Flash Comics

Flash Comics was a series of comic books published by DC Comics. It ran for 104 issues published between January of 1940 and February of 1949.

There was material produced for a 105th issue, but it was never used.

The comic book, as most comics in the Golden age, was an anthology that featured stories of different characters in every issue. Out of them only the Flash and Hawkman stories ran during the 104 issues.

Other characters featured in the comic at some point and that had damsels in distress in some adventures were Johnny Thunder, Black Canary, The Ghost Patrol, The Whip, The King, Les Sparks, Hop Harrigan and The Atom.

Other like Red, White and Blue or Cliff Cornwall never had bound and gagged females in their stories.

Damsels in Flash Comics
During the 104 issues run of this series, a total of 41 numbers had at least one tied up damsel, that means the 40% of the comics had material of interest.

This included a golden run of 20 straight issues with at least one damsel in distress, a streak that came to an end when the series ended with number 104.

Flash Comics also had dire moments between issues 50 and 66 and again from 68 till 82 were there was not a single damsel in distress. During this moments the comic usually fell into comedy content.

Damsels usually came in the form of the love interest of the main character, who had to run to save the girl, but it also came from heroines escaping danger and from supporting characters created for the sole purpose of being in trouble.

19 female characters were tied up and sometimes gagged during the series. Out of them Hawkgirl was the character that found herself in peril more often, recording 18 times where she was captured and tied up, sometimes as a superheroine, sometimes in her secret identity of Shiera Sanders.

Black Canary with 13, Joan Williams with 9, Marisa Dillon with 7, Mary James with 5 and Norah Blane with 2 were the other frequent damsels in distress in the series. The rest of the characters only got trapped in bondage once.

Stories
Despite being the titular character of the book, Flash was not the best place to find bound and gagged damsels, the speedster only found girls in bondage in 9 of his 104 adventures, all of them with Joan Williams, who occasionally was joined by another character including Flash himsels, in her bonds.

Hawkman, the other character that lasted 104 issues was the best producer of bound and gagged scenes, with 20 of his stories featuring a damsel.

He was followed by Black Canary, a popular character in the last issues of the comic that had adventures that often had her captured, this happened 10 times, while her other three appearances in bondage came when she was a supporting character in Johnny Thunder stories.

The Whip and The Atom who had short runs in the comic, were the next best producers of damsel in distress stories. The Whip often saved his love interest, Marissa Dillon, a danger prone reporter, while The Atom saved two other damsels beside his girl, Mary James.

The Ghost Patrol, a group of paranormal entities had 5 stories with damsels, a good number considering the nature of their stories.

More frustrating was The King, a hero from the earlier stories of the comic, he often had bondage scenes in his adventures, but they were alost always men he bound and gagged to replace, as he was a master of diguise. Only two times did he had females in bondage, two girls he had to rescue.

Gags
Gags were not common in Flash Comics, and more often the damsels were tied up, but not silenced. Despite this we had the chance of some gagging in the comic.

During this comic Black Canary had not received her sonic scream powers, and unfortunately writers found unnecessary to gag her, so she only had two adventures where she was completely helpless.

In this field, and surprisingly, Hawkgirl also lead the score, as she was gagged four times, including cleave, OTM and the only tape gag in the whole comic.

In terms of percentage, the winner was Marissa Dillon, who was gagged in three of her seven appearances in bondage, if The Whip had lasted for as long as Hawkman did, this girl would have certainly given us much more content as a damsel.

Elsie Gale, Susan Hinds, Rita Stevens and an unnamed store clerk were the other four gagged damsels in the series. While Joan Williams didn't get anything besides hand gags.