John Fox was a historian and physicist in the year 2645 AD when the villain Mota attacked Central City. Manfred Mota was an ex-soldier who paid off the janitor at the laboratory where Jay Garrick worked to gain the necessary radioactive materials to become the super-villain Atom Smasher I. In his alter ego as the Flash I Garrick defeated Mota and he was thrown in prison. Years later Mota reappeared calling himself Professor Fallout but was defeated by the second Flash (Barry Allen). Bitter from repeated defeats Mota swore to avenge himself against the Flash (he thought Jay and Barry were the same person) and Central City. He was finally defeated by the third Flash (Wally West) who witnessed his power overload seemingly killing him.

Hundreds of years later Mota resurfaced, it seemed that in the intervening period the meltdown that appeared to killed him had actually transformed him into a massive radioactive living plutonium monster. He started attacking Central City which was then without a defender. As Mota headed towards critical mass it was decided that the best hope for survival was to send a traveller into the past to recruit one of the original Flashes for help. The person chosen was John Fox, historian and particle physicist. He tried to make contact with Jay, Barry and Wally in turn but fate was against him an he failed.

The return time travel apparatus in 2645 was damaged by Mota causing John to be subjected to a massive blast of tachyon (faster than light particles) radiation upon his return. The blast killed his support crew but imbued John with the power of superspeed. Taking his lead from the twentieth century Flashes he cobbled together a costume from materials at the Flash Museum and went to face Mota as the Flash of the 27th century. To defeat Mota Fox used the cosmic treadmill to pull Mota fifty billion years into the future where his living plutonium body decayed into lead leaving him inert and harmless.

After the defeat of Mota John Fox became a celebrity as the Flash, however his fame was short lived as the authorities replaced him with a more controllable alternative called Speed Metal. Speed Metal were a corps of robotic law enforcement droids created to mimic a Flash's superspeed. They constantly patrolled Central City tirelessly enforcing the will of the authorities. With them in place and a political shift making time travel illegal John Fox was relegated to a position guarding the Time Institute and its museum.

When a time lost Wally West appeared in the 27th century he was arrested because of the authorities fear of time travellers. Wally was lost in the speed force because something was disrupting his link with Linda Park. When a villain attached the Time Institute John Fox was made to see how useless he had become when Speed Metal over ruled him and claimed the arrest. He sabotaged Speed Metal, sprung Wally and then helped him to jump back into the time stream. John knew of legends about a great disaster that hit during the twentieth century, he also had heard of indications that Wally never made it home. With no life left for him in his own time John stole a pair of time gauntlets made by the late Rel Vidar and left for the twentieth century.

John arrived in the twentieth century just after Wally had disappeared into the Speed Force during his battle with Savitar. He found himself battling Chillblaine, Doctor Polaris and Kadabra who had kidnapped Iris West, (who was from even further forward in the future that he was), and were forcing her to divulge secrets about their future. John worked closely with Linda who was grieving the loss of Wally, they worked well together and John became a close confidant of hers. Together they managed to track down the criminals but Fox found himself falling for Linda causing her to momentarily fall for him. It was this act that disrupted Linda's link with Wally and stranded him in the time stream where John had already met him. When John underestimated Linda she angrily rebuked him by shouting that it was only Wally that she ever loved, moments later she was turned into an ice statue by the criminals technology.

Linda rekindling her passion for Wally in anger against John was enough for Wally to home in on and reappear in our time. Angered to find the state of his city (under a blanket of ice) and girlfriend Wally was less that friendly towards John. Yet together they tracked down and apprehended the villains. Tensions between the two Flashes almost came to a head in the street but they were interrupted by the arrival of Speed Metal from the 27th century. They arrested Fox and Wally was all for letting them take him back to his own time, unfortunately Fox had been tried in his absence and had been sentenced to death.

Reluctantly Wally sprung Fox from his captors and joined him on a race through the dessert to escape Speed Metal. Using his superior speed Wally made easy work of the droids and during the battle showed John his ability to lend speed to other objects. Inspired by this John convinced Wally that he could use the same stunt to speed up the thermal motions of Linda's molecules thereby unfreezing her. When the operation was successful John announced that he was leaving this era encase Speed Metal sent more agents after him. Before he went Wally made up with him but John would still carry a large inferiority complex over Wally for sometime.

John Fox wondered the vastness of temporal space jumping from period to period until he reached the year 2945. He discovered a world on the brink of war were the two remaining separate political blocks were perhaps hours away from all out war. Wrong footed Fox was captured by one side who discovered his identity from historical records. With no statute of limitations on time-travel he faced the death penalty and found himself imprisoned with Eric and Fran Russell, two scientist who were trying to use Fox's published work on temporal physics to send their infant daughter into the past to escape the war that was coming. Fox helped them escape and to fix their machines before running off to stop a powerful new weapon that the other side had developed. He managed to stop the weapon and in the process throw himself back into the time stream. However the Russell's thought that John had failed and sent their daughter, Iris, into the past where she would be raised by Professor Ira West and later marry the second Flash, Barry Allen.

Eventually John's time travels lead him further and further into the future until he ended up in the 853rd century. The 853rd century was a world of wonder where the normal population were all connected to a Galaxy wide digital network via microchips in their heads and way stations of computer-suns. The entire solar system had been colonised and was now known as the System. The System was protected by the Justice Legions and to an extent time travel was routine. Fox decided to settle down in this century where his actions as a time traveller were no longer illegal. In time he become the resident hero on the planet Venus and joined the Justice Legion A.

When the Justice Legion A began planning the celebrations for the return of Superman Prime to the 853rd century John was involved and accompanied them into the past as he had the most experience of the twentieth century. He swapped places with Wally West who was sent to the future to participate in the celebration challenges. When the Hourman Virus hit he was stranded with the other Legionnaires as his Time Gauntlets had been stolen by the villain Chronos II. When Vandal Savage launched Jesse Quick in a Rocket Red Battle suit as a weapon Fox was forced to team up with Impulse to save her. Initially there were problems between the two as Impulse remembered the bad feelings between Wally and John but the later managed to save Jesse.