Golly, Iris! Sorry I'm late! The Flash (Barry Allen) Appreciation 2023

[Frontier]

Glad we're past the evil Tornado Twins.

[Hol]

Glad we're past the evil Tornado Twins.

Me too sir. Me too. Nice to see Barry hanging with his kids.

[Tomkatie]

I wonder what people thought of the story with Barry in The Flash #800?

What about the characters that show up and what this means for Barry and Iris' lives? If they visit them a lot? Is it common and frequent?

It was such a lovely story!

It's so great seeing Barry and Iris finally spend time with the Tornado Twins as a family, especially as it's implied they do this once a month. I hope this means the timeline's been changed and Don and Dawn don't have to die

[Last Son of Krypton]

The Flash clip - Suit inside the ring:

[Frontier]

The Flash clip - Suit inside the ring:

I think he only used it like 4-5 times in the TV show...

[bat39]

So I re-read Flash Rebirth recently after God-knows how many years, in the run up to the movie. And appreciated it way more than I did the first time!

The series really did a great job giving Barry the modern-age reinvention that he never got after COIE (because he was dead of course), while also, in a very meta way, addressing a lot of the arguments people may have had (and still have over a decade later) for or against the return. From Jay talking about how Barry made him the Flash (highlighting how Jay and the rest of the JSA became relevant again because of the "Flash of Two Worlds"), to Bart talking about how Wally earned being the Flash and Barry's just a martyr from a bygone era (mirroring the views of a lot of Wally fans from around that time), to an overall deconstruction of Barry's 'bland' persona.

Reading this again, with the benefit of hindsight, you can really tell how much this series' take on Barry and the Flash mythos inspired the CW show throughout its run. From the emphasis on Barry's role as a CSI (he was just a "police scientist" back in the Silver Age), to Eobard Thawne's portrayal as a psychopathic stalker obsessed with Barry and making his life miserable, to the Negative Speed Force and Thawne being its creator/avatar, much like Barry was for the regular Speed Force. It shows up even in the small details - like Savitar escaping from his Speed Force prison to fight Barry (though Savitar here is of course a totally different character from the show), to (Julian) Albert Desmond once working with Barry at the Crime Lab (I seriously had no idea that was ever in the comics! And now it's in the movie as well it seems...)

And of course, we now come to the elephant in the room - the murder of Nora Allen. As someone whose exposure to Barry Allen has largely been post-resurrection, and through the CW show, I admit I am biased towards this take on the origin. And Johns does a pretty good job blending it seamlessly into the rest of Barry's established history. I suppose it does amp up the threat of Thawne - the fact that he's one of the few (possibly only?) people in the DCU who has successfully changed the past in a permanent way, without any ill-effects to himself. What makes Thawne dangerous isn't that he's a villainous speedster who can go toe-to-toe with Barry, but rather that he's obsessed with ruining Barry's life and has the power to literally rewrite history to achieve that. The fact that he managed to go back and kill Nora Allen, and have that change to Barry's past be inserted so seamlessly into Barry's history, really drives home the possibility that he could do the same to Iris...which gives some real stakes to the final confrontation between Barry/Wally and Thawne.

On the whole, a phenomenal story that really celebrated the history of the Flash, and Barry Allen, while paving the way for an exciting and dramatic future. A shame that both past and future would soon be messed up with Flashpoint and the New 52...and it's only very recently that we seem to be moving back to the status quo that Rebirth created.

[Tomkatie]

Ah man, I have to say, I dug my Flash Rebirth trade out maybe a few months ago, and I think I honestly like it less than when I first read it.

I don't have a problem with the meta-commentary of Jay saying Barry brought him back, or Bart saying he shouldn't have been brought back. I don't even 100% hate the Nora's death time travel shenanigans or the "speed force creation" meta-commentary/canon-weaving.

What I cannot get past is the "innocent and guilty do not blur" monologues used to describe Barry. And I get that a lot of his personality during this miniseries comes from Barry's confusion at his unwilling rebirth mixed with the Negative Speed Force, but this feels like the peak of Johns's "supercop" writing that every writer after (including Johns himself) has purposely waned away from.

Also hoh boy wow does EVS art just not feel great anymore.

[bat39]

Ah man, I have to say, I dug my Flash Rebirth trade out maybe a few months ago, and I think I honestly like it less than when I first read it.

I don't have a problem with the meta-commentary of Jay saying Barry brought him back, or Bart saying he shouldn't have been brought back. I don't even 100% hate the Nora's death time travel shenanigans or the "speed force creation" meta-commentary/canon-weaving.

What I cannot get past is the "innocent and guilty do not blur" monologues used to describe Barry. And I get that a lot of his personality during this miniseries comes from Barry's confusion at his unwilling rebirth mixed with the Negative Speed Force, but this feels like the peak of Johns's "supercop" writing that every writer after (including Johns himself) has purposely waned away from.

Also hoh boy wow does EVS art just not feel great anymore.

I dunno...Barry really doesn't strike me as some kind of morally ambiguous anti-hero type willing to really engage with moral complexity. While I don't see him as "supercop", I think that label would fit him better than any other superhero, given that he really is a 'cop' in a certain sense (or at any rate, works for the cops).

I mean, why wouldn't Barry think that "innocent and guilty do not blur"? Most of his foes are straightforward cases of psychopathic killers like Thawne or career criminals like Captain Cold and the rest of the rogues. His day-job is literally about helping determine if people are innocent or guilty of a crime using the most scientific methods possible. And all that's before you throw in the aspect of his dad being imprisoned for his mom's murder, and Barry being convinced his dad is innocent and being obsessed with proving it.

[Digifiend]

I think he only used it like 4-5 times in the TV show...

Yeah, mainly in season 5 when his suit was one from the future. They later switched it to nanotech after that technology was introduced for Supergirl's new suit.

[Frontier]

The thing about the Nora retcon is that, yeah, it punched up the Flash/Reverse-Flash rivalry a lot and was a good story driver but having it lug around just started making Barry so mopey and over-emphasizing tragedy as part of the Flash mythos.

[Buried Alien]

The thing about the Nora retcon is that, yeah, it punched up the Flash/Reverse-Flash rivalry a lot and was a good story driver but having it lug around just started making Barry so mopey and over-emphasizing tragedy as part of the Flash mythos.

At some point, I hope DC lets Barry definitively correct the timeline to what it was originally was, with his parents alive, well, and free throughout his life. Perhaps if Wally, Jay, and the others all get involved instead of Barry trying to do it solo as he did in FLASHPOINT.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[MajorHoy]

At some point, I hope DC lets Barry definitively correct the timeline to what it was originally was, with his parents alive, well, and free throughout his life. Perhaps if Wally, Jay, and the others all get involved instead of Barry trying to do it solo as he did in FLASHPOINT.

Hell, it doesn't even have to be Barry who manages to correct the timeline.

Maybe bring back the ghost of Johnny Quick and have him be able to make the change?

[Refrax5]

I dunno...Barry really doesn't strike me as some kind of morally ambiguous anti-hero type willing to really engage with moral complexity. While I don't see him as "supercop", I think that label would fit him better than any other superhero, given that he really is a 'cop' in a certain sense (or at any rate, works for the cops).

I mean, why wouldn't Barry think that "innocent and guilty do not blur"? Most of his foes are straightforward cases of psychopathic killers like Thawne or career criminals like Captain Cold and the rest of the rogues. His day-job is literally about helping determine if people are innocent or guilty of a crime using the most scientific methods possible. And all that's before you throw in the aspect of his dad being imprisoned for his mom's murder, and Barry being convinced his dad is innocent and being obsessed with proving it.

Because Barry literally was friends with a rehabilitated Heat Wave and was generally very kind to his enemies. He also was written by Johns himself to have made some morally ambiguous choices during Identity Crisis. He was more than willing to give the Top a second chance at life. He himself killed a man and went on trial for manslaughter. He also is a vigilante and a member of law enforcement. The idea that this guy has "never felt guilty" and refuses to accept there's moral complexity in life doesn't make him seem noble. It makes him seem self-righteous, hypocritical and outright stupid. It doesn't make Barry an antihero for him to recognize the reality that human behavior is anything BUT black and white. Him calling the Rogues lowlifes and the whole diet Judge Dredd attitude made him very unlikable to me. It also ignored his past characterization.

This is also the guy that wrote Barry saying that he was used to covering for his friends when they did something bad because he's a cop and he believed in the Blue Wall of Silence. Which basically makes Barry a dirty cop and complicit in police corruption. The levels of copaganda were off the charts.

[Tomkatie]

Because Barry literally was friends with a rehabilitated Heat Wave and was generally very kind to his enemies. He also was written by Johns himself to have made some morally ambiguous choices during Identity Crisis. He was more than willing to give the Top a second chance at life. He himself killed a man and went on trial for manslaughter. He also is a vigilante and a member of law enforcement. The idea that this guy has "never felt guilty" and refuses to accept there's moral complexity in life doesn't make him seem noble. It makes him seem self-righteous, hypocritical and outright stupid. It doesn't make Barry an antihero for him to recognize the reality that human behavior is anything BUT black and white. Him calling the Rogues lowlifes and the whole diet Judge Dredd attitude made him very unlikable to me. It also ignored his past characterization.

This is also the guy that wrote Barry saying that he was used to covering for his friends when they did something bad because he's a cop and he believed in the Blue Wall of Silence. Which basically makes Barry a dirty cop and complicit in police corruption. The levels of copaganda were off the charts.

Every single story beat, tie-in, and follow up of Identity Crisis was disgusting, and I choose to believe that the New 52 made that event non canon.

[Frontier]

Every single story beat, tie-in, and follow up of Identity Crisis was disgusting, and I choose to believe that the New 52 made that event non canon.

I liked Wally and Zatanna teaming-up to fight The Top at least.