Jesse Quick
24 years ago - Jesse Chambers is born the daughter of Johnny Chambers & Libby Lawrence, who both retire from the All-Star Squadron.
20 years ago - 4-year-old Jesse's parents Johnny Chambers & Libby Lawrence divorce after she has an affair with John Law. Her father founds Quickstart Enterprises.
8 years ago - 16-year-old Jesse begins working at Quickstart Enterprises, finishing high school early and beginning taking college classes.
6 years ago - 18-year-old Jesse Chambers' father Johnny Chambers passes away. He gives her his company and speed formula in his will, but she relies on the board of directors to run the company while she attends college and begins learning how to use her new speed powers, helping out Wally West as Jesse Quick.
5 years ago - 19-year-old Jesse joins Arsenal's Teen Titans. She earns her bachelor's degree and begins working toward an MBA.
4 years ago - 20-year-old Jesse is invited to join the reformed Titans.
3 years ago - 21-year-old Jesse is injured fighting Brainiac drones with the Titans. She has to spend 18 months rehabilitating her leg. She earns her MBA, and takes over as the CEO of Quickstart Enterprises
1 years ago - 23-year-old Jesse joins all the surviving Titans in space to save Donna Troy, and on her return is invited to join the Justice Society.
Jesse Quick appeared in a few seasons of the Flash live action TV series, although her character was pretty far removed from the one from the comic. I can kind of see why; she was built in an era where DC's potential to build new characters out of existing legacies was really firing on all cylinders, when comics weren't afraid to try a million new things every month just to see what worked and what didn't.
They didn't have to work that hard to make Jesse, though... she's the most obvious type of legacy character; just the child of a classic hero, taking their powers and applying them to the modern world. Jesse just FEELS very modern, and we want to make sure we retain that feeling, keeping her firmly facing toward the future.
They didn't have to work that hard to make Jesse, though... she's the most obvious type of legacy character; just the child of a classic hero, taking their powers and applying them to the modern world. Jesse just FEELS very modern, and we want to make sure we retain that feeling, keeping her firmly facing toward the future.
Jesse Quick's Comic HistoryJesse Quick's first appearance was in a 10-issue 1992 miniseries by Len Strazewski called Justice Society of America, a book that does a TON of heavy lifting to reintegrate the classic Justice Society into modern continuity after their history was rewritten by the Crisis on Infinite Earths. It's set right smack dab in the middle of the early 90's shenanigans of DC, referencing crossover stories like Invasion! and Armageddon 2001. Superman appears in the first issue, but is dead in continuity by the tenth. Part of the way the series brings the characters into modern times is to introduce a young, modern-looking (for 1992) woman who is revealed to be the daughter of classic Golden Age hero Johnny Quick.
In the next few years, Mark Waid was really developing the Flash series starring Wally West, advancing the character out of the shadow cast by Barry Allen. Part of how he did this was by defining the legacy of the Flash, and of all the different speedsters. In that context, Jesse Quick became a regularly featured character as part of an extended family of speed force-based heroes. |
Jesse would appear regularly in the Flash series even after the departure of Mark Waid and into the Geoff Johns years. When all the founding members of the Titans came together for a new Titans series in 1999 by Devon Grayson and each of them brought in a recruit to expand the membership, Wally nominated Jesse, and she stayed with the team for it's entire run appearing in almost every issue. While she also had a lot of appearances in the Flash, this is really where her character comes together, depicting her as a extremely confidant, successful CEO who just happens to also be a superhero.
After the Infinite Crisis crossover in 2005, when all of DC books jumped ahead in their 'One Year Later' crossover, the new version of the Justice Society now featured Jesse adopting her mother's superhero identity as Liberty Belle, and married to the new Hourman, Rick Tyler. She eventually became Jesse Quick again, but was now wearing a less-flashy (pun intended) costume that more closely emulated her dad's old look. This book actually has more appearances for Jesse than any other, which is frustrating, because this was an entirely new characterization for her and if you ask us, it wasn't really as much fun. She's been almost completely absent from anything post-52, which is also frustrating, because this is the sort of character we all would like to see more of. |
Our Jesse Quick StoryI believe we condensed Jesse's timeline a little bit, because when she was introduced in 1992 she wasn't exactly a teenager, instead coming across as being roughly in her mid-twenties, although that might be because of the 90's penchant for pantsuits and shoulder pads. This worked primarily because, even though she was regularly part of the Titans, at that point most of the members were out of their Teens. For the purposes of our timeline, the classic New Titans like Nightwing are all around 26, so we made Jesse just a button younger at 24. This means that around the time we first meet her she's actually only just about 18, but it really works for her to be an extremely high-achieving polymath of a person, finishing high school early and attending advanced-level college courses while being groomed to be the new CEO of the company she owns, all while also moonlighting as an apprentice superhero.
I mentioned that we're not huge fans of the characterization of Jesse from the post 2005 Justice Society where she becomes Liberty Bell. This is mostly because Jesse is a speedster first and foremost. Her mom's powers are vague and magical, and while it's cool that she might have SOME access to that, this is her real legacy. |
Jesse Quick's CostumeJesse has actually clicked through quite a few costumes over the years, and I'm sure they all have their fans. Her very first outfit was core 90's, with a collared short jacket, goggles, and shorts. I know objectively that this is goofy, but I can't help loving stuff like this. The outfit that she wore for the bulk of her early appearances was the red & yellow leotard with goggles and high boots that you see here. This is, at least from a style standpoint, probably where we'd like to see her go; I like the idea of her costume feeling like it's derived from extremely high-tech runners-wear. You'd just want to make the amount of coverage it provides to be a little more reasonable. This is probably one of the best opportunities for a superhero costume to actually feature running shorts of some kind.
Other than the time she spent as the modern Liberty Belle, Jesse has essentially rocked two other costumes; a second leotard with a clever Q-logo during her time with the Devon Grayson Titans, and a modern version of her dad's old costume. The Q costume is probably her most sexualized, but I still like the runner-gear tech in it and would love to see that part of it used. Her Dad's costume, sadly, is the one we see her in the most and is probably my least favorite. Jesse has such a sleek & modern feel to her and that costume, as classic as it might be, just feels like such a relic in comparison. |
Jesse Quick's FutureJesse's characterization in the Justice Society, while she was serving as both Liberty Belle and Jesse Quick, was shifted dramatically by making her the wife of new Hourman Rick Tyler. Their relationship became the main thing about both characters, and it didn't really leave a lot of room for anything else. Before that, Jesse was an incredibly successful woman but was perpetually single, and her mom, a retired superhero, frustrated her by being overly active in her love life. It had this playful sitcom energy which is SO much fun played against a superhero story, and I absolutely want that here. Also, Jesse is the subject of these panels from issue 11 of Devon Grayson's Titans, which do more to explain that appeal of Nightwing than anything ever. This is just a character who needs to be single, because she's more FUN that way.
Jesse is a product from a time when DC was really doing a great job coming up with new, innovative ideas that combined their classic legacies with a constant push toward the future. As we close our timeline, She is really beginning to come into her own. She's taken control of her company, and has recently joined the new Justice Society, which just so happens to be chaired by another young female CEO. I can just imagine some really great potential for where this could go. |