King of GA;8058247 said:
I need someone to school me on Earth 1 and Earth 2. I thought Garrick was prior on Allen but the way some of yall paint it they are concurrent....
He was but storywise on a different earth.
In real life he was created years before Barry Allen. During the golden age of comic books (1940's and 50's) the pulp era. He was the original Flash. His contemporaries were Green Lantern, Wildcat, Hawkman and the original Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Atom as well as Dr. Fate, Sandman, Black Canary. They were collectively known as the Justice Society. Heroes of what came to be known as Earth-2.
Basically it was a progressive Earth always in flux. Superman married Lois and they raised Supergirl who becomes Power Girl down the line, Batman married Catwoman and had a daughter who grows into a vigilante called The Huntress. Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor live happily ever after and sire a daughter (Fury). The Hawks have a son called Hector Hall. Green Lantern ends up with drama when his grown up kids he didn't' even know he had show up out of nowhere etc.
Eventually the JSA retire and their kids take up the legacy as Infinity Inc.
Barry was created during the silver age of comic books when DC was finding ways to modernize their heroes. For Flash, Atom and Green Lantern it wasn't Jay Garrick, Al Pratt and Alan Scott anymore. It was Barry Allen, Ray Palmer and Hal Jordan. Brand new characters with a more contemporary perspective and even power set and overall outlook.
On Barry's earth Jay was a comic book character who Barry idolized and it's why he took on the name Flash. Barry ends up breaking the light barrier one day and realizes that Garrick is a real person on a parallel earth he travels to. No more pulp comic stuff but pure sci-fi which was major during the 60's. No Justice Society just the Justice League of America.
DC still published Golden Age heroes too so to have their cake and eat it too they designated those stories as taking place on Earth-2 while their then contemporary stories were taking place on Earth-1 and for over 20 years this went on. Eventually during those decades as DC kept buying off competition like Charlton Comics (Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, the Question), Fawcett Comics (Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family), Quality Comics (Plastic Man, Freedom Fighters) it expanded into a multiverse as those characters were given their own Earth designations. All Earths met during annual crisis crossovers in different combos of 2 until Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Basically while both Earth-1 and Earth-2 have similar characters and even code names the history is very different. One is a WWII era set of heroes and the other much more modern day.