Notable characters |
Flash (Jay Garrick) Flash (Wally West) |
---|---|
First appearance | Flash Comics #1 (January 1940) |
Publisher | DC Comics |
Keystone City is a fictional city in the DC Comics Universe. Specifically, it is the home of both the original Flash, Jay Garrick, and the third Flash, Wally West. Keystone City first appeared in the 1940s in the original Flash Comics series.
Within the comics, Keystone has been described as being "the blue collar capital of the United States" and a center of industry.
Keystone City's location over the years has been treated as vague, much like DC's other fictional cities such as Gotham City and Metropolis, though most writers have shown it as being located in Pennsylvania (likely due to Pennsylvania being nicknamed "the Keystone State"). Starting in the 1990s, however, Keystone has been treated as being located in Kansas, near the Kansas/Missouri border, adjacent to Central City. JSA #16 (November 2000) explicitly states that Keystone City is in Ohio, but Flash (vol. 2) #188 (September 2002) states that it is in Kansas. In the latter, the Flash constructs a bridge that connects Keystone City and Central City. (His internal monologue reads, "Keystone City, Kansas. Central City, Missouri. Forever united, and under my protection.")
Under DC's Multiverse system between the early 1960s and 1985–1986's Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries, Keystone City is located on Earth-Two (home of the Justice Society and DC's Golden Age characters), in the same space as Earth-One's Central City (Earth-One being the home of the Silver Age superheroes, and Central City being the home of the Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen). With the changes rendered to DC's fictional reality due to Crisis, Keystone and Central become twin cities.