The Flash, or Showcase #4, is off to a fast start – No surprise there…

April 30, 2009
Posted by Noah

I think I’ve made it abundantly clear in these pages before that I am, and have ever been, an unabashed aficionado of The Scarlet Speedster. Barry Allen first, Wally West second and Jay Garrick coming along in third. Give me a little Barry Allen, throw in the time travel treadmill and some Prof. Zoom and it’s about all I can do to stay conscious. Like a good scotch, these stories just get better with age.

I’ve also written here before about the upcoming copy of Showcase #4, the most valuable Silver Age Comic of all – which, by the way, is the first appearance of The Flash, as embodied by Barry Allen – that’s featured in the upcoming May Comics Auction here in the hallowed halls of Heritage. That issue, part of the Motor City Collection, is already up to $100,000 and the auction is still three weeks away. Any way you cut it up, that’s still an impressive matzo ball. I’ve asked Barry Sandoval for comment and he is his typical sanguine self about getting excited over such things.

“I don’t really think the early bidding is that significant one way or another,” he wrote.

I can see his point, of course, as the bottom line is ultimately what it brings at auction – at least from a business perspective – and if it raises the bar higher than it already is. That’s saying something about such pricey comics. Barry veneer of comic expert cool did slip a bit in his comments regarding the Fair/Good 1.5 Detective Comics #27 – If I have to tell you why it’s a famous book then stop reading this post right now! – that’s a featured lot in this auction. It’s an unrestored, original owner copy of this second overall most popular Golden Age book, right behind Action #1.

“Look at the Detective Comics #27 at $47,801,” he wrote. “Already higher than the Overstreet value with three weeks of bidding left to go.”

That’s a great price, especially considering the relatively low grade, even for The Batman’s first appearance. Evidently Heritage Grader/Consignment Director Jerry Stephan (whose license plate is TEC 27 by the way) was ribbing him a bit after seeing Barry do the auction highlights video, because he was raving about how nice it looks and yet the grade on it is that Fair/Good 1.5.

“I don’t dispute the grade,” he wrote, “the book does have a split spine. But all 1.5 copies are not created equal.”

The run of the different Motor City Showcase comics in the May auction are quite amazing, even besides the #4. There are definitely some great titles and some choice books in the bunch that will probably go for good prices and probably won’t show up on the market again for quite some time.

“To me it’s all about the Flash issues,” Barry wrote (and with which I agree. “Maybe because he’s also named Barry, but if you ask (Chief Comic Cataloger) Jim Steele, whose nickname is Flash, I think he’s most excited about the Challengers of the Unknown. And I got an email from a bidder who thinks the Showcase #11 – Challengers again - is the cream of the crop.”

I am not one to disagree with any assessment any of these men make regarding comics – does a bug question the blowing wind? – but there’s no chance any of them will come close in price to that Superhero among Superheroes, the one – the only – The Flash.

Have I mentioned yet in this post that no one – no one – is faster than The Flash? No? Well, I’ll see about getting around to that. As an aside, I have an old and dear friend named Dechen who once gave me an old beat up comic in which Superman and Flash race, and the cover has Flash saying, “I give up, Superman. You win. You really are the fastest,” or something to that extent. The truth is, inside, the two tie, which proves nothing to me. See, Superman isn’t even a man – you know it’s true! So The Flash is, truly, the fastest man alive. I am resolute in my conviction, so don’t even bother trying to change my mind, and never speak to me of Quicksilver.

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– Noah Fleisher

No one – I repeat – No One is faster than The Flash…

March 27, 2009
Posted by Noah

… and very few are more valuable, at least if you’re talking about Showcase #4, The Flash, 1956, from DC Comics. It’s the book that started the Silver Age, and is easily the most valuable Silver Age comic that exists. Did I mention that Heritage is auctioning off a copy of Showcase #4 in our May comics auction? Did I further mention that it’s from the Motor City Run, and that it’s the single highest graded copy of the book in existence? Forgive me for not saying so sooner.

I know that this was a comic printed in 1956, and that I was but a mote of cosmic dust at that point, but this was the comic book of my dreams as a kid. I also know that the Silver Age ended in 1970, the year I was born, but I bought ratty old Silver Age Flash comics with my meager allowance all through the 1970s, the more beat up the better, as I actually enjoyed reading them. I read many of them until they literally disintegrated in my fingers. The few that survived my slavish reading and re-reading of them, as I was very politely informed by Barry Sandoval when I started working here and brought them in on a whim, are worth maybe a couple bucks each. I think he was being charitable at that, as nice a guy as he is…

Showcase #4 introduces Barry Allen as The Flash, and tells his famous origin story. Many a kid, I imagine, was tempted to douse themselves in a stew of chemicals in the hopes of gaining the same speed. At least I know I was – thanks to my brother Matt for stopping me on that hazy July afternoon.

Barry Allen was The Flash of my childhood, and is still The Fastest Man Alive, in my opinion. Wally West is Kid Flash. Period. I know that very fact has become a big part of Wally West’s character, or was until 1996’s The Return of Barry Allen, but I still didn’t buy it, even as much as I enjoyed watching Dr. Zoom take yet one more thrashing some 3,000 years before he was born.

My passion for The Flash has never really died; it’s just changed over the years. Ii now mainly consists of a plastic Flash figurine on my desk. It’s of a later vintage, so I know it must be Wally West. That doesn’t matter to me, though. One of my oldest and dearest friends in the world gave it to me years ago. It has sat on every desk I have worked at for more than a decade, which is not so interesting. The real story of this Flash, though – and I think this proves that The Flash really does have superhuman powers, in all of his forms, even plastic – is that this one survived a rather nasty flood in 2005.

I had just moved to Amherst, MA to edit a couple antique magazines when I got the call one morning that the basement office where I worked in Palmer, MA, flooded to the ceiling overnight when the Quaboag River overran its banks, travelled across a football field, and a parking lot, to flood the whole street and all the buildings on it. Everything was completely destroyed. When we made our way in two days later, knee-deep in mud, paper slush and office equipment, I went to the area of my desk. There, miraculously, sitting right where my desk once was, was The Flash, stand and all.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a miracle, but it was pretty cool, considering it was really the only thing I was hoping to find.

Here’s a link to all The Motor City run comics in the May Comics Auction. You can look, but you can’t touch…