Hello and welcome to Comic Drake where I talk about comic books and my name is Drake.
Previously on the channel, we analyzed the fastest man alive, The Flash and compared
his speed to that of Superman, but many of you guys left comments and were curious if
The Flash was faster than Shazam… er… Captain Marvel or whatever you want to call
him, but let’s give the fans what they want and put an obnoxious amount of research to
answer this question once and for all.
Enjoy!
For those of you who aren’t super familiar with the powerset of Captain Marvel, here’s
a quick refresher.
He has the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power
of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and finally, the speed of Mercury.
Now, despite the fact that Shazam has a weird mishmash of powers from a bunch of Greek gods,
heroes, and… a Jewish king, it’s interesting to note that Captain Marvel gets his speed
and strength from Mercury and Hercules respectively, a Roman god and demigod.
More on that later.
In order to figure out who is faster between our two heroes, the most logical place to
start is looking at any races that the two of them may have had.
The first one that comes to mind is when Captain Marvel caught up with The Flash, Barry Allen,
in Justice #7 in 2005, when Barry was being forced to constantly run as fast as he could.
Unfortunately though, this is an alternate universe and there really hasn’t been an
official race against the Flashes and Shazam in the main DC Comics universe, at least not
one that I was able to find.
So in order to put this debate to rest, we’ll need to get creative and figure out if Mercury
is faster than Flash considering that’s where Shazam draws his powers.
As we’ve explained multiple times on this channel, The Flashes are what are known as
speedsters meaning that they draw their super speed from an interdimensional power called
the Speed Force.
By looking at our old friend, the map of the DC Comics multiverse, you can see that the
Speed Force surrounds the fifty two multiverses, separating it from the Sphere of Gods.
It’s within this sphere that we have Skyland, the dimension of any non Abrahamic gods and
their various pantheons.
This is important to note because since Skyland and the gods within it exist outside of the
Speed Force, it stands to reason that the various gods of speed transcend the capabilities
of speedsters.
To prove this however, we’ll need to dig deep within the annals of DC Comics history.
The only proper comparison for Mercury’s speed is that of the Greek god, Hermes.
“But Drake!”
many of you guys might be asking “Mercury is just the Roman name for Hermes and they’re
the same person!”
Well that might be true for the mythology of our real world, but in DC Comics, the Greek
and Roman gods are actually separate entities entirely.
This happened when the Greek gods created avatars for their Roman worshipers in order
to literally be in two places at once, but over time, the Roman gods ended up becoming
distinct from their original Greek counterparts.
Now we don’t know if Hermes perfectly divided his power when creating Mercury, but regardless,
we’ve seen comparable speeds when the two of them fought so it’s fair to say that
they’re pretty much equals.
Using this knowledge, we can take a look at Flash Vol 2 #55 where Hermes straight up annihilates
The Flash at the time, Wally West, in a race.
It’s not even a contest with Hermes seemingly toying with Wally the entire time.
We even get to see an alternate universe Barry Allen race against Hermes in the comic tie-in
to the video game, Injustice: Gods Among Us, but here’s the thing… that’s the exact
same Hermes that Wally raced against in the main DC Comics universe!
...Kind of.
You see, the gods of DC Comics aren’t physical beings per-se.
They dwell within the Sphere of Gods sort of like disembodied ideas and that is referred
to as their “godhead”.
Each god’s godhead can be refracted like light through a prism, making mortal copies
of themselves among the various universes.
They’re connected, but still separate from the godhead itself.
Because comics.
The best and most well known example of this is the New God, Darkseid, who appears in pretty
much every incarnation of the DC multiverse, but has only shown his godhead in the event
Final Crisis.
So back to the zoom zoom fast stuff.
Just like his protege, Hermes INSTANTLY took down the Injustice Barry Allen, catching up
to and almost killing him within the blink of an eye.
So that solves it!
The Speed of Mercury makes Captain Marvel quicker than even the fastest speedsters which
means that he’s faster than every single Flash, right?
Well… what if I told you that there is a Flash out there that doesn’t rely on the
Speed Force?
In fact, he gets his speed from the very same place as Shazam, Mercury.
That’s right!
The post Flashpoint version of Earth 2 features the death of EVERY SINGLE of the Roman gods.
Now, this is interesting because since their death, none of the Roman gods have appeared
in ANY form throughout the multiverse from what we can see.
So at this point in time, it’s not known if it was their refractions that perished
or rather their godheads.
Anyway.
In the Earth 2 books, Mercury appears before a man named Jay Garrick and passes along his
powers before dying off, giving Jay access to the same power as Shazam’s speed of Mercury,
but here’s where things get tricky though.
There isn’t a Captain Marvel on Earth 2 so there’s no way to directly compare the
speed of both heroes, but one of two scenarios is likely.
If just a refraction of Mercury died off and granted Jay speed, that would make him as
fast as Shazam.
However, if this was the straight up godhead of Mercury who died off and passed his powers
along to Jay Garrick, that would mean that Jay is more or less the new Mercury meaning
that Captain Marvel gets his speed FROM Jay!
Therefore, that would make this Flash faster.
So is Shazam faster than The Flash?
Yes, but maybe not the Earth 2 Jay Garrick Flash.
But hey, that’s just a theory.
A COMIC THEORY!
I’m probably going to get a cease and desist.
As always, this video would not be possible without all of my amazing supporters over
on Patreon and I want to give a huge shout-out to Yehoshua Flores, Ashley Donson, Bonnie
Davies, Billy Lewis, and Tim Wyllis.
Thank you guys for being awesome and you can see even more names down there in the description
below!
But if you like this video then why not consider watching another one?
Like our previous episode on if The Flash is faster than Superman!
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But thanks for joining in this time.
Hope to see you guys next time.
Have a great day!