I have a high regard for the Silver Age Flash. I have quite a lot of Silver Age Flash comics in my collection, stories I really liked as a kid. They were exciting at the time, and fired a young imagination. Re-reading those old comics now (From "Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt" onwards) proves they still hold up today. Barry Allen-Flash is a neat character and his early comics are some of the best super-hero comics ever, especially those written by Gardner Fox and John Broome.
That's my opinion.
What's not my opinion, and what I have read many times, is that Julius Schwartz created the Silver Age Flash and kicked off DC's Silver Age. While I have a high opinion of Julius, it's just not correct to say he created Flash. It's too easy to take something often repeated as gospel.
I forgot that Robert Kanigher (the great Robert Kanigher) wrote the first Silver Age Flash comic. Every time Flash is brought up, someone mentions Schwartz; but Kanigher...?
It's interesting that Kanigher says Gardner Fox is the creator of The Flash (meaning the original Flash of course).
Purely by accident (I was looking for something else), I came across this web page that presents an article from
Alter Ego Vol. 3 #10. Here are some quotes from
Robert Kanigher:
I created the modern Flash. I wrote about him. I sat with him and listened to his hopes and despairs and dreams. He has my genes.
One day, Mr. Schwartz asked me to write a new origin for The Flash. Gardner Fox had originated The Flash. He was, and in my mind would always be, the creator of The Flash. I merely reinvented The Flash. I wrote a completely finished script in every single detail, which he [Schwartz] gave to Carmine Infantino to draw.
[Gardner] Fox was a creator. A seminal figure. He created The Flash, etc. I invented Flash 2, the modern Flash. A world of difference.
Gardner Fox created The Flash, the fastest man in the world, in Flash Comics #1, 1940. No illustrator (penciler), inker, letterer, colorist, or editor whispered to him in the mysterious, labyrinthine maze of his brain what path he was to follow; like all creators, he did it alone. This was the Jay Garrick-Flash of the Golden Age.
I arrived at DC by a meandering route, never having read comics (although I found The Golden A-s-s by Apuleus very comical; as were Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, the pornographic "Tiller the Toiler" and "Jiggs and Maggie" (furtively sold in Times Square in soiled little mini-comics by soiled little men), Fanny Hill, Villon's Ballad to Fat Margot (written when he was in jail)... but comics? No. Sue me. I was uneducated.
Although Fox, Bill Finger, John Broome, etc., were reliable writers at DC in 1956, Julius Schwartz asked me to write a new origin for a new Flash. It was easy...
I hadn't read or seen any of Fox's "Flash." I wrote a handful in the 1940s, illustrated by Joe Kubert, Lee Elias, and others. Just wrote them.
Come 1956 and all I needed to know about the new assignment was that he was the fastest man alive. I left the rest to my inner self. What name to give the new Flash? I was too impatient to waste time to think up one. You really can get hung up on the simplest things. My task was to bring him alive. What could be more natural than to call him Flash, and pretend that he was inspired by an old comic? And Jay Garrick was changed into Barry Allen, who was the new Flash.
The Flash's ring was sheer plagiarism. When I was a pre-teen or almost a teenager, I used to sit on the steps of a tenement house at Washington Ave. and about 179th Street, with a rabbi's son, who was an aspiring pulp writer. He told me about a character running in a pulp. Called the Crimson Clown, I believe. When he wanted to switch from his civvies, he pressed a spring on a ring on his finger. The clown costume erupted out and expanded to life-size. So, many years later, I stole that gimmick. You can't sue me. The statute of limitations has run out.
How to give Barry his super-powers? I used comics' hallucinatory idea of reality. I made him a police scientist, since I had worked for the P.A.L. for several years, and blew him up in a chemical explosion. In real life he would have been scraped off the walls. In comics, his atomic structure was rearranged. And he became the fastest man in the world. Naturally, he was always late in civilian life, exasperating his girl friend. He had to have a girl friend, didn't he? He had to be late, didn't he?
I admire Robert Kanigher as a writer and creator. It is not correct, as far as I can tell, to credit Schwartz with the creation of Flash and DC's Silver Age. As with all the best super hero comics, it's a collaborative effort, and no one can deny what a great opening story we have with "Mystery of the Human Thunderbolt".
Julius Schwartz:
...Robert Kanigher (originator of The Flash in its Showcase tryout)...
Carmine Infantino:
On one day I was delivering my work, Julie told me we were going to try The Flash. He said it was decided at an editorial meeting. He gave me a script by Kanigher. (I know Kanigher had a lot of input. It was in his style.)
.....
The cover idea for the first issue was Kanigher's-this I do remember.
.....
Lastly, Kanigher had a way with his scripts to make me stretch and grow. Thank you, Bobby.
.....
In early 1956, during one of my weekly visits to Julie's office-one he shared with writer-editor Bob Kanigher-I was informed that during one of their editorial meetings a decision was made to try super-heroes once again...
The Flash was the character selected to begin the revival, and I was offered the art assignment. The Flash seemed like an old friend; I was elated.
Bob Kanigher had developed a new version of the old Flash, and I was told to design a new character, a new costume, and sundry villains. Joe Kubert was to be the inker, and Julie, of course, would be the editor.
.....
Bob handed me the script, and even laid out the first cover. He did a rough drawing of it; I'll never forget it. Then he sat with me and asked, 'If there's anything in the script that you don't quite understand, ask me.' And we went over it quite a bit.
All of the above quotes I have copied and pasted from this web page:
http://www.twomorrows.com/alterego/articles/10flash.html