Cover: Carmine Infantino & Joe Giella

The Flash #117

Dec 1960 · DC · 0.10 USD

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“Here Comes Captain Boomerang!”

★ 1st appearance — Digger Harkness★ 1st appearance — Captain Boomerang

About this Issue

The Flash #117 marks the debut of George 'Digger' Harkness — Captain Boomerang — one of the most durable and personality-rich members of the Flash's Rogues Gallery. Unlike many Silver Age villain introductions, this issue also serves as a complete origin story, showing Harkness parlaying a toy-company mascot gig into a full costumed criminal career, a gimmick-villain premise that proved elastic enough to sustain decades of storytelling. The character's later elevation to a starring role in John Ostrander's Suicide Squad in the late 1980s transformed him from a Central City nuisance into a fixture of DC's wider universe. That cross-title longevity — villain to anti-hero to film character — gives this first appearance outsized narrative footprint relative to the modesty of its original publication context.

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writer John Broome · artist Carmine Infantino · inker Murphy Anderson · letterer Gaspar Saladino · cover Carmine Infantino, Joe Giella

More listings for this title

NM- $5.3 NM $24 NM $24 PR $82 VG+ $106.38 GD $129.99 GD $150 VG+ $169

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History

The issue was produced by the core Silver Age Flash team operating under editor Julius Schwartz: writer John Broome, penciler Carmine Infantino, and inker Joe Giella. Broome was in the thick of systematically building Barry Allen's rogues gallery during this period, having already introduced Mirror Master, Gorilla Grodd, the Pied Piper, and the Trickster in earlier issues of the same volume. The book followed the standard Silver Age DC anthology format — two stories per issue — pairing the Captain Boomerang debut with a comedic back-up tale featuring the Golden Age comedy trio Winky, Blinky, and Noddy (the 'Three Dimwits'), whose reappearance drew mixed reader mail published in subsequent issues. Infantino later asserted partial co-creator credit over Captain Boomerang and several other Flash characters in a 2004 lawsuit, though that suit was ultimately dismissed.

Trivia · 8 facts

First appearance and origin of George 'Digger' Harkness as Captain Boomerang (cover date: December 1960, Flash Vol. 1 #117).
Lead story title: 'Here Comes Captain Boomerang!' — a self-contained origin in which Harkness exploits a W.W. Wiggins Game Company mascot search to launch his costumed criminal career.
Created by writer John Broome and penciler Carmine Infantino, edited by Julius Schwartz; Joe Giella inked the issue.
The issue contains two stories; the back-up, 'The Madcap Inventors of Central City,' features the Golden Age comedy trio Winky, Blinky, and Noddy — their reappearance generated mixed reader response printed in The Flash #120.
In the original 1960 story, Harkness and toy-company owner W.W. Wiggins have no established family connection; the retcon making Wiggins his biological father was introduced in Suicide Squad #44 (1990).
Captain Boomerang was not written with an Australian identity in his early Silver Age appearances — the Australian accent and explicit nationality were added beginning in the late 1980s Suicide Squad era.
The issue has been collected in The Flash Archives Vol. 3, The Flash Omnibus Vol. 1, and The Flash Chronicles Vol. 3.
Digger Harkness was later adapted for live-action as Jai Courtney's portrayal in Suicide Squad (2016) and The Suicide Squad (2021), and appeared in the Arrowverse's Arrow as well as numerous animated series and video games.