Max Flash is an agent with the DFEA.
That acronym new to you? It should be. We are there when Flash is introduced by his parents to a woman named Zavonne who explains to him that "the DFEA stands for the Department for Extraordinary Activity. You won't have heard of it. You won't have read about it. You won't have seen it on TV. It is a very secret organization. The only people who know about it are the people who run the department and our undercover agents in the field". By 'extraordinary' she means "situations or events that can't be explained. Things that the government, security services, the police, and the army could never handle".
When Flash inquires as what sort of things these might be, she tells him of missions to handle a "street sweeper who was possessed by the soul of the great Egyptian ruler Tutankhamen" or of "disabling an ambulance that kept time-traveling back to the French Revolution in Paris". He was stunned, as you can imagine.
But not as much as he would be when he learned that his parents were and had been for all his life DFEA agents. He couldn't believe it! Mom and Dad were, well, just Mom and Dad!
Granted, they were not your typical parents even without that shocking news. Dad was Montgomery Flash in his private life but on the stage he was the Great Montello and Mom was Carly Flash as well as Mystical Cariba. They have been extremely gifted illusionists who have defied cynics for twenty years,
And their young son, Max Flash, was a prodigy (my word but if he understood what it meant, he would agree). He watched all their shows and figured out how they worked. He tried them himself. And after some time, he was perfect. "But Max wasn't just good at doing magic tricks. He had been born with a rare double-jointedness. His body was remarkably flexible and bendy. He could slide through the narrow park railings. He was never found during hide-and-seek because he could hide in impossibly tiny spaces. He had remarkable physical traits and dedication. These things had made him a first-class escape artist, contortionist, and illusionist".
After a bit of subtle testing, his parents and their boss, Zavonne, decided it was time to let young Flash in on the truth and then in on the assignments. As for Max Flash's opinion, well, he loves it. Lots of action, excitement, danger, and best of all, really cool gadgets. What was not to love?
Oh, did I mention how old Max Flash is? Nope, I didn't, because I am not sure. I've looked through the recorded adventures and found nothing. Lots of great illustrations showing him to be around 10 or so but I could be wrong. Let's say give or take two years.