Flashes Publishers history

In 1938 DC published the first Superman story in Action Comics no.

Batman debuted in May 1939 in Detective Comics no.

8 in December 1941 before receiving fuller treatment in Sensation Comics no.

4 (October 1956), which introduced Barry Allen, a police scientist who acquired superhuman speed when a bolt of lightning struck his laboratory cabinet, drenching him with a cocktail of electrified chemicals.

110 (January 1960). He adopted the name Kid Flash and accompanied the Flash on numerous adventures before later going on to join the Teen Titans.

In 1970 writer Dennis (“Denny”) O’Neil and artist Neal Adams introduced a new level of maturity to the superhero genre with Green Lantern/Green Arrow.

In 1985 The Flash was canceled, and later that year Barry Allen was seemingly killed in the Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries.

Far more enduring was DC’s Vertigo imprint, which began in 1993 as a home for mature-themed horror titles such as Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.

Since the inaugural issue of October 2008, Flash has established itself as the world’s leading publisher of quality short-short stories and serious reviews of flash-fiction anthologies, collections, guidebooks, and critical studies.

That process was made complete in 2011 with the Flashpoint miniseries, a massive event that rebooted the entire DC universe and left Barry Allen as the sole Flash.

A ‘Flash Essays’ section was added to the magazine in October 2012.

Barry Allen returned to live-action television in The Flash (2014– ), a series that capitalized on its place in the so-called “Arrowverse,” a collection of DC-related shows on the CW network that included Arrow (a gritty Green Arrow drama) and Supergirl.

Perhaps the most obvious outward sign of this shift came in 2015, when DC closed its longtime New York City offices and relocated its headquarters to the Warner Brothers complex in Burbank, California.

In December 2017 a group of writers who had published historical flash were part of a Twitter conversation about which journals might publish historical flash.

In 2018 DC launched its Black Label imprint to serve as an umbrella for its adult-themed titles, and Vertigo was shuttered the following year.