What Is The Flash Fake
The Flash: Fastest Man Alive Barry Allen is the secret identity to the second man to take the name of the fictional DC (Detective Comics) superhero, The Flash (The Flash). He has been shown various ways since his creation, whether in television or on the pages of a comic book, but one thing has always been portrayed the same, his origin. In every comic series, Allen Is struck by a bolt of lightning from a freak thunderstorm and doused with chemicals from his laboratory, and from this disaster, a hero was born (The Flash). I have always been interested in learning the origins and back stories to the characters that everyone knows and loves, and one that has always interested me was this particular origin, and more specifically, the enigma
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that most superficially involved comic-readers are largely ignorant of. Though this holds true in every new version, one thing that is still surrounded in ignorance is the actual lightning bolt itself. Therein lies the reason I believe that The Flash, Barry Allen, has one of the best origin stories in the DC Universe. Allen was originally created by writers Robert Kanigher and John Broome in 1956. They wrote him to be a light hearted addition to the largely dark themed DC universe (Great). Barry was often portrayed as very fun, light-hearted, and quick-witted, showing his ability to always be able to come up with a joke, even in the middle of a fight (Great). The character first appeared in Showcase #4 (Great) as his first introduction since the death of the first Flash hero, Jay Garrick, who was one of the original members of the Justice Society of America (Beatty, et. al. p.123). Since his creation Allen has been seen fighting alongside other members of the Justice League, of which he is one of the founding members, alongside heros such as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and more, as well as on his own in his hometown of Central City (Beatty, et. al. p.123). Though his predecessors costume consisted of a pair of tights, a red shirt, and a bright, silvery helmet, Allen has become easily recognizable by his bright red costume accented by yellow lightning bolts on his chest, ears, and around his waist (Beatty, et. al. p.123). This character has become the most well known version of the Flash franchise and, therefore, had the most screentime of any other Flash in DC history (Beatty, et. al. p.123), appearing in many cartoons, movies, and television shows, including a reboot of his own show currently airing on the CW (The Flash). Though his story has been written many times, by many people, I would like to focus on one iteration in particular, The New 52 version (recently created in 2012) (Manapul iss. 0 p. Cover) that ties into the Secret Origins Annual comic from 1988 to tell you the origin of this well known superhero (Messner-Loebs p. 59-60). Bartholomew “Barry” Allen grew up in Central City, a coastal metropolis, with his mother and father Nora and Henry Allen (Beatty, et. al. p.123). They were a normal, happy family until the night that Nora Allen, Barry’s mother, was killed (The Flash). Barry’s Father was blamed for the death of his wife and was sent to Iron Heights, a maximum security prison, for life. (Manapul iss. 0 p. 7 ) Barry, having been witness to his mother’s murder, knew that his father was innocent, for he had seen the real killer, though he couldn’t yet make sense of what he had seen (Manapul iss. 0 p. 23 ). All he was able to make out in the situation was a blur and a man in a yellow suit (Manapul iss. 0 p. 23 ). He told the police of what he’d witnessed, but this was dismissed as the imagination of a child and his father was arrested and found guilty of murder (Manapul iss. 1 p. 5). Since then Barry immersed himself in trying to prove his father’s innocence and find the real killer, a task that would take up the rest of his childhood, and most of his early adulthood (Manapul iss. 0 p. 22 ). Barry’s journey to find his mother’s killer led him to eventually become a forensic analyst for the Central City Police Department, a job that he kept even after the event that gave him his powers (Manapul iss. 1 p. 15). This job gave him the opportunity to use police resources and files to further explore the mystery surrounding his mother’s murder, in hopes to clear his father’s name and find the real killer. It was here, working this job, that he met Iris West a reporter who would later become his wife (Beatty, et. al. p.123) who would become a constant point of vulnerability for Flash that was often exploited by his nemesis Reverse-Flash (Necessary). His work often led to hours in his lab at the Central City Police Station’s top floor, where there was an excellent skylight view (Messner-Loebs p. 59-60). This lab is where the fabled lightning strike would splash him with electrically charged chemicals, giving him his powers of superspeed (Messner-Loebs p. 59-60).
. To understand his character more, I would like to talk about the various emotional drives that set Allen on the road to becoming a hero, the first of which would be the death of his mother. Barry and Nora Allen were very close, this is shown the various times she is mentioned in internal monologues in the flash comics (Manapul iss. 0 p. 20). The death of a mother can often cause fissures in the psyche of an otherwise healthy child (Loss). In Barry’s case, he became borderline obsessive (Loss) because he not only lost his mother, but also his father, who was imprisoned shortly after her death, leaving Barry practically orphaned (Manapul iss. 0 p. 10). This loss could have sent him down a darker path, but because of his faith in his father and his overall character, it pushed him into law enforcement, seeking the man in yellow, a job that takes up most of his concentration even after he becomes the Flash (Manapul iss. 0 p. 18). This drive pushed him toward the path of justice which is key to becoming a hero at any capacity. These drives and his new job lead us to the night of the storm when Barry’s life changed forever, for without this exact set of circumstances who knows where his life would have taken him. In his lab at the top floor of the police department, there is a freak storm, born from which is a powerful lightning bolt that strikes a table of chemicals that splash onto Barry causing him to go into a short coma (Manapul iss. 0 p. 4). After awakening he quickly realized that something was different; somehow he could move faster than normal people could even perceive (The Flash). He had powers that he couldn’t make sense of, all he knew was that now he could use these powers to help people, and maybe they could even help him catch his mother’s killer (Great). The Flash is well-known for his power of speed, showing the ability to run up buildings, across water, and even around the Earth (Beatty et. al. p.123). Among these powers he has shown that he can use his super-speed ability to do several other things as well, such as create wind vortexes by spinning his arms, or running circles around his enemies, he is seen using this power to move cars from hitting people, (Manapul iss. 2 p. 12) and knocking out his adversaries by sucking the oxygen out of the area (Manapul iss. 11 p. 18). He learned he could also phase through solid objects, or in turn, phase one object through another by using his speed powers to vibrate at just the right frequency to shift molecules around and through each other, he could even use this ability to achieve limited invisibility (Manapul iss. 4 p. 5). His powers have even shown him having the ability to run so fast as to transcend above the physical form into a being of pure energy, and even the ability to travel in time (Messner-Loebs p. 59-60). Barry is able to do these things, thanks to that “lucky accident”, by tapping into a higher energy force known as the Speed Force (Manapul iss. 2 p. 8). He never knew, when he received his powers and began his Hero’s Journey, that these powers would come in to play concerning the event of his own origin (Messner-Loebs p. 59-60).After all, Allen only ever discovered his time-travelling ability after his first few run-ins with his greatest nemesis; Reverse-Flash (Beatty et. al. p. 123). Among all of The Flash’s villains, his ultimate opposite is Reverse-Flash (sometimes also known as Professor Zoom) (Beatty et.
al. p. 123). Reverse-Flash, or Eobard Thawne, didn’t start out as an adversary to The Flash, in fact, he was a fan, born decades after Allen had passed away (Necessary). Born in the 25th century, Thawne grew up as a huge fan of Barry Allen, so much so that he eventually recreated Barry’s accident to give himself the same powers, even altering his face with plastic surgery to look more like Allen (Necessary). He used his speed powers to run along the cosmic treadmill (the force they used to time travel) to go back and meet his idol, only to arrive several years after Barry’s death to discover that he would himself later become Reverse-Flash and be killed by Flash (Necessary). This drove him mad, the thought that his idol would bring about his death is what sent him down his path to eventually travel in time to replace Barry as The Flash and as the husband of Iris, who he later kills (Necessary). Reverse Flash shows up off and on throughout the story of Barry’s life, situating himself into his role as his hero’s worst adversary and Barry’s polar opposite, even donning a costume the complete opposite of The Flash’s red, as Reverse-Flash’s costume is yellow, with red lightning bolts (Beatty et. al. p. 123). One of the most important of these is when comes to pass that Thawne, using time travel, went back and became the man in the yellow suit that …show more content…
Barry had seen as a child, the night that Thawne became Nora Allen’s murderer (Necessary). It was Reverse-Flash’s careless misuse of the cosmic treadmill that eventually led to his first downfall (one of many as, through time travel, Thawne is brought back several times) (Beatty et. al. p. 124) The First time Barry took a life, was Thawnes first death after Thawne murdered Iris’ body (though her mind was saved with a psychic transference to an older version of herself) he went back to finish the job, but Barry caught up to him on the treadmill and forced his body to move faster, which eventually broke Thawne’s neck, killing him. And yet another is when Barry tried to use the treadmill to go back and stop Thawne from murdering his mother, which resulted in the timeline known as The Flashpoint Paradox. Though it would seem that Barry is always able to defeat him, Thawne would yet become involved in the eventual “death” of Allen, though he would not be the one to “pull the trigger” per se, he had a hand in helping another villain known as The Anti-Monitor (Beatty et. al. p. 123). The Anti-Monitor was the one who delivered the “Killing” blow to Barry, in that after this event, Allen was believed dead by the world, until the release of Secret Origins in 1988 (Beatty et. al. p. 362). The Anti-Monitor, as the name may give away, is the equal and opposite being to The Monitor, the master of the positive universe and lord of his world of Qward (Beatty et. al. p. 362). The Anti-Monitor is a being of pure evil born on the distant, lifeless moon of Qward, who masters the use of the negative universe and crusades the universe in a constant struggle against his opposite (Beatty et. al. p. 362). After a battle, several billion years ago, he and his opposite were thrown into a deep sleep that allowed another resident of Qward to rise to power and wage war against the Guardians and The Green Lantern Corps., a war which eventually awakened The Anti-Monitor, allowing the events of The Crisis on Infinite Earths. (Beatty et. al. p. 362). During the Crisis, it is shown that The Anti-Monitor has a gun that shoots a concentrated beam of anti-matter that could destroy the Earth, and by extension, every Earth. This Crisis is eventually dealt with by the Many Lantern Corps. in the universe, whilst Barry, trying to beat the countdown to firing of the anti-matter gun which was being powered by a single tachyon moving several hundred times faster than the speed of light, ran much too fast, bringing about his secret origin (Messner-Loebs p. 54-55). Barry’s secret origin finds him during the last moments of this event (Messner-Loebs p.
54-55). While running, trying in vain to catch this one super-charged particle of destruction, this one small sub-atomic tachyon, Allen's body is ripped apart with the force of the speed acting on him (Messner-Loebs p. 54-55). Through this, he knows that there is no hope for his survival, but like a true hero, he continues past the point of bodily harm, as his flesh and muscle melt away, leaving only the energy trapped inside him known as the speed force (Messner-Loebs p. 54-55). While he is running, he becomes aware that he had inadvertently slipped onto the cosmic treadmill whilst trying in vain to follow the particle headed for his home planet, Earth (Messner-Loebs p. 54-55). He begins to see bits and pieces of his life, the people he know, the friends he had fought alongside, the enemies he had defeated,and even the woman he loved, until this trip brought him back to where this had all started; that day in the lab (Messner-Loebs p. 54-55). He is able to catch the tachyon moments before it is able to make impact with one of his own chemical racks, causing him to instead strike the rack in his pure-energy form, splashing chemicals onto his past self, and surging all the energy that was left of him, into his past self, imbuing that body with the power of The Flash (Messner-Loebs p.
58-60). With the release of Secret Origins Annual Starring: The Flash we find out that it was, in fact, Barry himself who was responsible, through the twists and turns of fate, for giving himself the powers of The Flash. This writing is exemplary in that it was done over decades, through the collaboration of many different authors, to come up with this one cohesive storyline in which time folds back upon itself to bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy that J.K Rowling (creator of the well known Harry Potter Saga) would be proud of. because of this storyline, I feel confident that The Flash, Barry Allen, has one of the best origin stories in the DC Universe to date.
that most superficially involved comic-readers are largely ignorant of. Though this holds true in every new version, one thing that is still surrounded in ignorance is the actual lightning bolt itself. Therein lies the reason I believe that The Flash, Barry Allen, has one of the best origin stories in the DC Universe. Allen was originally created by writers Robert Kanigher and John Broome in 1956. They wrote him to be a light hearted addition to the largely dark themed DC universe (Great). Barry was often portrayed as very fun, light-hearted, and quick-witted, showing his ability to always be able to come up with a joke, even in the middle of a fight (Great). The character first appeared in Showcase #4 (Great) as his first introduction since the death of the first Flash hero, Jay Garrick, who was one of the original members of the Justice Society of America (Beatty, et. al. p.123). Since his creation Allen has been seen fighting alongside other members of the Justice League, of which he is one of the founding members, alongside heros such as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and more, as well as on his own in his hometown of Central City (Beatty, et. al. p.123). Though his predecessors costume consisted of a pair of tights, a red shirt, and a bright, silvery helmet, Allen has become easily recognizable by his bright red costume accented by yellow lightning bolts on his chest, ears, and around his waist (Beatty, et. al. p.123). This character has become the most well known version of the Flash franchise and, therefore, had the most screentime of any other Flash in DC history (Beatty, et. al. p.123), appearing in many cartoons, movies, and television shows, including a reboot of his own show currently airing on the CW (The Flash). Though his story has been written many times, by many people, I would like to focus on one iteration in particular, The New 52 version (recently created in 2012) (Manapul iss. 0 p. Cover) that ties into the Secret Origins Annual comic from 1988 to tell you the origin of this well known superhero (Messner-Loebs p. 59-60). Bartholomew “Barry” Allen grew up in Central City, a coastal metropolis, with his mother and father Nora and Henry Allen (Beatty, et. al. p.123). They were a normal, happy family until the night that Nora Allen, Barry’s mother, was killed (The Flash). Barry’s Father was blamed for the death of his wife and was sent to Iron Heights, a maximum security prison, for life. (Manapul iss. 0 p. 7 ) Barry, having been witness to his mother’s murder, knew that his father was innocent, for he had seen the real killer, though he couldn’t yet make sense of what he had seen (Manapul iss. 0 p. 23 ). All he was able to make out in the situation was a blur and a man in a yellow suit (Manapul iss. 0 p. 23 ). He told the police of what he’d witnessed, but this was dismissed as the imagination of a child and his father was arrested and found guilty of murder (Manapul iss. 1 p. 5). Since then Barry immersed himself in trying to prove his father’s innocence and find the real killer, a task that would take up the rest of his childhood, and most of his early adulthood (Manapul iss. 0 p. 22 ). Barry’s journey to find his mother’s killer led him to eventually become a forensic analyst for the Central City Police Department, a job that he kept even after the event that gave him his powers (Manapul iss. 1 p. 15). This job gave him the opportunity to use police resources and files to further explore the mystery surrounding his mother’s murder, in hopes to clear his father’s name and find the real killer. It was here, working this job, that he met Iris West a reporter who would later become his wife (Beatty, et. al. p.123) who would become a constant point of vulnerability for Flash that was often exploited by his nemesis Reverse-Flash (Necessary). His work often led to hours in his lab at the Central City Police Station’s top floor, where there was an excellent skylight view (Messner-Loebs p. 59-60). This lab is where the fabled lightning strike would splash him with electrically charged chemicals, giving him his powers of superspeed (Messner-Loebs p. 59-60).
. To understand his character more, I would like to talk about the various emotional drives that set Allen on the road to becoming a hero, the first of which would be the death of his mother. Barry and Nora Allen were very close, this is shown the various times she is mentioned in internal monologues in the flash comics (Manapul iss. 0 p. 20). The death of a mother can often cause fissures in the psyche of an otherwise healthy child (Loss). In Barry’s case, he became borderline obsessive (Loss) because he not only lost his mother, but also his father, who was imprisoned shortly after her death, leaving Barry practically orphaned (Manapul iss. 0 p. 10). This loss could have sent him down a darker path, but because of his faith in his father and his overall character, it pushed him into law enforcement, seeking the man in yellow, a job that takes up most of his concentration even after he becomes the Flash (Manapul iss. 0 p. 18). This drive pushed him toward the path of justice which is key to becoming a hero at any capacity. These drives and his new job lead us to the night of the storm when Barry’s life changed forever, for without this exact set of circumstances who knows where his life would have taken him. In his lab at the top floor of the police department, there is a freak storm, born from which is a powerful lightning bolt that strikes a table of chemicals that splash onto Barry causing him to go into a short coma (Manapul iss. 0 p. 4). After awakening he quickly realized that something was different; somehow he could move faster than normal people could even perceive (The Flash). He had powers that he couldn’t make sense of, all he knew was that now he could use these powers to help people, and maybe they could even help him catch his mother’s killer (Great). The Flash is well-known for his power of speed, showing the ability to run up buildings, across water, and even around the Earth (Beatty et. al. p.123). Among these powers he has shown that he can use his super-speed ability to do several other things as well, such as create wind vortexes by spinning his arms, or running circles around his enemies, he is seen using this power to move cars from hitting people, (Manapul iss. 2 p. 12) and knocking out his adversaries by sucking the oxygen out of the area (Manapul iss. 11 p. 18). He learned he could also phase through solid objects, or in turn, phase one object through another by using his speed powers to vibrate at just the right frequency to shift molecules around and through each other, he could even use this ability to achieve limited invisibility (Manapul iss. 4 p. 5). His powers have even shown him having the ability to run so fast as to transcend above the physical form into a being of pure energy, and even the ability to travel in time (Messner-Loebs p. 59-60). Barry is able to do these things, thanks to that “lucky accident”, by tapping into a higher energy force known as the Speed Force (Manapul iss. 2 p. 8). He never knew, when he received his powers and began his Hero’s Journey, that these powers would come in to play concerning the event of his own origin (Messner-Loebs p. 59-60).After all, Allen only ever discovered his time-travelling ability after his first few run-ins with his greatest nemesis; Reverse-Flash (Beatty et. al. p. 123). Among all of The Flash’s villains, his ultimate opposite is Reverse-Flash (sometimes also known as Professor Zoom) (Beatty et.
al. p. 123). Reverse-Flash, or Eobard Thawne, didn’t start out as an adversary to The Flash, in fact, he was a fan, born decades after Allen had passed away (Necessary). Born in the 25th century, Thawne grew up as a huge fan of Barry Allen, so much so that he eventually recreated Barry’s accident to give himself the same powers, even altering his face with plastic surgery to look more like Allen (Necessary). He used his speed powers to run along the cosmic treadmill (the force they used to time travel) to go back and meet his idol, only to arrive several years after Barry’s death to discover that he would himself later become Reverse-Flash and be killed by Flash (Necessary). This drove him mad, the thought that his idol would bring about his death is what sent him down his path to eventually travel in time to replace Barry as The Flash and as the husband of Iris, who he later kills (Necessary). Reverse Flash shows up off and on throughout the story of Barry’s life, situating himself into his role as his hero’s worst adversary and Barry’s polar opposite, even donning a costume the complete opposite of The Flash’s red, as Reverse-Flash’s costume is yellow, with red lightning bolts (Beatty et. al. p. 123). One of the most important of these is when comes to pass that Thawne, using time travel, went back and became the man in the yellow suit that …show more content…
Barry had seen as a child, the night that Thawne became Nora Allen’s murderer (Necessary). It was Reverse-Flash’s careless misuse of the cosmic treadmill that eventually led to his first downfall (one of many as, through time travel, Thawne is brought back several times) (Beatty et. al. p. 124) The First time Barry took a life, was Thawnes first death after Thawne murdered Iris’ body (though her mind was saved with a psychic transference to an older version of herself) he went back to finish the job, but Barry caught up to him on the treadmill and forced his body to move faster, which eventually broke Thawne’s neck, killing him. And yet another is when Barry tried to use the treadmill to go back and stop Thawne from murdering his mother, which resulted in the timeline known as The Flashpoint Paradox. Though it would seem that Barry is always able to defeat him, Thawne would yet become involved in the eventual “death” of Allen, though he would not be the one to “pull the trigger” per se, he had a hand in helping another villain known as The Anti-Monitor (Beatty et. al. p. 123). The Anti-Monitor was the one who delivered the “Killing” blow to Barry, in that after this event, Allen was believed dead by the world, until the release of Secret Origins in 1988 (Beatty et. al. p. 362). The Anti-Monitor, as the name may give away, is the equal and opposite being to The Monitor, the master of the positive universe and lord of his world of Qward (Beatty et. al. p. 362). The Anti-Monitor is a being of pure evil born on the distant, lifeless moon of Qward, who masters the use of the negative universe and crusades the universe in a constant struggle against his opposite (Beatty et. al. p. 362). After a battle, several billion years ago, he and his opposite were thrown into a deep sleep that allowed another resident of Qward to rise to power and wage war against the Guardians and The Green Lantern Corps., a war which eventually awakened The Anti-Monitor, allowing the events of The Crisis on Infinite Earths. (Beatty et. al. p. 362). During the Crisis, it is shown that The Anti-Monitor has a gun that shoots a concentrated beam of anti-matter that could destroy the Earth, and by extension, every Earth. This Crisis is eventually dealt with by the Many Lantern Corps. in the universe, whilst Barry, trying to beat the countdown to firing of the anti-matter gun which was being powered by a single tachyon moving several hundred times faster than the speed of light, ran much too fast, bringing about his secret origin (Messner-Loebs p. 54-55). Barry’s secret origin finds him during the last moments of this event (Messner-Loebs p.
54-55). While running, trying in vain to catch this one super-charged particle of destruction, this one small sub-atomic tachyon, Allen's body is ripped apart with the force of the speed acting on him (Messner-Loebs p. 54-55). Through this, he knows that there is no hope for his survival, but like a true hero, he continues past the point of bodily harm, as his flesh and muscle melt away, leaving only the energy trapped inside him known as the speed force (Messner-Loebs p. 54-55). While he is running, he becomes aware that he had inadvertently slipped onto the cosmic treadmill whilst trying in vain to follow the particle headed for his home planet, Earth (Messner-Loebs p. 54-55). He begins to see bits and pieces of his life, the people he know, the friends he had fought alongside, the enemies he had defeated,and even the woman he loved, until this trip brought him back to where this had all started; that day in the lab (Messner-Loebs p. 54-55). He is able to catch the tachyon moments before it is able to make impact with one of his own chemical racks, causing him to instead strike the rack in his pure-energy form, splashing chemicals onto his past self, and surging all the energy that was left of him, into his past self, imbuing that body with the power of The Flash (Messner-Loebs p.
58-60). With the release of Secret Origins Annual Starring: The Flash we find out that it was, in fact, Barry himself who was responsible, through the twists and turns of fate, for giving himself the powers of The Flash. This writing is exemplary in that it was done over decades, through the collaboration of many different authors, to come up with this one cohesive storyline in which time folds back upon itself to bring about a self-fulfilling prophecy that J.K Rowling (creator of the well known Harry Potter Saga) would be proud of. because of this storyline, I feel confident that The Flash, Barry Allen, has one of the best origin stories in the DC Universe to date.