Flash #179 (On Sale: March 5, 1968) has a Ross Andru and Mike Esposito cover."The Flash -- Fact or Fiction?" by Cary Bates, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito is a Bates classic. " Flash encounters a hurricane-like creature known as a Nok which feeds off Flash's aura. The Nok follows the Flash, who is unable to find a way to stop the creature. An alien hunter appears and tells Flash that he is responsible for bringing the Nok to Earth, but the Flash must recapture it before his ship leaves.
While fighting the Nok, Flash is thrown into a parallel universe. He soon discovers that super-heroes only exist as comic book characters in this reality (This it the first story to take place on Earth-Prime, a parallel universe in which the Flash and other super-heroes only exist as comic book characters. It is not the real Earth and would later develop two super-heroes of its own, Ultraa and Superboy.). He is unable to cross the dimensional barrier to return home, so he looks up the one person who will believe that he is a super-hero, DC Comics editor Julius Schwartz.
At the DC offices, Flash meets Julie and proves that he has super speed. Julie then gathers parts for the Flash to build a cosmic treadmill. The treadmill enables him to return to Earth-1. Once, he is back in his own universe, Flash is able to stop the Nok using a chemical that mimics his aura. The alien hunter then takes the Nok away from Earth.Reprinted in Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told HC, Greatest Flash Stories Ever Told TPB and Flash: The Greatest Stories Ever Told TPB.
Edited by Julius Schwartz.
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4 comments:
"It is not the real Earth . . ."
What? You mean Flash didn't really come to our Earth and meet Julie?
Actually, I think at the time it was supposed to be the "real" Earth (although, of course, they didn't expect anybody to believe it really happened). Even later, when they introduced Ultraa, they had him remain unknown to the public on Earth-Prime, so that they could still pretend that it was "real." It wasn't until Crisis that they turned around and said that Earth-Prime wasn't our real Earth after all. [In my view, the fact that our Earth wasn't destroyed 22 years ago simply means that what I've been contending ever since then is true: Crisis never actually happened; Earths 1, 2, S, etc., are still out there; and all the stories DC has published since then have been false, because none of their current writers or editors have brain waves properly attuned to pick up "vibrations" from the other Earths, like Gardner Fox did. (In fact, I'm not sure whether a lot of their current writers and editors even have brain waves at all.)]
I got this comic autographed by Julie Schwartz when he was a guest at FallCon here in the Twin Cities a few years ago. It was the first time I ever had a comic signed by a character in the comic.
Cool. I would have loved to get that issue of All-Star Western autographed, where Gray Morrow drew El Diablo and put Gil Kane, Dick Giordano and Al Williamson in as the characters.
As for the Earth-This, Earth-That bullshit, I don't really pay much attention to all the nonsense, i.e., everything that came after the first issue of Crisis. I had someone argue with me the other day that I don't need to explain anything that happened in the Brave and the Bold because it all happened on Earth-H (I think that stands for Earth-Haney!).
Keller said: "I had someone argue with me the other day that I don't need to explain anything that happened in the Brave and the Bold because it all happened on Earth-H (I think that stands for Earth-Haney!)."
I believe the usual term used (jokingly) by fans of late-60s/early-70s B&B is "Earth-B" (the "B" standing for editor Murray Boltinoff).
Yeah, that may have been it. I just think it's a sad commentary on where the DC universe has gone.
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