Lady Flash
34 years ago - Christina Alexandrova is born in Moscow.
21 years ago - 13-year-old Christina, living on the streets of Moscow, first becomes addicted to drugs.
15 years ago - 19-year-old Christina is selected by The Hammer as a test subject trying to replicate Velocity 9. Her prior addiction allows the drug to alter her neurochemistry, creating an incredibly unstable connection to the speed force. She is given the role of Lady Flash and is sent to challenge the Flash. When he defeats her she is sent to STAR labs for help, but is extracted back to Russia.
14 years ago - 20-year-old Christina is selected as a member of the government-sanctioned organization The People's Heroes
12 years ago -22-year-old Christina & The People's Heroes are unable to stop Ben Turner from assassinating a Russian Pakhan for the League of Assassins.
8 years ago - 26-year-old Christina's body rejects its speed force connection when she is forced to help pursue Ivan Illyich Gort during his defection. She falls into a coma for three months, and is sent to a swiss recovery facility.
4 years ago - 30-year-old Christina, now clean and teaching meditation techniques, is able to unlock her prior speed force connection. She helps Wally West defeat Savitar before returning to Russia.
3 years ago - 32-year-old Christina joins members of The People's Heroes to stop mad scientist Alexi Nicolai from creating a nuclear apocalypse.
Modern fans of the Flash are very used to a pretty big supporting cast. One of the big things that made Wally West such a great Flash is all the wonderful characters that came up around him. He didn't start out that way, however; for some time after taking on the mantle of his mentor after Barry's death he kind of struggled to find his footing. There was a brief period where there was a whole different stab at creating a supporting cast of fellow speedsters, and Lady Flash was actually a relic of that era. Let me see if I can explain her adequately.
Lady Flash's Comic HistoryChristina first appeared in The Flash #7 in 1987 by Mike Baron, in Wally's very first year as the Flash. While trying to find scientist Pytor Orloff in Siberia, Wally discovers that Orloff has created a small team of speedsters called Red Trinity, characters that had grown up as part of his experiment. (It's worth pointing out, this all predates Mark Waid's invention of the Speed Force, so exactly how being a speedster works was still pretty ill-defined) While Orloff and Red Trinity are trying to escape with Wally, we meet a DIFFERENT group of speedsters, Blue Trinity. These three are Orloff's earlier experiment and are still loyal to the Soviet Union.
So coming out of this story, Wally had a few new supporting cast members in Red Trinity. A little later, during the Bill Messner-Loebs era of Wally West, he goes up against Vandal Savage. We see that Vandal has essentially corrupted Christina by getting her addicted to drugs, making her his consort. He gives her a copy of Wally's costume to fight him, but by the end of the issue Christina has switched sides and is now an ally of Wally's as Lady Flash. As the series continues she and Red Trinity only appear a few more times. After essentially dissappearing for a long time, Christina actually turned up again much later on during Mark Waid's era, now a follower of Savitar. It was actually a pretty clever use of a character who had already exhibited a penchant for clinging to charismatic leaders, and she made a few appearances as part of that arc. Then, of course, years later while putting together a team of Russian heroes for Doomsday clock, Christina was an obvious inclusion. |
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Our Lady Flash Story |