The Flash #123 (1961) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty good. I'm back for another comic book review. This time I'm going back to 1961 and taking a look at The Flash #123, which was the birth of the DC Multiverse and allowed the Flash (Barry Allen) to meet and team up with the Flash (Jay Garrick). So let's get into it.

"The Flash of Two Worlds" is a pretty great Silver Age tale of the two Flashes coming together to face some of Jay's most classic villains, the Thinker (Clifford DeVoe), the Fiddler (Isaac Bowin), and the Shade (Richard Swift). Of course DeVoe was the big bad for season 4 of the CW show, and both Isaac Bowin and Richard Swift appeared in Stargirl. Which is pretty cool. And obviously Jay Garrick, played by the wonderful John Wesley Shipp, has shown up on both The Flash (2014-2023) and Stargirl (2020-2022).

The book was written and drawn by Gardner Fox, Carmine Infantino and Joe Giella. Of course, I'm extremely familiar with this creative team's work as not only did Gardner Fox write some early Batman stories for Detective Comics in 1939, but he, Infantino, and Giella, alongside Julius Schwartz, who is the editor of this issue, sheparded Batman and Detective Comics through the mid to late '60s during the time that the Adam West TV series was on the air. So it's a real treat to see them usher in the DC Multiverse through the Flash.

Speaking of the DC Multiverse, it's interesting to see its birth, given that the publisher has had a real focus on the Multiverse in the last five years with the Arrowverse, particularly Crisis on Infinite Earths in the 2019-2020 TV season, the upcoming The Flash movie, and various comic book series. 

I also had to keep reminding myself that the Speed Force didn't exist yet in 1961, that wasn't created until 1994, during the Wally West, post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, era of the comics. Here, Barry and Jay simply have super speed powers given to them by their respective accidents. Barry getting hit by a lightning bolt, and Jay knocking over a flask of hard water and inhaling the fumes. Okay, so Jay's origin is a bit stupid at this point, but he was created in 1940 by Gardner Fox, who isn't exactly a scientist.

Superheroes had just become popular again when Julie Schwartz revamped the Flash in Showcase #4 in 1956, and John Broome revamped Green Lantern in Showcase #22 in 1959, and the Justice League had just been formed as well. Over at Marvel Comics Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were just starting the Fantastic Four, relaunching their superhero and giving birth to the Marvel Universe, after having done monster books for the last decade. So while superheroes were originally created in the late '30s and early '40s, the late '50s and early to mid '60s are when they really took off. 

 Before you start envying me for having a readable copy of the original issue, no, I would never be able to afford such a copy. Instead I have the 2022 reprint of the Facsimile Edition of the issue that originally came out in 2020. Brad picked it up for me earlier this year and while I've read it a few times since then, this was the first time I've read it specifically to review on this blog. It's a really good issue and a great place to start if you want to look into the history of the DC Multiverse. And while it's been reprinted in several trade paperback and hardcover collected editions, this is the best way to get this issue if you wanna see what it looked like when it was originally published in 1961, without paying an arm and a leg for an original edition. Especially one that isn't all torn up and unreadable.

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with another blog post and hopefully I'll be back sometime this weekend for my review of Star Wars Rebels season 3. So until then have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.