Fiends Face Fleet-Footed Week: Flammable Foes

Our fiery foes of the moment are a couple of social miscreants. Mick Rory, formerly a youth traumatized by being locked briefly in a freezer, became the pyromaniac Central City criminal known as Heat Wave. The other was Eel Madden, a slick criminal who always attempted to slide out of his sinister schemes in Keystone City, known as both the "Eel" and "Tag".

Rory developed a portable flame thrower and wore a specialized suit to shield him from the affects of his device, although his throat was already able to handle tremendous heat being a former circus fire-eater. Earth-One's Flash had a series of battles with Heat Wave, both by himself and alongside the infamous Rogues Gallery of costumed crooks.

Rory's counterpart was Eel who developed the means to use his grease gun to cause his opponents to slip and fall when they tried following him. Although his grease was highly flammable and should have helped him against the Earth-Two Flash, he found himself outsmarted by his fleet-footed foe. Even when he himself temporarily gained superspeed, it still wasn't enough versus the Flash.

Eventually, Rory retired from villainy and became a firefighting consultant, even assisting his former foe on a case involving his probation officer Edward Hobart who was manipulating matters to become the next Heat Wave. Flash and Mick defeated the faux-fiend.

In Earth-Two's Gotham City, an unidentified criminal technician become the evil Lizard, so-called "Master of Fire", and quarreled a time or two with that Flash's favorite friend, Green Lantern. He was never seen again after his swift defeat. Meanwhile, Eel's attempt to become corrupt the mayor of Eelton was thwarted by his Flash who ferreted the fiend out once more.