Profile: Julie Jackam

Julie Jackam
First appeared: The Flash #170 Vol. 2, 2001. Her only live appearance too.

History: it's not like there's much, but as Geoff Johns shoehorned into continuity, and not very well at that, Julie was a NYPD officer who'd had an affair with Wally West a few years before. She was murdered almost immediately by a member of the Cicada cult that was committing murders in the Flash's name(!), leaving behind a young son whose father turned out to be the Weather Wizard.

Was subjected to the following act of discrimination: already told above, but what I didn't mention till now was that, true to the title of the story, "Blood Will Run" her death featured quite a shed of red.

What's wrong with how this was done? While I'm quite familiar with the idea of characters introduced in order to be killed as part of the story drive, this one leaves me with a very bad aftertaste today, because of how it was built on a vile premise of a gang that was killing people the Scarlet Speedster once saved out of twisted worship for the Flash?!? It seems more like an insult to both the character and the reader by making it look as though his efforts had been for nothing.

Worse, it was a very bloody story to boot, featuring quite a few panels with blood dripping. And this ended up setting the tone, more or less, for the rest of Geoff Johns's run on the series at the time - that is, over the top violence and other disturbing elements, no matter how subtle, that seriously detracted from the entertainment value in a book that wasn't exactly built on that kind of R-rated mayhem when it first began years before.

And for someone who's supposed to have a family, the bad news is that since that time, Julie's son Josh, whom I want to write about next, if he represents said family, has sadly since gone to the great reward with her in "Rogues' Revenge".