This story is reprinted from Flash Comics #1.

At Midwestern University in the late 1930s, a student was involved in a laboratory accident, and inhaled some "hard water gas" fumes, which put him in a coma for two weeks. Jay Garrick made a complete recovery, and soon was back on the school's football team. A weird after-effect of the fumes was that Jay could think and act at tremendous speeds. He soon graduated from college, and moved to New York City, to become an assistant professor at Coleman University. In New York, at age 21, Garrick adopted a secret identity as the Flash, and embarked on a super heroic career, starting with the dismantling of a local protection racket.

Jay's college sweetheart, Joan Williams, visits Jay and enlists his help in locating her missing father, Major Williams, who has been kidnapped by Sieur Satan and the rest of the Faultless Four, a group of scientists working for a foreign power. They are seeking the plans for the secret new "Atomic Bombarder." Flash rescues the major from the spies, who then fight back, and make a distraction, by sending an aircraft to strafe a nearby beach. This murderous tactic backfires on them when the Flash simply follows the fuel-depleted plane back to the site of the gang's new hideout, which he immediately invades. To save his own skin, Sieur Satan electrocutes all three of his partners, then flees in a car. In a stupid attempt to bump The Flash off the road, Sieur Satan loses control of his car and plummets to his doom.

At the Williams home, the Major is amazed by the Flash and wonders who he could really be, while Joan knowingly repeats the question to Jay.