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The Blitz Earth A
Real Name: Jimmy Travis
Identity/Class: Human mutate
Occupation: Racing driver
Affiliations: Cyclone
(sidekick)
Enemies: Helmut Schletmann,
commies
Known Relatives: None
Aliases: None
Base of Operations: Earth A
First Appearance: Big Bang #3
"The Cris-Cross Crisis" (Caliber)
Powers/Abilities: Able to run
at supersonic speeds.
History: During a race in
Monte Carlo, racing driver and ladies man Jimmy Travis
was forced off the road by his East German rival, Helmut
Schletmann. Uninjured, he decided to explore the hidden
cave next to where he crashed. The cave contained an
abandoned Nazi laboratory, complete with test tubes of
secret formulae and a red and yellow uniform marked "Ubermensch".
All of the test tubes were ruined, save the one labelled
"Blitz-Geschidigkeit".
Unknown to Jimmy, he had been
followed by gamblers who had orders to finish him off.
One of them dropped his gun, which went off. The sound
of the shot startled Jimmy, who spilled the contents of
the test tube on his racing suit. The suit dissolved,
but Jimmy was unharmed. With nothing else to wear, he
put on the Ubermensch uniform. When the gamblers came in
to kill him, Jimmy astonished himself by defeating them
with a burst of super speed. He realised that the words
on the test tube translated as "Lightning-Speed", and
that exposure to the chemicals had granted him
superpowers.
Using his new powers, he caught up
with Schletmann and dismantled his car. He then raced to
his hotel for a spare racing suit, pushed his car to
where it would have been if he had not been attacked,
and won the race. Afterwards the quick tempered Travis
decided to fight crime, taking the name of Schletmann's
car "Der Blitz". He soon acquired a sidekick (Cyclone)
and became a founding member of the Round Table of
America.
He was killed in an explosion in the
late 1980's. His sidekick, Cyclone was crippled by the
blast, but with the aid of cybernetic legs returned to
action as Overdrive in the mid '90's.
Comments: Thanks to Chris
Adams for all the information about the Blitz used on
this page. He notes that "This version of the Blitz
first appeared in Big Bang #3 (Caliber series, reprinted
as Big Bang # 6 by Image) in the best BB story ever,
"The Cris-Cross Crisis". The Blitz differs from the
Flash, in that Jimmy's personality (as well as his
colour scheme) are the opposite of the easy going Barry
Allen.
It would appear that allowing for the
20 year time difference between the two Earths, that
Jimmy and Mack (the Blitz of Earth B) got their powers
at the same time, in the same laboratory." The explosion
that killed the Earth A Blitz and crippled Cyclone
(leading to him becoming Overdrive) was first mentioned
in Big Bang # 4 (Caliber series), but it has never
actually been depicted.
CLARIFICATIONS: Not to be
confused with
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