Welcome to the first day of Justice Society of America Week here at the Fortress of Baileytude! All week long I’ll be celebrating the first and greatest super-hero team ever!
To kick things off I thought it might be keen to discuss my favorite member of the Justice Society. The team has had some legendary heroes (male and female) as part of their numbers over the years but one stands above them all for me. He was a founding member and the first fastest man alive. I’m talking about Jay Garrick, the Flash.
You would think that because I am on the short side that I would feel more of an affinity for Al Pratt, the original Atom but Jay Garrick is the man as far as I am concerned. I’ve been a Jay Garrick fan since at least 1995. In 1994 I began buying two series; Flash1 and All-Star Squadron2, both of which in one way or another featured Jay Garrick. Jay had recently become a big part of the then ongoing Flash series and served as a kind of grandfather figure to the rapidly growing speedster family. In All-Star Squadron he was a young man in his prime. He wasn’t a big part of that series but I enjoyed when Roy Thomas brought him into the stories. So I got to see Jay in both the past and the present and really got to know the character at least as far as what the writers of the eighties and nineties thought of him.
As much as I liked All-Star Squadron3 it was Mark Waid’s run on the Flash that cemented Jay’s place as my favorite Golden-Age character. During the summer of 1995 I tracked down the early part of Waid’s run on the series and one of those issues was Flash #734. If memory serves this was the first issue where Wally and Jay first had a chance to spend some time together after the Justice Society returned from that other dimension where DC stuck them because they thought the JSA was too old the Society was fighting Ragnarok5. It was a Christmas themed issue where Waid wrote about the connection between Jay and Wally and it was the first time I thought about the fact that the Flash was a legacy character. I liked that. I dug the fact that DC, as opposed to Marvel at the time, had a sense of it’s own rich history. While the Silver Age characters were considered modern at the time there was still a Golden Age Flash, a Silver Age Flash and a modern day Flash. So getting to know Jay in the pages of the Flash was a real treat.
In addition to All-Star Squadron I also spent most of 1995 tracking down issues of the 1992/93 Justice Society of America series. It only ran ten issues but the book had two things going for it; the series was a lot of fun and Mike Parobeck’s art. It is a damn shame that the series only lasted ten issues but I loved each and every issue. The series focused on the team as a whole but Jay had a great moment in the very first issue. After defusing a hostage situation Jay and Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern, have an amusing little discussion on the concept of retirement.
To me this is one of the few times where an older person uses “current” slang and it actually works.
For the next few years Jay was a mainstay in the pages of the Flash. Waid continued to build up his role as Wally’s adopted grandfather and he had a lot of great moments, especially during Terminal Velocity and Dead Stop. DC tried to sideline the Justice Society again in 1994 when they killed off most of the members in the pages of Zero Hour they gave the older generation a supposed top flight send off but thanks in large part to James Robinson’s Starman series the Justice Society was given another chance at life with the JSA series originally written by James Robinson and David Goyer but eventually Geoff Johns got in on the act and that book quickly became my absolute favorite book for the entirety of it’s run.
Jay was a big part of that series, especially at the beginning. Robinson, Goyer and Johns all understood the elder statesman role Jay, Alan and Ted Grant played and while Jay had some great hero moments his greatest contribution was acting as a mentor to the next two generations of heroes. Johns used Jay to good effect when he took over the writing chores of the Flash and while I had dropped the title he was also a major mover and shaker in the pages of Impulse where he served as guardian to Bart Allen after the death of Max Mercury. I really need to track those issues down because I feel like I can’t call myself a tried and true Jay Garrick fan without those books in my collection.
One thing I would like to touch on before wrapping up today’s portion of Justice Society of America Week is my absolute favorite aspect of Jay Garrick. He’s married. That is hardly new to super-hero comics. As a matter of fact all of the Flashes of note are united by the fact that they have walked down the aisle but there is something really cool about the fact that Jay and Joan have been married for so long. That sort of thing is something to aspire to in my opinion. I like the fact that these two kids met back in the late thirties/early forties and stuck together through the decades. No matter the super-villains or the Congressional hearings or the disappearance of Keystone City or the disappearance of Jay into another dimension these people loved and cared for one another. I like that. I like that a lot actually. Maybe it is because I have a really solid marriage myself. I don’t know. It’s just cool to me to see a fictional couple last that long.
Oh, I nearly forgot. Another really awesome thing about Jay Garrick. He is one of the few super-heroes to get his powers because he wanted to grab a smoke.
It is downplayed these days mainly because of the social climate of the past thirty or so years but I will be eternally amused at the fact that Jay was working late in the lab and wanted to have a cigarette and it was the nicotine high that caused him to knock over the chemicals he was working with, including the experimental hard water vapors. Those hard water vapors6 are what gave Jay his powers. So without cigarettes my favorite Justice Society member might never have come to be. Be sure to check out Comic Coverage’s entry on this subject as well as K Squard Ramblings post about the differences in Jay’s origin as it has been recounted over the years. Actually you should check out Kelson’s blog Speed Force on general principle since it is such a good Flash related blog and don’t forget to give Dixon’s Crimson Lightning blog some love as well. Both are excellent sources of news and commentary about Jay Garrick and all of the other Flashes.
Tomorrow in the second part of Justice Society of America Week: trading cards and Mike Parobeck.
More to follow…
Fortress Footnotes
- The then ongoing series with Wally West as the Fastest Man Alive ↩
- A series from 1981 which I became addicted to when I found some back issues in the thiry cent bin at Beachead Comics in Allentown, PA ↩
- And still do by the way. I absolutely love that series. ↩
- Cover date February 1993. It came out on or around December 15, 1992. ↩
- The Justice Society returned in the abysmal Armageddon: Inferno. That series was terrible, but at least it brought the JSA back. ↩
- As goofy and silly as it sounds. ↩
October 19th, 2009 on 1:18 pm
As a founding member of the JSA, Jay will always have a certain significance and stature — and rightfully so. That said, like you, Michael, I find the character most appealing because he’s a class act. He’s a family man, the epitome of a mentor, and a hero in the best sense of word, but he also doesn’t hesitate to sock the bad guys in the chops when necessary. Classy heroes/heroines, the kind that serve as real, honest-to-goodness role models, don’t have to be vanilla “boy/girl scouts,” and Jay has repeatedly proven as much through the years.
October 19th, 2009 on 6:22 pm
Great write-up. Jay was always my favorite of the JSA. And I always liked the Jay & Joan marriage. Hard to believe that hasn’t been destroyed yet in the cynicism & extremism of the last decade.
October 19th, 2009 on 11:10 pm
Mike – Fantastic post! I totally share your man-crush for Jay Garrick. For me it happened back in All-Star Squadron (admittedly I was reading All-Star Squadron back issues in the late 80′s). He’s such a fantastic character. He has a presence (regardless of the writer) that makes everyone else around him want to be a better superhero.
Also, the Mike Parobeck JSA series… we’ve talked about this for hours. You know my love for this comic. So good!
Looking forward to this week!
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October 24th, 2009 on 8:54 pm
Jay is pretty much the man.
November 3rd, 2009 on 8:51 pm
I enjoyed reading about Jay Garrick, it’s not a hero I knew much about (except mainly from an Impulse trade I have). My reading of comics over the years has been so spotty, that there is so much I don’t know, reading something like the above is really cool way to find out more about the DC Universe.
I’d like him too for the married part of his history, I enjoy heroes that have something normal ongoing. And plus I’m a romantic.
April 10th, 2010 on 2:42 pm
dude jay and alan is cool to i have a jay tshirt and jay is also uin the book teen titans