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Quote1 Try anti-mutant hysteria for a couple days. Try being an outcast in a world you never made for a couple days. Quote2
Captain Speed src

Harry Christos was Jack B. Quick or Johnny Quick, and later Captain Speed, a member of the Angorian superhero team the Assemblers known as "the fastest man on two legs."

Earth-One

Jack B. Quick was a superhero on his home world of Angor, and joined his fellow heroes in defending its natural resources from a robot sent by a corporation from the planet Cam-Nam-Lao. He and the other Angoran heroes traced the robot's point of origin, finding only the Justice League of America, targets of a similar robot sent to Earth, on the now-dead Cam-Nam-Lao. Each group mistakenly concluded that the other was responsible for the robots' attacks, and Quick attacked the JLA speedster the Flash with rubble thrown at high speed. However, through the compassion of the Earth heroes—and the translation ability of the Green Lantern's power ring—the two groups came to understand the commonality of their goals, and Quick returned with his allies to Angor.[1]

New Earth

Harry Christos hailed from the planet Angor. Gifted with the power of super-speed[2] thanks to his status as a mutant,[3] he joined with several other like-minded heroes as a member of the celebrity super-team the Assemblers.[4] Originally operating under the identity of "Johnny Quick," he changed his alias to "Captain Speed" when he and his teammates were granted honorary military ranks.[5]

He faced persecution as a mutant, including societal segregation and targeting by bigoted groups, for which he found little sympathy among his teammates. He was present at his team's headquarters, a New York City mansion, when it was visited by what appeared to be the famous and supposedly deceased children's entertainer Mitch Wacky. Speed requested an autograph for his niece, a fellow mutant, but when Wacky was revealed to be a robot duplicate, he joined his teammates in battle against it. After its destruction, he concluded that it had been sent against him by an anti-mutant group, and attempted to trace it back to its source.[3]

The team's mortal enemies were the sociopathic villains the Extremists who sought to destroy the world through nuclear Armageddon. The Assemblers fought against the Extremists, sending a delegation to seek help from the heroes of another world, but failed to stop the conflagration. While Captain Speed survived the initial blast, unlike many of his fellow heroes, and lived to see the return of his teammates from their unsuccessful mission, his accelerated metabolism led to his death from radiation poisoning shortly thereafter.[4]

Powers


  • In Justice League Europe #16, Blue Jay refers to Christos as Johnny Quick, not Captain Speed. It is the only known occurrence where he has gone by this name.
  • Although this character was originally introduced during DC's Earth-One era of publication, their existence following the events of the 1985–86 limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths remains intact. However, some elements of the character's Pre-Crisis history may have been altered or removed for Post-Crisis New Earth continuity, and should be considered apocryphal.
  • Captain Speed was created as a pastiche of Marvel Comics' Quicksilver.
  • His alias as Jack B. Quick is a play on the Nursery Rhyme "Jack be nimble".
  • The pre-Crisis Jack B. Quick is slower than the Flash.[1]

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Footnotes


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