All-Flash 32 (Dec. 1947-Jan. 1948) became No-Flash with the next issue, which never appeared.
Even as postwar interest in superheroes was waning, the art and storytelling in superhero comics was continuing to improve. The stories began to anticipate the 1960s’ superhero revival, with its emphasis on colorful costumed super villains.
In this issue, the Flash is opposed by the Thinker, an enemy introduced in All-Flash 12 (Fall 1943) who uses his “thinking cap,” a metal hat that projects mental force.
And the superhero is introduced to the Fiddler — a thief who learned the mystic art of music while imprisoned in India — as well as Star Sapphire, an evil alien queen.
Described by writer Robert Kanigher as “an amazingly exotic creature,” the purple-clad Star Sapphire was an example of comic books’ new emphasis on female audiences and characters in the late 1940s. Black Canary was another.
Even as superheroes in general were on the way out, female superheroes were on the way in.
Marvel/Timely alone had five such characters — Miss America, Golden Girl, Sun Girl, Namora and Venus.
The tale begins intriguingly, with the Flash and Dr. Maria Flura found dead in the street. The Flash had previously aided Dr. Flura in an adventure involving an Amazonian secret city.
In fact, the two are in a state of suspended animation, and when Star Sapphire challenges him on the planet she rules, he has only two minutes to defeat her before he dies and Earth is destroyed.
The night sky is filled with the light of an approaching “Star Sapphire planet” whose rays are destroying the chlorophyll in green plants, and threatening all life on Earth.
While the Flash lies on a lab floor, Star Sapphire confronts his other-dimensional self on her own plane of existence, cackling about her plans to wipe out the human race.
Star Sapphire, effectively dodging the Flash on a flying staircase, is able to hurl sand and trees against him. But he beats her anyway.
“Two Earth minutes on this planet are like two hours!” he explains. “I had plenty of time!”
This 7th dimensional super-queen was clearly fashioned as a recurring foe for the Flash, but she made only one other appearance in the 1940s (The Last Man Alive!, Comic Cavalcade 29, Oct.-Nov. 1948).
The Thinker and the Fiddler returned in the 1960s to battle both the 1940s Flash and his 1950s namesake, while Star Sapphire was revamped as a Green Lantern villain.
She was secretly his girlfriend, Carol Ferris — a secret kept, at least initially, even from Carol herself.
“Eventually she would resume her identity as Carol Ferris, and have no memory of her attacks,” noted comics historian Michael E. Grost. “One always got the impression that repressed inner conflicts were driving this transformation, especially conflicts over the state of women in 1960s America.”
In a sense, the Silver Age Star Sapphire combined the 1940s’ Flash’s space queen with the 1940s’ Green Lantern’s antagonist Harlequin, Molly Mayne. She disguised herself in a costume and committed fanciful crimes merely to attract the attention of Green Lantern, with whom she was smitten.
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