Barry Allen: Future Crime Doer
DC's The Flash vol. 3 #1-6. "The Dastardly Death of the Rogues" written by Geoff Johns; art by Francis Manapul and Scott Kolins with additional inks by Joel Gomez.
There are like 800 issues of The Flash. That doesn’t count Justice League, JLA, Justice Society, or any event or cross-over comics. I’ve read six Flash comics. I’m probably not the right person to be talking about Flash. And honestly, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into with this.
To me, he’s sort of like Iron Man, he’s always been around. He’s a core member of the team and one of the oldest characters in the universe, but he’s not an A-lister. Flash is always playing second fiddle to Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, much like Iron Man does with Marvel characters like Captain America or Spider-Man.
Again, this is just my view, but Flash gained popularity as a transmedia character, much like Iron Man did with the 2008 movie that launched his popularity. One other thing about this, I think the comparison to Iron Man is a little uneven. I think Flash, at one time, was more popular than Iron Man, he just was a second-tier hero in his universe.
Before we get into this though, I want anyone reading this to understand where I’m not coming from. Until reading “The Dastardly Death of the Rogues,” I had never read a Flash comic. When I was young, I just didn’t like the Flash. Don’t remember why, I just didn’t.
Here’s a list of things I knew about Flash before reading:
He’s red
He run real fast
He has a time-travel treadmill
Yeah, so, that last one is a reference to Flashpoint, the storyline I was initially going to read for this post and one that I’m going to read at some point in the future as a follow-up for this one. I ended up reading Dastardly Death instead after seeing a post online that said this is a good starting point for Flash.
I disagree with that post. This is, in my opinion, a very difficult starting point for Flash. So much so, that I don’t really know what to say about it, but we’ll worry about it when we get to it.
Flash’s Origin
There’s a bunch of Flashes. I didn’t know that. I knew Barry Allen, and later Wally West, was Flash but I didn’t know about the other ones. Flash made his debut in 1940 in Flash Comics #1 and was created by Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert. Fox was a prolific comic book writer and it’s estimated that he wrote over 4,000 comic book stories. In addition to Flash, he also co-created several other DC characters like Barbara Gordan and Dr. Fate. Lampert only drew two Flash stories before leaving the series to work on humor comic books.
The first Flash
Fox and Lampert’s Flash was a college student named Jay Garrick who gained his powers after he…inhaled heavy water vapors while smoking cigarettes in the laboratory. First Garrick used his powers to be a star football player but later went on to fight crime. This version of Flash didn’t conceal his identity with a mask. He vibrated his body so that any photos of Flash were blurry. Okay, man. You do you.
Flash Comics was canceled in 1949 and in 1956, DC Comics reinvented Flash.
The Flash I know
Barry Allen! Barry Allen debuted in Showcase #4 with the costume we know. Allen is a non-smoker who gained his power when a lightning bolt stuck him inside his police scientist laboratory. Doesn’t make sense to me but that is what we’re going with. Barry Allen is the character in Dastardly Deaths and the one I think most people know.
Wally West — Barry Allen 2.0
Wally West is Barry Allen’s nephew and gained his powers when visiting the police laboratory and the freak lightning strike that gave Barry his powers happened again. Whatever. I don’t like the freak lightning origin story with Barry and the fact it repeated for Wally West is boring.
Bart Allen
This one is real weird so I’m not going to get super into details but he’s Barry Allen’s grandson who aged superfast so Barry Allen’s wife Iris West Bartt Allen to the past cure him. This Flash ended up changing the name and costume. He went by Impulse.
Avery Ho
Avery Ho go her powers from the same event that created Godspeed, another DC character. Avery is a member of the Justice League of China. Later, Barry Allen goes missing and Avery is recruited to take his place in the interdimensional Justice League team.
The Dastardly Death of the Rogues
Barry Allen returns to Central City after a brief stint in the Witness Protection Program. It never says why he was in the program but the concept made me laugh out life. Dude is a superhero and witness a crime that he needed government protection for? Okay.
Flash immediately gets back into the costume. Wait, can we say ‘stume from now on? Flash immediately gets back into the ‘stume and stops a bank robbery. In doing so though, he causes a car crash and has to rescue every tenant in an apartment building. The building is destroyed, leaving the tenants homeless so Flash runs to the local library, reads a bunch of construction books, races back, and rebuilds the apartment complex.
This is why I support libraries.
Allen goes back to his job as a police scientist and gets called out to a crime scene. A guy, dressed like the villain Mirror Master has been murdered! Barry Allen’s DNA is at the crime scene and Allen gets berated for contaminating it. But then, some other dudes — all look like several villains — show up and accuse Allen of future crimes.
They attempt to arrest him for Murder but Flash nopes out. He finds Iris West, his wife, and tells her what is going on. While all this happening, Captain Boomerang escapes from prison.
We’re getting close to the point where the story lost me. One of the time cops tells Allen what’s going on. So this guy Mirror Monarch does supervillain stuff and it turns Iris into Mirror Mistress. Flash gets mad bout it and goes to kill Mirror Monarch because he can’t turn Mirror Mistress back into Iris but instead kills Mirror Master, but it’s not actually Mirror Master, it’s just some guy in the suit and I think it’s the guy they found back in the first issue and that is why Allen’s DNA was at the scene.
Flash is eventually taken into custody and goes to future court. Allen vibrates out of his handcuffs and goes back in time.
So it turns out that this was just the machinations of The Top, a future cop trying to frame Barry Allen for, um, reasons, I guess. Honestly, I don’t remember. There was a subplot about this innocent guy in jail and Barry Allen was trying to find evidence to get him out.
So Flash stops The Top, the time cops, they are actually called The Renegades, are like, “our bad” and leave. Everything is hunky dory, or so it seems. There is a reveal at the end of the story that something is missing from the time stream.
Final thoughts
Not going to lie, kind of a tough read. So here is the thing I kind of glossed over. There are multiple versions of some of the characters in this and it’s kind of confusing. This may be a good re-entry point for readers, but I don’t think it’s a good place for brand-new readers.
All that being said, I did like Flash more than I thought I would. I’m super unfamiliar with this character. There were parts of the story I really liked, parts of the story I really didn’t like, but all in all, It was pretty fun.
Got some Thor and Human Torch comics coming up as we continue to look through some old comics from the 60s.
Until next time, be kind to one another.
Dang, I can't believe they totally pranked you like that! Maybe you'll come across another Flash comic in the future that is a easier to digest. If so, you def gotta write a redemption article!