature the new character archetype—soon known as "superheroes"—proved a sales hit; the company introduced such other popular characters as the Sandman and Batman. On February 22, 2010, a copy of Action Comics #1 sold at an auction from an anonymous seller to an anonymous buyer for $1 million, besting the $317,000 record for a comic book set by a different copy, in lesser condition, the previous year. National Allied Publications soon merged with Detective Comics, Inc. forming National Comics Publications on September 30, 1946. National Comics Publications absorbed an affiliated concern, Max Gaines' and Liebowitz' All-American Publications.
In the same year Gaines let Liebowitz buy him out, kept only Picture Stories from the Bible as the foundation of his own new company, EC Comics. At that point, "Liebowitz promptly orchestrated the merger of All-American and Detective Comics into National Comics... Next he took charge of organizing National Comics, Independent News, their affiliated firms into a single corporate entity, National Periodical Publications". National Periodical Publications became publicly traded on the stock market in 1961. Despite the official names "National Comics" and "National Periodical Publications", the company began branding itself as "Superman-DC" as early as 1940, the company became known colloquially as DC Comics for years before the official adoption of that name in 1977; the company began to move aggressively against what it saw as copyright-violating imitations from other companies, such as Fox Comics' Wonder Man, which Fox started as a copy of Superman. This extended to DC suing Fawcett Comics over Captain Marvel, at the time comics' top-selling character.
Faced with declining sales and the prospect of bankruptcy if it lost, Fawcett capitulated in 1953 and ceased publishing comics. Years Fawcett sold the rights for Captain Marvel to DC—which in 1972 revived Captain Marvel in the new title Shazam
Flash (Jay Garrick)
Jay Garrick is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. He is the first superhero known as the Flash; the character was created by artist Harry Lampert. He first appeared in Flash Comics #1. After a bizarre laboratory accident, he acquired the ability to move at superhuman speed, chose to fight crime as a costumed vigilante, calling himself "the Flash". Jay Garrick has made numerous appearances in other media, including his live-action debut as a cameo in Smallville, played by Billy Mitchell, in The Flash, portrayed by John Wesley Shipp; the character of Jay Garrick was created by artist Harry Lampert. The character first appeared in the first issue of the anthology series Flash Comics in 1940, published by All-American Publications, he was soon featured in All-Star Comics as part of the Justice Society of America. In 1941, he got All-Flash. After World War II, superheroes declined in popularity, causing many of the Flash's comic book series to be canceled.
All-Flash was canceled in 1948 after 32 issues. Flash Comics was canceled in 1949 after 104 issues. All-Star Comics was canceled in 1951 after 57 issues. Garrick would not appear again for ten years, never got another solo series. In 1956, DC Comics reinvented the Flash character, giving him a new costume and background; this new Flash, named Barry Allen, was unrelated to Jay Garrick. In fact, Garrick had never existed. Barry Allen's first appearance shows him reading a copy of Flash Comics, lamenting that Garrick was "just a character some writer dreamed up". Readers welcomed the new Flash, but still had an interest in the old one. Jay Garrick made a guest appearance in Flash #123. In this issue, Garrick was treated as residing in a parallel universe, which allowed the character to exist without any continuity conflicts with Barry Allen, yet allowed him to make guest appearances in Silver Age books. Garrick only made guest appearances for most of the 70s. However, starting in 1976, Garrick became a regular character in the revived All-Star Comics, partaking in adventures with the Justice Society, in stories set in modern times.
In 1981, he and the Justice Society appeared in All-Star Squadron in stories set during World War II. In 1985, DC Comics merged all of its fictional characters into a single shared universe. Jay Garrick now shared the same world as the new Flash. DC wrote the character out of continuity in the one-shot Last Days of the Justice Society, but brought the character back in the 1990s due to fan interest. Unlike characters such as Batman or Superman, DC decided not to update Jay as a young hero, but portrayed him as a veteran of World War 2 with a magically-prolonged lifespan. Jay Garrick became a regular character in Justice Society of America. Jason Peter Garrick is a college student, prior to 1940, accidentally inhales hard water vapors after taking a smoke break in his laboratory where he had been working; as a result, he finds that he can run at superhuman speed and has fast reflexes. Retcons imply that the inhalation activated a latent metagene. After a brief career as a college football star, he dons a red shirt with a lightning bolt and a stylized metal helmet with wings.
He begins to fight crime as the Flash. The helmet belonged to Jay's father, who fought during World War I, he sometimes uses a type of shield, as seen in Infinite Crisis. He has used it to direct a beam of light at Eclipso. In The Flash: Rebirth, he used it to de-stabilize Reverse Flash. In the early stories, it seems to be known that Garrick is the Flash. Stories would show him as having his identity secret, that he is able to maintain it without the use of a mask by "vibrating" his features, making him hard to recognize or photograph; the effectiveness of this is debatable, as he blamed his girlfriend, deducing his true identity on his lack of a mask. Garrick made his identity as the Flash public to the world. During his career, he would find himself embroiled in semi-comic situations inadvertently initiated by Winky and Noddy, a trio of tramps known as the Three Dimwits, who tried their hand at one job after another, never successfully, his first case involves battling the Faultless Four, a group of blackmailers, who plot to steal an atomic bombarder and sell it.
It is revealed that a professor found the last container of heavy water vapors and used it to gain superspeed, becoming the Rival. He takes away Jay's speed after capturing him, making him super-slow, but Jay uses the gases again, allowing him to regain his superspeed and defeat the Rival. Like the Flashes who followed him, Garrick became a close friend of the Green Lantern of his time, Alan Scott, whom he met through the Justice Society of America; the Flash soon became one of the best-known of the Golden Age of superheroes. He served as its first chairman, he was based in New York City, but this was retconned to the fictional Keystone City. He returned several years later, he had a distinguished career as a crime-fighter during the 1940s. Garrick's early history was the subject of retcons. A story explaining the retirement of the JSA members, including the Flash, explained that, in 1951, the JSA was investigated by th
Alan Scott
Alan Scott is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics, the first character to bear the name Green Lantern. He fights evil with the aid of a magical ring, he was created by Martin Nodell first appearing in the comic book All-American Comics #16, published in 1940. Alan Scott was created after Nodell became inspired by the characters from Greek and Norse myths, seeking to create a popular entertainment character who fought evil with the aid of a magic ring which grants him a variety of supernatural powers. After debuting in All-American Comics, Alan Scott soon became popular enough to sustain his own comic book, Green Lantern. Around this time DC began experimenting with fictional crossovers between its characters, leading towards a shared universe of characters; as one of the publisher's most popular heroes, Alan became a founding member of the Justice Society of America, one of the first such teams of "mystery men" or superheroes in comic books. Following World War II, the character's popularity began to fade along with the decline of the Golden Age of Comic Books, leading to cancellation.
After 12 years out of print, DC chose to reinvent Green Lantern as science fiction hero Hal Jordan in 1959. DC would again revisit Alan Scott, establishing that Alan and Hal were the Green Lanterns of two different parallel worlds, with Alan residing on Earth-Two and Hal on Earth-One. Stories set on Earth-Two thereafter showed that Alan became the father to two superheroic children, the twins Obsidian and Jade, each with powers a bit like his own; when in 1985 DC chose to reboot its internal continuity, it merged the worlds of Earth-One and Earth-Two, Alan was again reimagined as an elder statesman of the DC Universe, the magical Green Lantern of an earlier generation who coexists with the more science fiction-oriented heroes of the Green Lantern Corps. When DC brought back its internal Multiverse concept in the 2000s, it reintroduced a new, young version of Alan on the new Earth-Two, this time as a gay man and the owner of a media conglomerate whose magical powers stem from his role as champion of the Green, an entity embodying plant life on Earth.
The original Green Lantern was created by an American artist named Martin Nodell. Nodell mentions Richard Wagner's opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung and the sight of a trainman's green railway lantern as his inspiration. After seeing this opera, Nodell sought to create a superhero who wielded a variety of magical powers from a magic ring, which he recharged from a green lantern. Nodell wanted a colorful and interesting costume for his character, deriving from elements of Greek mythology; as Nodell recalled in an undated, latter-day interview, When I sent it in, I waited into the second week before I heard the word to come in. I was ushered into Mr. Gaines' office and after sitting a long time and flipping through the pages of my presentation, he announced, "We like it!" And "Get to work!" I did the first five pages of an eight-page story, they called in Bill Finger to help. We worked on it for seven years. Nodell chose the name "Alan Scott" by flipping through New York telephone books until he got two names he liked.
The character of Alan Scott made his debut in All-American Comics #16, fighting crime under the masked identity of "Green Lantern". He appeared as part of the superhero team Justice Society of America in All Star Comics #3, he served as the team's second chairman in #7, but departed following that issue and returned a few years remaining a regular character. His villains tended to be ordinary humans, but he did have a few paranormal ones, such as the immortal Vandal Savage and the zombie Solomon Grundy. Green Lantern proved popular and was given his own series, Green Lantern that year. Most of his adventures were set in New York. In 1941, Alan Scott was paired with a sidekick named Doiby Dickles, a rotund Brooklyn taxi driver, who would appear on a regular basis until 1949. In 1948, Alan got a canine sidekick named Streak; the dog proved so popular. After World War 2, superheroes declined in popularity. Green Lantern was cancelled in 1949 after 38 issues and All-American Comics dropped superheroes in favor of westerns.
Alan Scott's final Golden Age appearance was in All-Star Comics #57. He remained out of publication for 12 years, after his revival he never got another solo series. In 1959, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz reinvented Green Lantern as a science fiction hero; the new Green Lantern, named Hal Jordan, was empowered by alien masters to serve as an interstellar lawman and had many adventures set in outer space. His powers were similar to Alan's but he was otherwise unrelated—Alan Scott never existed as far as the new stories were concerned. Hal Jordan proved popular; some years Alan Scott reappeared as a guest star in The Flash #137. To avoid continuity conflicts with the Hal Jordan character, Alan Scott and all his old stories were written as being from a parallel universe. For most of the 1960s and 1970s, Alan Scott made guest appearances in books belonging to Silver Age characters, visiting their universe through magical or technological means. In 1976, he appeared alongside his Justice Society comrades in the revived All-Star Comics and Adventure Comics in stories set in the 1970s.
In 1981, DC Comics launched All-Star Squadron, which featured Alan Scott and the Justice Society in a World War 2 setting. In 1986, the editors at DC Comics decided that all its characters should exist within the same setting and effected this change with the Crisis on Infinite Earths minis
