Review by Frank Plowright

If you’re not compelled to start at the beginning, and only need a sample of the way Flash looked in the 1960s, this is the peak material. New readers can pick up the backgrounds of Flash, Kid Flash, Elongated Man and the assorted villains, and there’s no need to know who the Justice Society of America are to appreciate their return after fifteen years in limbo. Carmine Infantino has hit an artistic plateau while alternating writers John Broome and Gardner Fox provide clever, science-based stories featuring super speed trickery.

It’s not exclusively the case, but Broome is more inclined to return the villains he’s already introduced (see Volume One and Volume Two), while Fox prefers the exotica of taking Flash to other worlds, pitting him against alien threats, or guest starring other DC characters. It’s Fox who introduces the idea of Flash palling around with Justice League comrade Green Lantern, and who pens the small town superheroics of Kid Flash back-up strips, the last of which appear here.

The final two members of Flash’s core foes also make their débuts in this selection, first Heat Wave, then Reverse Flash. Both are saddled with limitations. In the case of Flash’s evil counterpart from the future it’s being referred to here and for a long time afterwards as Professor Zoom. Mick Rory, though, was saddled with a strangely unglamorous costume, all white and padded, which suggests a fire retardant material. That might be practical, but Infantino was also the artist who dressed the Pied Piper in a green and white pixie costume and gave Captain Boomerang a blue monstrosity with boomerang motifs and a 1950s flight attendant’s cap. Heat Wave meets his opposite in Captain Cold with both mooning over a celebrity. Time has altered viewpoints, and what in 1963 was light comedy now has a disturbing undertone.

That’s an exception, though, and allowing for the concept of diversity still being a couple of decades away at DC, these light superhero dramas remain fun in small doses, while Infantino’s stylish art is under-rated these days.

These stories are available in other formats. They spanned the hardback Flash Archives Volume 4 and Volume 5, are part of the second Flash: Silver Age Omnibus, and in black and white are spread over Showcase Presents the Flash Volume 2 and Volume 3.