John Wade

Johnny Wade loved cars from the moment he first saw one. As a teenager in Freedom City, he became a skilled mechanic with dreams of opening up a garage of his own eventually—dreams that were cut short unexpectedly.
Johnny was driving—dangerously, as he often did—along Bayview Heights when a big truck came barreling the other way. Both vehicles crashed, spilling the experimental rocket fuel the truck carried. Soaked in chemicals and choking for air, Johnny managed to pull himself from the wreckage. There was a spark and a ball of fire blossomed from the fuel tank . . . in slow motion.
Running from the blast as fast as he could, Johnny Wade found himself well over a mile away before the blast rose into the sky and the dull boom caught up with him. He initially allowed the criminals to believe he’d been killed, following the other car at the scene to their hideout, where he used his new super-speed to apprehend them. The crooks heard the “mystery man” call himself “Johnny” and one said, “He moved like a rocket!” The Freedom City press quickly joined the two up and headlines wondered about this new hero “Johnny Rocket.”
Johnny responded to the President’s call for heroes to join The Liberty League and was the League’s youngest official member (second-youngest after the team’s “mascot,” Bowman's junior partner Arrow). He fought alongside his teammates and quickly earned a reputation for “moving faster than he can think,” as Dr. Tomorrow once put it. More than once, the Liberty League hauled Johnny’s fat out a fire when he ended up in some Nazi deathtrap or the like. Still, exasperating as his exploits sometimes were, the Leaguer’s considered Johnny Rocket a true hero and friend.
John Wade retired from super-heroing not long after the Liberty League disbanded, finally realized his dream to become a full-time mechanic and business-owner. He married and, although his son demonstrated no evidence of having inherited his powers, his grandson and namesake John did, carrying on the family legacy as a member of the modern Freedom League.