Johnny Quick (Johnny Chambers)

Johnny Quick
Art by Kerry Gammill and Bruce Patterson
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	More Fun Comics # 71 (Sept. 1941)
Created by	Mort Weisinger
In-story information
Alter ego	Johnny Chambers
Team affiliations	All-Star Squadron Black Lantern Corps
Abilities	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 a Golden Age DC Comics character with the power of superhuman speed. He was a superhero who appeared mostly in More Fun Comics during the Golden Age. In the 1980s Johnny Quick's adventures were reconnected into the reality of DC Comics' Earth-Two; this was done in the pages of the comic book the All-Star Squadron.

Johnny Quick is in truth Mr. Johnny Chambers, a newsreel photographer for Sees-All/Tells-All News. He invokes 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. After learning the secret to gaining superhuman speed, Johnny chooses to work as a mystery-man.

In 1941 Johnny Chambers puts on his scarlet uniform for the first time. He works alone at first and then gains the help of his friend and newsreel assistant Tubby Watts. December of that same year, however, proves a turning point in Johnny’s life. While on assignment in Los Angeles, California, he is one of the last people to see the Flash before that mystery-man’s kidnapping at the behest of the time-travelling villain Per Degaton. Due to the time paradoxes inherent in Dr. Zee’s 1947 technology, the events of that first week of December, any and all which surround the villain’s intrusion from the future, become undone to one extent or another when Degaton returns to the future. Though Johnny Chambers loses his memory of the details of that week (along with the other heroes and Degaton himself), in the end he goes from lone mystery-man to member of President Roosevelt’s All-Star Squadron.

That pivotal adventure began with Johnny following the trail of the disappearing JSA members. He makes his way to Washington, D.C. and encounters, for the first time, Miss Libby Lawrence. As Johnny Quick he meets Liberty Belle, Plastic Man, Dr. Mid-Nite, the Hawkman, Robotman, and the Atom, and with these heroes meets with President Roosevelt. They are told of the Japanese attack on the American Fleet at Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt announces to this handful his desire that the Justice Society of America mobilize all American costumed heroes into a single unit, an All-Star Squadron, responsible directly to the President. Their first mission is to fly to the west coast and search out any saboteurs and hopefully prevent any Japanese attack on the US mainland. (All-Star Squadron 1, 9.1981)