Captain Flash #3
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeCaptain Flash #3 is a snapshot of comics in transition — a mid-decade atomic-age superhero title arriving squarely between the collapse of the Golden Age and the Silver Age revival that Showcase #4 would ignite just a year later. Wikipedia's Silver Age entry explicitly cites Sterling Comics' Captain Flash and its backup feature Tomboy as part of the small wave of new superhero characters that bridged those two eras, giving this brief series an outsized place in the medium's periodization debates. The issue also continues the Tomboy backup — a then-rare solo female crimefighter with no superpowers and no male mentor — which scholars and collectors have since recognized as an early precursor to the costumed-girl-hero archetype. Together, the lead strip's radiation-origin template and Tomboy's independent agency make this short-lived book a genuinely instructive document of what superhero comics were experimenting with just before the Silver Age redefined the genre.
Captain Flash faces two separate threats in this issue. In "The Beasts from 1,000,000 B.C.," prehistoric monsters emerge and attack, forcing Captain Flash into combat with the creatures. In a second story, Captain Flash and his companion Ricky are dispatched to a naval base in New London to protect a submarine and deal with enemy sharkmen; after the sub is attacked and pulled into the deep, Captain Flash pursues the vessel underwater where he battles the razor-fanged sharkmen and a large sea creature.
ComicBooks.com Value
Show all 10 grades ▾
Find on ebay
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
Sterling Comics was a small operation run by editor Martin Smith — whose real name was Martin W. Grupsmith — a veteran who had worked for the Iger and Sangor studios supplying scripts to DC and ACG before launching his own publishing outfit. The series ran only four issues (November 1954 – July 1955) and was distributed by Leader News, the same distributor that handled EC Comics; Leader's 1956 bankruptcy likely contributed to Sterling's disappearance. The scripter(s) for individual issues were long unidentified, but Grand Comics Database credits issue #3's stories partly to Carl Wessler based on Robin Snyder's bibliography, while the Tomboy strip's authorship remains uncertain. The first Tomboy installment in #1 had been drawn by Mort Meskin, sometimes mistaken for Simon & Kirby work; by issue #3 the Tomboy art duties had passed to Edvard Moritz.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published May 1955 by Sterling Comics Inc., edited by Martin Smith (pen name for Martin W. Grupsmith); a bi-monthly title running only four issues total (Nov 1954 – Jul 1955).
- Cover and interior Captain Flash art by Mike Sekowsky; Tomboy story art in this issue by Edvard Moritz; script credit for at least one story attributed to Carl Wessler per Robin Snyder's published bibliography.
- Lead story 'The Fight of the Century' / 'The Beasts from 1,000,000 B.C.' sees Captain Flash investigate deteriorating uranium at Atom City Laboratory, rescue a poisoned Ricky, and battle three dinosaurs thawed from a prehistoric ice cliff — blending Cold War atomic-age anxiety with pulp adventure plotting.
- The Tomboy backup in this issue features a double-identity twist: an impostor girl masquerades as Tomboy and is immediately kidnapped by gangsters, forcing the real Janie Jackson into action — an early example of the 'fake hero causes chaos' story device applied to a female lead.
- Tomboy (alter ego: Janie Jackson, daughter of Police Lieutenant Charles Jackson) is described by the Public Domain Super Heroes wiki as possibly the first female kid superhero who was not anybody's sidekick, predating comparable characters by years.
- Issue #3 also contains a Captain Flash underwater story ('Sharkmen') and a text/prose story, following the series' standard 36-page format of three Captain Flash strips, one Tomboy strip, and a short prose piece.
- A Captain Flash story from this issue ('The Beasts from 1,000,000 B.C.') was reprinted in AC Comics' Men of Mystery Comics #22 (2000); a companion story was reprinted in Golden-Age Men of Mystery #2 (1996), giving the series a second life in AC's Golden Age reprint line.
- The entire series — including issue #3 — has been made available as a public domain reprint in print (via UP History and Hobby / Amazon) and as a free digital read on Comic Book Plus, confirming its public-domain status.
Key issues in Captain Flash
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.