PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite Things About SHOWCASE #4
The celebrated Mr. K pays tribute to the Flash’s anniversary — and the birth of the Silver Age… — UPDATED 7/3/26: THE FLASH debuted 70 years ago, in the pages of DC’s Showcase #4, on July 3, 1956 — kicking off the Silver Age! To celebrate both landmarks, we’ve got a FOUR-PART celebration for you! Once you speed through this piece — which first ran in 2021, celebrating the issue’s 65th anniversary — run to the links below for three new segments! — Dan — By PAUL KUPPERBERG I got into comic-book collecting when the collecting was good, when history was being made practically weekly on the newsstand and back issues were still available for reasonable prices, even taking inflation into account. It must have been around 1970 or 1971, when I was working diligently to complete my collection of Showcase, one of my all-time favorite — and probably the most important — comic book titles of the Silver Age. Running for 93 (often) glorious issues from March-April 1956 to September 1970, it was ground zero for the revitalization of the comic book superhero, beginning with Issue #4 — the revamping and re-introduction of the Flash. Taking only the Flash name from the original Scarlet Speedster, 1940s Jay Garrick, editor Julie Schwartz, writer Robert Kanigher, and artists Carmine Infantino and Joe Kubert built a whole new character who had solid roots in the original. Showcase #4 (pub date Sept./Oct. 1956) was, and remains, one of the key key issues of the era, and copies were not easily obtained, even then. But in a rare act of fraternal benevolence, my older brother Alan, who was then working in DC’s production department and was a frequent visitor at Neal Adams’ Continuity Associates, mentioned that artist Jack Abel had a copy of Showcase #4 laying around on his drawing board forever. Should he ask if Jack would sell it? Long story short, Alan asked, Jack would, and with $10 borrowed from my mother, I became the proud owner of a beautiful, near mint copy of the first appearance of the Silver Age Flash. (No, I don’t still have it. It fell victim to my starving artist years, circa 1980, when I sold it to comics dealer Larry Charet in Chicago for $900, at a time when my rent was $145 a month....
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