Johnny Quick

Johnny Quick (Golden Age)
Missing image Johnnyquick.jpg Art by Kerry Gammill & Bruce Patterson
Publisher DC Comics First appearance More Fun Comics #71 (September 1941) Created by
Statistics Real name Johnny Chambers Status Deceased Affiliations All-Star Squadron Previous affiliations Notable aliases Notable relatives Libby Lawrence (aka Liberty Belle, ex-wife); Jesse Chambers (aka Jesse Quick, daughter) Notable powers Can move at very high speeds. Has an invisible aura to protect his body and clothes against air friction. Can sometimes use speed to engage in flight.

Johnny Quick is the name of two DC Comics characters, each with the power of superhuman speed. The first was a superhero who appeared mostly in More Fun Comics during the Golden Age. The other was a supervillain, an evil version of The Flash from Earth-Three, appearing mostly during the Silver Age.

Superhero

Johnny Quick's secret identity was Johnny Chambers, a newsreel photographer. He invoked his power by reciting a mathematical formula ("3X2(9YZ)4A") taught to him by his childhood guardian, Professor Gill, who had in turn derived it from inscriptions found in a Pharaoh's tomb.

Johnny Quick was an important member of the World War Two era team known as the All-Star Squadron, written by Roy Thomas. It was in the pages of All-Star Squadron (written during the 1980s) that Johnny Quick met and began a relationship with the costumed heroine known as Liberty Belle.

In modern appearances, Johnny's speed formula is explained as a mental focus to channel the energy of the Speed Force; Johnny himself disbelieved the existence of this semi-mystical extradimensional energy source until his final battle with Savitar, in which he finally felt the presence of the Speed Force and merged with it.

His modern-day successor was his daughter Jesse Quick, a one-time member of the Titans, who had inherited super-strength from her mother Liberty Belle and had learned the Speed Formula from her father.

Supervillain

Johnny Quick was a supervillain on the alternate Earth designated as Earth-Three, but rather than being a counterpart of the Earth-Two Johnny Quick, he was a version of the Flash. He and the other members of the Crime Syndicate of America (all of whom were villainous counterparts of Justice League of America members) were Earth-Three's only superpowered beings, and had never been defeated by Earth-Three's only hero, Luthor (a heroic counterpart to Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor). Like the rest of the Crime Syndicate, he perished during the Crisis at the hands of the Anti-Monitor.

The character was revived in the 1990s as a villain from the "Anti-Matter Universe", rather than being from Earth-Three.

External links

• The original Johnny Quick
• Information on the Golden Age Johnny Quick stories
• Johnny Quick in the Toonopedia
• The Earth-3 Johnny Quick

See also: Johnny Quick, All-Star Squadron, Anti-Monitor, Crime Syndicate of America, DC Comics, First appearance