The Golden Age Comic Blog (Hawkman page 32)

[Marv-El]

Foiling Funk's Plans. Good name for a college band.

[John Moores]

I'd hope to see them on the same bill as The Spider-Men From Mars (If Ziggy Stardust didn't sue!) as these eight-legged freaks are the titular villains of the far-fetched #24.

It all begins with Jay working in his lab, alongside the old Professor Jennings, who claims to have cracked space travel. After Jay clocks off for the night, he meets Joan, but his plan of hoping to see a movie is foiled when Joan insists they cheer on her friends Mabel and Jim Seltzer and their baby in a "healthy family" contest. However, things go wrong as all the contestants are surreptitiously captured. Flash begins to investigate and finds the dazed Jim Seltzer, who claims that everyone has been shanghaiied aboard a spaceship, from which only he escaped!

The Fastest Man Alive soon gets to the craft, piloted of course by Prof. Jennings, who was financed by the unscrupulous Enzil, who has gone along to be proclaimed ruler over all the genetically fine families from the contest. Flash smuggles himself aboard, and soon the craft lands on Mars(!), which is inhabited, apparently, by giant spider-men. The creatures wish to enslave the Earthlings, but Jay performs some super-fast Flash business on them. In the melee Enzil is killed, but Flash manages to remove the giant spider web the aliens have placed around the ship and return everyone else to Earth. Where, quite reasonably, people refuse to believe them. And neither do I. I'd like to think that this was the result of a late night cheese sandwich, quite frankly.

[Black Lantern Cliff Francis]

Jay sure does like to go to the movies, doesn't he?

[John Moores]

I guess a lot of people did then, after all there was only the radio at home. But yeah, he does. They never quite spin it out as a plot point, just an incidental.

[SDcomics]

[John Moores]

With #25, the first 1942 cover-dated issue of Flash Comics, the threatening war comes to America, and Jay's world. After rescuing Joan from two thugs with machine guns, the Crimson Comet finds that his girl has a job - she's working for the government, investigating fraudulent claims. A flashback reveals that her first assignment was interviewing a poor family who are being intimidated by Dukes, a local mobster who operates a restaurant as a front. Dukes claims that the family owe him money; however, they don't. Soon, Joan foolishly confronts a crook and ends up we met her at the start of the story. Flash makes her promise to stay behind her desk from now on and let him do the investigating.

And so, in disguise (well, in a pair of overalls; Jay puckishly keeps his helmet on his head) Jay investigates another claim of Dukes' wrongdoing - sabotaging a factory at the behest of an enemy power. Of course Flash speeds though some typical tricks and pranks, before visiting Dukes' restaurant. However, the villain has kidnapped Joan and is using her as bait in steel canisters in the basement; but Jay goes in invisibly, sees the danger, and begins causing havoc with the eaterie's patrons. Food fights, trippings and mess galore later, Dukes leaves his sanctuary to rescue his business and ends up being thrown at speed through a wall, his head comically sticking through the mouth of a mounted moose on the other side of the wall. Joan and Dukes' henchman are removed from the other canister by means of Flash sawing through the floor below, and all crooks are transplanted to the authorities.


Those used to the wise old Jay of the modern JSA issues would certainly be slightly surprised to see just what a prankster he was in his early/mid twenties; there are scenes almost reminscient of Bugs Bunny cartoons in these issues. I dig this Jay; he certainly has more fun than any Flash has had since. Long may he run.

[John Moores]

Some fine dining in FLASH #26, as Jay and Joan are attending a fancy restaurant. Or it would be, if all hell wasn't about to break loose. The headwaiter, Herman Bunch, is experiencing his least favourite part of the job - constant insults from patrons; and Rajput, a (surprisingly non-stereotypical) Indian dishwasher, has just received a telegram informing him that he has inherited the position of ruler of his country. After some thugs overhear, it's a kidnapping case, but Flash is on hand and takes them to jail.

However, they're soon bailed out by Herman Bunch, who tired of his lot as a headwaiter, decides to become a kidnapper. Enlisting the thugs as his gang, they take to the ship taking Rajput over to his native country; Bunch disguised as an English colonel, the thugs as Indian Holy Men. Flash and Joan are also aboard, however, and of course The Crimson Comet speeds into action. When the ship reaches it's destination, Bunch teams up with Rajput's unscrupulous uncle to achieve his goals. They sabotage the path of Rajput's elephant convoy, but of course they haven't reckoned on the Flash. After some speedy action, the villains are foiled, and Rajput - who had been hiding from his villainous relatives in the States - is installed as emperor, and Bunch's punishment is apt: he must stay and train waiters, and absorb the insults he hates so much.

NOTE: Interestingly, in this issue, the Flash's base of operations is still New York.

[SDcomics]

[John Moores]

Social commentary in #27; Jay confiscates the fruits of a small-time robbery by three kids, one the younger brother of a notorious crook, now imprisoned. Jay tells the kids that they're on the wrong road, and they can do better by being honest and working as informants for the Flash.

Upon meeting Jay as the Flash, the boys stumble across another gangland crime, perpetrated by "Little Sam" and his gang; however the Flash does his thing, and after the kids are riled up too (because "Little Sam" was willing to shoot them as witnesses) the four defeat the crooks handily.

Soon the boys act as semi-vigilantes, stopping small time crimes and the like, until they get the news that the wonderfully named "Slit", the crooked elder brother of one of the kids, Spike, is about to break out of jail. Spike can't bring himself to turn in his brother, and "quits". When Flash apprehends the escaped felon, straight out of jail, he convinces him to go straight, as he's a bad influence on his little brother. "Slit" agrees, and a few months later Jay and Joan hear on the radio that he's been paroled. Crime Does Not Pay!

[John Moores]

The Flash goes Hollywood in #28!

It's a deal brokered by Patrick Mount, Hollywood mogul (and of course, secret criminal) that brings the Flash and Joan from New York (yep, it's still New York not Keystone) to the Sunshine State, where he intends to kill the Flash on Movieland territory. How does it start?

Well, Jay and Joan are enjoying a meal at a fancy restaurant, when Jay sees two undesirable characters - local crooks - enter and go straight into the managers office. Jay speeds into action - breezing past the doorman and blowing his toupe off his head and into the face of a rich female patron - to see what's up. Suspecting foul play, Flash springs into action, but Mount appears and mollifies Flash's fears - it's a publicity stunt for his studio's new gangster flick - and that's where Mount gets his fiendish idea to do away with the Flash. (There's a brief buzz of activity when Flash finds out that money has gone missing, but it turned out that it blew out of the room when Flash zipped in and got stuck on the glue the doorman used to stick his hairpiece down!)

Joan, much flightier in her younger days, obviously gets her own way when she's summoned to Tinseltown,  and so it is that the Flash goes too. Mount, still keeping his criminal activities secret, initiates filming a scene, cannily asking Jay to slow down so the camera can catch him (and of course there's guns in the camera). Flash detects this chicanery, and turns the trick back on Mount. There follows a few more attempts on Flash's life, including a plane strafing his path (Mount clearly didn't read Flash #1, or he'd know that doesn't work) until a henchman spills the beans about Mount. In his usual jovial way the Flash defeats the criminals, and even makes it up to Joan, who had dreams of movie stardom; two weeks in California, hitting the beaches and star-spotting, seeing the likes of Clark Gable and Marlene Dietrich, who both pull down a non-speaking cameo. (Cheaper that way!)

[SDcomics]

Mike
(A bright, shiny point to the person who can identify everyone on that cover!)

[John Moores]

You got me! Clark Gable top right. Is that young Orson Welles below? I see Marlene Dietrich right at the bottom on the left, Mickey Rooney top left, and maybe Lana Turner below Welles(?) Is that Rita Hayworth below Lana?

[JSayonara]

Is that Bette Davis on the lower left?

[John Moores]

Some slight continuity in FLASH #29: Jay and Joan are heading home via Trans-Continental plane, presumably from Hollywood. Suddenly, the sky is split with purple lightning, striking the plane and leaving Joan comatose. Flash quickly saves the plane by making a huge parachute for it, then heads off to find a doctor for Joan.

What he actually comes across is devilment, courtesy of stereotypical mad scientist Nicholas Grag. Grag is the man behind the lightning machine, and his next plot is a bank haul in the nearby city of Danvas. Of course, this is also where the Flash is seeking help, so he takes a few moments out to evade the lightning beams which Grag has sent as a distraction, defeat the crooks in his usual way, and throw them in jail; until he realises he needs them to lead him to the mastermind. Hey, he was worried about Joan. Meanwhile, some of the plane's passengers have found their way to the nearest dwelling to seek help too, and yes, you guessed it, it's Grag's house. Before Grag can do anything however, his henchmen have returned, little knowing that the Flash has tracked them right to the mad scientist. In the melee, Flash defeats them all, and Grag, in a panic, miscalculates and electrocutes himself by accident. Everything works out for the best, as Joan wakes up, having actually been exhausted by the proximity of the lightning rather than hit by the blast, and all's well that end's well.

[John Moores]

Flash #30: The Adventure of the Curiosity Ray!

We begin with a super-criminal (of sorts), The Gray Guardsman! The Guardsman is a mad scientist, and strangely, considering his evocative name, a plainclothes one. He doesn't even wear a grey business suit. Still, here we have the beginning of (dare I say it) a Flash's Rogues Gallery, alongside the two villains from the early issues of All-Flash, The Threat and The Monocle. The age of the super-villain is slowly beginning!

The Guardsman has invented a Curiosity Ray - a beam that when shone upon anyone, makes them almost psychotically driven to find out the answers to any question (and permanently asking questions). He tries the ray on his ox-like henchman, Joe The Dope, and soon Joe becomes a tireless scholar; the ray is a success! Unfortunately Joe clumsily hits the ray and it beams upon a man outside, who HAS to go inside and find out what just happened. Once there, the man reveals that he's a criminal, and proposes a plot to get rid of the Flash.

Meanwhile, Jay Garrick agrees to "get the Flash to appear" at the Braderschatt department store to raise awareness of the "Make America Fit!" program the store is initiating (Jay was playing a game of Jai-Alai by himself!) and once he does, he is of course hit with the Curiosity Ray. At first just being a pest in the store, the Scarlet Speedster soon takes to hitting the books at the library, storing useless facts all day and all night; not even Joan can reach him. However, Joe The Dope, struck with the same obsession, engages the Flash in quizzical conversation, and of course, spills the beans. And so, Flash confronts Grey Guardsman, and curiously tinkering with the Ray, sets it to make anyone hit with it tell the truth. Forced not to lie, Grey Guardsman gives Flash the antidote, and soon Flash clears up the gang working with the mad scientist.

As for Joe The Dope, he LIKES being smart, and becomes a radio quiz-kid, still incessantly asking questions.

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