Captain Boomerang

Enemies of the Flash: Captain Boomerang (aka Digger Harkness)

Digger Harkness came to America from Australia as the spokesman of a toy company selling boomerangs. However, he became Captain Boomerang, a member of the Rogues Gallery who used special boomerangs, such a razor-sharp and exploding ones, in his plots to outwit the Flash.

Once, he planted special getaway boomerangs in every jail within one hundred miles of Central City, where they would remain invisible until he concentrated his brain waves to materialize them. One year later, he had the chance to use one of them. He was being transported to the state pen, but an anonymous phone call, which had actually been made by Boomerang's father, "Aussie", said that there was a bomb in the patrol wagon that he was being transported in. The police evacuated the wagon and put Captain Boomerang into temporary custody at the police station. However, he used one of his getaway boomerangs to escape. As he escaped, he hurled a boomerang at Barry Allen for rubbing him the wrong way (a little earlier, the scientist had told one of the police officers not to take off the villain's straightjacket). Barry quickly changed into the Flash, and tried to apprehend Boomerang by creating air gusts, pushing the villain in front of him. However, the Captain contorted his body into the shape of a boomerang, which caused him to hurtle back towards the Flash, knocking him down. All of this had been recorded by Boomerang's father and put into a scrapbook entitled Flash -- This is your Death! Boomerang set Flash up in a machine, that sent the hero hurtling like a boomerang into another dimension, filled with terrible monsters. However, Flash stayed in the shape of a boomerang, knowing that he would be returned to his sender. Foiled, Boomerang and his father tried to get away with a special flying boomerang, but Flash created a waterspout as they flew over a lake, bringing them back down, where Flash could take them to the police headquarters.

Digger Harkness's Appearances

* Flash (1st series) #227 (May-June, 1974)
* Flash #325 (September, 1983)
* Flash (2nd series) #19 (December, 1988)
* Flash #34 (January, 1990) as a hallucination
* Flash #121 (January, 1997) as a shadowy figure
* Flash Secret Files #1 (November, 1997)
* Flash Secret Files #2 (November, 1999)
* The Life Story of the Flash