The Ballad of Barry Allen

Barry Allen. The name holds weight. Serious weight and credit in the name of comic books. Sure it’s not as well known as Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark but those in the know, know of Barry. He’s the Flash, the biggest one of them all. The unique thing about the Flash is that there have been at least several main stream incarnations, each uniquely different in style and character however Barry has always been the premier speedster in the DC Universe and had a legacy which was cemented by his death in Crisis on Infinite Earths. So loved was Barry that he has even transcended death to return to comics, albeit in brief occurrences through the magic of time travel. Even Batman loved Barry, saying that if his parents had lived, he wished that he became a man like Barry. Barry became much more than a simple superhero. He helped to usher in the new era of the DC universe to the Silver Age of comics and in a way, helped to end it. So what does his return herald?

From the pages of Grant Morrison’s Infinite Crisis, Barry has spawned his own landmark mini-series Flash: Rebirth helmed by veteran Flash writer Geoff Johns who isn’t a stranger to resurrecting the dead with his other series Green Lantern: Rebirth. However this time John’s has a bit of a challenge since the Flash who filled Barry’s boots after his death was his nephew Wally, who has was previously known as Kid Flash and took over since the late eighties. Most fans have grown to love Wally over the past two decades so bringing back Barry and introducing him to a whole new unfamiliar fan base is a task. Fan boys are notorious for the status quo and have grown up with Wally West and several even feel it was an insult to bring back Barry Allen to sully his death in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

It’s no secret that comic book heaven is only reserved for those who characters who no one particularly cares about and that major characters are usually back to earth in a relative short amount of time. But Barry has been a different case. He’s one of the exceptions where he has stayed dead. The versions of Barry were often from the future or from the past, never the present moment and so he hasn’t been back to life in the mainstream continuity. Until now…

At first when I heard of Flash: Rebirth, I wasn’t terribly interested. Now I’ve been a fan of the Mark Waid era and a huge fan of the Geoff Johns run but the first issue didn’t interest me, mainly because I really didn’t read much of Barry growing up. I was always familiar with Wally West as my Flash and with respect to Barry, I’m with Wally and my initial response to the Flash: Rebirth showed that. Wally was with me not only in the books but also in the Justice League animated shows and I have lots of memories of the fast talking and fast working red haired speedster. So when Barry returned, my reception as lukewarm. Meeting Barry was like meeting a famous uncle you know little about and have no connection with. He seemed to me a boring and outdated character with little depth where as Wally always had a more interesting path where he was once a millionaire, a womanizer, married man and father who had more every day struggles. Barry seemed very vanilla by comparison. The guy wears a bow tie and hasn’t changed his hair cut in the past fifty years, even when he was dead. Sure he had his share of tragedies and adventures in time travel but those were reactions. Wally always seemed to cause his own problems and struggles which is much more fun to read.

I started the series at the first issue but it didn’t have the punch initially that Green Lantern: Rebirth started with and I was busy with other series that were occurring at the same time. Sure I saw some of the covers and they looked interesting but it wasn’t enough for me to come back and give it a shot. Flash forward (no pun intended) almost a year later and the Flash: rebirth hardcover came out at Borders. I always did like the cover for the first issue so I decided to at least read how it ended, even though I guessed it would be a typical hero ending. And as I got past the first issue, the story REALLY picked up. I was glued to the damn thing blessing myself for having all the issues now in front of me but cursing my short sighted attention span for writing this book off. This book completely ROCKS. I actually read it three times and after I finished I realized why Barry garnered the reputation that he did. The first several pages of the book buzzes with all the DC heroes getting ready to throw Barry Allen several major welcome back parties. At the same time it has many major heavy hitters from the Flash’s rogues gallery prepping for Barry’s return as well.
But those aren’t the featured characters in the book. This is a Flash book and the scarlet and gold of Barry aren’t the only colors that are running full speed. The Flashes of the past (Wally, Jay and Bart) come back as well as having other runners from the DCU pop up. How many others? Try ALL the major speedsters. Jesse and Johnny Quick. Max Mercury. Wally’s children Jai and Iris, a new Impulse, and it even features the return of speed villains Savitar and Professor Zoom. We even get to see a brief glimpse of the Black Flash. The book is a giant celebration of the Flash family but also manage to sew some seeds for huge future story lines, much in the way that Green Lantern: Rebirth setup for the War of Light trilogy and the current Brightest Day run.
Among the big return of several characters, Flash: Rebirth also retcons Barry’s origin story but in that clever new Star Trek movie kind of way which of course involves time travel, a staple of the old school Flash stories. It of course involves Professor Zoom, the Reverse-Flash and probably the most evil son of a bitch in Flash history, who manages to bring Barry out of the speed force and set the greatest tragedy of his life by killing his mother and pinning his father for the murder and orchestrating this entire fiasco, including turning Barry into the Black Flash which is the embodiment of death for all speedsters. Old yellow britches has been a busy boy, but of course who wouldn’t be since his costume isn’t exactly awe inspiring. Nor exactly original. Should be more known as Reverse Fashion. But Johns also goes to redefine the speed force where it was once understood as a Valhalla for speedsters and a bridge to between planes of existence, now it is Barry Allen himself who actually creates the speed force with every movement of step he takes. Of course since Barry IS the speed force, Zoom is the reverse speed force which robs speedsters of life. I had problem with the logistics of Barry as the entire embodiment of the speed force considering that there have been speedsters who existed WAAYY before Barry like Max Mercury and that logically it doesn’t make sense, which is ironic because usually the time travel aspect is the biggest clusterfuck involving time travel
Johns re teams with GL: Rebirth cohort, Ethan Van Scivier who provided the artwork. The art of course is phenomenal as always and ads new levels of heroism, despair and menace to compliment Johns story telling. Van Scivier rivals Jim Lee in drawing details however he really likes to add shadows to everything as if he was paid in black ink. At least he knows how to make great use of the shadow but it doesn’t quite work as well as it did in Green Lantern: Rebirth because GL had occurred mostly at night and the darkness of space so the use of shadows accented the features from various light sources in the darkness. Flash: Rebirth however is much lighter story and occurs mostly in the white light of speed force and day time in Central City so you gotta wonder where the hell are the shadows coming from? And for the sticklers, out there, yes I know Van Sciver did the Sinestro Corp war and that had a shit load of yellow light in it just like the Speed Force BBUUUTTT they had light sources in Sinestro Corp. The Speed Force is just a place of FUCKING LIGHT! There’s not even a ground to walk on. Yes Reverse-Flash’s reverse speed force has a black aura about it but not in every damn panel. But, that’s a small thing….The artwork is of course amazing and the character design for Wally’s new Flash costume is well done, looking more like Flash live action TV series costume. Look at the back of the book for the concept art and there’s going to a hilarious story about one of the ideas that Ethan had for Wally’s costume. Another aspect of Van Sciver's art is how busy everything can be. Try counting how many lightning bolts there are. It's as if he kept adding more and more because he just felt there wasn't enough on the page. Check out the Blackest Night series if you want to see throbbing blobs of light everywhere.

So after reading this, I am a Barry fan. Why? Well Barry honestly just has a likeability about him and it shows in the union of all the characters who celebrate and try to save him. There's even one part where he punks Superman by absolutely smoking him. But the thing about Barry now is that with a retconned past, he’s changed. Looking up Barry’s personality pre-COIE (Crisis on Infinite Earth), he was much more of a lighthearted and joking character (the best example being Darwyn Cooke's The New Frontier and the New Frontier animated movie). This Barry that’s come back is a more a serious guy and less so with the cracking of the jokes. In fact Barry seems much more like Superman (which is funny because both are mid-westerners) where he wants to help people just for the sake of helping people. But one thing seemed different compared to Clark: Barry was driven for justice by the death of his mother. Sounds more like a certain guy who dresses like a bat (and funny because both are scientists and have a massive rogues gallery of colorful weirdos) which makes the new Barry a hybrid of Batman and Superman. Different yes but Barry is more the Jimmy Steward every man of the DC universe. Plus the guy did just die and come back to a world that’s new to him and that he has a fear of dying again. Only natural I’d say. Note: In the Brightest Day Flash series, you do see Barry relax back into the world as he makes some jokes, not in the Merc with a mouth kinda way but funnier then Batman, even though Batman is as funny as anaphylactic shock. But then he was never meant to be funny…

The entire story culminates with the return of Jesse Quick, Max Mercury and even a brand new Impulse who turns out to be Iris West, Barry’s daughter who all team up against dear old Zoom. Now insert rant. Geez Zoom….you think you’d be a bit original here. Reverse Flash? Lame. Let’s call you who you really are…DANE COOK!!!!! How bad ass are you really in that yellow ass costume? It’s yellow! Flash looks like a sports car. You just kinda give me caution that a red light is coming. Or that black dude at the bus stop with the big ass yellow teeth. And what is with the color yellow in the future? Booster Gold and you just seems to want to attract as much attention and inspire manic mediocrity. (Although the new Booster Gold series is pretty cool. Also by Geoff Johns) End rant.

The story ends with some foreshadowing of events to come Zoom’s attacked Abra-Kadabra, another magician from the 25th century (you think they’d team up), corrupted the jungles of Gorilla city and is last seen talking to another Reverse-Flash, Hunter Zolomon (the Reverse-Flash for Wally) as well as the entire group of Rogues getting ready to gear up for the throw down of their lives. And it even has a Q and A at the end of the book with Geoff Johns with several blacked out passages referencing a huge future story line called Flashpoint, coming in 2011 and man did he just name drop that. If the previous work of Johns is any indication, Barry’s going to be the next big thing at DC just as Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern corps is now.
And in case you are wondering, how good is Geoff Johns? Well he's the guy who made Captain Cold, a guy wearing a bright blue parka and a freeze gun gimmick into one hard core bad ass.