By Andrew A. Smith
Tribune Content Agency
If you listened carefully when "Flash of Two Worlds" aired on The CW Oct. 12, you could have heard the distant roar of many minds being blown.
That episode of Flash, the second of season two, wasn't named randomly. It was a reference to one of the most important and influential comic books in the history of comic books -- and therefore, of American pop culture.
To understand its importance, we have to go back 75 years, to when the first Flash debuted. That's right, Barry Allen isn't the first guy to call himself "The Fastest Man Alive."
That honor goes to a fella named Jay Garrick, who premiered in Flash Comics #1 (1940) as a college student who gained super-speed by inhaling "hard-water fumes." He quickly donned a super-suit -- including a winged helmet of Mercury that somehow stayed on his head no matter how fast he ran -- and set out to fight crime. As you do.
Teddy Sears as Jay "Flash" Garrick. Copyright The CW.
And yes, that's a stupid origin when looking back at it from 2015. But 75 years ago everyone knew that something called "atomic energy" was on the way, although no one knew what it was -- only that anything associated with it was mysterious and powerful. And "hard water" was one of those things.
So, The Flash. The Crimson Comet turned out to be pretty popular. After all, what kid doesn't dream of being the fastest at school?
Despite the name, Flash Comics wasn't just about The Flash -- it was an anthology that included characters such as Hawkman, Johnny Thunder and The Whip. But Flash was successful enough that he was later awarded his own book -- titled, unimaginatively, All-Flash -- and appeared in two other books, Comic Cavalcade and All Star Comics. The latter featured the very first superhero team in comics, the Justice Society of America, of which The Flash was a charter member.
But after the Allies won World War II, interest in superheroes waned. Maybe the former soldiers who were the mainstay of comics sales during the war were tired of the never-ending battle against evil.
Or maybe they just turned their attention to building families and careers.
Whatever, superheroes began to fade, and even The Flash couldn't outrun cancellation. Flash Comics and All-Flash died in the late 1940s. Comic Cavalcade became a funny-animal anthology in 1949. Even mighty All Star Comics couldn't buck the tide, trading costumes for cowboys to become All Star Western in 1951.
But The Flash had not run his last race. In 1956, an editor at DC Comics named Julie Schwartz suggested reviving the Scarlet Speedster. But instead of the silly hard-water idea, he wanted a more scientific explanation for super-speed, and more serious adventures.
Thus was born, in Showcase #4, Barry Allen -- a "police scientist" who was struck by lightning while doused in unknown chemicals. Later this origin would be expanded, to where the lightning was just a conduit for Barry to be connected to "the Speed Force," the real power source for all super-speedsters in DC Comics -- including, retroactively, Jay Garrick.
How could that be? The first adventure of the new Flash in 1956 showed Barry Allen reading Flash Comics -- relegating poor Jay to a fictional world within a fictional world. That should have been the last we'd see of Garrick.
But older fans, faced with a new Flash, wanted to know what happened to the old one. Schwartz and his chief writer, Gardner Fox, decided to introduce a staple of science fiction into the Flash series to explain the two Flashes: parallel worlds.
And so it was that Flash #123 (1961), in a story titled "Flash of Two Worlds," Barry Allen accidentally vibrated at a certain speed and found himself crossing the dimensional barrier onto another Earth, one almost identical to the one he left. Only on this one Jay Garrick was The Flash. Barry's Earth was quickly established as "Earth One," while Jay (and DC's other 1940s characters) lived on "Earth Two."
In his autobiography, titled Man of Two Worlds, Schwartz wrote of the comic book crossover: "This established a comics precedent of having a character from one universe interact with a character from another universe, the ultimate in crossovers since it was basically Flash meets Flash."
Are things starting to sound familiar? In TV's "Flash of Two Worlds," Garrick mentions hard water in his origin, and "Earth-1" and "Earth-2" are established by Prof. Stein. Nicknames such as "Crimson Comet" and "Scarlet Speedster" were name-checked.
Oh, and one more thing -- when new character Patty Spivot calls The Flash, and both Barry and Jay come to her aid on separate sides of a brick wall ... the positions of the three figures re-create the cover of Flash #123.
Minds. Blown.
Back in 1961, comics fans loved "Flash of Two Worlds" so much that Barry and Jay began teaming up regularly. Before long, the 1940s Justice Society and the modern Justice League were teaming up. Earth Three, with an evil Justice League (called the Crime Champions, with a bad-guy speedster named Johnny Quick) was next. One Earth followed another, until DC had an entire multiverse on its hands, with many, many versions of The Flash. -- which has now expanded to include Earth-CW.
That opens the door to a lot of mind-blowing, science-twisting, spit-take possibilities for the TV show. For example, the next time Green Arrow visits from Star City, will it be "our" Oliver Queen, or the one from Earth-2? Will we see live doppelgangers of dead characters, like Dr. Welles or Det. Eddie Thawne?
Two characters from Earth-2 other than Garrick have already appeared on the show, on missions to kill our Flash. One of them -- a character from the comics named Atom Smasher -- had a counterpart on Earth-1, whom he quickly murdered. Garrick has explained all this as part of a plan by a villain from his Earth named "Zoom," who intends to be the sole super-speedster in the multiverse by killing all the rest.
Funny thing: In the comics, "Professor Zoom" is another name for Reverse Flash, who was the big bad of last season. He was Eobard Thawne, a villain from the future who was eliminated from history by the death of one of his ancestors (Eddie) in last year's season finale. Evidently, his counterpart survived on Earth-2 -- or Zoom is the Earth-1 Reverse Flash, who survived his demise by dimensional travel.
Mind blown yet?
Reach Captain Comics by email (capncomics@aol.com), the Internet (comicsroundtable.com), Facebook (Captain Comics Round Table) or Twitter (@CaptainComics).
Replies
In the episode, Jay Garrick said that he was experimenting with heavy water, not hard water.
I just watched this via streaming (my U-Verse receiver has been dead for the past week). It's true, that shot mimicking the "Flash of Two Worlds" cover just about made my head explode.
When that shot happened, -- complete with dialogue! -- I screamed, paused the show, and ran upstairs to get my archive.
And to think I'd been thinking Professor Stein explaining the concept of Earth 1 and Earth 2 was going to be the most comic-booky part of the show.
Philip Portelli said:
In the episode, Jay Garrick said that he was experimenting with heavy water, not hard water.
I think they corrected this in the Jay Garrick comics. Heavy water is associated with atomic energy. Hard water is why Southern Californians buy a lot of water softeners.