Barry Allen: New God?

[SiddFinch68]

Excuse me if this theory has already been floated, but re-reading FC #3, it just popped into my head.

The Black Racer is very clearly after Barry Allen. At first, I thought he was following the bullet to collect Orion, but he immediately takes off after Barry and the other Flashes after Orion's death. Barry and Wally outrun him and end up several weeks in the future. Barry himself is confused to why he's back from the dead: "We couldn't save Orion, Wally. His murder had already happened. So why?...Why did I have to come back?"

The Black Racer, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the avatar of Death for the New Gods, not the avatar of death for humans. Why would he be after Barry unless Barry is somehow inhabited by a New God?

The evil Gods of Apokolips are taking over living mortals. Are the "good" Gods of New Genesis taking over dead mortals? Shilo Norman, Barry Allen...is J'onn's "resurrection" far behind?

[mdg1]

According to Morrison, Metron is the only "non-evil" New God left. So unless he's in Barry (which may explain WHY he was brought back), the answer is no.

[XPac]

Hopefully they do something like that with Barry.

We don't need 3 Flash's. They need to do something different with him.

[Superboy-Prime]

thats a silly thing to do.

[SiddFinch68]

According to Morrison, Metron is the only "non-evil" New God left. So unless he's in Barry (which may explain WHY he was brought back), the answer is no.

Did Morrison say when it was that there were no "non-evil" gods left? The thing with Gods is that they always return. I just find it interesting that Shilo Norman, in FC #3 says (the first thing we hear from him in the issue) "then 3 days later I crawled out of my own grave."

[SiddFinch68]

thats a silly thing to do.

Probably, but how so?

[mdg1]

Did Morrison say when it was that there were no "non-evil" gods left? The thing with Gods is that they always return. I just find it interesting that Shilo Norman, in FC #3 says (the first thing we hear from him in the issue) "then 3 days later I crawled out of my own grave."

Not in the FC #2 interview on Newsarama:

NRAMA: Where are Highfather and the New Gods of New Genesis in all of this?

GM: Dead. Gone. Only Metron got away because, as Kirby wrote, Metron is ‘something -- different! Something unforeseen!! On New Genesis -- or here!!’ Metron, the god of science, is the key to the resistance in Final Crisis.


I'm actually warming to the idea of Barry as (temporary) host for Metron. They are both scientists, both seekers of knowledge, and both can travel through time.

[SiddFinch68]

Hopefully they do something like that with Barry.

We don't need 3 Flash's. They need to do something different with him.

I agree. I love to see Barry back, but I want it to mean something.

[SiddFinch68]

Not in the FC #2 interview on Newsarama:



I'm actually warming to the idea of Barry as (temporary) host for Metron. They are both scientists, both seekers of knowledge, and both can travel through time.

Nice. I'm thinking it may not be as temporary (the host body) as Darkseid and his minions. Evil, anti-life, burns out the host. The host for life would seem to follow, be rejuvenated.

The science thing, of course, makes Libra's threats to Luthor even more telling.

[VicVasDeferens]

I think Barry Allen will be instrumental in ushering in the Fifth World that Morrison's been talking about since JLA's WWIII storyline.
Remember that Earth is supposed to be the cradle for the Fifth World, which Darkseid is trying to prevent. As Barry was the torchbearer for the Silver Age, he'll probably play a significant role in Darkseid's defeat and start a new age wherein the DCU Earth/multiverse beings will be setup as the new, fifth age of gods

[SiddFinch68]

I think Barry Allen will be instrumental in ushering in the Fifth World that Morrison's been talking about since JLA's WWIII storyline.
Remember that Earth is supposed to be the cradle for the Fifth World, which Darkseid is trying to prevent. As Barry was the torchbearer for the Silver Age, he'll probably play a significant role in Darkseid's defeat and start a new age wherein the DCU Earth/multiverse beings will be setup as the new, fifth age of gods

Yes! Barry is being brought back in a way we've never seen before

[Samuraixsithlord]

The Black Racer is very clearly after Barry Allen. At first, I thought he was following the bullet to collect Orion, but he immediately takes off after Barry and the other Flashes after Orion's death. Barry and Wally outrun him and end up several weeks in the future. Barry himself is confused to why he's back from the dead: "We couldn't save Orion, Wally. His murder had already happened. So why?...Why did I have to come back?"

The Black Racer, and correct me if I'm wrong, is the avatar of Death for the New Gods, not the avatar of death for humans. Why would he be after Barry unless Barry is somehow inhabited by a New God?


He wasn't after Barry, Wally, and Jay. He was merely following the bullet as it killed Orion so he could harvest his soul.

You can't outrun the Black Racer, even if you are The Flash.

and even if Barry was playing host to Metron, unless Metron/Barry was about to die. Black Racer wouldn't be chasing him.

He doesn't work for Darkseid

[Jack Zodiac]

He wasn't after them while the bullet was firing backwards through time to kill Orion, but he was chasing them into the future. And, apparently, you can outrun the Black Racer. But probably only if you're The Flash.

[SiddFinch68]

He wasn't after Barry, Wally, and Jay. He was merely following the bullet as it killed Orion so he could harvest his soul.

You can't outrun the Black Racer, even if you are The Flash.

and even if Barry was playing host to Metron, unless Metron/Barry was about to die. Black Racer wouldn't be chasing him.

He doesn't work for Darkseid

As Jack Zodiac noted, it sure seemed like the Black Racer wasafter Barry after Orion died. And I'm not saying that the Black Racer works for Darkseid - Death doesn't work for anyone. The Black Racer, as death, is pretty much ambivalent to sides. But he's the Death for the New Gods and he's never gone after anyone who wasn't before.

[Superboy-Prime]

Probably, but how so?

well for one Xpac seem to have implied that we don't need a third Flash, so Barry should become a new god, which isn't the way to go with the character at all. IMO, Barry is The Flash changing him to something he's not is lame.

[mdg1]

Nice. I'm thinking it may not be as temporary (the host body) as Darkseid and his minions. Evil, anti-life, burns out the host. The host for life would seem to follow, be rejuvenated.

The science thing, of course, makes Libra's threats to Luthor even more telling.

Only reason I think it's temporary is that we already know Johns is doing FLASH:REBIRTH. That suggests Metron wouldn't be hanging around. :)

[Jim Thompson]

I think Barry Allen will be instrumental in ushering in the Fifth World that Morrison's been talking about since JLA's WWIII storyline.
Remember that Earth is supposed to be the cradle for the Fifth World, which Darkseid is trying to prevent. As Barry was the torchbearer for the Silver Age, he'll probably play a significant role in Darkseid's defeat and start a new age wherein the DCU Earth/multiverse beings will be setup as the new, fifth age of godsI think Barry's character would seem best suited as a vehicle for the return of the pre-Crisis multi-verse.

[XPac]

As Jack Zodiac noted, it sure seemed like the Black Racer wasafter Barry after Orion died. And I'm not saying that the Black Racer works for Darkseid - Death doesn't work for anyone. The Black Racer, as death, is pretty much ambivalent to sides. But he's the Death for the New Gods and he's never gone after anyone who wasn't before.

If indeed Black Racer only chases after New Gods, and IF he was indeed chasing after Flash, then I suppose we would have to assume that he is either a New God, or the Black Racer is now chasing after people other than New Gods.

Lots if "if's" in those potential conclusions though.

[Jeff F]

You can't outrun the Black Racer, even if you are The Flash.


Unless you're Fastbak.

Who, if you couldn't guess, is really fast.

[XPac]

well for one Xpac seem to have implied that we don't need a third Flash, so Barry should become a new god, which isn't the way to go with the character at all. IMO, Barry is The Flash changing him to something he's not is lame.

I know Barry has his share of fans, so my opinion may not be popular.

But I still think it's sort of silly to have 3 characters named Flash with the exact same power. I know we have a lot of GL's... but that's a Corps. I'm not sure we need a Flash Corps.

In the LEAST they should change their costumes or names or something. It's fine to have Batman, a Nightwing, and a Robin. It would be silly if we had a Batman, a Batman, and another Batman.

[Spiffy]

well for one Xpac seem to have implied that we don't need a third Flash, so Barry should become a new god, which isn't the way to go with the character at all. IMO, Barry is The Flash changing him to something he's not is lame.
That's an interesting point of view from someone nicknamed "Superboy-Prime".

Then again, it depends on if your fandom of that character is based on how he was originally presented, or how he was vastly changed. :tongue:

[Spiffy]

I know Barry has his share of fans, so my opinion may not be popular.

But I still think it's sort of silly to have 3 characters named Flash with the exact same power. I know we have a lot of GL's... but that's a Corps. I'm not sure we need a Flash Corps.

In the LEAST they should change their costumes or names or something. It's fine to have Batman, a Nightwing, and a Robin. It would be silly if we had a Batman, a Batman, and another Batman.
Yeah. I was actually making a similar point about The Atom in another thread (about killing, reviving or changing the alliance or powers of a hero) (http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=233431).

At least in that case, it seemed easy--take the new guy, who an interesting character but not TOO deeply ingrained, and alter his powers (in combination with a new name).

Then again, in that thread I also suggested killing off two of the four Earth Green Lanterns.

Flash is the toughest case of all of these. DC is SO in love with the "legacy of the Flashes" that I don't think they see how "old" its all getting. That's more the reason behind falling sales than any notion that its the "wrong" Flash behind the mask now and they need to bring an older one back. Somehow, something completely bold and unexpected needs to be done with Flash, and even harder, they have to STICK with it.

[Jack Zodiac]

Multiple Flashes isn't the reason it's selling poorly. It being just another superhero book is the reason it and other books sell poorly. You'll see Johns push the book's sales in his Rebirth redux, just like he did for Green Lantern, but they'll hardly be sustainable. It'll probably explode in the upper ninety thousands when it hits, and then it'll ride through the eighty and seventy thousands for months before settling down there, somewhere in the mid-sixties. It'll sell decent, better than The Flash has in a while, but it won't be huge.

When you do something bold and different with characters, generally, that fails. People hate change. Especially with their favorite characters. The Atom failed. Blue Beetle is failing. Firestorm failed. Electric Blue Superman? Batzrael? Parallax? People hate it when the company !@#$s with their toys.

[Spiffy]

When you do something bold and different with characters, generally, that fails. People hate change. Especially with their favorite characters. The Atom failed. Blue Beetle is failing. Firestorm failed. Electric Blue Superman? Batzrael? Parallax? People hate it when the company !@#$s with their toys.
I don't disagree. But there's a point where maybe its just damage control to take people's minds off of how stale a franchise is getting. And I think, at least with Flash, its time, and it needs a while to percolate.

And its not like its NEVER worked--its just rare. One example: it worked for a lot of people with Peter David's version of Supergirl. It seemed fresh, and DC stuck with it long enough for it not to seem like a joke. Yes, it got unraveled eventually, but it wasn't, excuse the pun, in a Flash.

Personally, I don't even hate Hal Jordan going evil for a few years as much as some people did. SOMETHING had to be done, just to cleanse the palate of Hal for a while.

Heck, I even enjoyed the Death of Superman. Yeah, again, it wasn't permanent, but it also wasn't a little dash in and out. A lot came out of that, and some of it even stuck.

That's not to say there aren't big changes I've loathed. Azrael is one I've always particularly hated, even though I know that a lot of people loved him. Making someone else Batman for a while after RIP is one I'm iffy of too, just because I don't think the big changes need to be identity changes as much as emotional and story arc ones. Batgirl going evil for no good reason, there's another one I hated, because it just seemed SUCH a reach given how it was done and what she was like before. Better to have a new Batgirl entirely than THAT kind of crap, I guess, so I guess both routes to change can go really wrong with bad writing behind it.

DC has tried to jump start Flash a lot of times by juggling the Speedster, but I'm not sure they've ever gone far enough. And a lot of junk has gotten left behind. It might have been the right idea, but taken in the wrong direction. It might simply be that Flash himself as a hero isn't as flexible or endurable as some of the other franchises. I dunno. It's something to consider.

And the Blue Beetle reboot? I get that commercially its crashing and burning now, but artistically some really good stuff came out of it. It's one of the few "identity changes" I've really liked. Although as I said, I didn't mind the Ryan Choi Atom that much either, at least until that guy who took over after Gail Simone left. But Beetle and Atom have smaller legacies than Supes, Bats, GL or even Flash, and changing them to other people wasn't as big a deal. Maybe it worked better there because of that.

[Jack Zodiac]

I'm sorry, I assumed you were talking about financial success since you framed the idea of The Flash not being as powerful a character anymore around its sales.

Blue Beetle and The Atom are two books that really stood out compared to your usual superhero fare, but they were and are financially disastrous. Although I hear that Blue Beetle does extremely well in trade paperback sales compared to most superhero books. One took the idea of the standard teenage superhero and spun it on its head by making it exactly the opposite of those types of books. No secrets, no shame, just a kid with superpowers sharing his new life with his friends and family. The other tried grounding the idea of impossible-ass science in the concrete setting of a city (instead of Ray's usual adventures in subatomic worlds) while having a completely surreal war between science and magic unfold around it. For the most part, though, both of these books are still just your usual superhero books.

That's all most superhero books are until somebody takes some idea, something unusual, and runs with it. Batman has its title character going insane right now, a complete deviation from the typical physical breaking of a character. And its sales are doing great. The Flash has its title character trying to raise a superfamily (an idea outright shunned by most mainstream superhero titles), and it's !@#$in' tanking. Some ideas fly, others don't.

What would they do with the title that would make it take off besides just bringing Barry Allen back? Green Lantern is a very stock-basic superhero title and it's still selling very well, riding years of intense fan fare from resurrecting the title character after years of being dead. I'd say that this and Geoff's name draw are the biggest reasons for the title's continued success. So what now, when he and Ethan resurrect Barry Allen, a character who'd been dead nearly three times longer than Hal Jordan? Would his book explode? Was Barry ever that strong of a character? Hal had his own little fanclub cheering for him to come back, but where's Barry's acronymic support group?

Back to what you were saying before, that change is a way of refreshing a franchise: I agree. That's why sales spike when something interrupts the common pace of a superhero title, whether it's a death, a birth, a rebirth, whatever. But those sales are almost never sustainable because people don't like change enough to want to see that change become permanent, or they get bored with change very quickly and demand even more change, or changing back. Geoff's The Flash: Rebirth will be huge, and the title will be revitalized and outsell nearly every other DC superhero title for a while, just like Green Lantern did, but in the long run, it's just going to be another superhero book with a character people haven't seen in forever, or never got to see in action in the first place. Within five years, people will get bored with it again, DC will try to shake things up, people will check it out and then bitch and sales will even out again.

It's the nature of superhero comics.

[mdg1]

When you do something bold and different with characters, generally, that fails. People hate change. Especially with their favorite characters. The Atom failed. Blue Beetle is failing. Firestorm failed. Electric Blue Superman? Batzrael? Parallax? People hate it when the company !@#$s with their toys.

Yeah, they never should have replaced Al Pratt, Jay Garrick or Alan Scott. :biggrin:

[XPac]

I suppose they will just stick one flash in JSA, one Flash in JLA, and one Flash in Titans and call it a day.

I still think it wouldn't kill them to tweak ONE of the Flash's... if he's in a team book it's not like the character will have to carry the book even if readers initially won't warm to the new name or costume or whatever.

[Jack Zodiac]

Yeah, they never should have replaced Al Pratt, Jay Garrick or Alan Scott. :biggrin:

They didn't, though. They created a whole new line of comics with characters that resembled characters that they hadn't printed stories of in years. And those same characters continued to exist in another universe for the entire duration of their successor's careers. And most of them continue to exist today, in the very same universe as their younger Silver Age counterparts.

[Mat001]

If indeed Black Racer only chases after New Gods, and IF he was indeed chasing after Flash, then I suppose we would have to assume that he is either a New God, or the Black Racer is now chasing after people other than New Gods.

Lots if "if's" in those potential conclusions though.

If you know anything about the Fourth World, you know that Black Racer generally appears when a New God is about to die or someone of the Fourth World. Morrison used this in issue 14 of "JLA" back in 1998. The Black Racer was there when Orion's body was found by Dan Turpin, as seen in issue one. At the end of issue two and during the middle portion of issue three, we see that the Black Racer was behind Barry as he appeared. Jay and Wally did as Barry commanded and they ran backwards through time, only to arrive too late to stop Orion's death. We then see their point of view as the Black Racer bypasses them and stops to watch as Turpin finds the body. He turns as he spots them, almost as if he is now noticing them. He turns to follow, but he is not there when Barry and Wally finally stop. For all we know, the Black Racer was returning to the point in time that he was from.

[celticguy]

I know Barry has his share of fans, so my opinion may not be popular.

But I still think it's sort of silly to have 3 characters named Flash with the exact same power. I know we have a lot of GL's... but that's a Corps. I'm not sure we need a Flash Corps.

In the LEAST they should change their costumes or names or something. It's fine to have Batman, a Nightwing, and a Robin. It would be silly if we had a Batman, a Batman, and another Batman.

Like Green Arrow, Green arrow, and Red arrow? Ok one is in a coma but still.