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  1. #1
    The Fastest Post Alive! Buried Alien's Avatar
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    Default The Many Deaths of the Reverse Flash

    Eobard Thawne, also known as Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash, is a villain who has died on multiple occasions, only to return by various means. Considering only the comic books, let's catalog his deaths:

    1. Neck broken by the Flash (Barry Allen) back in 1983.

    2. Impaled by sword wielded by Thomas Wayne Batman in 2011.

    3. Disintegrated by Dr. Manhattan TWICE (in the same comic) in 2017.

    I feel like I'm missing a few.

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  2. #2
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    Iris shot him with a futuristic gun in Running Scared.

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    Has there been an explanation for how Thawne is able to keep coming back from the dead? Is the idea that he's altered his own timeline so many times that there are too many alternate versions of himself to ever purge him completely from the timestream? Or is he essentially The Joker in that he should be dead, but he's too cool of a villain, so they just handwave it away?

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lee View Post
    Iris shot him with a futuristic gun in Running Scared.
    That's # 4, then. Thanks.

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  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bored at 3:00AM View Post
    Has there been an explanation for how Thawne is able to keep coming back from the dead? Is the idea that he's altered his own timeline so many times that there are too many alternate versions of himself to ever purge him completely from the timestream? Or is he essentially The Joker in that he should be dead, but he's too cool of a villain, so they just handwave it away?
    The idea is that before he died he was doing things with time travel. The idea was originally used by Waid for Return of Barry Allen, but the neck snap was always the final moment.

    Then Rebirth and Blackest Night came around and brought his dead self back from the dead, so neck snap was actually not the end.

    Then Flashpoint happened and he was killed. Only Barry Allen then "fixed" (I use this word as sarcastically as possible) the timeline, thus undoing Flashpoint, thus undoing Thawne's death. So that's 2 deaths, but two negations of those deaths.

    Next comes New 52 Thawne who is awful and we will not talk about very much. He turns back into the Thawne we know and this leads into The Button. Thawne beats up Batman, touches The Button, teleports away, then teleports back "dead" and Bzzt'd by Manhattan. Barry gets it in his stupid head that the best solution to this situation is to use time travel to go back and see how Thawne died and Bruce tags along. Skipping past the Thomas Wayne stuff, they catch up to Thawne after he had just touched the Button, apparently willingly running towards Manhattan. Thawne gets there, gets killed, and our heroes get sent back to the present.

    I think Buried Alien is misconstruing what happened in the Button as 2 different deaths, but they are not. The fourth issue of the button just gives us the perspective of what happened to Thawne when he showed back up as a corpse in the first issue.

    That said, he immediately regenerates despite clearly just being some bones and a suit in #23. We see his zapped body glow with some negative speed force powers and he then shows up for the events of Running Scared, where he dies by Iris using Cold's extra special cold gun on him. This is the last time he died and he hasn't appeared since, causing no paradoxes or weirdness. Every single time he died he either was shown coming back to life or history was reset, undoing his death in the first place.

    ...with the exception of Christopher Priest's Deathstroke run, which has Thawne appear as his most generic silver age incarnation as part of a league of villains. Priest notably does not give a **** about what happens in other comics unless he's doing a crossover with them so he's just flagrantly ignoring any and everything that has happened to Thawne because he wants to use his own version of him. I'm sure if pressed Priest would give the same logic that Waid did, that Thawne would be doing this via time travel (how would the league contact him and force him to show up and why would he care if he was time travelling, though? WHO KNOWS) but it obviously makes absolutely no sense given what Thawne has done. Instead of immediately embarking on his obviously stated goals after being reset to his non-New 52 version he'd have to take a detour to go do the stuff in Deathstroke instead of fulfilling his ambitions. It's dumb and weird and should be ignored.

    But in The Flash itself Thawne's latest death has stuck so far. None of Thawne's deaths or appearances have been paradoxical or rely on him doing stuff while dead through time travel since Post-Crisis.
    Last edited by Dred; 05-17-2019 at 05:10 PM.

  6. #6
    Moderator Frontier's Avatar
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    The sheer force of Thawne's hatred for Barry Allen and the Flash legacy transcends death .

    I have a feeling he'll probably be back before Williamson's run ends.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Frontier View Post
    The sheer force of Thawne's hatred for Barry Allen and the Flash legacy transcends death .

    I have a feeling he'll probably be back before Williamson's run ends.
    I wouldn't be shocked if Thawne is behind Wally's problems in HEROES IN CRISIS. Thawne has made a career out of impersonating Barry Allen; maybe this time, he's impersonated Wally West.

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    Maybe in some long distant retcon but that is not going to be the story as it is told. Their goal was to do those things to Wally.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dred View Post
    Next comes New 52 Thawne who is awful and we will not talk about very much. He turns back into the Thawne we know and this leads into The Button.
    As I'm a glutton for punishment, I gotta know about the New 52 Thawne. I largely skipped most of the New 52, what did they do with Thawne? I know Wallace West's dad was some kind of Reverse-Flash character, was this supposed to be Thawne?

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bored at 3:00AM View Post
    As I'm a glutton for punishment, I gotta know about the New 52 Thawne. I largely skipped most of the New 52, what did they do with Thawne? I know Wallace West's dad was some kind of Reverse-Flash character, was this supposed to be Thawne?
    Basically. He went back in time, grabbed a gang of Metahumans from different points in time, and then tried to ruin the Flash's reputation before Barry beat him and locked him up.

    He was basically old Thawne in an overly-detailed Brett Booth costume.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bored at 3:00AM View Post
    As I'm a glutton for punishment, I gotta know about the New 52 Thawne. I largely skipped most of the New 52, what did they do with Thawne? I know Wallace West's dad was some kind of Reverse-Flash character, was this supposed to be Thawne?
    They retconned his obsession with Barry being because, in the future, when he randomly gained Speed Force powers (But they are not Speed Force powers, he actually manipulates time to simulate super speed, and when the writers were told that that was Zolomon's power and not Thawne's they said they didn't know the two characters were different), he tried to use his powers to become a warlord who reigned over Central City as a maniacal despot. And he created the Reverse Flash suit for no reason because he did not care about The Flash. The people of Central City united against him, harkening back to 400 years ago with The Flash as their war banner or whatever but with no real connection to The Flash at all. Thawne took this personally, and this is the reason he hates The Flash.

    He then goes back in time to try to force Barry Allen's dad to create a machine that will suck the speed force out of someone's blood. And it has to be Barry Allen's dad because he's a, uh, world famous super blood surgeon? Genius? Or something? And he's the only person in history who could make the device? When Henry Allen refuses he kills Nora, and that's how they got around to Thawne being responsible for Nora's death and Henry's imprisonment. He never interacted with Barry or even cared about Barry, it was purely because Henry Allen spurned him as the only blood scientist in history who could fulfill his goals.

    Cut to the "present" of the New 52 and Thawne is back, knows Barry is The Flash, and still wants Henry to make the machine. He recruits a bunch of Speed Force users from throughout time whose powers are not Speedster like at all and are instead just some random powers and uses them to beat Barry and threaten Henry that he'll kill Barry if he doesn't make the device. Henry makes the device, Thawne uses it to suck the Speed Force out of most of his adepts, and also he like sets up a trap to frame Barry for blowing up Central City to ruin Barry's life I guess. It was all rather ramshackle as a story so I'm fuzzy on the horrible details.

  12. #12
    Moderator Frontier's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dred View Post
    They retconned his obsession with Barry being because, in the future, when he randomly gained Speed Force powers (But they are not Speed Force powers, he actually manipulates time to simulate super speed, and when the writers were told that that was Zolomon's power and not Thawne's they said they didn't know the two characters were different), he tried to use his powers to become a warlord who reigned over Central City as a maniacal despot. And he created the Reverse Flash suit for no reason because he did not care about The Flash. The people of Central City united against him, harkening back to 400 years ago with The Flash as their war banner or whatever but with no real connection to The Flash at all. Thawne took this personally, and this is the reason he hates The Flash.

    He then goes back in time to try to force Barry Allen's dad to create a machine that will suck the speed force out of someone's blood. And it has to be Barry Allen's dad because he's a, uh, world famous super blood surgeon? Genius? Or something? And he's the only person in history who could make the device? When Henry Allen refuses he kills Nora, and that's how they got around to Thawne being responsible for Nora's death and Henry's imprisonment. He never interacted with Barry or even cared about Barry, it was purely because Henry Allen spurned him as the only blood scientist in history who could fulfill his goals.

    Cut to the "present" of the New 52 and Thawne is back, knows Barry is The Flash, and still wants Henry to make the machine. He recruits a bunch of Speed Force users from throughout time whose powers are not Speedster like at all and are instead just some random powers and uses them to beat Barry and threaten Henry that he'll kill Barry if he doesn't make the device. Henry makes the device, Thawne uses it to suck the Speed Force out of most of his adepts, and also he like sets up a trap to frame Barry for blowing up Central City to ruin Barry's life I guess. It was all rather ramshackle as a story so I'm fuzzy on the horrible details.
    Man, no wonder I dropped the book back then .

  13. #13
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    can this just be an Eobard Thawne death appreciation thread?

    I don't mind him alive, but he's had some cool deaths.

    my favorite:


  14. #14
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    You can't keep a good villain down. If they get killed the temptation is always there to bring them back. I kind of wish any deaths of Eobard Thawne had been permanent. But at least with his time travel and his use of the negative speed force, it's understandable how he could defy logic and come back.

    However, it would be nice if sometimes DC stuck to its guns and dead was dead. This reminds me that Chester Gould killed off Flattop in the Dick Tracy comic strip and he stayed dead. Which is DC related because I read that story in DC's tabloid format, LIMITED COLLECTORS' EDITION C-40 (December 1975-January 1976). I was shocked at the time I read that book, because Flattop was one of the most famous comic strip villains--and yet he had died and stayed dead all the way back in the 1940s.

    By the way, I never understood why DC reprinted that Dick Tracy story in one of their comic books. It's a mystery that haunts me to this day.

  15. #15
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    Since this post he came back and died 3 more times....lol.....

    Not as bad as some X People......(the redhead, the brooding one, the one with the claws or the scarred one with Deathstroke’s last name who talks all time and to nobody in general)

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