Flash Family MEGA EPISODE (Barry Alan, Iris West, Wally West, Bart Allen)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, and welcome to Geek History Lesson. I am Ashley
Victoria Robinson, a comic book writer from Canada, and this
is Geek History Lesson the podcaster, where we take one character,
one contract or one superpowered family from pop culture and
teach you everything we need to know about it in
about an hour. And today is a massive celebration, my friends.

(00:22):
We are going to present you with one of our
patented mega episodes. We break into the history of episodes
past on one topic and today we're talking about the
Flash Family. And you may be thinking to yourself, why
snow must we do the Flash Family? Well, Absolute Flash
is eating it up in the world of d C comics.

(00:46):
We have had three issues episode episode Issue three just
came out a couple of short weeks ago and the
series is drawn and has cover art by Nick Roeblas.
If you don't know this, friends, Jason Inman, my host
and I did a series of stories called Terrific and
Thief as part of anthology series and those evolved into

(01:10):
Super Best Friends Captain Terrific, who you see in Jason's
mini series of the same name, and those first two
anthologies were drawn by who Nick Roeblist. The artist of
Absolute Flash. Absolute Flash stars Wally West the best Flash
if you asked me, and I know you did. My

(01:32):
dear friend who's listening to this podcast right now, and
it is a reimagining of his origin story, and what
it does is it strips away one of our favorite constructs,
the Flash family. So Jason and I are bringing it
back to celebrate everyone who makes the Flash as cool
as possible in this mega episode. So take it away,

(01:53):
my speedy Speedsters, past Jason and past Ashley.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
His name is Barry Allen and he's the fastest man alive.
And I can't believe that it took us over two
hundred and twenty five episodes to do a Geek History
lesson on him. Hello, and welcome to Geek History Lesson.
I am Jason Lightning Bolt in Them.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
I'm Ashy Victoria Robinson. Welcome to your Mind University, because you,
dear friend, have stumbled onto the podcast where we take
one character contractor speedster from popular culture and teach you
everything you need to know about them in about an hour.
And like Jason alluded to in the intro, we are
finally getting around to a I'm assuming heavily requested very
popular character.

Speaker 2 (02:33):
You are actually completely wrong on that. I don't know
anything about our podcast. We keep a giant We have
a long Google doc. I don't know how many pages
long it is. It's really long.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
There are three hundred and fifty plus characters currently requesting yes.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
And so every time you request somebody at at GHL
podcast on Twitter and Facebook, Facebook dot com slash geek
history that is true lesson So right, yep, those are
the two places to do it, not our parst on
t sweaters. Please thank you, because because we won't find
them there. But no, there is only one person who
ever requested Barry Allen the Flash blasphem, and that person

(03:13):
is Grod Frankenstein.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Oh yes, I recognize that username. That is from the
Tumblr days. That was from our pre official website Days.
So well done, Grod Frankenstein. Well done.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
We're first talking about Bury all in the Flash because
Flash season five is zooming back into our lives and
we thought this was the best time to talk about
one of the founding members of the Justice League. I
now I'm talking about this right off the top of
my head, and it's all right if you don't remember,
and we're not going to google it. Have we have
we done every founding member of the Justice League. Now, no, way,

(03:48):
we haven't done. We haven't done Marshal Manan or have
we Yes, I taught it. We haven't done Aquaman.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Oh we're we might be saving a Fridge Titan movie
coming out? What my man? I will also get thereference, Uh,
that's a Justice League reference. There you go. I would
also counter that it depends on which do you mean,
like the original Justice League? Well, I'm founding Justice Leaguers
are because we haven't. I guess we did do Hawkman? No, no, no, no,

(04:15):
hawk Man is not a founding member the Just League.
He's a founding member of the Just Society. In my head,
I can go in the Big seven. I think the
Big Seven are the foundings of it. But I also
include Black Canary in that list. Then I think Aquaman
might be the only one that we haven't done. Yeah,
I think it might be. Well that's my head getting
blown off. Yes, you know what else will blow off

(04:36):
your head? The ten sent Origin The Dan said Origin
is the first part of the podcast that I picked
the queue up on this week, where Jason is going
to lay down all the basic creators and things that
you need to know in case you go to a
cool Justice League themed cocktail party and someone's like, who's
this Barry Allen? Guy? Mob woman?

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Okay, never say that, there's another Just League reference for you, Okay.
The ten cent origin for Barry Allen is, of course,
he is a DC comm Its character. His first appearance
was in Showcase number four in October of nineteen fifty six.
He was created by Robert Kniger. I've never heard this
name sound out loud, said outloud, but more importantly Carmine

(05:13):
Infantino classic. His full name is bartholomele Henry Allen. That
is his real name, just like on the television. He is,
of course a meta human. His place of origin is
Central City. His team affiliations are the Justice League. He
has partnerships with several people Jay Garrick, Jesse Quick, Jesse Chambers,
Kid Flash, Max Mercury, Wally West. Other partner heroes are

(05:36):
Green Lantern and all of Justling Hill and his abilities
are He has insane superhuman speed, agilities, stamina, electrokinesis, body vibration,
to face through objects, and time travel.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Oh boy, it's not like he loves that, all right,
Let's go through the meat cute now, Ashley, Yes, and
the meat cute is a term that we still from
romantic comedy writing, where we tell you where we first
meeted character and how cute he itd?

Speaker 2 (06:01):
What was Actually I'm very curious about this. Let's talk
about comic book Barry Allen. This is what of course,
this whole lesson is going to be about comic book
Berry Allen. YEA, where did you meet Barry Allen and
the comic books? Because I think when you started reading
combooks he was dead.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
He was and I'm sure we'll get into that. I
haven't read a ton of Barry Allen stories of my life. Actually,
you're not a real nerd, you're probably right, Yeah, yeah,
I am. If you are. If you stuck around this
podcast for a while, you know that I'm a bart
Allen Wallely West girl. U. I heard a lot about

(06:36):
Barry Allen before I ever read Barry Allen stories, and
he was first mentioned in a New Teen Titans issue
that I read because they were they referenced their mentors
back in the Marve Wolfman run. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
used to buy them from quarter Vince Guys, and then
I paid a lot of money for the Omna buy
to make up for the fact that I read the
entire run, probably paying I don't know, maybe a fifth

(06:59):
of actual value of the book. Sure, and Barry Allen
was quite a mythical figure at the time. You know,
Wally really looks up to him and admires him, and
he seems really great. But I was always more of
a Titans girl than a Justice League girl, so I
didn't read a Barry Allen's story until I think I
was an adult. Okay, interesting, if I'm gonna be honest,

(07:22):
But he loomed large over Wally West. But I loved
Wally so much that I never needed Burry Allan. Yeah,
where did you first meet him?

Speaker 2 (07:30):
I first met Barry Allen because, of course he was
dead during the May nineties time when I was super
getting into the JLA, and my first encounter with a
Flash was actually JLA Grant Morrison Wally West, and he
does loom large over Wally West life. But to be actually,
to be honest, the first place that I caught into
him was JLA Year one.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Great. Let's we talk about a lot here. I love it.

Speaker 2 (07:52):
It's one of my favorite Justice League stories of all time,
and that was the mini series they released during the
time of the Grant Morrison run, written by Mark and
it's about the origin of the Justice League and Barry
Allen as the Flash be Honest with You. That is
the first Barry Allen story I ever read. Wow, And
again it's interesting that for being one of the Big Seven,
Barry Allen is unique that for the current generation comic readers.

(08:14):
I would say more people probably discover him either through
the TV show or somehow through Wally. Yeah, because he
was dead for twenty three years. We'll get into that.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
And Wally is a big part of the animated SERIESES.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
So yeah, all right, So let's move into the history
one O one.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
It made meet of the Lesson where Professor Jason's gonna
tell us everything we need to know about Barry Allen.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
Now, Barry Allen and a twin brother were born two
weeks late to Henry and Nora Allen in the small
Midwestern town of Fallville, Iowa.

Speaker 1 (08:48):
Are you kidding me? Oh?

Speaker 2 (08:50):
We have talked about this twin brother before. The brother
was pronounced stillborn by doctor Gilmour. However, in actuality he
had been born, but was given to another family, the
Thawn Oh that's right, whose child had died during birth.
And that is the last time we are going to
talk about that twin brother who is a bad soap

(09:11):
opera trope.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
No, no, we are done. Thinks we have an entire
lesson on that we don't.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
But this is if you want to have one hundred
if you're wondering what we're talking about. It is a
course a feature Flash villain called Cobalt Blue. We talked
about him in the Wally West episode because he's a
Wally West villain.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
Yeap, because we did a Wally West episode before a
Barry On episode. Don't tweet us. That's right now.

Speaker 2 (09:33):
When Barry was a child, his mother was killed and
his father was convicted of the murder, and this drive
to prove his father innocent was what gave Barry his
strong belief in justice, because young Barry refused to believe
that his father was guilty of the crime. You've seen
a lot of this in the Flash season one television series.
His life basically grunted to a halt because he dedicated

(09:55):
himself to finding the real murderer and to finding the
motive behind the murderer. And because this led Barry Allen
to study forensic scientists, which dedicated himself to solving his
mother's case and other innocent people like his father.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Can I interject something here? Sure? I really like this. Okay,
I like this for Barry Allen. I like it for
any superhero because the dead parents thing is very tropy.
We see it with almost all of them. But I
like that Barry manifests it in the real world by
becoming a scientist. He's not just a superhero. That's like
a thing that happens later and then amplifies his search

(10:32):
for justice. But his choice is to be a civilian
crusader for justice, not to be Batman. And I like that. Okay,
this is actually a retcon. I still like it. It's agent.
We'll talk about it later. I am actually not.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
A fan of it because it makes the flash of
self filling paradox.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Oh well, I don't like that. That's fine, Yeah, but
we talk about that. We'll get to where it comes
actually in this story, after graduating from college, Barry Allen
found work with the Central City Police Department as a
police scientist. It was later retcon to be a forensic scientist.
Forensics didn't become a thing until the nineties, and.

Speaker 2 (11:08):
He had a well known habit for slowness and lateness. However,
working late in the lab one night, a rack of
chemicals that he was working next to was struck by lightning,
and Alan was doused in the chemicals. Unharmed, Alan clean
up the mess and returned to work, but soon noticed
that everyone in the world appeared to be moving much
slower than normal, and he realized that it was not

(11:29):
the world that had slowed, but himself who had sped up.
Now an avid fan of comic books, especially the Adventures
the comic book Adventures of J. Garrick The Flash Me Too,
Barry decided to follow in his hero's footsteps and fight crime,
taking Garrick's superhero name as a form of tribute. Experiments

(11:49):
with his powers later revealed that not only was he
able to move super fast, he could vibrate his molecules,
allowing him to appear invisible and phase through solid objects.
So Barry he designed a special costume inspired by the
Flash comic book that he had read as a kid,
and he used a special cold cast polyester that he
developed in college, which could be molded into miniature outfits

(12:12):
from liquid metal, which when submerged in a special liquid.
We're getting nerdy here, became sensitive to hydrogen, expanding on
contract on contact with the hydrogen in the air, and
when a charge from a battery powered ring he wore
on his favorite finger caused the fabric to release the
extra hydrogen and shrink into the ring. He later revised
the process, making the fabric sensitive hydrog nitrozen instead and

(12:35):
creating the costume out of his flash ring.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
I don't know if I actually heard any That was
a long scientific explanation and comic book explanation just to
explain how the flash costume can fit inside a ring. Hey,
I bet we have one scientist who listens to this. Yes,
is any of that real size? A lot of hydron?

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Now, there is a thing that is forgotten in many
tellings of Barry Allen, and the fact is that he
is a comic book fan. In this telling, in the
original idea, the Golden Age Adventures of the Justsiah Society
of America were the comic books published in Earth one
because they really much Earth too. It was like the

(13:16):
idea that these ideas seep through the ether. Now, Ashley,
would you like to see because Barry Allen in the
comic books doesn't have much of a personality. Would you
like to see the return of Barry Allen the comic
book fan?

Speaker 1 (13:32):
I think that would be really interesting. I'd actually love
to see it on the television show as well. I too,
I too. I don't know what that was with, that's fine.
I think that's a really sweet idea. And I've always
loved that the Earth two Adventures were read on Earth one,
and I would love the idea that it worked in
opposition as well, or even if they were like augmented

(13:53):
versions of what actually happened. I think that kind of
bleeding over of the universe is like a really sweet
way to be a meta without sort of I don't know,
hitting us over the head too much. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Now, Barry soon began dating picture news reporter Iris West News,
whom he met while examining an apparent murderer that she
was reporting, and she was charmed by his honesty and
his stability and his bow tie. Yeah, he was a
little Jimmy Owl said at the beginning. Then soon came
a kid named Wally.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
During one summer, Iris's nephew, Wally came to visit her
in Central City, and he was actually a huge Flash fanboy,
and he knew that his aunt's boyfriend, his aunt's boyfriend,
excuse me, was a friend of the Flash. So a
meeting was arranged and the Flash offered to answer all
of Wally's questions. So Wally asked how the Flash gained
his powers of super speed. The Flash explained the events

(14:46):
of what happened, causing Wally to wish out loud that
something like that could happen to him. And the worst
wish of all time happened because it just so happened
that Barry had happened to set up the kabnical cabinet
in his lap exactly the same way at a been
during the Fateful Flash night, and there was a thunderstorm
on the afternoon of Wally's visit, and then all of
a sudden, almost then an answer to Wally's wish, the

(15:09):
freak accident that gave Barry his powers recreated itself exactly
and covered Wally in electrically charged chemical.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
An example of too much meta narrative.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
This is a thing where I would say that the
Central City Police Department needs to get rid of its
damn lightning rod, because that is a problem that is
an insane problem. No, in the comic books, there are
no skylights. They're on like the fifth plane now and
it comes inside of West.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah. I of all the potential comic book origins, the
Flash one is one of my least favorite ones.

Speaker 2 (15:41):
It's silly now possessing the same powers as the Flash.
Wally first dawned a smaller sized copy of Barry Allan's
Flash costume. It's really odd because he just looks like
a tiny person. Yes, funny, I've read that is share
and the picture news headlines dubbed him Kid Flash. Wally's
original costume was later transformed into the new yellow and
red design because that was a design that Barry was

(16:02):
actually thinking about changing to.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
I love that design and even the weird head piece.
Let me ask you this, Ashley. Is the Kid Flash
costume better yes, than the regular Flash costume. The stump
the head is super dumb. But I'll tell you what
I like about it. I like the way they draw
Wally's hair in it. The latest Incredibles movie ripped it

(16:26):
off with dash where they draw his hair always waving back,
so he always looks like he's in motion even when
he's standing still and open top head pieces like that
or like Gambit are always stupid and they never work
in real life. But I've always really loved this costume.
I take issue with the name Kid Flash. What would
you have called him? I don't know, But there's a moment,

(16:49):
there's a moment in the Jeff John's Teen Titans run
where Impulse changes his name to Kid Flash and they're like,
don't you think Impulse is a better name? Because it is?
I don't know. It's very still, very easy to me,
and maybe that's what I don't like about it. Don't
think it's aged well sure, but yes, I do think
the costume is better. I have a hard time with

(17:11):
a full cowl if you're trying, if you're trying to
obscrew your identity, it's truly the best way to go.
But I don't like people with big domie heads on
the time, Like with Thatatman, it works because you have
the ears and stuff like that, but I kind of
think Barry looks like he's covered in like a surgeon's glove.
I think it's weird. I do I think Kid Flash

(17:32):
should have a cow You do you don't? Are you
your pro regular Flash costume? Well? One except it makes
him look like a weird signy. Barry Allen, No, I
think he should have the ollow costume, but it should
be domed over like reverse Slash, like Reverse Lash. It's fun. Fact.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
There is a very recent retcon from Joshua Williamson, the
current writer of The Flash at the time of this recording,
where he did a story where he explained the reason
why eobar Thoron's Flash costume is yellow is because originally
eobar Thoron was a super fan of The Flash and
he built his Reverse Flash costumes yellow because all of

(18:06):
Flash's partners have yellow costumes.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Oh that's cute. I actually was like just I was like,
that's a clever ret coon. I really like. See, we
like a ret coon when it's clever when you add something, well,
it's character based, that's yeah, that's why it works. Cool.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
So Barry eventually joined the Justice League don't know if
you've heard that team.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yeah, yeah, and that little organization.

Speaker 2 (18:26):
And became best friends with Howl Jordan Green Lantern.

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Oh, we did an episode on him.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
Eventually, Barry proposed to Iris on a ferris wheel at
the fair because you know, he learned how to propose
the nineteen fifties and by Ferris. No, they don't deal
in carnivals.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
I'm a pilot. That was a joke.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
She accepted, and they were married in spite of the
efforts of Professor Zoom. Who is Professor Zoom Ashley.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
Professor Zoom is Barry's nemesis. I guess Arch, were you
looking for the name, yeah, Hunter Zalomon? Nope, Oh you
have arth On yep, one Ago. I don't know. They
have different names on the TV show exactly the same
names on the TV shows like Looks Look. Professor Zoom
is eobardon a a speedster from the twenty fifth century

(19:11):
who hates Berry Al He's Berry Alan's joker late, and
we were later going to learn Professor Zum is actually
the person who murdered Barry's mama. Oh yeah, so Professor
Zoom attempted to foil the ceremony, and actually after the ceremony,
Barry hid his identity from Iris for over a year,
although she had known the entire first year of their

(19:32):
marriage because he had spoken in his sleep about being
the flash on their honeymoon. Yeah, I've read that issue too.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
He was worried that the accident had actually made him
less human and was worried that his speed powers would
not allow them to have children, even and after mini
tests they actually found out that they could have children.
And then that is when Barry officially revealed his identity.
Do Iris, even though I was like, I already.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
Know, Yeah, because of course you would, even if you
don't talking to your sleep. Also with flashes, they do
like to sometimes give them medical scares. During newteen Titans,
there's a whole arc where Wally has cancer and then
it doesn't anymore.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
Yeah, because he outran it kind of. Soon Iris is murdered,
that's true by Professor Zoom at a mass grade party.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah, but you know, don't worry about Barry because he
honestly didn't wait that long, and soon he has a
new fiance. Yeah, very quickly. In fact, he begins to
date a woman named Fiona Webb, and soon and very
quickly he proposes to her.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Yeah, Barry is one of them commitment types. Yep.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
However, on the day that they were supposed to be married,
guess who shows up not a minister Professor Zoom. Professor Zoom.
Professor Zoom shows up again because he hates weddings. And
claims that he would once again kill the wife of
the Flash.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Oh my god, I'm just imagining him being like, why
are you wasting all this money? Put it down payment
on a house.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
No, he's more like, I'm gonna be your wife, Barry, Really,
you don't know what love is. So Barry chase Professor
Zoom across the world, and at the last second before
Zoom was going to kill Fiona, Barry snaps Professor Zoom's
neck accidentally.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Look, Jason, we all know that only Superman snaps people's necks. No,
Barry Allen did it first, and almost by thirty years. Wow.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
So anybody complained about the ending of Man of Steel,
go complain to Barry Allen in like nineteen eighty three.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah it's Mary al hashtag blame Barry. Yes. So this
seeing this murder, of seeing two speedsters attempt to murder
her and then murder each other sends Fiona into a
fit of madness understandable, and she goes to an insane
as Alum, that's too bad. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
So actually I want to ask you there is let's
talk about this Barry Alan murder. Because Verry Barry Allen
is not typically a murderer.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
He's very straight lace, he's he follows the rules. Yeah, yeah,
he's a he's almost a stick in the mud.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
He is a stick in the mud. That's a great
way to describe him. It is accidental and in the
pile in the panel, excuse me, he is behind Zoom
and he sort of grabs him in a choke hold
and he says not again, and it's on the again
that he pulls in and that's what snaps Zoom's neck.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
So now punctures is trachea with his adam. Yes, this
is a very early eighties storyline. It is a very
famous flash storyline. What do you feel about.

Speaker 2 (22:41):
In the early eighties than being like, let's make Barry
Allen a murderer? I don't a wedding.

Speaker 1 (22:45):
I'm honestly surprised that this issue doesn't get more attention
because it happens right pre the sort of violent turn
that we get in the mid eighties.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Yeah, this is I don't know the exact year, it's
somewhere around eighty two eighty three issue in this for
Dark Knight, which is eighty five.

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Because I always think of nineteen eighty five as kind
of being the turning point into like grittier comic.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
It is because nineteen eighty five is Chrisis an infant
earse watching the Speaking of Death. Yeah, and Dark Knight returns, Yes,
all in the same years.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
So I'm surprised that this isn't like we made a
joke about Man of Steel and it is. People are
still harping on that, they still talk about it. Yeah,
I'm surprised more people don't harp on this moment in
comics because death wasn't as rampant or as permanent. Heroes
didn't really kill yeah, bad guys, even Wolverine, who was

(23:39):
in Chris's X Men at the time. It was sort
of implied death. But there's a difference between seeing someone
and snapping a character's neck. Is that's and it's on
different handle. It's personal on PANL I'm honestly, I'm surprised
they gave this to Barry Allen. I really am. I

(23:59):
don't I don't have an issue with it, Yeah, but
I am surprised that it happened when it did.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
Okay, Yeah, and now actually I have to ask, are
you ready for the most bat crazy trial you've seen
this side of an Boston legal episode. You're welcome for
the two thousand difference. Yes, all right, now it's time
to talk.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
About the trial of the Flash.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Oh yeah, Now Barry is placed on trial for murder
and connection with Zoom's death. Imagine that Barry Allen has
found guilty because he snapped the dude's neck in front
of a giant wedding.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Party and on panel and we all saw it.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
When he is told this by a juror, he finds
that the jury is actually possessed by a mind from
the future and that the Reverse Flash, who Barry Allen
knows to be dead, brainwashed the jury into this verdict.
So the Flash runs away from the trial.

Speaker 1 (24:51):
Good for him. Barry is then.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Attacked by the Reverse Flash somehow and realizes that the
answers to this mystery and restoring his good name, I
win the future. So the juror that gave him the
verdict uses a time device to send them forward. He
discovers that Abra Cadabra, Hey, he's a very famous magician,
Ye Flash villain who's actually from the Futureature disguised himself

(25:15):
as Reverse Flash to ruin the Flash is good name.
Defeating Cadabra, he retreats the future to be reunited with Iris,
having learned in the storyline that Iris's spirit was actually
in fact drawn to the thirtieth century and given a
new body, and was in fact the mind that was
inhabiting the Juror and telling him all the information. Now,

(25:36):
the final issue of the Flash at this time ends
with the Flash and Iris kissing passionately and the caption
and they lived happily ever after dot dot dot for
a while. And this is in the Flash number three
hundred and fifty. Now, Ashley, why is the thirtieth century?

(25:56):
The thirtieth century important?

Speaker 1 (25:58):
The thirtieth century is important because that's where such great
characters as the Legion come from.

Speaker 2 (26:05):
But also Mardon, Yeah, but the Legion is superous. Yeah,
by the leg Brdellin doesn't come around for another decade. No,
but he's important to be here.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Also, if you've never read this story arc, it is
worth reading just to see what they draw the future
looking like. And Citizen Abras a fun time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
Also, before the Trial of the Flash, I just want
to talk about another retcon that was put around this
time period in Barrie's life. It's somewhere during this time
period that the controversial past scenes in Identity Crisis that
Brad Meltzer storyline happened, and during this it is revealed
that Barry voted to allow Zatana to edit Doctor Lyde's

(26:44):
mind with four of the other members of the Justice League.
And this is they say, this is six months after
Iris's death, so it's between Iris and it's between Iris
and Fiona. Yeah, when Batman discovers the League what the
League was doing, they have Batman's memories at it as well,
despite the opposition from Green Arrow, and both Doctor Light
and Batman would eventually recover their respective mind lips, with

(27:06):
Doctor Light leading to swear Vengdos and all the heroes. Also,
I'm gonna let you know the thing after this time,
I forgot to mention in the future time. Iris would
later go on to have two kids, twins called Dawn
and Dawn Allen d O N and d.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
A w N.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
Stupid, And then Crisis on Infinite Earth's happened.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
I knew this was gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (27:32):
And before we get to the first semi detailed ever
talking about Crisis on End of the Ever on this podcast,
because usually we just skipped a past thing and say,
like the Anti Monitor farted out a universe or whatever.
It's actually a little bit in Super Growl we talked
about but we're actually gonna talk a little bit more
about it, and Barry Allen because he's very important. We
first got to talk about our sponsor now. Our today's

(27:55):
episode is sponsored by our ex.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
Barmy ALM hmm, I like them a lot, okay, right
out of the gate.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
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and they make gray bars because they apparently went to
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say it. And actually, most of the time that stuff's
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(28:26):
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Speaker 1 (28:47):
Ashley and I had.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
A couple of RX bars right before the episode. Ashley,
what do we try?

Speaker 1 (28:52):
We tried the chocolate Sea Salt and also the peanut
butter Chocolate Bar.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
I like the chocolate Sea Salt. It actually reminded me
of some protein bars that I used to eat when
I was in the military, and they were great. Oh
wild eyes, those are probably full of sugar and crap.
Probably they were.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
I really enjoyed the chocolate peanut butter because they played
right into a combo that I enjoy very much.

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at xpar dot com slash geek History. So thanks to
them for supporting the podcast. You all right, it's time.
It's time to talk about crisis on Infinite Earth.

Speaker 1 (29:46):
So there were so many you don't talk about it
at all.

Speaker 2 (29:49):
Do not talk about it at all, because we're gonna
talk about it because Barry Allen actually participates in the storyline.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
I'm gonna say it right here, Barry Allen's best thing.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
Now, Barry Allen was where when we left him, Ashley,
where is he at in the future with future where
the thirtieth century?

Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yes, okay, I was like, I don't know the name
of the city. Please don't ask Futurepolis. Probably. Now, the
thirtieth century was beginning to fall apart. Natural disasters were
occurring despite the technology that had been created to stop them,
and reality was tearing in part Oh no, So Flash
returned to the twentieth century to warn his fellow heroes,
and just as he was about to warn Batman, he

(30:26):
was pulled into the anti matter universe by the anti Monitor,
where Barry Allen was mentally tortured by the psycho Pirate. Now,
just in case anybody doesn't know, Ashley, do you know
what the antimatter universe is?

Speaker 3 (30:39):
Not?

Speaker 1 (30:39):
Really? Okay?

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Our universe is made up of positive matter. Yes, and
there is an opposite to that called anti mappa.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
Oh, this is an actual science thing. Yes, it is real.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Antimatter actually exists, or we theorize that exists.

Speaker 1 (30:53):
So I'm going to say pro does exist. Now, do
you know who the anti monitor is than a giant
evil bad guy? Not really? Well.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
At this time in DC continuity, there was a multiverse,
multiple universes at every permanentation, and there was a bean
called a monitor that monitored or watched that Earth. The
anti monitor was some one from anti anti universe, and
since there were infinite monitors, there was only one anti

(31:24):
monitor and a Yang here. So the anti monitor stole
the flash because he is the only bean capable of
traveling to other universes at will. So the anti monitor
was like, I gotta shut that crap down, no more
of this. But Bury Allen escapes and foils. The anti
monitors plan to destroy the Earth with an antimatter cannon,

(31:46):
creating a speed vortex to draw the power in, and
in the process of this, the process has too much
power and becomes too much for his body, and Barry
Allen disintegrates and dies inn Issue seven and thank you
so much for listening. That's it for this episode of
Geek History lesson, Goodbye everybody.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
We had done this episode in nineteen ninety eight instead
of twenty eighteen, you would be right, Yeah, that would
have been the lesson.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
And well, yeah, and we have to continue on the
lesson because Barry got up to a lot in the nineties.
You want to know what he got up to in
the nineties.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yes, and this is what death sounds like.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
And then he did more of this, and then in
ninety five he.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
Did this, We're really up to ninety five.

Speaker 2 (32:38):
And then the most important event happened in nineteen ninety nine,
and that was and that's what Barry Allen got up
to in the nineties.

Speaker 1 (32:52):
Somewhere in the world, Jeff Johns in the back of
his head is tingling because he just made fun of
Barry Allen in the nineties. Well, he was saving to
bring him back.

Speaker 2 (33:04):
In all honesty, there's several different accounts of actually what
happened to Bury Alan following his death, and it kind
of evolved around a lot of writers in the nineties
in the two thousands is basically deciding what worked best
for their story. Yes, so he was shown in one
story to transform into pure electricity and go back in time,
becoming the lightning bolt that strikes him and gives him

(33:26):
his power. I kind of like that, do you yeah.
I sort of like the nice circular nature of that.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
You just said earlier. They didn't like him being a
self fulfilling paradox, but.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
That is meaningful, whereas a self Fulfellian paradox where your
mom gets brutally murdered, I think is a little bit different.
There was also during the nineties an extra dimensional amnesiac
character who showed up in the Marvel universe and was
really implied to be Barry, and he remembered his name
something like Buried Alan.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
So there's that.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
But then, eventually, in Mark Wade's Wally Westflash run, specifically
in Terminal Velocity, they introduced the concept of the speed
Force and it was portrayed as sort of a Valhalla
for all speedsters, and Barry was shown in the speed Force.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
I like this one.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
But actually, when Oliver Queen later died in a feature storyline,
he met Barry in an aspect of Heaven. And in
this Heaven and we saw hal Jordan, Jason Todd and
Barry and Barry was the one who gave Oliver the
tour of Heaven. Jason Todd doesn't believe in God, that's true,
don't tweet me, but he believes a bad man. If

(34:36):
you're going to go to heaven, that implies a religious belief.
And then Barry Allen finally came back.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
Oh boy, and right.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Now, because I think we are respectable, new source of podcasts,
new source for fake characters and fake history. In histories,
we never get anything wrong. I'm gonna reveal my bias
right now. Okay, before we go any further.

Speaker 1 (34:59):
Oh, I do you think this is a nice ethical
thing to do if.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
Any character in the DC universe should be a legacy character?
And actually, what's a legacy character? We actually got asked
that question on Twitter very recently, what is a legacy character?

Speaker 1 (35:12):
I also, I'm sorry, I don't know the user who
asked us, but I want to commend him. I do remember.
It was a gentleman for asking because he said that
he knew it was and there are no dumb questions.
But he's like, oh no, this is a dumb question.
It's not.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
And I appreciated that he asked, and it was curious.
It's interesting that. I mean, we're two hundred and twenty
eight episodes into gig h hishelst and we never thought
to explain.

Speaker 1 (35:31):
What character is. Yeah. A legacy character is a character
that inherits a mantle or a superhero identity, from a
previous hero Robin to becoming Batman, every Green Lanner, every
Green Lantern Kid, Flash Impulse, all of the characters that
you think of as having Keptain America now yeah, Captain America.

(35:54):
Now yeah, there have been two caps three I meant
to baby caps, yes, in three caps. But it's any
character that, yes, inherits a mantle. This is a legacy.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
So I think that the Flash being a legacy character
is very profound for this reason. Okay, he is the
first DC character to ever be rebooted. It is the Flash,
his appearance Barry Allen starts the Silver Agce.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
It does.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
And I think the story of Wally West and his
adventures in the nineties are so much more profound and
better than any story Barry Allen had pre nineteen eighty five.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
I will agree with that one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
And the idea of now I'm not saying that Wally
West should probably still be flashed now like say, they
never brought Barry back. You know, at this point, I
almost think like it shoud have probably gone to bart
Allen and then Wally's gone now. But the idea that
the Flash is always this legacy, that the character, because
Barry Allen was trying to live up to Jay Yerrick,
Wally was trying to live up to Barry Allen, bart

(37:04):
Allen trying to live up to Wally West. And again
when they brought Barry Allen back, he had been dead
for twenty three years, Yeah, twenty when.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
They brought him back years, he had been dead for
my entire lifetime. Yeah, Like he died before I was
born exactly, and had always been dead. Like there's a
whole generation where Wally West is there fac Lolly West.
And a lot of it has to do with a
JUSTICEE cartoon because the reach of that cartoon is so
much more than any of these comics. But if there was,

(37:40):
I'll agree with you on this, and I'll show my
bias as well, but I agree if there was any
legacy character where we should never have gone backward, because
I'm okay with Bruce Wayne becoming Batman after Dick Grease,
like it reverting back. Yeah, I'm okay with Clark Kent
coming back to be Superman after the reign of the Superman.
If there's any character who should have never taken their

(38:01):
mantle back, it's probably Barry Allen.

Speaker 2 (38:03):
Well, It's also it goes back to the original question
of was anybody asking for Barry Allen to come back?
Besides Jeff Johns, was anybody asking for that?

Speaker 1 (38:12):
And look, I'm sure a very nice human is going
to tell us on Twitter that they were. I don't
think so I come down on the same side of
it's argument that I come down on an identity crisis.
No one cared about Sue Dibney and no one was
upset about it until Identity Crisis, and nobody cared about
Barry Allen until the until the show started, and now

(38:32):
everyone's glad that they brought him back.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, but you're right, even though the Flash on the
TV show acts more like Wally West than he did
Barry Allen.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
But that's another discussion, asolets. But Barry did come back,
so let's talk about it. Okay. So during Infinite Crisis,
Barry is still inside the Speed Force and he entered
into the regular universe with the other Speedsters to combat
Superboy Prime, dragging him into the speed Force in an
attempt to stop his destructive rampage, but then he finally

(39:01):
came back to life fully in Final Crisis. Ashley, what
is Final Crisis? Because I love asking you about crises.
I hate asking me about crises mean answering. Yeah, I
love asking you about crisis. Final Crisis is when Darkseyde
comes to Earth and he kills Superman. No, Batman, he

(39:21):
kills Batman. Superman lives to that one. I was thinking
about the cover and for some reason, I thought it
was Batman holding Superman.

Speaker 2 (39:28):
In fact, it's in that storyline. Superman is the only
one to actually not die.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
I'm sorry, it's very late we're recording this and I've
lost my mind. The entire multiverse actually dies you no, now,
colloquial only known as the second death of Superman. We'll
get to it when we finally get to our Superman
the modern day. So sorry. He shoots Batman and Batman

(39:57):
goes back in time and does it die.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
That's right, Okay. So Garry Allen is seen chasing the
bullet fired backward through time that killed Oriyan, the son
of Dark Side, and being chased by the Black Racer,
which is basically the Grim Reaper of the New Gods.
But if he was a skier, yep. He simply says
to Wally West and Jay Gerrick, run and Barry and
Wally and j accelerate one month into the future because
they run so fast, only to find that dark Side

(40:19):
has conquered the world. Barry explains his plan. He says
that since they had led the Black Racer to the present,
Barry would lead him to dark Side and let the
Black Racer claim Darkseide's soul. But Barry wanted to do
it alone, but Wally insisted on going with them, so
the two Flashes teamed up ran so fast they ran
past Superman, who naturally was surprised to see Barry in

(40:41):
the real world, and they vibrated through dark Side, allowing
the Black Racer to remove Darkseide's essence from Dan Turpin.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
It's actually a really cool moment.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
It's a of all the ways to bring Barry back.
It's a neat moment. It's a need beat to bring
Barry back.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Although if I can give Barry a punch up note
instead of saying run, I would, I'd recommend fly you.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Fools, and the lawyers for j. R. Tolkien and are
on the line right now.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
It's a joke for like five people.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
Then Flash Reborn happens and the full details of his
resurrection are revealed. Now Barry, Allen, and Wally found the
Black Flash apparently dead.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
Ashley, what is the Black Flash? What is the Black Flash?
It's like what if death? But Speedster though, yeah, it's
a grim reypro flashes. After the Black Flash was dead,
they find out that Barry becomes the new Black Flash.
Actually think that's cool.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
And he realized that his presence could damage or damage
or kill other innocence and Barry decides to go back
into the Speed Force. There he finds Professor Zoom iabar Thon,
who reveals it is I Baron who reveals the depth
of his plan. After Barry briefly aided Kid Flash against
Superboy Prime and Infinite Crisis, Thorn was able to send

(41:59):
a subliminal pulse into the Speed Force to draw back
what was left to Barry's self awareness. This led to
the hero coming out of the Speed Force in Final Crisis,
and afterward, Zoom transformed himself into a new kind of
Speedster and created his own negative speed Force to contaminate
Barry and other heroic Speedsters. Of course, all the Speedsters

(42:21):
teamed up. They eventually beat Zoom and Wally, who had
become the full Flash during Barry's death, basically just stays
the Flash again. All a green Arrow, Green Arrow situation
with Oliver and Connor Hawk.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
Yeah, I think it works better for the air Roses
than for the Flashes. I actually, to be honest with you,
I love Wally's costume post Flash rewarn because they give
him the Flash TV costume. Yes, and it looks awesome.
I love it.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
I think it's actually my favorite. It's my favorite Wally
Flash cost interesting yep. So this is also the storyline
where they retcon Barry's mother being killed by Zoom in
the place police blaming on his father, and before this
in the Silver Age, his parents were actually just alive
and also Slash reborn de ages Iris and Barry by

(43:10):
twenty years somehow, and it's never explained because Iris had
gray hair in the nineties. Because coming Yep, Barry just
goes back to being the Flash during his next series
and just does the same old superhero stuff. Intel Ashley's
favorite event flash Point can I explain this one, Ashley?
What's flashpoint?

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Barry Allen missed his mom so he ran back in
time reset the universe. Everybody got lines on their costumes,
and he said a bad precedent for time travel yep.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Basically, he creates an alternate world because he wanted to
save his mommy. And in this alternate world, Thomas Wayne
is Batman and we did a whole episode of with
it with Sam Basher a couple of years back.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
Go listen to it.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah, so Barry makes the whole new timeline and then
eventually this whole new timeline has ignored it about five years. Yeah,
Barry is single in this timeline. Iris has no idea
he's the Flash, but he does get a new Wally
West who is African American, and then soon the white
Wally West comes comes back. He's dahed and somehow he's

(44:10):
been lost in the speed Force for about ten years.
But however, Barry cannot remember his pre flashpoint life. He
can't remember people like Jay Garrick and the detail of
his feuds with Reverse Flashing yobar Thon. He can't really remember. However,
Wally can remember everything from before the flashpoint timeline.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Break.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
Later, eobar Thoron does show up. He attacks Iris and
Wallace is who they're what appointed the African American Wally West,
and Iris gets glimpses of her pre flashpoint life with
Barry learns the identity of the flash that's how she
learns in this timeline. And then during this they Burry
and Iris learned that they were married in the previous timeline.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
And had terrible, terrible children. Yep.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Because of this, knowing that from Thorn that her entire
life has been drastically altered and that Barry is directly
responsible for it because of his time traveling actions, Iris
now distrusts Barry. Good move Iris, and soon Wally White.
Wally learns that in the previous timeline he had two children,

(45:16):
and he decides that he must break the speed Force
because he believes that they were both speedsters that his
children must be inside the speed Force. Barry tries to
outrace him to stop him, and Wally beats him. Wally
proves himself to be the fastest man alive. Oh well,

(45:37):
damn straight.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
About friggin time. But also the fact that both characters
now because the speed Force is a mark Wade Wally
West invention, but you know, since both characters had access
to it for quite some time in continuity, the fact
that Wally's the only one who has all of the memories,
I think, if you want to take it this way,

(46:01):
is a canon nod to the fact that he is
a deeper connection to the speed force as well. Well.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
It is actually said, and this is this is the
most recent flash storyline called Flashboards Really Good, written by
Joshua Williamson. It is actually said that the reason why
Wally outruns him is because Wally has a spiritual connection
to the speed Force, whereas Barry's is a scientific connection,

(46:25):
which is well proven because again, Wally West was the
speedzer that discovered the speed force.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yeah, so he would regard it maybe as something closer
to religious, and he's not a scientist. There's also on
the moment, there's a moment where Barry says, you are
Wally West and you're the fastest man alive. It's a
truly beautiful moment, like it's a good story.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
It's great, good job, josh It's actually a very good story.
The issue after that happens. The issue starts out with
I'm Barry Allen and i am not the fastest man alive,
and I was like, oh, that's so good. But eventually
after that is revealed that uh, Barry Wally's children being
in this beef is actually a trick by Hunter Zolomon
who is Zoom not Eobarthon to unleash new forces like

(47:10):
the speed Force into the world, including the Sage Force
and the Still Force. And you know what, we'll explain
all of those some other time, because that's currently happening
in flash comicooks right now as of the time this recording,
and that is the entire history of Barry Allen, who
good job. Yeah, and now let's go into the recommended reading.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
And the recommended reading is the part of the podcast
by Professor Jason is going to recommend a bunch of
great Barry Allen stories for you to read. You can
find these and all of our past recommended readings at
geekhistory lesson dot com slash recommended Reading. You click on
the widget, you buy the book, a little bit of
support comes back to the Mind University so that we
can keep Barry on running on that treadmill in the
basement and keep the lights on.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Now, the first one I'm going to suggest this is
not even a Barry Allen story.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
What Jason, what hell could you do this? But it's
called the Return of Barry Allen. Oh, this is a
good story.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
The storyline happens very early into Mark Wade's Flash run
with Wally West, and it's basically, it's very soon after
Christ on Infinite Earth and Barry Allen shows up a
live and Wally freaks out, yeah because he's like, what, so,
Barry Allen's in the story, but I'm not going to
give you the twist of how Barry Allen's in the story.
And it's a really good Barry Allen story.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
Cool.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
The next one is Flash Rebirth Volume one by Jos Williamson.
This is one of the most recent volume ones of
the Flash. It's basically where a thunderstorm shows up in
Central City, but it's a thunderstorm made of a speed
Force energy and it creates a whole bunch of new Speedsters.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Yeah. And the last.

Speaker 2 (48:38):
Trade I'm gonna give you is actually a trade that's
not even out yet at the time of this recording,
but it's so good. It's called the Flash War and
you can go over there and you can pre order it.
But if you're listening to this in the future. This
is one of the best. Flash War is so good
and it is the best story arc of Joshua Alliamson's Run.
I don't think you need to know that much about

(48:58):
the Run to be able to read it. Flash War
is going to go down in I think the flash
cannons as equal to Mark Wade flash stories.

Speaker 1 (49:08):
I mean, I'll say it right here, and people can
agree with me or discree with me as they will.
Of course, I think this is the best contemporary flash story. Sure,
I think it's you know, really quick, it's good, It's
really really good. But I wonder if the reason, again
we're kind of biased. I wonder the reason why we
consider to be so good is because it's mainly a
Wally story. Probably.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Okay, Now we're going to go into the discussion, and
the discussion is going to be with a flash fan
Flash Fact Friends that Didn't Work, The host and the
owner of Majorspoilers dot com and the creator of several
awesome podcasts, including The Legion Clubhouse, Top five and Critical
Hit flash Fan from the Future. Welcome to the podcast

(49:53):
for this discussion, Stephen Schleiker and Hello Stephen, and welcome
back to geek History Lesson. Well, thanks for having me back, Jason.
No problem, man, I've been waiting for the episode that
we could pull you back in here. Now you're Flash
expert or you're a big fan of the Flash. When
did your love for the Flash start? Actually, it kind
of got to me through Impulse. When Impulse came out,

(50:17):
just the umberto Ramos covers just grabbed me and I
started reading that and I'm like, oh, this ties into
the Flash, and maybe I should go read that. And
then as time progressed, I slowly started to make my
way back through the entire history of the Flash run
and certainly some of the big phone book catalog reprints
of the early Flash stuff, you know, six hundred pages

(50:38):
for nineteen bucks.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
Yeah, I'm going to buy that and read all that.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
So yeah, it really started probably in the mid nineties,
and then just as escalated from there.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
So you've read a lot of the Silver Age Bury
Allen stories then yes, uh huh wow. Does anything stand
out to you from them or about them? About those
type of stories with Barry Allen?

Speaker 3 (50:57):
I think the thing that's kind of amazing about the
Silver Age Flash is that they try to inject as
much science as they can into his stories, where they're like,
here's how Barry can spin his arms as fast as
you know a tornado, and here's what a tornado can do,
and why it blows air this way and does these things.
So they really try to inject science, but it's like
not really good science, which kind of makes it funny

(51:19):
in hindsight. But at the time, you know, if you're
a young kid and you're reading this and you're like, oh, wow,
science is cool, then maybe that imprompts you to go
and study science somewhere else. But yeah, I always was
surprised how they try to inject some kind of a
pseudoscience into explaining how his powers work.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Well, the pseudoscience actually fits into the legacy of the
Flash because when you go back to the Golden Age
and Jay Gerrick, he got his hours from hard water, right, Yeah,
what the heck is hard water? Exactly?

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Well, what kind of fumes are you smelling there? Jay?
How does they give you super speed? Now? Do you
consider yourself to be a fan of Barry Allen?

Speaker 3 (51:57):
I like Barry Allen for what he represents and what
he did to the comic industry, And you know, he
literally started literally and figuratively saved comics because if you're
talking about the Silver Age and how DC really only
had Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and nothing else. Gardner Fox
coming in and say what if we reboot and bring
in Barry Allen. That really saved the superhero comics because

(52:19):
at the time everyone was so focused on romance comics
in Western and horror comics, and of course you had
the Tents and plague starting to creep into all of
that and limit what people could do. So Barry coming
in as the Flash and a reboot of a classic
character kind of saved the superhero comic industry, and then
of course the Crisis on Infinite Earth's he saves the

(52:42):
entire DC universe once again. So from those aspects, Barry
is really kind of cool. He's also very eh milk toast.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
You know, he's got him.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
He's not somebody that just really stands out as he
always does the right thing, but there's nothing really special
about him. He's kind of dry and dull and boring
to me. But when it comes time to step up,
he's there and ready to do it. So from that aspect,
I can really appreciate the point of having Barry Allen
in what he does.

Speaker 2 (53:11):
And that's an aspect too that we talk a lot
about in the Lesson that there is not a lot
of depth to Mary Allen, even after they bring him
back to life for his basic second comic book career.
He is just basically follow the rules guy and sometimes stiff.

Speaker 3 (53:29):
And that works especially when you put him with other
characters like Kyle Rayner or Hal Jordan or Green Arrow
or Batman, people who are willing to break those rules
and ben those rules. Then he becomes kind of that
sounding board of hey, wait a minute, guy, should we
really be doing this?

Speaker 1 (53:45):
Is this the right way to do it?

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Or you know, why are you guys messing around talking
all the time when I can just run over there
and come back really fast.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
M m.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Now, what do you see as the big differences between
Barry Allen and Wally West. The reason I ask about
Wally West is because these two gentlemen, more so than
any other Speedsters, more so than any other Flashes, basically
wore the same costume and they also have the closest connection.
So what do you see as the two differences between

(54:15):
the Wally West as the hero Flash and Barry Allen
the hero Flash.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
So Barry is doing it because to borrow from another company.
He's been given a great responsibility and he's doing it right.
Wally is doing it because he's honoring that person that
mentored him all of those years as kid Flash. And
so there's really very different reasons for that, and that's
one of the reasons why I think Wally West is

(54:41):
more of an interesting character, especially during the Weight Run
and the stuff during the nineties where it really came
down for Wally as family is important, love is important,
you know, these are the things, these personal connections are
what drives us. Barry is just there doing what needs
to be done because he's been given this this power.

Speaker 1 (55:00):
M hmm.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Now let's talk about the big elephant in the room.
Barry Allen had a great death in Crisis. Yeah, the
ultimate SIUT. He saved the multiverse right in Crisis on
Infant Ears, he saved all of existence and he died
and it was a depth that was talked about through

(55:23):
all for the next twenty three years. Basically, people still
reference the time that Barry Allen saved everything. So twenty
three years later, Barry Allen is brought back in Final
Crisis and then the reasoning for why he's brought back
is has explained in Flash Rebirth by Jeff John's. Should

(55:44):
Barry Allen have been brought back to life in the
fictional DC Comics history, of course?

Speaker 3 (55:51):
So that's a really good question and a really tough question,
right it's from a writer standpoint or from a fan standpoint,
there are many justifications for yes, he needed to come back.
From a story standpoint, I think him coming back actually
detracts from his sacrifice. And really that's the problem with

(56:11):
any comic book death and resurrection, right, they make this
ultimate sacrifice and then you know, a year, two years,
or in the case of Barry Allen, twenty years later,
he's back and everyone's like, Okay, let's move on with
the rest of our with the rest of our lives.
So from a universe standpoint of what DC Comics is,
I would say no. But from a writer fan standpoint,

(56:32):
I can see why people are like, yes, we need
Barry to come back, because he's that Barry we knew
growing up. He was the Barry that we read and
this he made that big monumental impact in Crisis on
Infant Earth. So yeah, why wouldn't we want to tell
additional stories about him.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
But do you see anything problematic with the fact that
because they waited basically a generation, there's two generations. There
are almost two generations of fans who have no idea
who Bury Allen is besides the fact that, oh, he's
the Flash that died. And then especially when you consider
the Justice League animated cartoon, right, Wally West in that

(57:09):
cartoon and that until the Flash TV show was probably
the biggest exposure that the Flash had ever had outside
of the comic book audience. That again, to me, the
only people that you're bringing Barry Allen back for are
the people that were reading comic books back in nineteen
eighty five. And there's two generations of combook readers that

(57:32):
don't care about Barry Allen.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
Oh yeah, because when Barry Allen came back.

Speaker 3 (57:37):
I'll be honest, my interest in reading Flash stories really
kind of weighing because Wally West is my Flash. It's
always that first Flash that you connect with. But if
you kind of look at the bigger picture, obviously, someone
like Jeff Johns Now, I can't speak for Jeff Johnson,
and so I'm just putting what I see into kind
of his sphere. But this is the Flash he grew
up on, This is the Flash that he loves. So

(57:59):
when given the opportun tunity, yeah, he wants to write.
He wants to write Barry Allen, not any other Flash
character that has tried to fill those boots. Also, from
another standpoint, you could look at the business side and
is DC trying to, you know, cater to old fans.
Are they trying to bring old fans back, And certainly
some things that were going on at DC at the

(58:20):
time may indicate that a large number of older fans
had drifted away. So bringing Barry back might have also
been another way to say, hey, older readers, we want
to bring you back into the fold. But the biggest
problem is, like you said, same way with a green lantern,
when you have John Stewart on the Justice League International
and you have Wally West in Justice League International, switching

(58:41):
them out to people that don't don't have any connection
to these characters really seems like a bad move.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Yeah, yeah, I agree, And I said in the episode
previously that I admitted my bias that Wally West is
my Flash as well, and I do have problems with
Barry Allen coming back to life. Especially when you consider
the CW Flash TV show that's on the air right now,
where he is Barry Allen, but he acts more like

(59:12):
Wally West than Barry Allen. Oh yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 (59:14):
And if you go and look at articles that we've
written over at majorspoilers dot com, especially into that first
season and.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
Please everywhere and go look at those articles.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
Or if you listen to our other show, the Flashback Podcast,
where we take a look at each episode of the show,
we may mention that, oh, this characteristic or this power
that Barry has in the TV show is actually a
Wally power. These are things that were introduced by characters, yeah,
by Mark Wade in the nineties, so that you know,
also kind of mixes it up. But then you know,

(59:45):
I love I love, love love the relationship that Wally
has with Linda. But the Barry Iris relationship, I think
is even stronger and more powerful when you go back
and read some of those old comics. Yes, he's always
trying to pull the oh, I'm guess I'm just slow

(01:00:06):
berry and then you finally realize that Iris is like, no,
I've known this all along.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Well, she heard she heard him say his identity on
their honeymoon.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:15):
So, but but then then the whole idea that, oh,
they want to start a family and he wants to
protect her and he's going to take her into the
future to live out their lives and they have kids.
I mean, that's fantastic. That's fantastic storytelling that you could
only do with Barry Allen. It's not something that you
can do with Wally West. So for Barry to be
the TV character in the show, I think is a

(01:00:35):
great idea. Okay, in the comics maybe not so much. Well,
that's what I was going to ask you, because you
touched on a little bit. What are the flash stories
that you can tell with Barry that you can't tell
with the other flashes. Well, obviously the biggest one is
the flash of two worlds, right, that is probably the

(01:00:57):
biggest one that you can tell. And then now with
this new season that's here or about to arrive on
the CW, we have one of you know, we have
his kids showing up. Granted it's excess and not one
of the Tornado twins, but you still have this legacy
of oh, here's one of your family members from the
future that's here today. And that's again another story you

(01:01:18):
really can't tell with Wally, but you certainly can't tell
with Barry, and I think that that's fantastic as well.
Then you've got you know, really, you can't do any
of the villains that are known Flash Rogues Gallery villains
without them being Barry Allen because by the time Wally
inherits them is his real pushes. Let's do reform, let's

(01:01:42):
become friends. Let's see if we can turn you away
from a life of crime to you know, being someone
who's different. And we saw what happened with that with
Legends of Tomorrow. But Barry is just like you're a
bad guy. I've got to do something about you. And
so that allows you to bring in all of those
classic villains again and again and again or one time
in the TV show to tell those stories.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
That's an interesting perspective. I never thought about that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
Final question for you, Steven, Okay, why do you love
the Flash? What is it about that superhero? Maybe their powers,
their stories, their style. What about the Flash speaks to you?
Because I know that you're also a big Batman guy
as well, So what is it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
About the Flash? So here's something that a lot of
people probably wouldn't realize. And this is a really weird
connection for people to probably to know. When I was
growing up in middle school and in high school, I
was a runner. I was you know, long distance runners,
you know, half mile up to two mile, across country
and stuff. Yeah, yeah, cross country track, you know, you know,

(01:02:46):
team events, those kinds of things. So running kind of
is in my blood and I really enjoyed the heck
out of that. So when you find a character whose
deal is speed, that's something that kind of triggers with me.
And so even though I'm a big Batman fan, I
like the Flash better. And I think it all has
to go back to the fact that he's a runner

(01:03:07):
and I used to be a runner, And man, what
kind of weird wish fulfillment fantasies can you have when
you're like, man, if I could run as.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
Fast as as the Flash, what could I do? You know,
those kinds of things.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
So that's probably why Flash, you know, came on my
radar and stuck around. But then as you start to
read the stories, it just grows on you suddenly realize
that depending on which version of the Flash you're reading,
and certainly Barry Allen has a lot of really good
deep stories that go on. You suddenly grow this attachment
in this fondness for all things flash nice.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
I really really like that and then gives us some
deep insight into your mind. That's really nice, Steven. Yeah,
really quickly tell our listeners where they can find you.
They don't know about majorspoilers dot com. Please tell them
about all the awesome things and your Patreon and everything
you got going on over there.

Speaker 1 (01:03:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
So if you want to find me on Twitter at
Major Spoilers, basically everything is Major Spoilers, So you can
go over to our website Majorspoilers dot You have news, reviews, podcasts.
The Major Spoilers podcast is a fun one. Ashley Victoria
Robinson sits in quite a bit on that show, and
so you can hear more of her thoughts on that show.
We have so many podcasts in the Major Spoilers podcast network.
You can just search for Major Spoilers on your Apple

(01:04:14):
podcasts and you can find them there. And if you
enjoy what you hear, you can check out our Patreon
page at Patreon dot com slash Major Spoilers for more information,
including how you can access the Flashback podcast, which I
believe is only on the Patreon. Correct, Yep, that's only
a Patreon. That's a Patreon exclusive.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
To all of our listeners that are out there right now.
Many of them have said to us that they listen
to our podcast and that they made a podcast because
of geek history.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Lesson.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
I'm going to tell all of our listeners that the
only reason I made a podcast was because I was
such a big fan of the Major Spoilers podcast, which
I've been listening to I think now ten years.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
In years.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Yeah, I think I started like in two thousand and
eight because I had a job at the time where
I was driving a lot and I was like, where
are some podcasts, and that's how I found it. So
it's awesome that but now you are our guest on
my podcast. It's like it blows my nerd mind. So
thank you so much Steven for joining us. Run, Barry, Run,
and thank you so much for Steven for joining the podcast.

(01:05:12):
I love having Steven on the podcast every time. And
again Major for dot coms, we can find everything, Steven.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Heck. Yeah, all right, now we're going to go into
the tching. We're in one and forty hereaters because we
old school professor Jason is going to give you his
thoughts on Barry Allen and you can find this at
GHL podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
The greatest thing that Barry Allen did was to die
and provide Wally West an example to aspire to as
he became the fastest man ever the real flash hashtag
Wally Yes.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
And now we're going to move into the final section
of the podcast, the Honor Roll.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
What is that, Ashley? Well, the honor Roll is where
if you head on over to I think it's called
Apple podcasts now Tunes, the fan see and you leave
us a five star review to help some other cool
people find us. We'll read whatever you write, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:06:07):
And it helps us in the iTunes search Apple podcast
search algorithm. The first person that's going to join the
all on a Roll and get five stars himself is
Alexis Odd three two eight, saying these guys are great.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
Jason and Ashley are some of the best and funniest
hosts on any podcast that I've ever listened to. They
get through the lessons very well and we're even able
to make me understand the legion of superheroes. Keep doing
what you're doing, you guys, are awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
You're awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
The next person that's getting five stars in the honor
roll is Q meets World, who says comics for the
comic illiterate. I have been listening to GHL for a
while now, and I finally feel like I get comics.
For whatever reason, my brain doesn't promise process comics well.
So this gives me the opportunity to learn all the
amazing comic stories from two amazing teachers.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
Oh, I'm glad you can help. That's so sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
And the last person that John joined the honor roll
is al Reid, who says Geek History performance review. This
is I'm excited to read this one, Okay. Professors Ashley
and Jason are always entertaining, informative, well prepared, and insightful.
I'm a newer listener, but felt immediately connected with and
invested in the professors and their various methods of storytelling.

(01:07:18):
Their lessons stand up to time and are worth going
back through if you play catch up. I have a
feeling they're going to be really busy writing for Marvel
or DC in upcoming years, so we as listeners need
to enjoy their lessons while they have time to teach them. Additionally,
their comic Jupiter Jet is excellent.

Speaker 1 (01:07:35):
Oh thank you, Oh, thank you so much. PS.

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):
Ashley, I don't care what Jason says. Batman the Animated
Series is a perfectly acceptable answer to any neat cute
thank you. I don't know if I've ever questioned you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
I've but I think sometimes you're like, I bet it's
Batman the Animated.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Series, and then he has a PS to me, PS, Jason,
I don't care what Ashley says. Forcing people to listen
to insert dial up internet sounds of the nineties here
is hilarious every time I forgot about that. So thank
you al Reid, thank you so much. She Meets World,
and thank you Alexis on three two eight. You now

(01:08:15):
get a key to the teacher's lounge because you are
on the honor roll. And whatever you do, do not
touch mister Glibloski's time magazines. What is mister Gobloski teach again?
Ancient Egyptian algebra?

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
Oh? Play? Were say, ahient aliens? Nope. If I was
going to ask you what the Flash? What, Barry Allen,
the Flash does the most besides running, what would you say?
I mean, it's funny the way you set that up.
It is running. Yes, what does he do the most? Yeah?
Can I go for the gross answer? Sure, Chase, Oh no,

(01:08:55):
I can't say what I want to say because we're
family friendly.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
What he actually what he probably does? What he probably
does the most without any gross jokes? Is Pine after Iris?

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
Maybe?

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
Okay, you're so close, you're bringing way too generous. Okay,
the answer is I'm Barry Allen and I I'm reset
the time. Oh right, travel back in time.

Speaker 2 (01:09:16):
I was going to say monologue, Oh that's true, which
he actually stole from Wallack.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
I'm understanding that this is my fault for the way
I praised this question. But Jason, did you know that
Iris West actually time traveled before Barry Allen ever time traveled?
Hashtag Iris West did it first? I believe, I think
I did. Oh I didn't know. I think. So if
you're talking about the story that I think you're going
to be talking about, Okay, then then shall we get
into it? Shall we get into it? Run? I can't

(01:09:43):
run podcast, untrod the podcast? Okay, Well, I'm in the
speed force now, so I don't have to huff and
puff because it's like comic book stuff. So thank you
and Welcome to Geek History Lesson because you have stumbled
onto the podcast where we take one character construct or
speedster from pop culture and teach you everything you need
to know about it in about an hour. And I
named Ashley Victoria Robinson. I did it completely backwards. I

(01:10:05):
forgot my name. You you did?

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
You did it so backwards that I was like, is
she intentionally doing a flashpoint joke and I need to
follow along? Or did she actually forget to introduce herself
because you're wonderful and you are a podcasts and you
are Ashley Victoria Robinson, and the people need to know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Who are you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
I am Tam mcgillicutting. My name is I am Jason.
I sometimes like Iris Inman. Yeah, I'm losing this. I'm
using this podcast episode to convince me to like the
character of Iris Wes, a very famous supporting character from
The Flash classically Barry Allen's girlfriend, sometimes Wally West's grandma,

(01:10:43):
sometimes his aunt, depends on which version you read. It's weird.

Speaker 1 (01:10:47):
My name is Ashley Victoria Robinson and I'm the fastest
podcaster alive, and nine years ago I started Geek History Lesson.
That's about as much as that monologue as I could remember,
Are you doing the Flash TV show? Yeah? I'm very
confused about what you were just doing. Okay, ok so
we're talking about Iris West, and why are we doing
that today, Jason, Because there's a movie called The Flash

(01:11:08):
that's coming out. That's right, we have not seen and
there will not be about it, so don't even worry
about it. Before we get deep into this, I want
to send out a big thank you to our research
assistant Meredith Harris for all of her hard work on
this episode. She debuted as a research assistant on our
Leah Organa episode which was a real doozy, so I'm
really proud of the work she's done so far, and
this being her first ever comic bookie history lessons. So

(01:11:30):
please send all good vibes and thoughts through the Speed
Force to Meredith Harris for her hard work.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
We should also send out we sho say that this
Iris West episode had been planned for a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
We've moved it I think six times.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
I think we've moved it as many times as that
Flash movie has moved, Yes, which which would be exactly
why we've moved it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
But in fact, we should have just said we'll do
it when the Flash TV show ended, But we did it.
Guess what the Flash TV show literally actually is coming out?
Is it crazy that e excuse me?

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
Is it strange that we live in a universe where
the very same year that the nine year long Flash
television show debuted was this same year that the movie
version of the Flash was announced to a peer.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
I'm going to tell you, Jason, it's not weird that
both of those things are happening. It's not even weird
that both of those things are happening quite close together.
What is weird is that neither of them are starring
Wally West. Yes, they're both starring Barry Allen, the boringest
Flash all times. That's right, I'm just lighting the Berry fans.
Wally is the true speaking. Yeah, if you would have,

(01:12:44):
if you would have asked me when Justice League and
Justice League Unlimited was airing, I would have been like,
it will absolutely be a Wally West movie. Yeah, I'm like,
I'm truly baffled at both of these star burial Thanks
Flash rebirth suggested by anything not a human soul. Great,
let's move and let's.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
Move into the ten's origin where Ashley's going to give
you the basic cliff notes and who's its and what's
it's of. Iris West. I kind of sometimes want to
call her Alan because I feel like that's part of
Iris West Allen or whatever her name is. In case
you ever go to a cocktail party in the middle
of Central City and somebody's from Keystone City and they
quite don't know who Iris is.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
I'm going to say, for the sake of the tenth
cent origin, we will call her Iris West Allen, because
at the time of this recording, that is her full
name in comic book continuity, and we defer to comic
book continuity, but we do throughout the episode. Typically we
do sure throughout the episode, I will probably refer to
her as just Iris or Iris West, because honestly, it's
going to save me some breath. But we all know
who we're talking about. Iris West Allen is a d

(01:13:39):
C comic book character who was created by Robert Canneger
and Carmine Infantino, legendary creator. Her first appearance was in
Showcase number four in October of nineteen fifty six, in
the very same issue as Barry Allen himself. In fact,
just like Lois Lane, Yes, I didn't realize this, and
I actually think it's pretty cool that she's been around
as long as Berry. So there she is a reporter

(01:14:02):
for the Central City Picture News, which is some real
Golden age nonsense. If I can offer a career, Lane
famous for being the current wife of Mary Allen, the Flash,
the aunt of Wally West, Kid Flash, but then also
the Flash, and the grandma of Bart Allen Impulse, then
Kid Flash, then also the Flash. So she's touched a

(01:14:23):
lot of Flashes that will leave you with that virture.
It's not in an inappropriate way. Well one of them,
one of them's her husband. Well sure, And she has
notably been portrayed by Candace Patten in the Flash television
show on the CW that Jason pointed out just wrapped
up at the time of this recording, and is about
to be portrayed by Kirsey Clements in the Flash movie
starring Michael Keaton. And that is your ten cent origin

(01:14:46):
on Iris West.

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
And I'm pretty certain that she also portrayed Iris West
in the Justice League.

Speaker 1 (01:14:53):
Zack snydercut, Yes, that is true. It's the same actress.
But because that technically didn't get a theatrical relief, we're
gonna call the Flash Movie. I consider the Flash Movie
to be her debut. Got it? Yeah, I'm there. We go.
That's all I've got. Meet cute time, Jason, what's the
meat here? That's where we're we talk about where we
first meet or cuted these characters. So, Ashley, where did

(01:15:14):
you first meet Iris Alan Al Iris West Allen. We're
actually gonna give merediths first our researchers. Okay, so she said,
I honestly don't even remember. I wrote a lot of
Flash as a kid, and since Iris has been around
as long as Barry, it's really hard to nail down
exactly when Iris would have first popped up for me.
So I think that that's fair, And I think that

(01:15:34):
that is a systemic of a lot of the supporting
characters in comic books, like if they're highly attached to
a more prominent character profile, like any of the Robins are, like, well,
it's so tied to who this person is, So then
mine is I have really no memory of Iris. She
didn't make all that much of an impression on me
before she started appearing in the TV show. Thus, DC

(01:15:57):
decided to upper visibility in the comics around like twenty
fifteen or so, and give her like a real personality
based on my reading interest though I probably would have
seen her in the pages of the New Teen Titans
when she was like Wally's older auntie, But I never
really read flash comics until I started reading them for
this podcast. So I also, like Meredith, don't have a

(01:16:18):
super super clean memory of when I first met Iris West.
So Jason going to make this a trifecta, or do
you have a clear memory of your introduction to Iris
West Allin?

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
No, I have a very clear memory because Iris Allen
is the grandma, or I always called her the grandma
of Wally West. And what I mean by that is
because they're in the classic Mark Wade Wally West run
before I started getting some of those issues before Impulse
showed up.

Speaker 1 (01:16:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16:44):
Yeah, and Impulse shows up around the same time that
Iris has disappeared, and everybody thinks that she's dead, but
she is actually in the future, I assume, Ashley, we'll
get to it. Yeah, and there is a big mystery
that you know this of course in this time period,
you know, Barry Allen has long been dead and in
that connunity, I want to believe that the reason why

(01:17:06):
she went to the future is because she went to
the future because Barry because of the way the timestream works,
like spend a bunch of time in the future, and
so she went to the future so that she could
spend time with Barry before his quote unquote death and
in that continuity, the idea is that she wrote a
book about Barry Allen being the Flash, and it was
like a big mystery that kept carrying through.

Speaker 1 (01:17:27):
Who wrote that book was? Who wrote that boy? Yeah, yeah,
I remember, yeah, yeah, So I always so when Bart
shows up, she shows up as this like gray haired
great lady. Yeah, great haired lady. Well, she's Bart's grandma,
yes with Bart, yeah and yeah. So like it's weird
to me to think about her as like the sexy
young lead of the Flash or the sexy young Roman

(01:17:49):
because like to me, I'm always like, yeah, she's Wally's
She's the Flash's grandma basically, even though I know, look
she was Wally's aunt, but she again, she showed up
with gray hair and looked like look like a grandma. No.
It's the same way that I felt when Teddy Sears
was playing Jay Gerrick for a while, I was like,
but Jake Gerrick, old man man and you become really marry,
you know. And that's a great thing about adaptation, right,
So you think you become married to these versions of

(01:18:11):
the character, and then you become you can become a
challenge and your opinions can change. So that's interesting. I
really didn't think anyone was going to have like a
clear memory, So I'm glad that you brought that up
and that you shared that. I'm glad because otherwise this
MEE C would have been a big old nothing. Well,
we've had those before where we're just like, I don't
even know where I first heard about drama. What can
I tell you? But if you want to know more
about like our personal relationships with these characters and more

(01:18:33):
casual reminiscences about characters and pop culture and things like that,
I would really really encourage you when you're done with
this podcast to go head over to patreon dot com
slash jaw win that's jaw ja Wi and I can
spell it. I promise you. We do a whole bunch
of shows there behind the paywall that are like super fun,
super casual, more yelling, more fun, more swearing back there,

(01:18:54):
including my favorite podcast, Jason and Jeremy John about Justice League, which,
if I can tease, just recorded a bunch of episodes
in person that are going to be coming out really
soon that I'm psyched to here, and I know everyone
else is going to be psyched to here. We have
all kinds of back end look at our processes. We
have access to our discord, which is my favorite place
on the internet. So if you like this pod, I

(01:19:14):
think you're gonna like us getting a little bit more
personal over on Patreon, please go join that, become a
super friend, because we want to welcome you into all
the club, all the fun stuff that we have going
on over there. Yes, all right, Jason, are you ready?
Shall we shall we do the thing? Yes, let's let's
do the thing. Let's let's get into Let's get into
the lesson here, let's get into the main lesson here

(01:19:36):
on Iris Allen, Yes, so here? What's her maid name? West?
That's a dumb question. Why did I ask that, Jason?
Are someone is writing us at a fun You know
what if you if you want to drag Jason for that, right,
it's fives whatever on I don't care. I welcome it.
I'll ignore it just the same. We're on Twitter at
GHL podcast. Okay, So, Iris West was born in the

(01:20:01):
thirtieth century. Are you sure that's her maid name? I'm
ninety nine, you know what. I'm sure Meredith is sure
that this is surveiden. You got it. I can fob
that her responsibility, you know, maybe in some continuities, maybe
pre crisis. What do you mean she was born in
the thirtieth century? What does that mean? Iris West was
born in the thirtieth century to Eric and fran Russell. Okay,

(01:20:25):
and they sent her to the twentieth century to escape
a nuclear war, where she was adopted by Ira and
Nadine West, and she became Iris West. She was never
told that she was adopted, but always suspected, okay, because
her curiosity came about when and led her to constantly

(01:20:47):
be digging for the truth. So she was always trying
to find like the truth of her origin and the
truth of how she were and this is what ended
up leading her to becoming a reporter. Okay, no, please
go ahead, I was going to say this right here
is the sound of a bunch of writers trying to
bend over backwards to explain something that we didn't need

(01:21:11):
to explain. This, So this is what I meant in
the opening where she technically time traveled before Barry o
oh boy, oh boy as an infant. This is also
the part of the podcast where I'm going to address
something about Iris West as a character and her construction
as a character. Yes, that's here, Jason. And in what
issue did Superman and Lewis Lane debut?

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
The same issue Action Comics number one, which was published
in thirty eight nineteen ninety thirty eight.

Speaker 1 (01:21:36):
Iris West was created in nineteen fifty six, almost twenty
years Laterana Living to show up until this olver. Yes, right,
Superman really really popular, Lois Lane really really popular. She
got her spin off book, she did friend Low's Lane
Fun Fact, which has some of the best covers of
all time. By the way, if you never read them,

(01:21:56):
which you should.

Speaker 2 (01:21:57):
Super so popular. They gave a spinoff title to his
girlfriend and his best friend. Yes, and his younger self.
Eventually He's weird friend Batman. It is gothfriend exactly, and
that his gothfriend's son. Okay, so fun fact.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
Iris West was basically created as a carbon copy of
popular Superman character Lois Lane. When she was first introduced,
Iris is a smart reporter. Iris has dark hair, Iris
lives in a big city. Iris is in love with
a superhero. Iris, unlike og Lewis, Lane basically has no
personality except to accidentally fall into danger when to show

(01:22:34):
up on a cover every once in a while so
that Superman, oh I'm sorry, not Superman the Flash, so
that the Flash can rescue her. She's the damsel in distress. Yes. So,
so basically they decided we're going to do Lois Lane
two point zero, which honestly is a fine thing to
make a bad character model of fault stal ideas from
your betters. In this case, they're stealing ideas from themselves.

(01:22:56):
And because they were like, well, we've got to make
her a little bit different than Lois, I think this
is where this thirtieth century origin story and her always
being curious idea came from.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
Well you may not have the answer to this, yes,
but I'm going to say something that might break your
entire lesson. Okay, because this thirtieth century little Hickey, Yeah,
sounds like a retcon to me.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Oh it is.

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
I was gonna say, I think that is one of
red con. It is, and I'm glad to know that
my retcon meter whoooooo actually.

Speaker 1 (01:23:29):
Was right. Yes, ye, yeah, Okay, I was like, they
did not make her from the thirtieth century in the
original No, in the her original intro, she's just she's
just lowest Lane. She just reported her. Yeah, and then
this retcon comes and to make her quote unquote slightly
more interesting and slightly more difficult different than Lewis Lane.
But Jason, you believe that Lois Lane is the most
important character in the female DCU, female character in the

(01:23:51):
DC univer what I ever saw. And you said earlier
that you thought it was smart for DC to basically
copy a version of her into the Flash.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
Sure, do you think it's a lazy choice, I'm I mean,
it's lazy if you leave her that way, mm hmm.
But at the time, No, I don't think it's a
lazy choice. I mean, look, when Green Arrow was brought in,
they did an Arrow cave.

Speaker 1 (01:24:15):
Yeah that's true.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
Yeah, and he had a plan. Yeah, but he was
a copy of Batman. Yeah, he was a rich billionaire
with a side cake and all this other stuff. So
they did the exact same They do it all the time.
As long as you don't leave it that way for
fifty years, I'm fine with it. I'm going to suspect
they did leave her that way for quite a long time,
which is why I have a feeling that we do

(01:24:36):
not have any kind of like character basis for how
Irish should act inutil very recently, whereas like with Lois,
you can you can track that all the way back
to the fifties. Yes, like, oh, this is how Lois
Lane acts like. This is the general sense of how
Lois should be. This is the general sense of how

(01:24:58):
Jimmy should be.

Speaker 1 (01:24:59):
Like.

Speaker 2 (01:24:59):
But I hate to say it, but like I think
for most characters that aren't basically the trifecta of comics,
which I would say is Batman, Superman, Spider Man, m
I kind of feel like almost every supporting character gets
forgotten and tell basically like the eighties or nineties.

Speaker 1 (01:25:15):
Now, we're gonna do this throughout this episode. But I
want to ask, also, do you think it's even fair
to compare Lois and Iris, Because like panel for panel,
Lois probably has one hundred times the stories that Iris
has ever had.

Speaker 2 (01:25:27):
It's not really that fair. And it's also not really
that fair because there is like an inherent story reason
for why Lois is with Superman.

Speaker 1 (01:25:36):
Yeah, yeah, more so than Iris and bar Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:25:39):
You know what, Iris and Barry their story reason is
that they got the hots for each other. Yeah, so
you're like, oh hey baby, oh hey. But with like Superman,
it's simply it's like literally the reason of like, oh,
she's not afraid of him. Mm hmm, Like she is not.
She is not intimidated nor scared by the Man of Steel,
and that's what attracts him to her.

Speaker 1 (01:25:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:25:59):
She's also harder than him, She's way smarter and a
better writer. Yeah, and so he's really impressed by her. Yeah,
whereas I don't think we have that with Iris and Barry.
I think they just they dated and they're like, oh,
look at you.

Speaker 1 (01:26:13):
She likes him despite him being we love you super Power.
Don't you like my bood tie? Iris? We I just
wanted to have that discussion because, like I said, we
are we are going to make comaricons between the characters,
and they are very similar, so I thought it deserved
to be discussed. Sure, Iris went on to attend Columbia University,

(01:26:34):
a real place, yeah give her, and then had an
internship at the Daily Planet. So her and Lois probably
actually worked together. Sure, they were together, that's also a
right con as well. At the same time, it was
also literally one of the only newspapers that was named
in the DC universe for a long time, besides Dailey
Star and the Gotham Gazette Daily Star. They wasn't called

(01:26:55):
Daily Plant until the Superman Radio Show. I mean, I know,
but I'm just saying, like, it's not like there's a
ton of so if they were like, well, she's going
to be a newspaper reporter, she's going to go to
the sure Post College. She traveled the world pursuing a
journalism career, which again is a very like lowis also
Lana Lange Journey. Yes. Yes, Upon returning to Central City,

(01:27:15):
which is famously the home of Barry all in The Flash,
she got a job at Picture News, Picture News News,
And do you know what happens to picture news, Jason.
They told you the news with pictures, Yes, she meets
Barry Allen. Well, they don't tell you the news with pictures.
They do tell you the news, and they're liars pictures.
I just love the phrase picture news. I think it's

(01:27:36):
so funny, it's so silver agy. You want your news
and you want your pictures. We got your pictures. And
you knew it was right here. She knows well the
only newspaper by that's got pictures, pictures news. I would
love it if this was the only news outlet in
all of the DC universe that had photographs. Uh. And
it's working there that she meets Barry Allen, of course,
who is a police scientist while reporting on a murder

(01:27:58):
that he was investigating. Pretty dark actually for DC comics
at the time. They begin dating, and eventually Barry proposes
while they're on a ferris wheel ride at the Central
City Amusement Park. Because romance, baby, Now, I'm gonna tell
you who Iris almost married, Because even though her and
Berry do have a fairly straightforward, very classic romance, there

(01:28:21):
was another suitor in her life. But I'm gonna tell you.
Right after this, okay, ghl, we raced back here to
talk more Flash Iris west Allan business. So, Jason, I
would love to ask you, I teased before the break
that I'm gonna tell you who Iris almost married before

(01:28:42):
she married Barry. Do you have any guesses as to
who it might be? Clark kat I wish. I don't
honestly know how much of this Flash supporting cast would
have been around at this point. This is a pretty famous,
well known Flash character. Mmmmm, I mean is it? Is
it some version of viable It is Eobard Thon in

(01:29:02):
fat that crafty You better explain who that is, that
crafty devil. Eobard Thon is the reverse Flash. Yes, but
he's also from the future. He's also from the future.
It's not way has a dumb name like Eobard. Yes,
because it's supposed to be like an Edward of the future.
I actually don't mind that. I don't either, because I
think it's a fairly and I actually think it's an
intelligent extrapolation. It just it sounds goofy. That's why we

(01:29:23):
like it pains your ear. But I agree with that.
I actually I think that's a smart writing choice. I
do too, I did do so, so hats off. So
it's not that Iris like dated Eobard. It's not like
an Iris and Eddie from Flash season one kind of moment.
It's not that she really liked eobar Thon. It's not
even that she knew who Eobard Thon was. She wouldn't
have known at all. What happened was he switched places

(01:29:44):
with Barry Allen on their wedding day, but like, luckily,
don't worry about at about it. Barry was able to
stop the wedding, so it was just norm. It was
literally just a switcheroo. It was a sitcom switcher. It
was like a one commich. So she wasn't dating him
at all. No, no, no, no, no, so comic baby, this
is comedy. I guess I don't know. Barry, despite being married,

(01:30:07):
continue to hide the continued to hide the truth that
he was secretly the Flash. I'm kidding me. He hid
it past his wedding wedding. He also lied to Iris
by not telling her that her nephew Wally West was
kid Flash until their wedding night.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
Wait, okay, so wait, I'm completely confined. I'm lost now.
So you're so you're saying if I am understanding you, right?
Are you saying that on their wedding night, this dick
Barry Allen revealed the secret identity of his nephew, but
did not reveal.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
And also himself on the same night.

Speaker 2 (01:30:44):
Okay, I was like, I was like, what logic and
Wally West is the kid Fly?

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
Well, who's the Flash? I don't know, honestly, I wish
no it was more like, I'm the Flash and Iris
is like what, And then he's like, oh, and also
Wally is the kid Fly.

Speaker 2 (01:30:59):
So if you don't completely like this, we can still
in know the marriage. It's been twenty four hours, al.

Speaker 1 (01:31:02):
So I can just run back in time and reset
the universe. So who knows, I'm idiot. But no, Jason,
it wasn't even that good because he didn't sit her
down like a respectful relationship, and Clark did and tell
and tell her what was going on. Barry was talking
in a sleep. Oh my god. So he was just

(01:31:23):
like and I'm the Flash and Wally West is the
kid Flash and pork chops and oh I would like
to I got to pick up some light bulbs and
oh no, eobar Thon, maybe he's back from the twenty
fifth century pancakes and all that kind of stuff. It's
not it's not that different, actually yes, And then Iris,

(01:31:44):
because Iris is like, oh, you're petty, I can be pettier.
Iris doesn't tell Barry that she knows until their first
wedding anniversary. These two are toxic. They are made for
each other. They are very I'm actually starting.

Speaker 2 (01:31:58):
To understand why the you made a show about these two.
This is very They should not be together. They're terrible
for each other.

Speaker 1 (01:32:08):
And then Barry didn't tell Iris that he was the
Flash until she was already pregnant with their children.

Speaker 2 (01:32:16):
Well, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry what oh you mean?
So he didn't officially admit it to because on.

Speaker 1 (01:32:21):
Their wedding anniversary, they're when your wedding aniversary, she was like,
I know you're the flash and he was like, no,
I'm not. Oh. He still tried to last and he
didn't tell her until until she was pregnant with her child.
She literally is like holding his suit. I saw it
and read I don't know where that came from.

Speaker 2 (01:32:37):
I'm a drag queen, costume party, costume party.

Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
I have no answers. And his excuse was that he
didn't know if he was even human anymore after the accident,
so he didn't know if they'd be able to procreate,
so he didn't want to put that burden on her
while they were trying to have children. This guy's a dick. Yeah,
I hate it, dick. I don't like him. And a
shout out to Meredith who left this note and caps
be honest with your wife either way. Barry honestly with

(01:33:03):
your wife either way. So I just want to point
out that in this way, Very and Iris are very
different than Lois and Clark. Yes, because Lois and Clark
have a very open and honest conversation about their future
and their races together their species, and Barry and Iris
just kind of like keep picking any they pick. Yeah,

(01:33:24):
well it's fine. I'm glad that a lot of this
gets hand waved away every time there's a red con. Well,
Clark Clark told Lois before he proposed. Yeah, well he
started to propose, but he was like, before you answer,
I'm going to tell you that I'm super bad. And
then she like took twenty four hours to kind of
process that, and then she told him, yes, yes, yeah,
this is like Barry Allen, this guy does not have

(01:33:47):
good Kobe mechanisms. No, he doesn't. He really really doesn't.
So and before you're all shadow at me, you're like, well, yeah,
his mom was killed in front of him, and his
dad would take into prison. That was also a red con.

Speaker 2 (01:33:57):
So at this time, at this time combook's history, that
did not exist in Barry Allen's lexicon. That didn't exist
until two thousand and eight. Yeah, we have a Barry
was just like I have a lame superhero guy.

Speaker 1 (01:34:09):
That's who he was. His mom and dad were fine.
In fact, they were in stories, Yes they were so.
Although Iris and Barry had a seemingly happy barriage, it
was happy version of the outside. It seemed very much love.
They were posting on their Instagram all the time, you
know Instagram. Yet we're in like the sixties, I know,
but I'm just making a joke, all right. They would
have been. They would have been you know what they

(01:34:29):
would have been doing, sharing their pictures in the social page.
Oh oh, that's a good one. Talking on the party line. No,
they would have They would have been dedicating songs to
each other on the radio. I've never done that. Yeah,
it would have been like w KFI fifty nine. Barry
would like to give his sweet baby Iris some sweets
we love, and here's a I need your loving by

(01:34:51):
the temptation, I need your love, he says. I'm sorry,
I'm always late.

Speaker 2 (01:34:57):
Baby Iris, coming back with a special message for a
Harry Allen over there in Keystone City, saying, don't forget
milk on your way home, and don't you dare be
late tonight, all.

Speaker 1 (01:35:05):
Right, Central City. They don't live in Keystone. Wally lives
in Keystone. Now Wally lives in Central, and they I
think they live in Central. They live in Central because
Keystone is the Golden Age. Oh that's where Central is
the Silver Age.

Speaker 2 (01:35:18):
I think Wally left in Kyson. But then eventually they
do this thing where they start to twin cities. Yes,
even though in my head canon it's it's Kansas City, Missouri.
Kansas City, Kansas.

Speaker 3 (01:35:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35:28):
Yeah, yeah. So though Barry and Iris were we're going
to say happily married, sure for several years, Eobard thon
her almost secret husband hadn't gotten over losing Iris, and
he'd been in love with her the whole time. Well,
I touched your hand just one time, and I got
to tell you not even they touched the backs of
the hands, probably brushed. It was like silky smooth, and
just for a quick second there, I was like, what

(01:35:49):
a wedding night this could be? And then you know,
Barry had to show back up again. So if you
think Berry has bad coping mechanisms, let me tell you
what Yobard does. Oh I'm I'm just schizophrenic straight up. Yeah.
But like comic books, schizophrenic, So she just means like
a general chaos.

Speaker 2 (01:36:01):
Mom Oh yeah, I will, surely, I will sneak into
bassinets and snap baby's next, I'll do that.

Speaker 1 (01:36:06):
You're not you know that far off. Actually, at one point,
he goes to their house and tells Iris that she
either needs to leave Barry for him or die.

Speaker 2 (01:36:12):
There was a quick second there where I thought the
end of yr sentence was going to be. One time
he went to Barry at Iris's house, I told Iris
that she needed to lose weight, and I was like,
that's cruel, that's villainous.

Speaker 1 (01:36:24):
And using a twenty fifth century hypnotic device because comics.
He wipes her memory of the visit and just kind
of like leaves the choice in her subconscious, hoping she'll
figure it out. She has this unconscious thing of like,
so someone is gonna to feel me very or I'll die.
I don't remember why.

Speaker 2 (01:36:41):
Yeah, I guess I'll stay basically.

Speaker 1 (01:36:46):
And then the following night they go to a costume
party and Than shows up and asks her to dance,
and she obviously doesn't remember him, but it's like floating
around her subconscious. So she promptly rejects eobar Than, saying
that she wouldn't be wont she wouldn't want to be
with him even she wasn't so in love with Bear.
Of course, his boat dies and him cons and being late,
and then Eoberton, in a totally level headed and rational move,

(01:37:09):
vibrates his hand through her head and kills her like
Cisco explodes explodes her head at this party. No, it
doesn't explode. It's just the hand in the forehead. It's funny.

Speaker 2 (01:37:22):
Now it's really dark though, now that you bring this up,
I remember this.

Speaker 1 (01:37:27):
Yeah, this, this moment is actually fairly memified, all bit.

Speaker 2 (01:37:30):
I remember this, and I remember this being like in
characters in the nineties and DC comics would talk about this. Yes, yea, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Iris is actually dead. She's dead dead for a
while in comic book history. How many issues do you
think she's dead before? Oh, it's a number between one

(01:37:51):
and one hundred, Okay, because I was like, are you
counting other series and stuffing?

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
No, no, just in the flash.

Speaker 2 (01:37:56):
Oh man, I don't know what time period are we in,
uh Green the seventy We're in the seventy, late seventies.
How many issues you did Okay, So I want to
say fifty, but since this is the seventies, my gut
wants to say like one. So I'm going to split
the difference and I'm going to say seventeen.

Speaker 1 (01:38:17):
Your first guest was pretty close one. No, fifty, oh fifty.
She's dead for seventy five issues. Oh that's a good
r She died from She died in issue two seventy
five of The Flash and came back in three fifty.
So she's dead which was the which was the final
issue of Flesh. So she's dead for about five years maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(01:38:37):
which is real world is not bad, pretty good chunk
of time. And this is so. And then this is
when her biological parents from the future. Oh boy, they
traveled back in time to draw her life force back
to the thirtieth century, give her a new body, and
reunite her with Barry. So technically this isn't even the

(01:38:58):
same Iris West clone body. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it's
like Swansaw's Iris. It's an Iris golum. Yeah in a
lot of ways. Or if you want to get star
treking about it, it's like what happens when you come
out of the transporter machine. Are you a clone. You're
again sent every time you go to that transport, you die.
And if you remember me seating this a few points back,

(01:39:20):
they bury and Iris stay in the thirtieth century together
and she gives birth to their children.

Speaker 2 (01:39:25):
Okay, but how does Barry find out that she's in
the thirtieth century? How does that ever happen? He just like, oh,
you're there, honey.

Speaker 1 (01:39:31):
Basically, her parents go and get him her like thirty
century parents, and they bring her.

Speaker 2 (01:39:35):
So seventy five issues later, he gets to go, oh, okay,
So I because I think I know what event is next. Now, okay,
if I'm correct, can I make a stab at this?

Speaker 1 (01:39:45):
Sure?

Speaker 2 (01:39:46):
I think what you're gonna tell me is that the
next event is crisis on it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:51):
That's right, yes, because I want to talk about the
twins really quickly and then we'll get to crisis. Yeah.
So basically, when Iris dies she was pregnant, ye bring
her or they res Arector in a body somehow, also
pregnant record goes baby body. Yeah, it's very scarlet witsch.
It's one division before one division, and they I risk
his births to twins, who are eventually called the Tornado Twins.
Down and down, d O N and Dawn stupid. Honestly,

(01:40:15):
the less said about them, the better they've been reviving
in recent comics. But I just wanted to. I know,
the Tornado Twins are a thing that people know about.
Iris and Berries are just wanted. This is when they
were born. And then what happens Jason Chrisis Sun Infinitives. Well,
daw Inn gives birth the bart Allen No we're not,
this is not the bart Allen episode. Oh well yes,

(01:40:35):
so christ uninfaniteors happens because the Anti Monitor, who is
this giant guy who loves the universes, has said there
are too many universes. There's too many multiverses.

Speaker 3 (01:40:43):
Like he is.

Speaker 2 (01:40:44):
It's very unlike today, Yeah, where there's so many multiverses.
There's so many movies about multiverses. See, if the Anti
Monitor comes back, he's going to do the same thing
he did in nineteen.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
He's going to eat the Spider Verse. It's the tastiest
of the verses. Wow, yeah, so much. Uh, spider Ubs
taste good. I would love to see Myles fight the Monitor.
I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 2 (01:41:03):
So the Anti Monitor decided to destroy the multiverse and
only left one Earth at the time. Now, I know
Barry Allen was in the future because he said that
he came back from the future specifically to specifically to
fight the anti Monitory.

Speaker 1 (01:41:17):
Yeah, I do. Just sorry to go back to the
Twins one more time. This is one thing that Iris
actually beats Lois too. She has children in Maine Cannon
continuity before Lois Lane does.

Speaker 2 (01:41:26):
But I'm going to tell you that I think the
only reason they let Iris Allen have kids because I
knew they were going to nurse Berry, because they knew
they were going to kill Barry and literally in the
next year.

Speaker 1 (01:41:36):
Yeah. And then this also gave them a chance if
they wanted to include include Flash characters with either the
Legion or if they didn't want to make Wally Flash,
they had two more options that they could just like
time travel bring back from the future. So are we
ready to like, so the Flash dies, Yes, the Flash
dies in Crisis on Infant Earth.

Speaker 2 (01:41:52):
It's the best and most importantly cracking. He breaks the
Anti Monitor's body in half. And then you know, now,
Marv Wolfman, the writer of this series, because Barry hops
through time throughout the series. Yeah, he always said that
he looked at that as like he's like, that's the
easiest way to bring Barry back. Barry is always running
through the times, and Barry makes lots of cameos. But

(01:42:13):
Barry is technically dead, and now Wally West kid Flash
is going to take up the mantle the Flash and
it actually takes thirty years for them to resurrect him.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
Well, I'm gonna I'm gonna say this, We're about to
make a pretty gigantic jump in time because yeah, Iris
like is reference and kind.

Speaker 2 (01:42:34):
Of appears twenty three years actually, my bad, twenty three years.

Speaker 1 (01:42:37):
In in teen Titans because of Wally, and she's referenced,
of course in the Flat like she kind of she'sving
Wally's run a lot. She kind of appears here and there,
but like the next thing that she does that's super important,
that's not just kind of her showing up to like
give Wally advice. Vaguely is is bart Allen stuff? Yeah,
so we get again, like, as you say, almost thirty

(01:42:58):
years of comic book history before she kind of appears again.

Speaker 2 (01:43:02):
Well not even no, no, no, no, no no. The Impulse
stuff happens at least like ten years later.

Speaker 1 (01:43:07):
Oh okay, why do I think it was more than that.

Speaker 2 (01:43:08):
No I was specifically referencing was was the return of
Barry Allen.

Speaker 1 (01:43:13):
Oh, you're right about the years of mixing.

Speaker 2 (01:43:15):
Barry Allen gets resurrected in like two thousand and eight, yahya,
which is like twenty three years. So Barry Allen is
officially dead, yes, for twenty three years. Yes, Wally West
is the flash for twenty three years.

Speaker 1 (01:43:26):
Why there are generations of people like myself and yourself
who are like Wally West is.

Speaker 2 (01:43:30):
The flash that it's the reason why Wally West was
the flash in the in the Just the animated series. Yes,
And the next time she shows is like ten years later,
and again she's an old lady when.

Speaker 1 (01:43:40):
She shows up. Yeah. But also, you know, I try
really hard when we do research on supporting characters to
like pick out one one weird adventure or one interesting
moment that they had, but like Iris literally has too many,
doesn't he It doesn't have any, Like they're all like
She's literally just a plot device when somebody needs to
explain something kind of speed force or they need maternal

(01:44:00):
figure to show up in speed like. She kind of
does that for Wally a lot. But in terms of
like story for me to tell you about. There's nothing
until Impulse comes into the place. Let's get the Impulse.
So let's get to Impulse the greatest speeds during the
DC universe, Barry.

Speaker 2 (01:44:15):
Has been dead for a while. Everybody thinks Iris is dead. Yes,
and Wally is the Flash.

Speaker 1 (01:44:21):
Yes. Okay. So Bart Allen, Iris's grand grandson is aging
rapidly because he's locked into super speed. So Iris takes
Bart Allen by the little baby hand and they go
back in time to the twentieth century so that Bart
can get help from Wally. So we talked about this

(01:44:43):
in our Bart Allen lesson. When Bart shows up in
the Impulse series and becomes part of the Flash family,
he does appear to be like nine to twelve years old,
kind of like a classic like Robin era age. But
I was gonna say Peers thirteen, but he's actually like three.
He's only been around for three years old emotion of

(01:45:04):
a toddler, yeah, but sort of that ambiguous like preteen
early teenage eras of a lot of teen side kids.
So he's a reverse Benjamin Button. Yes, I've never seen
Benjamin Button, and I always have to Benjamin Button. He
starts old and comes yet Yeah, yeah, that's that is
what happened. So Iris also has a moment where so

(01:45:25):
she basically she's like, I don't want to look after
bart Allen, so she dumps him off with Jason's favorite
speedster of all time, Molly Wes Max Mercury. Oh yeah,
that's right to raise like raise him and like treat
the kids right. And then it's later Rt colmed he
goes in loves with Jake Eric sole Bit. Your mileage
may vary on who he's actually raised by, that's fine.

(01:45:45):
She also is involved in the Savatar storyline, which I
normally wouldn't bring up Savatar, but it is kind of
a touchstone to the show, so I thought I would
tell you how she's involved in the Savatar storyline. So
there's another another speedster named Johnny Quick. He's all you
need to know is he's another another He's.

Speaker 2 (01:46:04):
A golden age speedster like kind of like Jake Eric,
but he would say mathematical formula and that would give
him powers.

Speaker 1 (01:46:09):
Yeah, so doesn't make any sense. Iris, because she's smart
and curious and was once a reporter, knows and she's
from the future, mostly knows that Savatar is coming and
so she tries to warn Johnny Quick that he's about
to have a conflict with Savatar, and Savatar is the
self declared god of Speed, and you learn over the
course of the storyline whether or not he is the

(01:46:30):
god of speed or not. But she's really nervous about
changing the future by sharing too much vital information about
the presence. And when Johnny Quick is like, well can
you give can you give me like any context? Can
you tell me who or why or what I should do?
She doesn't go into any detail on how to defeat him.
She's basically like, you have to defeat this bad guy
named Savatar who's going to show up and fight you.

(01:46:52):
And you're like why, and she's like reasons, yes, exactly.
She is then very quickly after this kidnapped by Abracadabra
and pul Laris DC Comics villains That's all you really
need to know, and is forced to write down everything
she knew about the future so they could create quote,
a roadmap to tomorrow. I actually think, if you're going
to have a character do this amount of time traveling nonsense,

(01:47:13):
This is like not a bad story today.

Speaker 2 (01:47:15):
Abercadabra also is a flash villain who's from the future
pretending to be a magician with powers when he's actually
using future technology who appears.

Speaker 1 (01:47:22):
In the Flash television show played by David That's right
after this, Iris disappears again goes back to the future
to write her book. Jason, do you know the name
of Iris's book? Is it The Life and Times of
Barry Allen? Oh, you're so close. It's the Life Story
of the Flat Oh okay, I knew it was something

(01:47:44):
like that, but I can't remember I had Barry Allen
or the Flash. I could tell that the Life and
Times of Scrooge McDuck is living. Rec I knew is
something like that. Yes, So, while she's visiting the future
writing her book, she learns that bart who was the
full Flash at the time, had died very very sad
and hoping to go back in time and prevent this,

(01:48:04):
which is like any Flash character's number one.

Speaker 2 (01:48:07):
M O, I ha the main clear we jumped ahead
in several years now again, Yes, and Bart Allen has
grown up and now he is the Flash because Wally
West at this time is considered to be dead. Yes,
so Iras is going back to prevent that. Then it
just happened the next day after well, I said that
she went away for some time.

Speaker 1 (01:48:24):
I just want to make sure we're literally just saying
he was thirteen, so now he's an adult. Yeah, he's
like maybe eighteen. So she wants to prevent her grandson
from dying. She finds out that Zoom Flash villain is
an ancient Rome, so she hires him to help her
save Bart. Hires who Zoom Okay, and despite her best

(01:48:47):
efforts to save him, including hiring Zoom in ancient Rome,
Bart's death is inevitable. So this is like a Doctor
Who version of a fixed point in time. It's something
that until the editors at DC Comics Aside decided a
few years ago, you can't change, you can canton do
and much like Barry, Bart has to sacrifice himself for
the larger good of of the DC universe. And then

(01:49:09):
you eventually learned that wasn't even part, which is weird. Yeah, Like,
I'm it's really hard because the part does not even
get part. Stuff is important to Iris, but it is
like really hard to sort of skirt around her.

Speaker 2 (01:49:20):
It's really complished. Listeners, If you if you want to
know more, you can google yourself. But if we if
we jump down that insane quagmire where we'll never end
this podcast. Yeah, it still doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 (01:49:32):
So I want to ask you. We've talked a little
bit about Iris being involved in time travel and what
she got up to while Barry Allen was away. I
would love to know. Do you think, since Barry Allen
disappeared for all this time, should Iris West have disappeared
with him?

Speaker 3 (01:49:51):
Yep?

Speaker 1 (01:49:51):
Should we have? So we don't think we should have
had ongoing adventures with her, have her her cameo appearance? No,
because you just you're you're just muddying waters. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:50:01):
If Wally West is your flash yeah, you know, then
we shouldn't have Grandma Aunt flash around. Or if we are,
then she needs to be a permanent character. She needs
to be like his Perry White. But you can't keep
being this thing of like I'm gonna go to the future,
even though I know every single thing that's going to
happen to your life and every single villain that's ever
going to attack you, and exactly literally I could look

(01:50:24):
up and google the exact second of your death.

Speaker 1 (01:50:27):
But I'm not gonna tell you. I gotta go to
vacation bye, Because if you actually loved somebody and then
she loves Wally. Yes, Wally is basically her son. Yeah,
before she has a sign, yes, before she has a son.

Speaker 2 (01:50:39):
She if she goes it has that easy access to
the future, she would tell him everything. Yeah, especially since
he's like a firefire his job is so dangerous.

Speaker 1 (01:50:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:50:48):
So if she was gonna go to the future, gone forever, yeah,
if she was gonna if she's gonna stay in the present,
then yeah, make her a character in the book. But
to make her like this weird. This is the part
of Iris Allen that I really don't like. It's just
this weird, like.

Speaker 1 (01:51:04):
Oh, she's in the future with the legion of superheroes
and I'm like, I don't care. Yeah, i don't care. Yeah,
I agree. Okay, but we're gonna get into even more
large scale DC comics crossover nonsense. And we come right
back because we're going to talk all about Barry Allen
and Final Crisis. We are back on geek history, lesson

(01:51:29):
talking Iris west Allan, Jason. We've made it all the
way to Final Crisis, big time jump. What is Final Crisis?
It is Dark Sight evades the Earth and he wins.
There you go. It is another big time jump, as
you pointed out.

Speaker 2 (01:51:44):
Because I mean not that big. It's maybe maybe five years. Yeah,
maybe three or four years. It's it's it's a it's
a chunk, it's a it's a couple of years down
the road.

Speaker 1 (01:51:53):
Yes, because she's just kind of doing exactly what we
were talking about before it breaks. So and suddenly she
got hot rid of her gray hair. Yeah, this is
this is when we get like young hot iris re emergence.
So when Jay Geric another another another flash, another another,
another space of golden hll. Jake Yerk is the original flash. Yes,
and Wally West we're looking into They were investigating the
death of a Ryot because at.

Speaker 2 (01:52:14):
This point Wally West was back from the dead. Yeah,
the flashes just come back.

Speaker 1 (01:52:19):
They discovered the Morbius chair, which was used by Metron Jason.
The Mobius chair, The Mobius chair, the Morbius chair. I'm sorry, Jason,
really quick. What does the Mobius chair allow you to do?
I don't know that answer. Well, it's need to make pishues.
Not really. Well, you can use it to like fulfill

(01:52:40):
your goals and dreams and stuff. No, that's not how
the Mobi's chair work. Okay, No, it's not okay.

Speaker 2 (01:52:48):
The I believe you are conflating two items from Final
Crisis here. The Mobius chair is just the floaty chair
that Metron flies. It's that big green chair. I actually
and we can do one.

Speaker 1 (01:52:58):
Of these.

Speaker 2 (01:53:01):
Action figure spotlight. I have a Mobi's chair with Metron
in it. It is a very old action figure.

Speaker 3 (01:53:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:53:07):
The Mobia's Share is just a thing that allows you
to access different dimensions of the multiverse and float around.
It's a it's an amazing computer, and it does have
like this knowledge of the entire of existence. You might
be thinking about the Miracle Machine, which is the machine.

Speaker 1 (01:53:24):
I am. You're right, I am. I think you just
got him flipped there both I did. You're right. But
also so the Mobi's Share basically like they while he
sits in it and it then turns into a boom
tube and Barry Allen comes flying out of it. Yeah,
and that's how Barry. That's why I guess I thought.
I always thought he sat in the chair and was like,
bring me back, Barry Allen, and then that's how he

(01:53:45):
came back. You're right, my mistake, that was my mistake,
not Jason's. Not Meridis was my mistake. I could be
I could be remembering this wrong. Yeah, it's been a
while since ive read Final Crisis, but I want to
say that it's because of what they did in the chair,
which is what so bare. He was just running through
the time stream and just like I'm lost to her forever.

Speaker 2 (01:54:02):
And then and then he saw some baby baby and
that was the thing that they did. Yes, and then
and then he like turned or he leaned left.

Speaker 1 (01:54:09):
And traffic light drops out of the sky with a
little green arrow pudding, right. They kind of do.

Speaker 2 (01:54:16):
And they explain this in flash Reworth, which I don't
know what we're gonna get into. I assume not in
a ton of ton of debt debt, but yeah, it's
sort of the idea like I talked about, Like Marve
Woopen kind of just decided that he was like, hey,
Barry is like always running in the timestream, so he
just has to come out of the time stream at
any point.

Speaker 1 (01:54:32):
But I just like, okay, let me finish explaining this.
It's a complicated, yes, because we need to get direc See,
cosmic nonsense is hard to explain. So Barry's back baby,
he should have stayed dead back, Berry back. It's not
my story. Yeah, he should not merit a story. It's
not Jason. Sorry, we can't fix this for you. I'm
sorry he should have stayed. So Barry's like, well, I

(01:54:52):
guess I should go home. Hm, my home is Iris's home.
I'm going to go to Iris's house. But you know what,
it's kind of bad at Iris's house at the time.
Why because she's enslaved by the anti life equation, that
old thing. Yeah, but it's okay because Barry kisses her
and briefly envelops her in the speed Force and it

(01:55:15):
underes all of that cosmic nonsense that I don't really
want to explain. So it's all okay. But he doesn't
stay and have a nice time with his wife. He
just kisses her, frees her, and immediately leaves Wally to
go fight dark Side, and Iris are and Barry are
finally able to reunite in the aftermath of Final Crisis. Yeah,
they'd be dark Sided, and then now Barry's alive again.

(01:55:37):
Now they're young, they're young and hot, and Iris somehow daged. Well,
I guess he kissed her, and we're gonna say the
speed Force brought them back to the last time they
were together, when they were maybe thirty five.

Speaker 2 (01:55:48):
I don't know, because here's the real question. Why Iris
popping back and forth to the future all this time?
Why was she in two thousand and eight, Yeah, just
sitting around, just waiting for Barry to show back up,
you know, I guess, yeah, Yeah, she knew he was
coming back right at this single moment, and with.

Speaker 1 (01:56:02):
The return of Barry and with a book for him
to star. And Iris also is like, you know what,
it's time for me to go back to work. I
haven't worked since nineteen eighty five. So she becomes to
a reporter again. She's like, what is this item? And
they're like, it's a pen? Iris, Ah, what is this?
That's paper? What is this?

Speaker 2 (01:56:20):
It's a computer? Oh you mean it's not a multiplexible
interdimensional interface.

Speaker 1 (01:56:25):
Yeah, somebody called the men in the Long Coast. Let's
get Iris out of here here. So all I'm saying, though,
is like, what was she doing in the meantime in
these like thirty years or twenty five here, I'll tell
you who could have found out? East reporter Lewis Lane.

Speaker 2 (01:56:40):
Well, I maybe Lois Lane, did you know I have
a feeling that Lois Lane might have figured out that.

Speaker 1 (01:56:46):
No, this is what I'm going to say. Okay, this
is what Iris did, Ashley, here's the real conspiracy. Okay,
Iris West is responsible for chat GBT. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (01:56:58):
She knew it was coming and did nothing to stop it. No,
she engineered its creation earlier than it should have been,
before we were ready for it, and then had this
AI computer write all our stories. Because she hasn't worked
in thirty years, she doesn't know what to type anymore,
nor put sentences together, so she made a machine to

(01:57:18):
do it from the future, and that is going to
lead to chat crisis. Chat crisis. Yes, if you ever
wanted to read a DC storyline where all your DC
superheroes fight word balloons, Chat Crisis is for you.

Speaker 1 (01:57:33):
You're gonna love it.

Speaker 2 (01:57:34):
You're gonna love love it so much lettering. The letterers
are gonna their hands are gonna fall off.

Speaker 1 (01:57:38):
Honestly, I hope they get to hire a paycheck. A
good letter is worth the weight in goal, that's right.
So this leads directly into the New fifty two. No,
it leads in the chat crisis we just talked about.
This into the New fifty two continuity where Barry's a
flash again. Inexplicably, we got a ritcon we Yeah, we
should talk about this because so this is all let
off by flashpoints where Barry Allen Iris is boo runs

(01:58:00):
back in time because he decides that he wants to
be with his mommy again, not his wife, his mom yep,
and he resets the timeline again, and because of that,
it resets the timeline makes everybody in the DC universe
younger and in their like twenties and thirties area.

Speaker 2 (01:58:14):
It officially says goodbye to Grandma Iris. Yeah, and now
Barry is full on the flash again even though we
just brought him back. We redid this again. Yeah yeah,
very confusing.

Speaker 1 (01:58:25):
Yeah. So in the new fifty two, Iris isn't from
the thirtieth century, thank god. She is retconned to be
the daughter of William West and an unnamed mother. So
probably Joe West stands that Couraginter doesn't exist yet. Joe
West is a creation of the television show and I
know that, yes, yeah, yeah, But I just think that's
interesting because I think a lot of people assume that

(01:58:47):
Joe West is her father.

Speaker 2 (01:58:48):
Joe West, I think was one of the things that
the CW television show did right. Absolutely, that was a
brilliant piece of writing. Shout out to Jesseil Martin.

Speaker 1 (01:58:57):
Her mother died during childbirth, so DC couldn't bother giving
her a name when she was delivering Iris's younger brother, Daniel,
resulting in William resenting his son and becoming an abusive alcoholic. Now, Jason,
I have to ask, is it really disrespectful that Barry
Allen tried to save his own mom but not Iris's
mom when he ran back in time a little bit? Eventually,

(01:59:18):
Daniel pushed their father down the stairs and then ran away.
Levy Iris alone to take care of her now paralyzed father. Yay.
She also goes on to become a reporter, where she
has multiple run ins with Barry Allen, both due to
his career as a forensic scientist for the Central City
PD and due to his being The Flash, who Iris
has been working on an expos about, because again, she's

(01:59:40):
basically just Lois Lane, got it. It is through Iris's
influence during their relationship that Barry would decide to make
the Flash more of a public figure and to become
a symbol of Central City. So like going full Superman
with his secret identity. When Irish tracks down a Chrome
named Clive Yorkin and publicly confronts him, she's rescued by

(02:00:04):
the Flash, who gets shot in the process, so Iris
actually gets very hurt when he's trying to rescue her.
Thanks Iris, Thanks Iris. Iris and Barry's relationship strains even
further when Barry's obsession with solving his mother's murder worsens,
because no matter what happens, even though Barry knows what happens,
he's always like, Oh, I gotta save my mom Mary

(02:00:26):
some MoMA's boy. Yeah, He's like, what about my mom?

Speaker 2 (02:00:30):
What up?

Speaker 1 (02:00:30):
Iris? What about my mom? Barry? We talk about this
every night. I know, Iris, but what about my mom?
Iris is kidnapped by the Turtle and the Turtle, yes,
both the past and future versions of the Turtle correct
boring is Flash villain of all time Turtle Squared yep.
When the Flash confronts the Turtles, Iris is able to
help free the rest of the city, who collectively rise
up against the Turtles henchmen. The Turtle is basically the

(02:00:53):
anti Flash.

Speaker 2 (02:00:54):
Yeah, and the simplest solution of this when you're fighting
the Turtles is just to give them in the head,
just to give them pizza, and then pizza.

Speaker 1 (02:01:00):
That's good, That's very good. I was like, give them
a letter, give them pizza when Irish. When Iris introduces
her nephews Wally and Wallace, because comics so she she's introducing, you.

Speaker 2 (02:01:14):
Better dive into that a little bit. Sorry, it's too complicated.
Your throat there and not even talking about so in
the New.

Speaker 1 (02:01:24):
In the New fifty two, I didn't want to you.

Speaker 2 (02:01:27):
Can see all the sign because this is like, this
is like maybe the clunkiest thing they ever did. I
didn't want to, Like, I didn't want to unpack this.
It was a white hose.

Speaker 1 (02:01:37):
In the New fifty two continuity timeline, this is where
we introduce Iris as a black character in Wallace as
a black character, because they are based on the portrayals
of the characters on the Flash television show. So DC
decided to change the comics to reflect the actress. That's

(02:01:58):
all this was. But then because comics, we reintroduced red
haired Freckles. A couple of years down the road, Wally
West the one from the nineties, and Wally White. Wally
and Black Wallace both have speed forest pass, so we
get into this weird place where I'm sorry, I I
think it's so silly. The update of making Wally black

(02:02:19):
not a bad update, No, I had issues with the
way it was handled in the writing, but then making
them black and he had a really awesome looking costume,
a great haircut. It got really popular the lightning bolts.
But then like we because we have to kill every
Flash yet bring them all back. I can't leave well
Enough alone, so we had to bring back White Wally West.
And then now it's the idea that like, oh, she

(02:02:40):
has two nephews that are both named Wally well yeah
and what so yeah in our different races. So she's
introducing Wally and Wallace, her two nephews to each other
because comics. Yeah. And then this is the day in
modern continuity when White Wally gets struck by lightning like

(02:03:03):
Barry Allen because he's hanging out with Barry Allen and
he becomes Flash. So Central City is attacked by Captain
Cold also on this same day. So it's really lucky
that Iris and three other civilians also get thrown into
the speed Force. Sure, because it's not enough that we
have three Flashes in Central City. We might need some more.

(02:03:26):
This definitely doesn't tie into the fact that this was
around the same time that Iris got speed powers. In
the Flash television show. They stay inside the Speed Force
for months and months and months. They're presumed dead, which
happens to pretty much every speed during the history of
the Flash before Barry Allen finds them and sets them free.
Reverse Flash shows up again and begins killing anyone who

(02:03:50):
has been quote touched by the Speed Force, so any
of these civilians. Iris the kid Flashes. He's on a
rampage to get all of them because he's the Reverse Flash.
That's what he does. And Iris and Barry are afraid
that they're going to be the only two left, the
only two who will survive because they're the title characters

(02:04:10):
of the books. Are not going to be killed. Barry
as the Flash, gives Iris an outfit similar to his
costume that would make her undetectable to the Reverse Flash.

Speaker 2 (02:04:20):
That's what they decide for story reason I don't really understand,
like molecules, it's something. It's like there's a thing in
the jacket that won't let him see you, yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:04:28):
I would also like to point out that Lewis Lane
did it first and first appear to Superwoman, as well
as Superwoman's first appearance in UC Comics in Action Comics
number sixty in May of nineteen forty three, number sixty.
Iris boom, take that less than ten years old? Baby,
that's right. If you came listen to this podcast hoping
that we were Iris Allen fans, will you got another

(02:04:48):
thing coming? Yeah? So I'm on Eobard's then bar No, nos, right,
hold this reverse flash isn't even Eobard. It's then she's
actually her restrained brother Daniel, who was planning on killing
their father that he paralyzed.

Speaker 2 (02:05:06):
No, this is the flash that he's like black, He's
like a red face and he's black armor. Right, it's
cool armor. I have to say the cool design. The
flashes always look cool. But Iris had introduce another reverse
another another reverse flash. Yeah, and Iris begs Barry not
to hurt him because he's her brother. She condemns her
brother for.

Speaker 1 (02:05:23):
His actions, and when he continues to defend himself for
killing people, Iris turns her back on him for good
and is like, I can't deal with you. I've dealt
with you my whole life. I'm not doing it now.
I turn the yes when she gets a glimpse of
her life pre flashpoint, because there's a excuse me, there
was a moment right before DC rebirth were basically certain characters,

(02:05:46):
as the editor saw fit, got to see certain parts
of pre flashpoint life. So because she's touched the speed force,
Iris is able to get a memory of herself, married
to Barry, with their kids Don and down from the
third century, all right, And this is how she learns
that he's the Flash. She didn't know that the Flash

(02:06:08):
and Barry were the same person up at this point
in this continuity, So every version of her learning his
identity is he didn't tell her is goofy, Yeah, got it.
She goes on to distress Barry, realizing that he is
indirectly responsible for altering time in the first place, and
form keeping this secret from her. I mean I'd be
mad about that, I mean livid. She doesn't actually forgive him, though,

(02:06:31):
of course, and curious about the Flash and the other
secrets that Barry is keeping for from her. She does
stay in the relationship, but she becomes more suspect of
his actions. I see. And then Flash goes on to
reintroduce pre flashpoint Wally West and when this version of
Iris meets him, she immediately regains her memory of him

(02:06:53):
because she touched the Flash the combined to the stuff
that we'd already talked about. So that's work. There's not
too white Wally West now, Yes, so that is your
Iris West history. Oh boy, that is something. Yeah, it was. Honestly,
I thought I thought teaching this lesson, I knew it
was going to be a little bit like we're talking

(02:07:19):
about this chunk of time and then we're jumping ten years,
We're talking about this chunk of time and then we're
jumping twenty years. Because's supporting character. I did not know
that even being a supporting character in the Flash was
going to be this confusing.

Speaker 2 (02:07:29):
Yeah, because everything with the Flash is confusing, really really
confect but also it just goes to show you that
kind of to be honest with you, it really feels
like nobody has done anything with Iris.

Speaker 1 (02:07:37):
No, like nobody no.

Speaker 2 (02:07:39):
And to be honest to you, the Flash television show
is probably her best represent The.

Speaker 1 (02:07:43):
Flash television show single handedly has won the most consistent
characterization on this character, where she doesn't vary wildly from
plot to plot as is demanded of her. She is
driven and actionable as a reporter. She is driven in
actionable as a super Actually really liked the arc of
the television show where she got superpowers.

Speaker 2 (02:08:03):
I didn't be I like the ark of the television
order show where she became a great reporter and writer. Yes,
I mean that's the best part. And she they let
her step out of Barry's shadow more than in any
other form. And I really hope, because we're in such
a flash moment right now, I really hope that she's
getting a little more autonomy because I think like Linda

(02:08:24):
Park and some Wally girlfriends actually have more consistent characterizations
and point of view than Iris West.

Speaker 1 (02:08:30):
And for character as old as she is, as kind
of sad.

Speaker 2 (02:08:32):
I'm gonna throw this out there at Linda Park is
a million times better than any Iris Alan story.

Speaker 1 (02:08:38):
I one hundred percent agree, And honestly, I hope we
see her in a great adaptation. So we get a
chance to talk about her on the pod, or you
can request it at GHL podcast. You'll be wait a while, yeah,
but you can request it. Sure, Maybe it'll be interesting
if everyone requests Linda and nobody requested.

Speaker 2 (02:08:52):
Iris into read our recommended reading Jason, what's that. You
go to ghl Geeksherleston dot com recommended reading and you
can find a full list of every single book that
we've ever suggested in all of our four hundred and
fifty ish episodes and click on a link take you
right to pick up the book and a little bit
that comes back to support the podcast.

Speaker 1 (02:09:12):
Yeah, so I am going to recommend the first one
is a digital recommendation unless you have a lot of
money to spend. Showcase number four that is the first
ever appearance of Iris west Allen, which is very cool.
I mean if you got like twenty grand to PLoP
down and yeah, it's great issue to go by. Also,
if you have twenty grand to PLoP down, like, send
us an emil Getkrish listen atimail dot com. I got
some other pictures for you. All right, all those Angel

(02:09:35):
investors that are listening to this podcast, we'll turn our
show in the shark tank. I'm also going to recommend
that you check out Flash volume one, number two seventy five,
which is the one where her literal death at the
hand of Eobard though on like just read it for
the audacity of doing that at that time, period, which
might be her coolest story. It is pretty cool. I
have to say The Flash the Fastest Man Alive. It's

(02:09:57):
a thirteen issue series. This is the arc where she
basically hires Zoom to attack bart Allen the Flash to
try to prevent his death. This is her taking action
into her own hands. This is older Iris. This is
old Lady Iris. The Flash Volume four Reverse, which is
the New fifty two volume four, which is the storyline

(02:10:18):
with the Daniel West version of the Reverse Flash. It's
kind of the most interesting thing that she gets up to,
in my opinion, during the New fifty two era. And
then I'm going to attack on the Flash Year one,
which is when current continuity Iris and Barry first started
their relationship, when Barry gets his power as Iris is
taking hostage by the Turtles, and you kind of get
the most complete look at who they are in current

(02:10:39):
comic continuity, I think from this volume. So here's five
recommendations for you, my friend. That's a lot. Yeah. Shall
we roll into the honor roll? Sure, that's where if
you go over to Apple Podcasts you lead us a
five star review or Spotify podcast, we'll read your review
on the air. Okay, and we have two friends joining
the honor role today. First is from Bragen the gage

(02:11:03):
In or Brigen the Guidgin. I don't know. I did
my best friend, who says, updated great podcast with a
few more listens as well as re listens. I have
realized that any of my previous critiques were unfounded, so
I wanted to undo my previous review with a more
educated opinion. Truth be told, this is one of the
best places to get information on everything geek culture in

(02:11:23):
an extremely entertaining package. Even when I think that I
know everything there is about one of their subjects, I
still come out listening. Sorry, I still come out learning
something new after listening in. Jason and Ashley have a
blast talking about LaVita Nerdy and you can really tell
take a dive in and you won't regret it. So
I want to say thank you, Ragen the beige In.

(02:11:45):
Thank you for writing us another review. I did read
your first one. This one is much nicer. Oh yeah,
And I say this because I'm not I'm being silly,
but I'm also not trying to shame people. Like your
opinions can change on anything, and I really appreciate you
coming back and like being honest and I'm glad that
we were able to find an equal abrium as your
podcast friend, so thank you for that. We love growth

(02:12:07):
and change, especially when it's nice. Nice. And then also
joining us in the teacher's Lounge today is to the
Matt Cave, who says, I am groot, I am groot,
And as Polonia says, brevity is the soul of witch.
So thank you to the Matt Cave. So Jason to
the mat Cave, and Rage and the gage in are

(02:12:29):
in the teacher's lounge. What's going on in there today? Well,
I wish that there was something exciting going on in
the teacher's lounge. But everyone to the thirtieth century. Well,
time to read the fridge. I guess there's yeah, it's well, yeah,
please raid their fridge actually, because it's going to go
bad if you don't. Here you go. So, but welcome.
No one's in there. We're all in the thirtieth century.
That's really fun. He's the kid who loved the Flash,

(02:12:52):
who grew up to be the Flash Superman. No, we
were actually talking about Wally West aka Kid Flash. Because
your Geek History lesson on Kid Flash is now in session. Hello,
and welcome to Geek History Lesson. I'm Ashty Victoria Robinson
and I'm Jason the Speed for us in Men. Welcome
to your Mind University, because we are Geek History Lesson,
the podcast where we take one character from pop culture

(02:13:15):
and we teach you all about it in an hour.
And at any point during this podcast, if you're like, Hey,
that didn't sound right, Hey that it sounded wrong. Hey,
I just like your voice, go find us on Twitter.
I'm on Twitter at Jawin j awii In. Ashley's on
Twitter at Ashley V. Robinson. But enough about tweets. We're
here to talk about Kid Flash because he's all over

(02:13:37):
The Flash season three. Yes, and before we get started,
this episode was requested by many, many, many people. Oh man,
I just want to shout them out because they're all amazing.
Willie Yip, the Tamar, Alan Menendez, ax Ken, Alexis and
Bowen and Elden Lashley. I'm sorry if I read your
user name wrong, but I love you for requesting Wally West. Yeah.

(02:13:58):
So let's move right into the first part of our PODCAS,
which is the ten Cent Origin. Yes, that's right. The
ten Cent Origin is where we are going to give
you the basic conceits and constructs basically a cliff Notes
list of what you need to know about Wally West
in case you go to a super cool cocktail party
in the middle of Central City and some guy with
the Boat tag comes on here and he's like, yo,
you know Wally West, And you're like, hell yeah, all

(02:14:18):
listen to ge guess your lesson exactly. So. Wallace Wally
Rudolph West aka name I Know Wallace Rudolph West aka
Kid Flash aka the Flash is a d C Comics character.
He is what is known as a speed stir. If
you don't know what that is, more on that later.
They Run Fast, They Run Fast creative by John Broom
and Carmine Infantino, both very legendary creators who first appeared

(02:14:42):
in The Flash number one ten published in DC of
nineteen fifty nine December of nineteen fifty nine. He's the
Old Mayan and his partnerships and team affiliations include Barry Allen,
The Flash, Bart Allen, Kid Flash, Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern, Nightwing,
Teen Titans, Justice League, and The Titans, and his abilities

(02:15:02):
include infinite super speed, superhuman agility and stamina, the ability
to vibrate body parts and face through matter, super strength,
supercharged brain activity, time travel. He can create a vortex
and increase his perceptions, and he is currently being played
by the awesome Keenan Lonsdale on the CW television show
The Flat I believe. Also, he was part of the

(02:15:23):
Justice League Elite, but that was only around for like
twelve issues, so no word, So it doesn't matter. So
let's go right into our meat cute part of the
podcost Yes me cute is where we say where we
meet and cute it these characters, because it's a term
for romantic comedies. About how you first discovered this person, Ashley,
how did you first meet Wally West? Unsurprisingly in the

(02:15:47):
Justice League cartoon? Oh? Really? Yeah? Yeah. I was never
a super Speedster fan, but I always really liked Wally
because I thought he was like super funny and he
is obviously the person in the Flash costume in the
in the Justice leag cartoon from the two thousands. Nice.
So yeah, how about you, where did you first meet him? Well,
I randomly met the Flash in some comics in the

(02:16:08):
mid nineties. It was Wally West, but at the time
I didn't know it was Wally West, and I didn't
really consciously become aware of who Wally West was until
JLA number one by Grant Morrison, because Wally West is
the Flash on that team, and he reveals that he
hit Uncle Berry.

Speaker 2 (02:16:25):
He talks a lot about flash facts and also there's
a big thing. Yeah, he talks about my uncle Barry
has all these flash facts and they very like the
fourth or fifth issue somewhere in there. But he also
has a cantankerous relationship with Green Lantern Kyle Rainer at
the time, which I think provides for one of the
best relationships in that book.

Speaker 1 (02:16:44):
Agreed, definitely.

Speaker 2 (02:16:45):
All right, cool, So let's move on into History one
oh one, where Ashley, with the help of all the
people that suggests this lesson, is going to tell you
all the stuff you need to know about Wally West,
kid Flash aka Flash aka kid Flash Again.

Speaker 1 (02:16:59):
Yeah, for real, little caveat before we start. Wally West
has been around for a long time. Oh, he's been
through many reboots, so this lesson is probably gonna be
one of our longer ones, okay, and I've done my
very best to stitch the continuity together for you. So
Wallace Wally Rudolph West was born to Rudolph and Mary
West in Blue Valley, Nebraska, fun fact, not a real place.

(02:17:21):
As a boy, Wally would often daydream, most notably about
being the Flash. That's all he wanted. He idolized the
Flash so much that he was even the president and
sole member of the Blue Valley Flash Fan Club. And
I can't believe that no one has made that a
T shirt. Please get on that. His parents thought he
was setting himself up for failure by setting this bar

(02:17:41):
so high, and they did their best to damp in
what they believe to be unrealistic expectations of becoming the Flash.
Often rather harshly, they would basically tell him, like this, boy,
his dad is not a nice dude. That's dumb. Don't
do that. But it's also tough to tell if that
was like, I don't know the way people acted in
the sixties, As opposed to by Devorie Standers, well, mister
Rudolph West is not a super friendly guy. At a

(02:18:05):
family reunion hosted by the Wests, wially accidentally spilled some
soda all over himself and incited his father to yell
at him for being so careless, and he was sent
to his room in tears. Although once there a familiar
looking man who he thought was his uncle came in
and started talking to him. The man encouraged Wale not
to give up on his dreams and gave him the

(02:18:25):
confidence that he would reflect back on this moment for
years to come and realize that this was when he
changed his life. Remember this. More on this later. So
one summer, oh I remember that. Yeah, yeah, one summer
when while he was ten years old, he went to
Central City, Central Tuesday with his aunt Iris Iris West,
whom he called his best friend, and at the time,

(02:18:48):
Iris was going out with police scientist Barry Allen, who
was quote friends with the Flash. Of course, I whish
we of course meant that he was the Flash. Oh
that's what that means. Somebody says their friends was, so
that means that they're actually so I am Jason and
Mian As it turns out. Wow. So Barry introduced Wally

(02:19:08):
to his idol, the Flash. I was so nice of
Barry to do that. Man, he's got the hookups. I know,
he's so talented. In the back room of Barry's apartment
there was a lab because that's what you do, and
Wally asked the Flash all sorts of questions and he
asked the Flash how he got his powers, and it
turns out that Flash had set up these chemical kevinal

(02:19:29):
chemical cabinet that had been struck by lighting and that's
how he was created. However, it just so happened that
the weather was particularly stormy that day and when the
lightning and outside, the lightning struck another cabinet full of
chemicals inside Barry's lab, bathing Wally in the same chemicals
that created the Flash in the first place, instead of
giving them horrible cancer. Welcome to the Silver Age, my friend.

(02:19:51):
It's real, it's real convenient, but just go with it.
So Flash told Wally that he had to keep this
a secret, even from his aunt Iris, because he's gonna
have the Speed Force now and be a superhero. But
he even gives Wally a Flash costume that is already
specially tailored to his side and is an exact duplicate
of barriers, right, and he tells him that he's gonna
become kid Flash or he's like, you know, like shut up,

(02:20:14):
don't tell anyone he goes drug by lightning, especially now
your aunt you're a sidekick. Now here's a creepy costume
that I had tailored to your body size.

Speaker 2 (02:20:21):
Yeah, I'm the Flash. Oh cool Flash, and you're gonna
be my slate sidekick. Cool super do what I say? Yeah,
pick up my dry cleaning. Okay, don't tell iris.

Speaker 1 (02:20:40):
Yeah, high five. All right, let's let's zoom it fully work,
Let's zoom out of here. Yeah. Rah. So the Flash
tap Wally everything that he needs to do, about how
to use the speed to his advantage, and about who
the rogues and their gallery were, and you know, how
to be basically a speedster. And the very next day,
after conquering a crippling fear of fire, while apprehended his

(02:21:01):
very first criminal, mister Element. Yeah, if you ever heard
of mister Element, don't worry about it. He had attacked
the art museum because silver age, transmuting many pieces of
art into shapeless forms and causing them to attack people.
Elements stole the Giardi Atom, which is an atomic model
crafted from golden jewels. It's like, oh, that's pretty, and

(02:21:21):
kid Flash followed Element to the home of Ward Wellington Weaver,
owner of another Girardi Atom, where he defeated the villain
and turned him into the police and saved the day.
That's kid Flash's first adventure. Hey, So at the time,
of course, Wally was still in high school, but he
was also a member of a fraternity called Ada Pie

(02:21:43):
along with his very good friend Tommy Elkin. And Ada
Pie provided a lot of social opportunities for Wally to
have to run away from to go and do his superheroing.
Of course it did. But the next summer Very told
Wally his secret identity because he was like, well, we've
been at it for a year, so you could finally
learn that I'm very Allen. He lives a long time
without telling Wally his real name. It was weird. It
was kind of like because Cassandra Kine and Batman like,

(02:22:05):
he didn't really he was Bruce Wayne for quite a while.
And of course this surprise Wally, who'd been living in
aid of Pie for the whole year, who had always
thought that Barry was actually like kind of boring. He's
a dunce because his civilian identity is boring. He does
a great job at playing against the Flash identity, and
again Lightning struck, causing a matter transforming machine to transform

(02:22:26):
Wally's costume into a newer, predominantly yellow costume. Right, just
like right, there's there always been struck by lightning and
the design of which Barry had actually been toying with
in the back of his mind to make the two
heroes more visually distinct. So it's really lucky that that
happened while he also joined the Teen Titans during this time. Now,
we are only going to talk about the Teen Titans

(02:22:46):
very very briefly throughout the rest of the history lesson
as it comes up. We did a full two part
lesson on the Teen Titans taught by me that you
can go listen to if you want some of the
specifics of this. Right. He also begun to take classes
at Taggart University with the hopes of eventually getting a
doctorate in physics. Now, Jason, do you know are right? Exactly?

(02:23:07):
During the same time which university did his Team Titans
teammate Dick Grayson go to? Oh, you know you're going
to get some night waking trivia? Oh, I know that
Hudson Universe Hudson. Tim gets accepted to goth Hudson. Where
does Wally go? Wally goes to Tiggart t A G
G E R T. Nobody goes the ivy all right,

(02:23:29):
no one, no one likes right, mom er, I don't know. Yeah, yeah.
So as Barry's sidekick, Wally also got to meet Hal Jordan,
who was then Green Lantern of Earth, and he became
How's friends because Hal and Barry were good friends. So that's,
you know, the next logical step. And Wally would also
go on to befriend another Green Lantern and a little
and another incarnation of the Justice League that Jason alluded

(02:23:52):
to at the beginning of the lesson that we'll talk
more about in a little bit. Because Wally had been
struck by lightning and affected by the charged chemicals when
he was a child rather than as a full grown man,
it started to affect his body in a different way
than it did Marry, and Wally was actually diagnosed with cancer,
with his speed powers effectively killing him. This is quite cool.
It's a tough storyline and the teen Diitan's run deals

(02:24:14):
a lot with us. It's very sad and basically, the
faster he goes and the more super heroic is the
quicker he'll die. Although he was able to run through
the crippling pain, which he called the same as hitting
a wall the summer, he got his powers when adolescents hit,
he came back vengefully, effectively propelling Wally to quit his
superhero career for a little bit. And then we get

(02:24:36):
to a big important DC Comics event known as Crisis
on Infinite Earth's, Jason, can you tell us really quickly?
Crisis on Infinite Earth's Basically, this character called the Anti
Monitor was like, I don't like that there are all
these earth out there, infinites. I only want one. So
he destroys the multi verse and after the event there's
only one Earth, right, And we usually gloss over Crisis

(02:24:56):
on Infinite Earths just like that. But the thing is
is it's actually really important to the Flashes. So we're
going to talk about it today. And here we go.
Dive deep. Kids, get your rain baskets. Yeah, put your
flippers on. So, during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, after
Barry Allen sacrificed his life to destroy the Anti Monitor's
anti matter cannon, an anti matter ray fired by the

(02:25:19):
Anti Monitor hit Wally full force. It's right in the chest.
It's really bad. But the important thing about this is
that it made Wally only able to run at the
speed of sound. It made him slower. Oh so he's
now at the same speed as Jagers exactly, but it
also cured his cancer and the storyline never comes back
again hot Dog, So Wally's pretty lucky. While he then

(02:25:40):
took Barry's uniform and declared himself the Flash just until
Barry returned, though, like he wasn't gonna keep it forever,
but he's gonna keep the super warm.

Speaker 2 (02:25:48):
That's in one of the final scenes of Crisis and
Event Earth's where Wally is like, I'm the Flash now.

Speaker 1 (02:25:53):
It's very important and it's a nice moment for Wally too.
I think he's one of the first legacy characters that
you actually get to see taking on the antle of
the grown up hero, the real hero. No one else
shared Wally's feeling that Barry was still alive, because we
kind of had a Tim Drake thing going on where
he was like, no, Berry's alive, I'm just keeping the
suit warm. And they also didn't appreciate Wally's attempts at

(02:26:15):
filling Barry's boots because he wasn't very good at it
in the beginning. He was actually publicly publicly embarrassed in
a fight with Doctor Alchemy. Yeah, and Green Lantern declared
that he would be the protector of Central City because
he didn't think the Flash could handle it. So for
about a week, Wally donned his kid Flash costume again
liked to punish himself. However, during his very next fight

(02:26:36):
with Doctor Alchemy, it finally dawned on him that Barry
would not be coming back. He was able to break
the sound barrier once again, and he saved Green Lantern
and Jay Garrick from Doctor Alchemy. And this was the
first time that anyone actually took Wally seriously as the Flash.
There was a big proving ground. Take dat zip zip
zip zoom. Is that how it went? That's Wally. I

(02:26:57):
do think it's interesting though. I just want to point
out that at this time we do have Hal Jordan,
who we previously mentioned. It's a big deal that he
becomes friends with Wally instead of supporting him. He's like,
you know what, kid, I don't know if you got
hold on this, I'm gonna take over. Well you have to.

Speaker 2 (02:27:12):
That's an interesting point because Hal and Barry in Compless
Continuity are best friends, best friends, so I actually kind
of appreciate that how was like looking in on him, Wally.

Speaker 1 (02:27:22):
You don't think that he should have supported Wally more
than being like you suck is a jerk.

Speaker 2 (02:27:29):
I know, Hal Jordan's a jerk, and Hal Jordan's kind
of guy that like, he doesn't ever give you a
chance to do anything. He's just like, no, no, I
wouldn't do it.

Speaker 1 (02:27:35):
But I kind of like that Wally saves somebody also
gets to say Jay Garrick, because Jay Yrek is the
original Flash, So if you can save him, you you
must you must know what you're doing, right, That makes sense?
So yeah, like I said, it was the first time
that anyone took Wally seriously as the Flash, and there's
kind of no doubt from here on out whether or
not he is deserving of the mantle, which is nice

(02:27:56):
except for himself except where he bear excuse me, Wally
does have a lot of self doubt because Barry Allen
is canonized by all the characters around him and in
his own memory as being just this epic hero.

Speaker 2 (02:28:09):
Oh he's the man who saved the world, right, He's
the man saved the multiverse? How do you beat how
do you ever looked that legacy?

Speaker 1 (02:28:16):
But I think it's interesting that even though Wally is
plagued by self doubt, like you mentioned that, you know,
Batman's fine with it, Superman's flying with it. Everyone else
becomes very supportive. From this point, it.

Speaker 2 (02:28:24):
Takes about Wally about ten years, I would say, in
our time, in publication time, in publication time to kind
of accept him as the Flash.

Speaker 1 (02:28:31):
It takes about a decade, Yeah, and then Barry comes
back and ruins everything. No, no, Barry, like that's even
like even further, Like Barry doesn't show up for another
another five five ten years. No, I know, but I mean,
like Wally like gets over it, and he's like, I'm
a great flesh and that Barry Allen's going to come back.
That's not a spoiler for something that happened many many
years ago. So after finally accepting that Barry was dead,

(02:28:51):
while he still had to overcome his angry feelings of
being abandoned and forced into the role that he did
not feel ready for a little bit about what we
just talked about, and this is right aroun on the
same time in the Teen Titans continuity that Raven suffered
a lot of pain at the hands of Brother Blood.
And I just want to bring this up because canonically
Wally has a big crush on Raven even though it
is true, even though nothing ever comes of that, we

(02:29:12):
talked a little bit about it in a Teen Titans episode.
So for him, this is a really trying time. So
not only is he trying to accept that like I'm
a grown up now I'm the Flash and like that's
really hard, but this girl that he really likes and
he's had a crush on for like at least five
years I was going through a tough time and he
can't help her because like, literally no one can help Raven.
So he reacts to all of this pressure the way

(02:29:33):
a lot of people do by acting rude and childish.
That sounds right, boo, And this mental anguish is later
revealed to be what is quote blocking Wally's ability to
go faster. I remember this storyline as well, because with
a lot of speedsters, you have to figure out why
they can't run fast in order to create dramas drama.
So even though Wally's able to break the sound barrier again,

(02:29:54):
he kind of plateaus and everyone's very concerned about why
he's not going any faster, and it's because he's kind
of like being a butt head and nut dealing with
his feelings super well. Right after this, Wally gets really,
really lucky though. The skies open up and they rain
down money on Wally West. He wins six and a
half million dollars in the lottery. He's a huge hall
in the lottery. And that doesn't happen often. It's not

(02:30:16):
usually often that the lottery goes above a million, No,
and when it is, it's a big deal. I would
love if anyone wants to give me six million dollars
take a run and and he is super speed. Yeah,
that son of a mama. And he's good looking. And
this isn't even the modern age, so the dollars going
for you don't think Wally West is good looking. Let's
table this. We'll talk about this later. Wally West is

(02:30:36):
good looking. He so he wins a million, six million,
six and a half woo million dollars in the lottery.
He wins a lot of money. He's able to leave
his small apartment in Brooklyn, which now probably would have
cost about a million dollars and buy a mansion on
Long Island. So he buys a giant house, because that's responsible.
During this time, Wally invited several different girlfriends and even

(02:30:58):
at one point his mother to come live with him
in hilarious sitcom esque situations. It's really kind of a
silly be plot to a lot of his superhero adventures
at the time. But Wally eventually lost all of his
money in the stock market, which is a bummer, and
he had to move back into a new, smaller apartment.
But he gets a new girlfriend, so it's all okay.

(02:31:20):
While he's kind of a ladies man, Wally is a
total ladies man, which means that, according to Jason, he's
probably a man boy. Then the Durlins invade Earth. If
you don't know who the Durlins are, don't worry about it.
I got your back. The Durlins are an alien race
of shape shifting beings from the planet Durla ha ha ha,
and they decide to attack herth Wally winds up defending

(02:31:42):
Cuba until the Durlins set off a gene bomb and
he loses his speed for a short time. Oh this
is during the event Invasion, Yes, which we recently saw
inspire a big television cross cross over. So let's talk
about another planet really quick, and that planet is Jupiter. Now,
Jupiter is important because Jason and I, both of us

(02:32:03):
have created a new comic book hero named Jupiter Jet. Now,
Jupiter Jet is the Rocketeer meets the Red Panda adventure
starring a teenage girl in a cool jet pack as
she fights mysteries and ray guns and big dudes with
glowing eyes. Now, to make this comic happen, and to
make it as absolutely as amazing as possible, we are
kickstarting Jupiter Jet and you can find it at jupiter

(02:32:26):
jetcomic dot com. Like your history lesson, Jason and I
made this together, so we really want to share it
with you because you are already amazing supporters of ours.
You can help us fund our dream and get yourself
something awesome for your trouble, Like what about a thirty
minute skype call with both Professor Jason and Professor Ashley.

Speaker 2 (02:32:44):
And at first you may be like, well why would
I want that? But let me put it out this way.
Ashley and I have been doing this podcast for about
three years now. We've got a pretty sizable audience. We've
also been doing YouTube videos I produce for ret and
link on us trailers Collider Densif that if you are
one of those people, be like I've always want to
start a podcast or I've always wanted to start a

(02:33:04):
YouTube channel. That's the perfect time to just spend thirty
minutes with us, and and we'll give you advice.

Speaker 1 (02:33:10):
We'll share our secrets because they're not that secret. They're
not that secret and sometimes it can be easily explained.
So that's like, I think, a great value. Like if
you're if you ever been thought about that, Like we
will totally like tell you what you should do. And
we're also nice open people and we'll answer. We'll talk
about Batman question. Yeah, we'll talk about whatever you want
for thirty whole minutes, one half an hour. You know
what else we have? I don't know. You can get

(02:33:32):
a copy of the Jupiter Jet graphic novel along with
an exclusive Nicholas Scott print Nicholas Scott as familiar current
wonder Woman artist, previous Earth Too artist, oh Man, current
Black Magic artist, amazingly talented lady artist who is drawing
an amazing print for you. All you can get she's
an ausy and she's on I get a little piece

(02:33:53):
of Australian art for your home. There's also a reward
level where Jason I will follow you on Twitter. We
can be all up your digital life, so look out
for all of those. Like I said, you can get
all of this and more at Jupiter Jetcomic dot com.
But that's not it, guys. We have a special reward
just for all of you amazing mind university students who
are here, a geek history lesson. Go to our Kickstarter

(02:34:16):
donate five dollars email June at least at least five
you dont more than that, let's true. We're open to that.
Email Jupiter Jet Comic at gmail dot com with the
subject lesson geek History lasson. Of course a screenshot to
prove that you did what you said you did, and
we will send you a geekissy lesson magnet that I
made with my own two hands, maybe some comics were
in personal collection, and probably a really cool handwritten note.

(02:34:39):
That's right, we guys. We pushed this a lot, but
like this comic book, it means a lot to us.
It means a lot to us.

Speaker 2 (02:34:45):
We've had this idea for a long time and now
we can finally make it real through Action Lab and
through Kickstarter. But we need Kickster to do it because
you have to pay a combook artist a living.

Speaker 1 (02:34:55):
Wage if you want to, if you want a great product.

Speaker 2 (02:34:58):
If you want a really cool looking comic books, this
means a lot to us. You can buy a copy
of the book for thirty dollars, like that is a
fair price, and especially when you know, like where the
money's going to, that's a big deal. I did I
do that on a Kickstarter all the time, Like, if
I like this book, I like to fund it simply
to the fact that I'm like, I know that that's
somebody that's like, I wanted to make this book for
so long, and.

Speaker 1 (02:35:18):
You're helping them create stuff in the future as well.
That's right. Juberjetcomic dot com.

Speaker 2 (02:35:23):
Thank you guys so much for everybody that's donated over
there on Kickstarter already.

Speaker 1 (02:35:28):
And we love you and you're amazing. But let's speedback
through the speed force. Get some more poor the stock
market killed him and he's in a small apartment right
and he doesn't have his his speed to his full
stabilities right now. But don't worry, friends, because while he's
gonna get his full speedback, that's good. See what happened
was his aura because this is pre speed force. Excuse me,

(02:35:51):
what was feeding directly off his body, affecting his brain
and body in negative ways, but he'd runten faster than
he never read before. And he is a really deep
trench across North America that stretches from New York to
New Mexico. Because he's running so fast and kind of
destroying his body at the same time, he also grew
long spines all over his body. And he's stalked around

(02:36:13):
a city called Swainsville, New Mexico, confused and looking for
food and not sure what's going on, and contributing to
citizens belief in a local myth, the Porcupine Man. This
is really silly, guys, It's really silly, but I want
to mention it because it's a little bit important. This
is the first time that Wally West meets Linda Park. Jason,

(02:36:35):
can you give us a real quick synopsis of who
Linda Park is. Linda Park will become the wife, the mother,
and the mother of Wally's children and his lightning rode yes,
and Linda Park is also kind of a lowesst Lane type.
She's a spunky, plucky reporter. She's really pretty TV though

(02:36:58):
she is she is an on air personnel. Yes, it
was a Lewis is definitely like a more of the
intellectual journalist type, and Linda is not about to let
anyone stand in her way either, Like she winds up
needing rescuing a lot because she's not superpowered herself, but
she doesn't let anyone think they have the upper hand
on her. Nope. So during this Porcupine Man incident is
the first time that Linda shows up to report on
what's going on. It all goes away, don't worry about it.

(02:37:22):
Wally decides that, well, it wasn't porcupine once, but now
I'm not and I am not dying anymore, and I
can run really fast, so I'm a move to Keystone
City Stone and Keystone Still. Keystone City is where most
people think of as being the home of the Flash
or Central City.

Speaker 2 (02:37:39):
Well, let's let let's clarify this one because christl on
Invent Earth does do an interesting thing to Central City,
Keystone City. Keystone City is the home to Jake Garrick
the Flash. Yes, then when Barry Allen shows up, he
is in Central City. Okay, these cities are not by
each other. Keystone City is on Earth to whatever whatever. Yes,
after Christ on Infant Earth, they do the really cool

(02:38:00):
thing that I actually really like. They make Keystone and
Central City the same cities and they're separated by a river.

Speaker 1 (02:38:08):
Yeah. I like that a lot. And I like that
a lot too because I've always supposed, and a lot
of people have as well, that Central City is kind
of based on Kansas City, which is also divided by
a river. I also like this idea, and I really
hope they do it in the Flash television show. I
hope Wally moves to Keystone City when he starts to
carve his identity out a little more when he moves
out of the West.

Speaker 2 (02:38:28):
Well, well, they've mentioned Keystone several times in the TV show.
It seems like it's a weird suburb of Central City.

Speaker 1 (02:38:33):
It does. It seems a little bit like blood Haven,
but it seems less evil. It seems like far away.
It does. But you know what, things change on too.
But that, by the way, is.

Speaker 2 (02:38:41):
One of the I think one of the coolest post
crisis changes is the idea of the twin cities.

Speaker 1 (02:38:45):
I agree. So Wally moves to Keystone City, and he
moves there because Joan Garrick, wife of Jay Gerrick, tells
him it's a really nice place to live. So why not? Thanks, Ma, Yeah,
once there Wally and Linda start dating. How great is that?
Shortly after this, Barry Allen seemingly returned from the dead

(02:39:09):
important word seemingly. Wait, but Barry was behaving very strangely,
and eventually, when they were superheroing together, he even left
Wally alone to die. So at this point, Wally's got
some real suspicions about whether or not that is not
cool man, This is his beloved uncle Berry. Okay. Wally

(02:39:29):
was right, of course, and soon learned that Barry had
been impersonated by Eobard Thon, better known as Professor Zoom
the Reverse Flash Right, and with the help of Jay Eric,
Johnny Quick, and Max Mercury, Zoom was defeated. Jay Eric,
you know, Johnny Quick and Max Mercury. For the purposes
of this lesson, are other speedsters. They're Golden Age speedsters.

(02:39:50):
They are You can request lessons on them if you
would like.

Speaker 2 (02:39:52):
Jesse Quick Real Quick was a member of the js
Quick johnnyqu excuse me, Johnny Quick was a member of
the JSA. Max Mercury is this long legacy th about
him as like the Obi wan Kenobi of the Speed Force.

Speaker 1 (02:40:03):
Ooh that's great. I'm gonna remember that. So the next
cool thing that happens with Wally West is meeting Bart
Allan by Wait, who's bart bart Actually, I was just
gonna say, Jason, do you know who Bart Allen is?
I do. Bart Allen is actually the grandson of Barry
Allen from the future, and he's also at speedster. I'm
not certain the year in the future that he's from.

(02:40:24):
I believe it's the thirty first century. It is the
thirty first actually, but I don't think I mean, there
might be a date.

Speaker 2 (02:40:29):
I don't think that's Yeah, So he's from the same
century as the Legion of Superheroes exactly, and he is
also a speedster and he's directly related to Barry.

Speaker 1 (02:40:36):
He's my favorite speedster in the whole universe. So Iris
West was revealed to be alive because when Barry died,
they kind of shunted Iris off at the same time
because it wasn't a lot left. She also got real old.
She did get really old. They made her a gray
haired lady, yes, and soon she returned from the future

(02:40:57):
along with Bart Allen. Yep. So now she's here and
she's sort of younger again. So Wally could help him
control his speed because Bart is like running out of
control and he's crazy and he's not focused, so he
needs help. Following extensive training with both Wally and with Jake,
Eric is a lot more with Jay Eric. Actually, Bart
took up the Speedster gig as a costumed hero impulse

(02:41:18):
yay with cool goggles, and then he follows in Wally's
footsteps and joins the teen Titans team of the time,
which I think is really really cool, and he will
eventually go on to be kid Flash for a minute
as well. Then we come to it and the Flash
for a minute as well, for like two whole seconds. Yeah,
I like him with Flash. Then we come to an
event called zero hour Jason, real quick? Can he tell

(02:41:39):
us what zero hour is? Well, there was an hour
and it turned zero zero hour. I'm gonna stay that
next time, and you're gonna get so mad.

Speaker 2 (02:41:47):
Green Lander and hal Jordan at the time had gone
all crazy cooky pants because his home city, Coast City,
had blown up by Cyborg Superman. So he grabbed all
the power of the green lanterns and was like, I'm
going to remake the entire universe in my image and
bring back cost City.

Speaker 1 (02:42:04):
That's zero hour. Ha, ha ha ha ha. So yes,
when Hal Jordan's seemingly went mad after the destruction of
his former home Coast City and became parallax, he was
replaced as Green Lantern by Kyle Rayner. Oh we love
Kyle Rayner. We also done a gek his lesson on
Kyle Rayner. My favorite tiss is of Lanterns taught by you.
I believe, yes who took his place in the Justice
League is America and the two Wally and Kyle became

(02:42:27):
best buddies, but not after a little bit of conflict.
I'm gonna back you up there. Yeah, it's not the
Justice League of America. This is the JLA. The JLA.
I'm sorry, the j LA. You don't say those words.
Oh you can say them later when they reboot it.
But at JLA too, they do become best buddies. And
I just want to say, this is a really funny
scene where they play rock and sock and robots together

(02:42:49):
and talk about Superman's haircut. So I would really recommend
check it out. JLA is not in my recommended reading,
but it's definitely worth it is it has been in
the past.

Speaker 2 (02:42:58):
I'm going to make a metaphor here or analogy. Okay,
and don't I forgot which ones? Which is I'm tired?

Speaker 1 (02:43:05):
Sorry.

Speaker 2 (02:43:07):
The Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and Wally west Flash relationship
in JLA is like Julian Basher and Miles O'Brien in
Star Trek d Space. That's a perfect comparison if you've
ever seen that, because they start out the forty issues
of Grant Morrison's run hating each other, they don't like
each other, and then by the end of the forty
issues they are as close of friends, like how Jordan

(02:43:30):
and Barry were.

Speaker 1 (02:43:31):
Yeah, and it's so interesting because Wally hates Kyle.

Speaker 2 (02:43:35):
Kyle Schmack does not like Kyle at all, which is
so funny because Wally was in Kyle's place, not that long, I.

Speaker 1 (02:43:42):
Mean long in the history of the stories, not that
long in his and his Green Lantern Howl. Jordan was
given him as much shade as he's given kylea So
just like, that's why I want to focus on it exactly.
So like, dude, come on, remember, so there's some nice
like mirror plots going on here. Not long after this,
Wally was seemingly killed. Seemingly is an adjective while trying
to help rip Hunter who you may know and Waverrider

(02:44:05):
save the sixty fourth century. But he was just flung
back in time, so don't worry about it. The nice
thing about this is we get a really cute red
con And I never thought I would use the phrase
cute red con, but here we have arrived at it.
So while it gets flung back in time to the
West family reunion and it is revealed that he was
the uncle that gave his past self the pep talk

(02:44:26):
that allowed him the confidence to become kid Flash.

Speaker 2 (02:44:29):
Now, I am going to say that you probably know this.
Also for our listeners, do you know what issue with
the Flash that takes place in No, The Flash number zero,
the zero hour tie in issue? Oh there you go,
Well that happens also.

Speaker 1 (02:44:49):
That is one of, in my opinion, one of the
greatest issues of The Flash of all time, written by
Mark Wade, art by Mike Wareingo while MICROWINGO like, you
can't go wrong, but that is the Flash zero. It is,
I without a doubt, I think one of the greatest
issues the Flash ever. Yeah, not even just Wally West
like the Flash the Flash, I would agree. During this time,

(02:45:12):
Wally had had a vision of Linda dying at the
hands of Cobra, who's a bad guy. And when he
tried to talk him out. Sorry, and when he tried
to take him out, and trying to take out Cobra,
bart Allen impulse ruined his plans and cause an accident
that made Wally start to transform into a being of
pure energy. Oh you did it about Cobras. He's a
guy who looks like a snake. He's like a snake

(02:45:33):
cult guy. Yeah, this would be an ongoing problem for
Wally for a little bit. He kept like turning into
pure energy and he couldn't run that fast because he
would be a being of pure energy and be part
of the speed Force, and who knew what was happening.

Speaker 2 (02:45:43):
Let's also point out too that there's an interesting thing
of note that Wally West is the flash that discovers
the speed Force.

Speaker 1 (02:45:49):
Yes, not Barry, No, it's Wally West. It is. It
is a it is a rather modern idea. Well, it
was the speed Force.

Speaker 2 (02:45:56):
The idea of the speed Force was invented by Mark
Wade in the nineties during his amazing the Greatest Flash
run of all time.

Speaker 1 (02:46:03):
Yes, which, don't worry, We'll be in the So Wally's
had this problem, he's turning into pure energy. Who's gonna
go to for help? But Jesse Quick Yay, Jesseqwick. You
will also know from the Flash television show. She's a
lady Speaster and he goes to her. She can't super
help him with his problem. So he's like, Jesse Quick,
if anything happens to me and I become a being,

(02:46:24):
a fear, a pure energy and absorbed by the speed Force,
will you take up the mantle of the flash? She
gets a really cool look at a little flash costume.
She gets an amazing flash costume. But it's actually he
doesn't really mean it. It's a trick because he wants
Bart to pull up his bootstraps, and he actually makes
Bart the next thin I guess the next in in
line to inherit the Flash title. Ah. However, the tragedy

(02:46:47):
was not completely averted, and Wally was forced to enter
the speed Force, where he traded Linda's fate for what
he thought would be his Da Da Dune. And this
strip beyond the Light gave Wally the power to tap
directly into the speed Force self, which granted new abilities
which consisted of projecting the speed force into objects, throwing lightning,
and many others. Yeah, and also manipulating of absorbing and

(02:47:12):
granting super speed to other people. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:47:16):
Yeah, was an ability the flash had never had before. Also,
there's a fun fact Wally West, in terms of this
speed for stuff, the very first flash to travel faster
than the speed of light.

Speaker 1 (02:47:26):
Also, this effectively makes him to date the most powerful
flash of all time. I think Barry has now done
that as well. But like, but Wally did it first.

Speaker 2 (02:47:35):
If you think about the way Wally did it first,
then yeah, you could make the argument that Wally is
the fastest flash of all time.

Speaker 1 (02:47:42):
So then he went onto battle. Savatar Flash Flash TV
show fans will recognize this name. Savatar Siphon's energy from
the speed force and kept other speedstars from tapping into it,
which is a very bad idea. Savatar wants to be
the fastest man alive. He's named after Hindu God's kind
of all that you know about him, or he is
the Hindu God. It's never depending on how you want

(02:48:05):
to read the mythology. I like that that's ambiguous.

Speaker 2 (02:48:07):
Yeah, he's kind of a he's a Cold War He's
a pilot from the Cold War. And he's getting immortal.
He gets absorbed into the Speed Force after he gets
his super speed powers, and then he's like, I'm the
only one that should have super speed powers, and this
whole cult is like you are the real guy.

Speaker 1 (02:48:20):
You are Savatar, and then while he's like yeah, but
it's like I'm the festament alive Savatars like I'm gonna
kill you. Linda learned Savatar's backstory because she's really smart
and good at her job and she's able to pass
along vital information to Wally. During this time, Wally and
Jesse went to Savatar's castle because he lives in castle,
where Jesse fought Lady Savatar, who I think the name

(02:48:41):
is pretty self explanatory, and the Flash fought Savatar himself
because you couldn't have a two on one that wouldn't
be fair. Jesse manages to free the Speed Force from
this weird box that Savatar has inside of it yay,
which gives everybody their powers back. So Jay, Max, Mercury,
Johnny Quick, and Impulse got all their powers back and
they ran over to the castle and caught up with

(02:49:02):
Wally and Jesse and proceeded to battle Savatar's army, which
is made up of all these cult followers that Jason
talked about. And then Wally threw Savatar into the speed
Force and then he got sucked in himself and disappeared.
Well he actually he didn't quite throw him in there,
but he tricked Savatar into following him into the right
He doesn't like put him over his shoulder and throw.
And the speed Force is very fickle, and they build

(02:49:24):
this in TV show. The Speed Force has like one
person that they like, and at this time it's Wally. Yeah,
it says he brings Savatar in there, like Savatar gets
absorbed by it. Yes. Then we enter a storyline called
Race against Time love it exclamation point, and it's basically
Wally bouncing around the speed Force a lot and going
to different centuries and having a bunch of adventures there,

(02:49:45):
including the sixty fourth century, remember when we talked about,
that's where Rip Hunter lives, and the mid thirtieth century
where he meets Don and Don Allen Don like the
male spelling and Don like the female spelling. The twenty
seventh century where he meets John Fox Susan those flash yeah,
before he has to figure out how to go back home.

(02:50:06):
It's a really really fun story. Now Don and Don
Allen are the parents of Impulse, Yes they are, and
they are well, he is the child of who is he?
Don Allen Mail Don Allen? Yeah, isn't he the He's
the child of Barry? Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say
they're both the child the children of Barry, but I
was like, no, they're definitely not the matching names a

(02:50:27):
little much though. During a brush with the Black Flash,
don't worry. He's a bad guy. Flash, who had apparently
claimed the life of Linda, Wally is able to save
her by entering the speed Force again, chases her down,
he brings her back. This is kind of the trend
of Wally from heron out. He goes into the speed force,
either sacrifices himself or save someone else, comes back out
of speed force because the speed force is a really

(02:50:48):
cool idea. Yes, it was so cool when it came down.

Speaker 2 (02:50:51):
And the Black Flash is the embodiment of death, the
death Ellen, that's the speed Force. It's the it's the
idea of the speed force that comes out and takes speedsters.

Speaker 1 (02:50:59):
But you're all right. The big crux of the Mark
Wade run is that Barry once he acts the speed
force fills. He feels it at all times. Wall excuse
me getting the TV show and the comic mixed up
as well. Wally feels it at the all time, at
all times, and it's like he feels like it's drawing
him to the light.

Speaker 2 (02:51:18):
Yeah, and it's very hard for him to resist, and
he can't escape it, you know, because it feels like
heaven to him.

Speaker 1 (02:51:23):
Yeah. It's every Yeah, everything a speechter could want. But
he saved Linda. They're living back together, so he proposes
to her and they were married shortly after, but she
then disappears off the face of the earth and not
even Wally can remember her. Nobody remembers her. This is
kind of the opposite of what keeps happening on the
TV shows, where Barry keeps resetting the timeline and then
Iris can't remember him anymore. Linda's disappearance was caused by

(02:51:46):
a mysterious man who had a deep hatreod for the Flash.
He abducted her and he kept her imprisoned within limbo. Yeah,
that place that we all love. And this character is
later revealed to be Cadabra. Oh and if you are yes,
if you are current in the Titan series, you'll notice
that this storyline is kind of being aped right now.

(02:52:07):
And this story taught Wally to accept that he would
not be able to prevent Linda's death forever, even if
he kept saving her from the Speed Force. Cadabra faked
his defeat at their hands and seemingly discorporated Wally and
Linda's essences, sending them through countless alternate dimensions until they
found their way to their home dimension thanks to Bart.

(02:52:28):
Yay Bart, he has to be useful. Yay Bart, I
Love Bart. Wally and Linda finally made their way back
to Keystone City, but Linda was still forgotten in everybody
else's minds. So Wally decides that what he's going to
do is impersonate the Reverse Flash in order to get
Cadabra to cast his spell and reverse on Linda to
make her return to everyone's consciousness and keep her safe.

(02:52:52):
And after this, Linda and Wally finally are able to
actually get married and fill out the paperwork and everything
that's good and it's a really sweet issue. Nightwing is
the best man. It's really makes sense. It does. Maybe
Kyle's there too. On their honeymoon, the couple is attacked
by Cobra and Lady Flash because they can't have nice things,
but they easily defeat them. They're going through their wedding

(02:53:12):
presence one day and they receive a bomb as part
of their wedding presence. Of course, so Wally investigates and
learns that someone has been targeting members of the JLA.

Speaker 2 (02:53:20):
And so, of course we should also point out too
that the reason why he gets a bomb is that
at this time, Wally West's public identity was open. It
was everybody knew Wally Wes was the Flash.

Speaker 1 (02:53:30):
Yes, so he gets a bomb. Yeah. After learning this
information that the JLA is going to be facing upcoming
attacks Flash Shaped Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and finally Aquaman
from all of these attacks, which is really really cool cool,
he then learns that an enemy is threatening him and
his allies. Oh, the enemy that has been threatening him
in his allies. It's none other than the Turtless Man,
alive and evidently obvious enemy of the Flash. Yeah. Then

(02:53:54):
we come to a storyline called Time runs out to
see We've got a lot of time and running jokes
going on. And what I want to bring up about
this is that Wally learns that he has fathered a
child with an old girlfriend taking a note from Oliver
Queen's book, and that the child is named Josh, and
he is forced to decide whether or not he's going
to take responsibility for raising this child. When Josh's mother dies,
Wally does decide to reveal himself to their son. But

(02:54:18):
about five seconds after this, the Flash meets the newest
member of the Central City Police Department, whose name is
Hunter Solomon, which should sound familiar to Flash fans, and
Lynda gives birth to their own twin children, Iris and
Jay West, and we pretty much never deal with Josh
ever again. So two, that's so sad for that kid. Wow,
I didn't know about that. Cool. Yeah, yeah, And I

(02:54:38):
actually like that they call him Jay West like Jake Yerk.
I think that's really really cute. Wally West decides I
should probably retire from being a Flash because he wants
to be a good father and raise his family. But
then infinite crisis happened, Jason really quick, what is infinite crisis?

Speaker 2 (02:54:55):
We find out that there there are some surviving members
of the christ On Infinite Earths, including a man a
Superboy Prime, and an Alexander lutheror in a Lowis lane
and they're like, hey, we want to bring the multiverse back.
So they attack the DC universe and guess what, they
bring the multiverse back, and some characters die, including the
super Boy. Yes, and Wally West is greatly affected by
this event, which I assume you're going to talk about

(02:55:15):
right now.

Speaker 1 (02:55:16):
I would assume that as well. Kid Flash, who was
bart Allen, Mary, Max and Johnny are able really quickly
before we get that.

Speaker 2 (02:55:22):
Sorry, I want to remind you at this point, now
that we've jumped all the Infinite Crisis, we want to
state that there was a storyline by Jeff Johns that
Wally West or that excuse me, that Wally West's public
identity was put back to bed again by the Spector
and now maybe right, okay, right, so now to Infinite Crisis.
What's going on there?

Speaker 1 (02:55:42):
So all these Speedsters are able to temporarily subdue Superboy Prime,
who's obviously a big part of this event by sending
him into the speed Force to that. Yeah, and Wally,
once he's gotten his family all safe, followed them into
what later turned out to be an alternate Earth. He's like,
I guess I'm a Speedster again for like the next
However long this event lasts, and the other Speedsters, along
with Linda and the twins, were sent to the home

(02:56:03):
of another Jay Garrick, who was operating as the Flash
on the earth that they go to. They decided to
absorb the speed Force into Bart and send him to
battle Superboy Prime and become the Flash full time. Content
with passing the Flash mantle onto Bart, Wally and Linda
decided to raise their family on an alien world known
as Savoth Savot, where the residents were longtime friends of

(02:56:26):
the Flashes. However, shortly after their arrival, the twins begin
to age very very rapidly, and the Savothians, who were
advanced scholars of velos of biology, at first did not
agree to help the West with what was happening to
the twins, but they finally relented and agreed to train
Linda to deal with the children's rapid aging.

Speaker 2 (02:56:47):
Now let's point out real quick here, just to make
it a little bit simpler here that in Infante Crisis,
Wally West runs into the speed Force with Bart to
get rid of Superboy Prime, and in the speed Force
he meets Barry, he meets Jay and to the outside world.
They all disappear, only Bart comes back. Bart's older, right,

(02:57:07):
So it seems like Wally West is dead.

Speaker 1 (02:57:10):
Okay, yeah, but on the other side. But on the
other side, this is what's happened. He's not dead.

Speaker 2 (02:57:14):
I just wanted to make that clear. That's a good,
good DC universe right now thinks Wally West is dead.

Speaker 1 (02:57:18):
He's not. So. Wally, along with Linda and their children,
are eventually brought back to Earth by seven members of
the Legion of Superheroes. Yay, it's called the Lightning Saga. Yes,
using lightning rod devices. Look at that. When Wally came back,
he indirectly took away Bart's portion of the Speed Force,
which is a bomber. And with the return of Wally West,
the Speed Force also returned, as he mainlined it and

(02:57:41):
was practically one with it. So Bart was the fastest Flash.
Wally came back. Now Wally's the fastest Flash again.

Speaker 2 (02:57:47):
And in this weird storyline as well, the moment that
Wally West comes back, that's when the Rogues were able
to kill Bart Allen. Yeah, but Bart Allen comes back
to life later on. Don't worry about it, comicbooks.

Speaker 1 (02:57:58):
It's very sad though I think Bart has a horrible death.
He was then invited to join the newly reformed Justice
League of America, which I'm allowed to say he moved
back to Keystone City because where else are you going
to go? Since he and Linda were afraid that their
twins could at any time age rapidly, possibly even into
old age and death, they decided to let Iris and Jay,

(02:58:19):
who had developed their own super speed related abilities, to
live their lives to the fullest and help their father
fighting crime. While he later found out that the cause
of his children's wrapping aging was not because of the
Speed Force like they'd previously believed, but because of the
Black Flash remember him. He then absorbed the speed Force
fragments from his children and defeated the Black Flash, thus

(02:58:41):
causing Jay and Iris to revert to their actual age yay.
He then goes on to rejoin the Titans for like
a minute to take down their old villain Trigan, who
is the father of Raven. Then we get to Flash
rebirth yep.

Speaker 2 (02:58:55):
And the reason why we get so flash reborth so
fast because when the Flash comes back. In this story
that's called The Wild West actually written by Mark Wade,
it's sadly, it's not a great storyline with him and
his kids.

Speaker 1 (02:59:09):
It's not. And there is stuff that goes on, but literally,
the next important thing that happens is Flash Rebirth. Yes,
so that's where we're going. No, I know, and I
just wanted to explain really quickly because that is it
is a time job. The wild West storyline, I hope
is not in your recommended reading. It is not. There's
a reason. Why. Can you real quick? What is Flash Rebirth.

Speaker 2 (02:59:27):
Flash Rebirth is where Barry Allen is now in the
modern DC universe. He was brought back to life in
the event called Final Crisis, where he's run through time
and he's been You learned that he's been brought back
to life by his old enemy eabar Thorn.

Speaker 1 (02:59:40):
That's right, So Barry Allen comes back to life. He's
he's doing hero stuff. It's really great. Wally and Jay
team up with Barry to save Orion's life. Orion is
the new God's character. Okay, but they fail and Orion dies,
so it's a big bummer. They also and that's in
Final Crisis. Oh yeah, but the leading is leading up

(03:00:02):
to Flash Rebirth. They also free Iris from her house,
which has been corrupted by Andy Life and she's strapped
inside of it. The Flashes team up and run off
to try and take down dark Side, who's taken over
the world. They save Superman from the followers Omega beams,
and when they managed to get to dark Side, they
vibrated through him, causing the Black Racer to crash into him,

(03:00:23):
severely wounding the evil god. So they effectively defeat dark Side,
which is not an unimpressive feat. Barry and Wally reunited
with the rest of their friends and family. Yay. Superman
assembles Wally, along with both generations of the Titans, because
by now we are well into the second generation of
the Titans, to reveal that Bart Allen and Superboy had
been resurrected in the future and brought back to the President,

(03:00:46):
and everyone is super happy. Yeah, don't worry about it. Yeah.
Both the superhero community and the public learn of Barry
and Bart's return, assembling parades and celebrations for all the Flashes. Yay.
Then Blackest Night happens. What's Blackest Night? Well, real quick.
Before we get to Black's Night, Wally basically takes He's

(03:01:06):
still called the Flash at this point, it's weird, and
he gets he gets a cool looking costume that actually
looks like John Wesley Ship's costume from the nineties TV
show and Wallet and Barry excuse me, becomes full time Flash.
But Wally's still around and he's still the Flash. Yeah,
but he's like part time Flash. Yes to Black's Night.

Speaker 2 (03:01:22):
So Blackest Night is where you find out that there
are these Black Lanterns, which are basically the zombie of
the DC Universe. They have black rings and they can
resurrec anybody that's been dead.

Speaker 3 (03:01:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:01:33):
So Wally races across the globe with Barry and Bart
to pass to pass to every hero around the world.
Barry's message about the rise of the Black Lantern Corps
and their universal invasion and like, hey, you should look
out for this. It's really really scary. He later arrives
in Coast City with Bart, the Justice League and the
Teen Titans who aid Barry and taking a stand against Necron,
the black personification of death and the Lord of the

(03:01:54):
Black Lanterns, and that's his biggest contribution to that event.
Then the New fifty two happens, where the DC Universe
rebooted and everyone gets a new costume. And the weird
thing about the New fifty two is that the redheaded,
Caucasian version of Wallyy West adult adult Wally West that
we knew appears to have never existed exactly. But it's
important to note that in several previous adventures, when he

(03:02:17):
had entered the Speed Force and thought that maybe he
was going to die, he had assured other characters that
he could always find his way back home as long
as he could find Linda, his lightning rod. That's right,
So you got to know that. But during the New
fifty two, a new African American Wally West was introduced
in the Flash Annual number three, sort of tying into
the fact that we're having an African American Walley West

(03:02:39):
on TV exactly.

Speaker 2 (03:02:40):
It was that character that Wally Wes was created, specifically
because of Keenan Lonsdale, who plays Ye West in the
TV show Yes, And.

Speaker 1 (03:02:47):
He's originally portrayed as the Originally the New fifty two
version was portrayed as the classic character, and he is
the biracial son of Rudy West. This is Wally and
it's all ret Kaneddy see Rebirth number one. And it's
very silly, but he's Iris's nephew. He looks up to
the Flash. He has speed powers. That's all you need

(03:03:07):
to It's basically the exact same. Yes. Yeah. The existence
of the original Wally West is hinted at in the
final issue of Titans Hunt, in which various original teen
Titans remember they're bond to each other but realize they
are still forgetting an important final member of the team,
and they as they look out on the ocean as
lightning strikes. And then we get up to DC rebirth,

(03:03:29):
and a big part of DC rebirth is original adult,
red haired Wally West coming back to life. But that
is currently what is ongoing, and he and real quick,
but let's just talk about that. In that one shot.
He's not an adult. He is like I would say,
in his early twenties. He's a late teen. He's an adult.
Well but he teen is an adult, but but he's

(03:03:50):
not the adult that he was.

Speaker 2 (03:03:52):
He's not like, yes, because I would say at the end,
but right before the new fifty two, Wally's probably thirty
at least. Yeah, this Wally that shows up is maybe
twenty twenty twenty one. Yeah, yeah, if that.

Speaker 1 (03:04:03):
But it's not we're not getting teen Titans Baby Wall.

Speaker 3 (03:04:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:04:07):
Yeah, so this in DC Rebirth number one, this twenty
year old in a in his original kid Flash costume
shows up to Barry. Barry's like, I don't know who
you are, and He's like, but I've been shunned it
down to the universe, and then Barry touches him, and
now the original Wally West is now in the DC
Rebirth universe.

Speaker 1 (03:04:26):
Yes, but that's all we're gonna say about.

Speaker 2 (03:04:28):
Yes, but there's two Waliy Wests out there. There's only
been like ten issues of the Flash. Go out there
and enjoy it, don't worry about it.

Speaker 1 (03:04:34):
And yeah, that's your that's your key cassure Lesson on
Wally West.

Speaker 2 (03:04:37):
I feel tired. I feel like I ran heck me too.
Oh myn oh wow, good job all rk you. Let's
move into the next section of the podcast, the recommended Reading,
where Ashley's going to give you three picks if you
want to read some Wally West Flash stories, and you
can go to geek History lesson dot com slash recommended
Reading and we have the full list of all the
recommended reading that we've ever done for this entire podcast.

(03:04:57):
We do right there and easy widgets that you can
buy them so that you can read them for yourself.

Speaker 1 (03:05:02):
So the first thing that I am going to recommend
is The Flash Born to Run. This is volume one.
This is Mark Wade's first volume on the Flash. It
is an amazing It is what launches the in my opinion,
the best run of the Flash of any of the Flashes.
And the great thing about this volume is that it
includes a year one origin story with all of the
kid Flash stuff that you need to catch you up

(03:05:23):
on who this character is. So if you've never read
Flash before, this is a super great jumping on point
to this character.

Speaker 2 (03:05:28):
Yeah, but it is also called isn't it it's the
one that's called the Flash book one by Mark Wade
or yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:05:33):
Yeah, but the storyline is called Born to Run. And
then the second one I'm going to recommend is The
Flash Wonderful, which is Jeff John's first volume, which is
another really highly regarded storyline in Flash history. They're printing.
I think all of those are still being printed. I
think those are collected as well in the Flash by
Jeff John's book, And I know you can definitely get
this first one. And then I am going to recommend

(03:05:54):
that you pick up Flash Rebirth, which is sort of
the ongoing story of what's happening with all these characters,
and Wally's a really important part of that. And that's
gonna be all my recommended reading for Wally West. And
now let's move on into discussion. Yes, so, Jason, we
have already established that you think Wally West is the
greatest potential Flash. Correct. So Wally's a lot of the

(03:06:17):
times defined by the fact that he's the first character
to tap into the speed force. That's a really big
defining part of his Speedzer legacy. Yep. So I want
to know other than that, what do you think is
Wally's greatest accomplishment is the flash? What is the greatest
accomplishment in the flash traveling faster than the speed of light?
But that's because he can happen in the speed for Yeah,
I know, but.

Speaker 2 (03:06:36):
Nobody had ever had no flash would travel faster than
the speed light. That's at that point, and that was
like this uncrossable barrier.

Speaker 1 (03:06:44):
You know.

Speaker 2 (03:06:45):
It's interesting because I think that I don't know if
Wally has the greatest accomplishment, but can you near you know?
Because I would pose the same question to you name
me Barry Allen's greates accomplishment besides dying in crisis.

Speaker 1 (03:06:57):
Of infall right exactly, I don't think he has exactly,
so like, it's kind of tough, like and if you
were to ask me that same question about Superman, I
would be like, I don't know, stopping doomsday. It's really tough,
especially in serialized storytelling, you to give that one specific event.
But I would say that Wally's greatest thing story, whatever
you want to call it, is that he is the

(03:07:18):
kid sidekick who was terrible. There are stories about how
he was terrible and how he used this weird chip
on his shoulder about never living up to the potential
of his uncle and became the greatest Tiro ever because
of it. Do you think Wally West is the greatest
legacy hero?

Speaker 2 (03:07:36):
No, because I believe that's Jick Grayson. Although Wally West.
See here's the thing, I might have changed my answer
if Wally West was actually the flash right.

Speaker 1 (03:07:45):
Now interesting but because because he's been in the suit longer.
But because yeah, but because he's been regulated m H.
I don't know, Like, I don't know if I can
give him that because they can't decide what they want
to do with him now, yeah, exactly, whereas if he
is Flash one hundred percent, I think, yeah, he is
the great legacy. It's interesting because him and Dick Grayson

(03:08:05):
are two characters who both ascended to their mentors titles
and then had to revert back into a previous identity. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:08:11):
The interesting thing though is that the downside is that
Dick regressed into an identity that wasn't related to Batman,
like he created the night Wing identity.

Speaker 1 (03:08:24):
Yes he did Flash. Is it totally right back to
kid Flash? Right? And I know in the current continuity,
Barry has a scene where he's just like, no, you're Flash.
But it makes a weird branding, and we say difficult
to discuss the characters when they're all the same.

Speaker 2 (03:08:38):
The branding is very interesting, and especially because you want
to call Wally West Flash now, especially since this is
the Walley that had that career.

Speaker 1 (03:08:45):
Exactly as opposed to the African American one who was
never at the Flash.

Speaker 2 (03:08:49):
It was never a Flash, so he should be kid Flash.
I have an idea right now, and I'm gonna suggest
it to you. The Wally West that is in DC Rebirth.
I like his new costume designed by Brett Booth. I
think it's amazing. I love that costume. I know a
lot of people are gonna come after me for this,
and I don't care. I don't think he should be
called the Flash. I think they should give Wally West

(03:09:11):
the name Impulse.

Speaker 1 (03:09:13):
Ten out of ten love it. I think it is
a great name for a Speedster two.

Speaker 2 (03:09:17):
I think it's a great name for a Speedzer two.
And that way we get to have the Impulse legacy.
An Impulse does have a legacy hit a solo series
in the great Solo series. Yes, in the modern DC universe.

Speaker 1 (03:09:28):
Cool. Ten out of ten. I would love that. Yeah. Great.
I'd read you my introduction, but I can read it
super speed, so you wouldn't hear it. Let me just
say very very slowly that your Geek History Lesson On
bart Allan Impulse is now in session. Hello and to

(03:09:49):
welcome to Geek History Lesson. I'm Ashley Victoria Robinson and
I'm Jason pictograph Inman. Welcome to your mind University.

Speaker 2 (03:09:57):
Because this is the podcast where we talk about we
talk about not we trick about one character, one construct
or one team in pop culture and tell you a
little bit more about them, and today we are talking
about a DC comic Speedster, a little young boy who's
been all over the DC universe and is probably going
to be popping up on some TV screens very soon,

(03:10:18):
or he's been on your TV screen for years.

Speaker 1 (03:10:20):
If you're listening to this far far in the future,
mister Bartholomew Alan, do you know his middle name? No?
I hope you're gonna tell us now, Okay, I was
gonna have a middle name. He does have a middle name. Okay.
He's sometimes known as the Flash, but most people know
him as Impulse, and he's sometimes known as Kid Flash
as well. He's got a bunch of nicknames. He is
the best speedster whoever speedstered in the DC universe. I mean,
guests Speedster, not the best Flash, the best speed he's

(03:10:45):
your favorite Speedsters, the best speezter. Yes, and there's a difference,
as we say all the time, between best and favorite
Tea is my favorite sweezter. I have been dying to
teach us and very excited Ashley.

Speaker 2 (03:10:56):
Like we do with every single episode, we allow people
to suggest episodes if they go to our Twitter at
GHL podcast, if they go to our Facebook at Facebook
dot com, slash Keikistory Lawson, I get that right. Yeah,
they can suggest episodes. Did anybody suggest a Bart Allen episode?

Speaker 1 (03:11:13):
Oh? Several many people have been requested. Several many. That's
a lot for a long time, big number. Several many. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifty six games, Boble, Scott b Boy, Sam Martinez, Alexis
n Bowen at a Bay Phrase at Camsensus, Grod Frankenstein,

(03:11:35):
Akadias Stevens at Decu's Multiverse, Nick Ronowski, Brandon Bold and
Matt Jacobs and Paul Graham, Drew Frisbee, Can Rollo, Corey Burton,
an at Spider Underscore, Hawk all requested I talk about
the best beats during the VC universe. Awesome, good for them, Yeah,
very exciting. All done, everybody, Thank you. We're finally rounding
out our og Young Justice Boys set of episodes. Oh cool, Yeah,

(03:12:00):
you already done.

Speaker 2 (03:12:01):
We've done super Boy, Connor Kent, We've done Tim Drake,
Robin a long time.

Speaker 1 (03:12:05):
Yea, even a Cassie. We didn't miss Marthaan too, I believe, Yeah,
but she's not a founding member for the comics. Okay,
splitting hairs here, that's true. All right, Is there anything
else we want to say before we move into the
first segment. No, let's do it.

Speaker 2 (03:12:17):
Let's get into the ten cent origin everybody. That is
the first segment of Geek History Lesson where if you
need to know the cliff Notes version of everything about
Bart Allen, or you're going to Keystone City, You're walking
into the Giant Mansion and Jay Garrett goes, hey, do
you know my grandson Bart Allen. Well, Ashley's going to
tell you every little detail you need to know in

(03:12:39):
case you're going to Jake Yerick's awesome cocktail party.

Speaker 1 (03:12:42):
He is not Jay Errek's grandson. Well, obviously, that's why
ja Erk's asking me about him. Okay, okay. Bart Allen
is a DC comic superhero character. He is a meta
human and a member of the Flash family and a
grandson of Barry Allen, and he travels back in time
from the future. He was created by Mark Waite and
Mike Waerringo. His first appearance as a cameo was in

(03:13:05):
Flash number ninety one from June of nineteen ninety four,
and his first full appearance was in Flash ninety two
in July of nineteen ninety four. His aliases include already
spoiled by Jason Impulse, could Flash and the Flash, and
his team affiliations have been Young Justice, Teen Titans, the
Legion of Superheroes, White Lantern Core not going to talk
about that one, and the Justice League. His abilities include

(03:13:28):
a genetic connection to the Speed Force, which grants immense
superhuman speed, superhuman stamina, superhuman reflexes, superhuman reaction, superhuman agility,
intangibility through molecular vibration at high velocity, speed reading, molecular control,
time travel and dimensional travel by running faster than the
speed of light, speed force clones, creation of Ward Texas,

(03:13:48):
photographic memory, accelerated healing force, speed force Aura resistance, celepathy,
and resistance to time stream alterations. Got it? Super speed? Yeah,
the same thing, the same non sense powers that every
other Flash has. Gotta just said super speed and Bart
has been voiced by Jason Marsden, who debuted and is

(03:14:09):
the only person who has ever voiced Bart Allen. He
debuted in the Mad cartoon and in the Young Justice series,
and he has been portrayed in live action by Kyle
Gallner in Smallville and at the time of this recording
will be portrayed in live action by the highly adorable
Jordan Fisher on The Flesh. I'm just gonna throw this
out right there, everybody.

Speaker 2 (03:14:28):
If you are listening to Jason and Jeremy john about
just seeing over at our Patreon dot com slash jomin,
then you know that Jason Marsden also voices Snapper Car,
a nemesis of mine, on that podcast.

Speaker 1 (03:14:39):
So this is a fun crossover. Yeah, he, James Marston
is all Jason Marson. I'm sorry, it's all over. Yeah, yeah,
I did the same thing. It's very easy to like
to autocorrect that to James. I don't mean any disrespect
in that, but you know, Jason Marson, I would like
to extend this imitation to you. When jasonon in min
and Ie original comb book series Jupiter Jet gets adapted

(03:15:01):
into a cartoon, I would welcome you to do a
voice on our show on Jason. The next second is
the meat cute?

Speaker 3 (03:15:06):
What is that?

Speaker 2 (03:15:07):
The meat cute is We're Ashley and I. We stole
a term from romantic comedies and we tell you where
we first meet it and cuted mister impulse.

Speaker 1 (03:15:14):
So Jason, I would like you to go first, because
mine comes with visual aids. Where did you first meet
bart Allen Ashley?

Speaker 2 (03:15:20):
I need a little help for the my meet Cute?
Could you tell me again the issue that was his
cameo appear ash number ninety one. Okay, I read that
issue that is my meet cute for Bart Allen. I
got that issue. I've told the story several times about
how I would always get comics from Walmart and whatnot,

(03:15:43):
and Walmart back in the day would always have these
really cool packs of like ten issues and then I
could get like ten comic books for I believe at
the time I was five dollars. Actually, Flash ninety one
was one of those comic books in one of those packs.
That is the and it was the mic where we
can Go also that, and then I was able to
get his first full appearance, which I think is the

(03:16:03):
cover where he's running at the canvas yep. That was
also in another pack I bought. So I was able
to shout out to whoever.

Speaker 1 (03:16:09):
Curated the pack. Yeah, yeah, who never carried the packs.

Speaker 2 (03:16:12):
I think was always like slipping in a Flash issue
and they were doing them in order. So that's how
I met in Q did I've known who Impulse was
for a law. Now, I don't know what year I
read those comics. That's fine, but I would guess ninety
five ninety six, it would be my guest. But yeah,
I've known Impulse from his very first appearance. So this
doesn't happen never often.

Speaker 1 (03:16:32):
But there you go. Actually, where did you first meet
and quted bart Allen? So I first met and quted
Bart Allen in the first issue of the Jeff Johns
teen Titans Run, where he is kind of the only
one who's excited to be part of the team. And
he runs out and he hugs Robin and he's so
happy to be there. And what's so special about that
moment to me is that when Patrick Leeson did his

(03:16:53):
Young Justice Run, he aped that when Bart comes and
hugs Connor, and that original is drawn by the great
Mike McCone. And he's always been my favorite speedster from
that very moment. And in fact, back in my day, children,
we used to talk on something called the Emson Messenger mission.
I remember the usual mission. I used to have a

(03:17:15):
mister bot Alan as my picture. Hold on shaking them
and turn on missioner you. Oh, especially if your dial
up was not working. Oh hello, speech to Girl seventy
eight and uh my MSN Messenger icon for a long
time was a cover to Impulse number thirty two, which
I'm going to show Jason right now. Okay, oh dear god,

(03:17:38):
I conforded myself. Everyone, Just okay.

Speaker 2 (03:17:41):
I will share this on our social We're gonna share
it at GJL podcast on Twitter. But just to describe
it to anybody that you know is probably driving the
car on a subway right now. This is an insanely
detailed picture of Impulse stretching out his mouth and looking
like a madman.

Speaker 1 (03:17:57):
Yeah, he's making a face.

Speaker 2 (03:17:58):
I fun of fact, this is so cool because the
cover you're showing me, what's the issue number again? Impulse
thirty two, thirty two. That was, by the way, this
is why this back in the day was my late nineties,
like my favorite DC period, because that month was when
DC decided to do all these like headshot.

Speaker 1 (03:18:15):
Yes, yes she was. The Tim Drake one is awesome.

Speaker 2 (03:18:17):
The Kyle Raineri was so every issue across DC comics,
We're all like headshot close ups.

Speaker 1 (03:18:24):
In every one of them are iconic. What I love
about that image in particular is it tells you exactly
who Bard is, particularly during the Impulse series. So that
was my Amazon Messenger icon. What was the issue number him?
Impulse thirty two. Thank you for years and years and
years and years. There's like one person who listens to
this podcast who can attest to that. Now, let's move
into the next and the longest section of the podcast,

(03:18:46):
the history one oh one Jason, what is that?

Speaker 2 (03:18:48):
It's the main mean of the lesson. It's not the
side dish, it's the very thing you come to this
podcast for where she's going to tell you everything that
you know about Impulse, probably more than you ever have
wanted to know.

Speaker 1 (03:19:00):
I do you want to say, if you're that over
enthusiastic vegan who came at us on Twitter for using
the phrase main meat of the lesson, Maybe it's impossible meat.
I don't know. Hey, I didn't say it was real meat. Yeah,
but somebody took great offense to our use of vibray
might be rubber meat, so maybe they won't listen to
Maybe it's I don't know, Durian meat to be triple meat. Sure, Okay,

(03:19:27):
do you want to guess Bart's middle name? So he's
Barry's Grant grandson, which means his father. I'm gonna give
you that his father is Barry's son, who is Don.
So Bart's middle name is is it Don is Don
Bartholomew Don Allan is a cameo who was referenced in
the Death of the Tornado Twins. That's when we first

(03:19:48):
meet him as the son of Don Allen, the male
Don di En. His name there is only referenced as
Barry Allen too, so I'm really glad that they changed
that around. And his father, Allen, is executed in the
year twenty nine ninety five, so he has his tragic
superhero origin very very young. He doesn't appear again until

(03:20:09):
he shows up in the main Flash series, which is
like his first appearance as the cameo, and then the
full issue which we talked about earlier, and this leads
directly into his own solo series titled Impulse. So when
Barry Allen two baby Barry Allen Junior makes this cameo,
it's in a Legion of Superheroes issue. So, Jason, did
you know that Bart is actually a legion of Superheroes creation.

Speaker 2 (03:20:32):
I didn't know that technically he was a legion of
superheroes creation. He's related, I mean, and he shows up
in a Flash yeah, very first ying.

Speaker 1 (03:20:39):
Yeah. Yeah, so it's been in the rules a little bit. Yeah,
if you want to be arbitrary about what Wolverine's first start,
we're going to talk about Bart's mom at all. Uh
not really, So if you want to bring that up,
let's let's talk about her now.

Speaker 2 (03:20:52):
Well, listener, he may not know this, but especially if
you're a fan of the Flash TV series, you know
that Eobar Thawn is a very big, big part of
that show. Barthawn, of course, is with the reverse Flash,
very classic Flash Millin.

Speaker 1 (03:21:06):
Bart's mom is Melanie Thornyo Bard's top. I don't know
b Bart's daughter and his daughter, Yes, I don't know.
If it's ever been confirmed, someone will tell me they're
in that.

Speaker 2 (03:21:18):
I don't know, because I think they're in the thirty
first century. But I always thought it was interesting that
Bart is sort of the connection point of the Thawn
and Alan family.

Speaker 1 (03:21:24):
Yeah, maybe that's why they decided to make him not
a great speedzer. I know. Then in nineteen ninety four,
Bart really debuts on the scene in Flash volume two,
number ninety two, which is the cover that Jason referenced earlier,
and it's kind of important for you to know that
this happens post Zero Hour. So, Jason, what is Zero Hour?
Zero Hour is an event that was created by the

(03:21:47):
masterful Dan Jerkins.

Speaker 2 (03:21:49):
Every DC comic got a zero issue, and most of
them were spectacular. Some of them had foil covers, but
mainly it was how Jordan went crazy, called himself parallax,
and he decided to reset the entire DC universe. He
went back to the creation of time. It didn't work out,
of course, he didn't reset the universe, and all the
DC heroes fought him. But it's noted because I know

(03:22:11):
that Bart is going to be connected to another crisis
coming up in the future. Zero is the tenth anniversary
event of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Speaker 1 (03:22:19):
So Jason, can I have a retcone alert? Please? Oh boy?
Oh hold on, hold on? The crisis has affected our soundboard.
Hold on there it is. So Bart has existed for
one tiny cameo and a llegiate superheroes and then he
gets a red con because Zero Hour obviously changed a
lot of things. So post Zero Hour, Bart's parents, his

(03:22:41):
dad wasn't put to death, and he wasn't raised by
his mom for a bit. It's retcon that they were
killed by the Dominators Aero Verse crossover event. Fans should
recognize those aliens. But Bart was still a baby when
they died. But he wasn't your typical baby. So Bart
came out the womb with full super speed and all
of its associated abilities that we talked about earlier, which

(03:23:02):
is not normal because he was a male baby. So
whereas his female cousin, Jenny Ognotz, who later becomes excess
for our splash, didn't get her powers until she was
a teen because misogyny. From a story perspective, this is
really important because, like Jason mentioned, it kind of sets
spartapart as like a wonder kinned among the speedsters of
his generation, kind of like how in Legend of Cora,

(03:23:24):
Core is able to master the Elements way earlier than
Ang did in The Last Airbender even though he's ten
times the avatar Shaver was fight me on Twitter. Then
the multiverse was restored, Bart's future continuity was shunted off
to Earth twenty forty seven having never existed, and he
was born on a parallel earth to Earth one, And
so then they brought him back to Earth one and
just said he was simply born quote unquote in the future,

(03:23:45):
so before he had done anything. We are up to
three red cons Jason, We're about fifteen minutes into this podcast.
Is Bart Allen's story already too complicated? Yeah? Sorry, Okay,
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I wanna so

(03:24:12):
I haven't reread Bart's origin anytime recently. And if you
don't know this answer, this is fine. But I don't
know if he got his powers early just because he
was male. No, he got his powers early because and
correct me if I'm wrong, Professor, did he wasn't he like,
wasn't his aging sped up? So I'm going to get

(03:24:33):
into that Yeo. I'm just wanting it. Like, from a
narrative perspective, I find it very freaking suspect that he
had a cousin of the same lineage was a female
who wasn't as good as him right out the womb
like that is. It might not have been intentional, but
that is what implicit misogyny is, and that is what
patriarchal storytelling is. It was nobody was trying to be
awful to excess, but it's not equitable, and it's not

(03:24:57):
that for a reason.

Speaker 2 (03:24:58):
Oh that's fair, But I I was just saying, like
I was, I was just pointing out that. I was like,
I think there's a story reason for why he had
his powers.

Speaker 1 (03:25:05):
Yeah, but it kind of strikes me as the same
way like Harry Potter is born with an innate talent
and Hermione Granger, who's already better than him, doesn't get
to be as powerful as you know what I mean,
Not to use a turfy metaphor, but so part of
Bart being born with super speed, like Jason said, rather
than acquiring it through puberty or tragedy, which happens to
a lot of the other flashes, they get a lot
of chemicals and lightning spilled on them. Meant that had

(03:25:27):
sped up all aspects of his life, including his metabolism,
which became hyper accelerated. And while this means it's probably
very easy for him to lose weight, it also means
that he ages faster than a normal human being. So
one e bet how long that sticks around in his story?

Speaker 3 (03:25:43):
Not long?

Speaker 1 (03:25:43):
Is it part of continuity now? Absolutely not. But as
a result, by the time Bart was two years old,
he appeared to be twelve years old. When you meet
Bart as Impulse, he's like arguably twelve or thirteen years old,
So you have to know that he's actually maybe three,
which I think implies why he's so kind of emotionally
stunted and immature compared to some of his peers, even

(03:26:05):
in the Impulse book. So in order to prevent developmental disorders,
Bart was educated at super speed inside a virtual reality
machine designed to simulate the outside world for him, but
matched the quick pace at which he was developed a
holid deck. Yes, base also that I remember reading the Tube.

Speaker 2 (03:26:22):
Oh I also remember reading that in the nineties and
viming like, oh, this is very not virtual reality.

Speaker 1 (03:26:27):
Yeah, what a nightmare man.

Speaker 2 (03:26:29):
Yeah, everybody knows the You remember that really bad virtual
reality movie, The lawnmower Man. Yeah, yeah, it's exactly like that. Yeah,
Like virtual reality was like the thing in the nineties,
so like it. It doesn't surprise me that and now
it's augmented reality.

Speaker 1 (03:26:42):
Yeah. It quickly became clear that the machine was not
working the way anyone had hoped it was. So Bart's
grandmother Jason who is Bart's grandmother, iris Al, that is right,
send him back in time West literally threw him into
the arms of Wally West. It was like, good luck bye,
who was the flash at the time. I also wanted
to up too.

Speaker 2 (03:27:00):
Here is an interesting part where you talked about that
they do get rid of the aging thing very quickly.

Speaker 1 (03:27:05):
Yeah, because how do you sustain that without murdering him
By the end of the first story, I don't remember
how they saw that, but I know Wally is the
reason how this. I will tell you. Oh, I will
tell you when we come to I'm sorry. It's good.
It's fun when we both know what happens to these characters.
So like any good ones removed relative, Wally challenged Bart
to a race around the world like you do, and

(03:27:26):
the speed expended that he expended running shocked his metabolism
back into being normal because comics and there's no more
rapid aging issues because Wally was like racing around the world. Kid.

Speaker 2 (03:27:37):
Yeah, but so that but that's great. Actually, that's a
great piece of writing. Like I will give a little
a tip of the hat to Mark Way. They're like,
I got to get rid of this. Well, when Bart
first shows up, Wally hates him.

Speaker 1 (03:27:49):
Well, everyone kind of does, every which is unfair. He's
literally a three year old. He's a three year old.
He's a baby. He's a walkie talky three year old.
You have a duty of kids. Look that he's not
still in diapers. What a sweet baby. Angel. I love
this pouch.

Speaker 2 (03:28:04):
Can you imagine if Impulse, like do you think that
was in the pitch? Mark Way was like, let's put
a diaper around side outside the Impulse and Marta, I'm
just cut this discussion right previous Gey casser lesson guest
Mark Wade, I'm sorry, no, so since he was.

Speaker 1 (03:28:19):
Raising it to But Bart was pretty bad at being
in the world. He didn't understand danger. He often got
himself in a bunch of trouble emotionally and physically, and
Wally thought Bart was too much to handle, so he
fobbed him off. On Max Mercury, please continue to request
Max Mercury at GHL podcast and we might get to
that episode this year. Who's basically a grumpy old retired guy.
He's not a grumpy old retired guy. He is the

(03:28:41):
first speedster in the Master of the Speed He is
a zen cowboy speedster. My friend, I just reread Impulse.
He is a grumpy old retired you'd be grumpy too.

Speaker 2 (03:28:53):
If you went from a universe where horses in pickaxes
were the most advanced technology you had.

Speaker 1 (03:29:01):
Jason, do you know where Max Mercury lived when Bart
Allen moved in with him? Louis no, miss Citppy. No.
Somewhere in the South, yes, okay, Manchester, Alabama. I was
pretty close, which I mean, I don't know American geography.
You could be which is a real place. It is
an unincorporated community. If you live in Manchester, Alabama. We

(03:29:21):
want to hear from you at GHL podcast the way.
How's your barbecue? Yeah, you sent us some How's your barbecue? Initially,
Bart was the one who came up with the code
name Impulse, although it's Ret Condon Impulse number fifty that
Batman gave him that name, but I choose to believe
that he gave the name to himself. I actually think
this is like a reaction to Superman naming night Wing.
That Batman gets the name Impulse. I don't know that name.

(03:29:43):
Somebody else's sidekick does Batman call Impulsive? He's like, don't
be so well, I don't act on Impulse in the
bar like, oh I like it? Impulse. No, truly truly
exactly my impulse. Imagine, yeah kind of Carman, not Bart out.
Who would you rather be named by? Jason Batman or
Superman Superman? I know, right, absolutely yeah. Once his superhero
identity was securely in place, Bart did pretty much what

(03:30:04):
every other teenage superhero in the DC universe does, join
the Dean Titans for about five seconds before Connorcant, Superboy,
Tim Drake, Robbin, and himself broke off and founded Young Justice.
We're not going to talk too too much about Young
Justice because I already told you we did an entire
lesson on them, But the most important thing is that
Bart was a founding member. While he was on the team,
he was granted a spaceship by a sultan from Space,

(03:30:27):
which Young justin Justice used to fly around the world
during his tenure. And he learned while on Young Justice
that he could make speed force duplicates like we talked
about in the ten cent origin, and Bart was able
to use these duplicates a couple times to save his teammates.
He then promptly had a crisis of ethics when his
first duplicate was killed. And this happened during our worlds

(03:30:47):
at War. Jason do you know what our worlds at war?
I do what is it? Do?

Speaker 3 (03:30:52):
You know what is?

Speaker 1 (03:30:53):
What is it? It's where impyriacs.

Speaker 2 (03:30:54):
Basically DC Comics's Galactus shows up and eats some planets
there and Superman has to fight them. It's a big
Superman event. Yeah, and Young Justice actually has one of
the best tie ins.

Speaker 1 (03:31:03):
Actually they do a pretty good job, but his duplicate
dies and he has a crisis over it. So grief
over his duplicate is ultimately what leads Bart to quitting
Young Justice, and then everyone kind of rage quits after that,
and then the team falls part. Not long after that,
Max Mercury disappeared, but Bart was still an actual child,
so he went to live with Jay Garrick and his
wife Joan because somebody had to look after him. This

(03:31:23):
happens like five seconds before Tim reforms the teen Titans.
Is the Jeff Johnsteen Titans, the one that you classically
think of Bart being a part of. And he goes
to join him again and have his kneecap blown out
by death stroke. And I mentioned this because I read
this comic about fifteen years ago and I can still
see the splash page where Bart's sneecap has blown out.
It is seared into my brain. Thank you, Mike McComb.

(03:31:46):
And like I said, fun fact, I had bart O
my Amson Messenger. And so remember I mentioned Bart being
shot in the knee, so he has to have his
kneecap replace with a prosthetic one, and while recovering because
he can't run on it, he reads the entire San
Francisco Public Library, designs himself a new costume, and goes
by the name Kid Flash from this point forward until
he doesn't anymore. Then, during The Titans Tomorrow's storyline, which

(03:32:10):
is like a weird alternate Titans where we see them
in the future and they're all bad, Bart makes his
final ascension to the mantle of the Flash after the
previous Flash died in a billion crisis his go During
this story there are multiple bart Allans. One bart Allan
still speed from another Barret Allen to become more powerful,
and the bart Allen on The Titans of Tomorrow is

(03:32:30):
actually a spy for Titans East working for the future
Cyborg who is dating Rose Wilson. It's very weird and
convoluted and kind of I think is a precursor to
Bart's time is the Flash later on, which is weird
and convoluted. Then infinite Crisis happens. Jason, what is infinite crisis?

Speaker 2 (03:32:49):
Invent crisis is where Superboy Prime punches the universe, reaches
a lot of red cons and they try to bring
back their old planet in the multiverse.

Speaker 1 (03:32:59):
Come yes. So, after Superboy Prime killed a number of
members of the Teen Titans, Bart Bark Bart, my son,
Bort Bart, takes it upon himself to put an end
to the massacre. So he joined forces with Wally West
and Jay Garrick to run at top speed in the
Speed Force. And this is the same story where Wally
turned into pure energy and disappeared for a million years.
So we could justify bringing back Barry Allen. But Bart

(03:33:22):
didn't need to fear because Johnny Quick and Maximurcury, you remember,
he was missing. He was actually absorbed into the Speed
Force at the time, because that's what happens to every
Speedster appeared out of nowhere to save the day and
throw Superboy Prime in prison, which of course he promptly
escapes from. Bart follows Superboy Prime into an alternate reality,
Keystone City, where he lived for four years until he
returns to Earth one with Superboy Prime in toe, so

(03:33:45):
he appears in Tokyo because why not. Tokyo's pretty cool
and he has Superboy Prime and he's like, let's throw
him in jail. But Bart doesn't look like his cute,
adorable floppy hair drawed by Todd Knock's self. He is
an adult man and he is wearing Barry Allen's original
Flash costume. He remembers virtually nothing of what happens before

(03:34:08):
his disappearance, but because he's a good guy underneath it all,
he teams up with Superman and basically every other superhero
to fight in the Battle of Metropolis, and they're like,
I guess we need a Flash, so this is fine.
Bart's memories slowly start to come back to him. During
the course of this fight, he defeats Superboy Prime again

(03:34:28):
and claimed that the Act took away all of his powers,
which is a lie. And this is a lie because
Bart is trying to protect the secret that the Speed
Force had not come back at this time, so he
still has like residual super speed and abilities. But they
during this storyline, they're like, oh, the Speed Force, no

(03:34:48):
one can connect to it, but we can still run
fast because that's interesting, right. No, the speed force is
like the single most interesting thing about the Flash. Stop
taking away the speed Force. Jason, are you you're familiar
with adult Bart Allen? Not really? Okay? When you think
about Bart Allen as a character, do you want to
see him as a sad twenty year old man. No,

(03:35:09):
me either. But in order to protect himself and the
existence of the speed Force, Bart basically quits being the Flash.
And what do you do when you quit being the Flash? Well,
you moved to Keystone City, where you've never lived. You
go to work in the Keystone Motor Factories making cars
which I don't think you've ever driven, and you get

(03:35:30):
yourself a roommate named Griffin who's kind of a real
butt head, and then slowly is revealed to be the
super villain, the Griffin. Imagine that that's like the Ray
level naming conventions. Bart became the Flash again to fight
the Griffin. Moved to Los Angeles, hooray when went to

(03:35:51):
work in forensics, just like his uncle Barry Allen had.
I kind of like the idea of him working in forensics,
and I like that it's an over to Barry Allen,
particularly given his name, but it's kind of a weird,
sad version of Bart.

Speaker 2 (03:36:05):
I have a feeling it was probably pretty connected to
CSI at the time, because CSI would have been like
heavy in the hie.

Speaker 1 (03:36:10):
Yeah, Bart became oh, I said Barty came to Flash again.
At this time, both the Justice League and the Team
Titans were also courting Bart to come back on their
teams because they were both in severe lack of a speedster.
And this was also when teen Titans kind of like
randomly had adults like Cyborg was on the team and
adult Beast Boy was on the team and Starfire was

(03:36:32):
on the team, and then there was also the whole
new crop of like vaguely fourteen to sixteen year old kids.
Bart decided that he wanted to go with the Justice
League and be a real grown up Flash, although said
he would not take an official position until he felt
it he was ready. Bart had a few more kind
of standard superhero adventures before Zoom. Who's Zoom, Jason?

Speaker 2 (03:36:54):
Are you talking about Hunter's Alomon? He's the sort of
second reverse Flash, but he's called the Zoo. He's a
guy just trying to make Wally West better.

Speaker 1 (03:37:03):
Yeah, he comes back in time to attack bart Allen
with the Rogues, and we begin the saddest chapter in
Baby bart Allen's life. Now, Jason, we've talked about the
Rogues a lot, particularly when we say the Rogues. Of course,
we were referring to the Flashes Rogue gallery. Who do
you think is the best of the Rogues?

Speaker 2 (03:37:23):
I mean, I personally like Mirror Master, but I like
the Scottish Mirror Master the best, which is the one
that they don't use anymore.

Speaker 1 (03:37:28):
The third Mirror Master, I think he's the second one.

Speaker 2 (03:37:30):
I like him the best. McCulloch, I believe I don't
like the original Mirror Master. I don't know behind that's
probably Captain Cold. I will say this about the Rogues.
I think the Rogues all have goofy costumes and they
all need to be redesigned, but they keep keeping them
in their original costume no matter what because people think
it's eclectic and kind of cool, and I'm just not
a fan of that.

Speaker 1 (03:37:50):
So yeah, I don't know. I mean Devil's Advocate, not
that I'm really looking to defend the Rogues. All superhero
costumes are silly.

Speaker 2 (03:37:56):
Yeah, but like, but I know what you, Captain Cold?
Where is a furry part, so like, you know, it's
weird to me. Yes, it's a little too dated for me.

Speaker 1 (03:38:06):
That's fair, That's totally fair. In order to take on
and defeat the Rogues and their silly costumes, mart Allen
revealed himself to be the Flash and draw their attention away,
and they immediately got into a huge fight because again
comic books, so rather than respecting this move of revealing
himself to be the Flash, the Rogues threw Bart into
a machine built by Inertia, another kind of speed Force villain,

(03:38:28):
which drained the speed Force from whoever the person inside was,
who happened to be Bart Allen. Bart loses all of
his powers. The Black Flash shows up, the Black Flash
kind of being the death of the Flash universe, and
Flash fans immediately knew that the Sweet Baby Angel was
going to die and go away for a few years.
The machine becomes increasingly unstable and threatens to unleash the

(03:38:49):
speed Force directly on the West coast of the United
States and destroy it immediately because he's in Los Angeles
at the time, and the Rogues panic, which leads to
captain Cold Heat Wave and Weather Wizard say their names.
Uh murdering Bart in cold Blood. Why did you say
say their names? H Because they're bad guys. You got
to say their names. You got to name the name.
Because these three, of all the rogues who were gathered,

(03:39:11):
these are the three who specifically kill Bart Okay, because
there were other rogues present who are just sort of
like running around flailing their arms in a vague panic.
So Jason dying inside a death machine? Is this a
good death in the scope of all comic book deaths, Superman, Batman,
Barry Allen? Does Bart Allen's death stack up? So they

(03:39:33):
were sucking okay, give it to me again. They were
sucking the speed powers out of it. They were sucking
the speed force out of him, and it was building
up all of this power and it was threatening to
destroy the West Coast. So Captain Cold heat Wave and
weather Wizard killed bart Allen to shut the machine down.
Did they ever specifically say like what they were planning

(03:39:54):
to use the speed force was, or like was it
going to power some domesday machine or their cars or
their washing machines? Not?

Speaker 2 (03:40:00):
So they just want to just trying to take his
powers away. They just wanted to fill up a tesla battery.
Oh yeah, yeah, no, although it's not uncommon for a
Flash to die in a speed machine, because that's kind
of how Barry Allen died in Crisis, or before he
officially died, he was like trapped in a speed he
was powering the anti moder for wow.

Speaker 1 (03:40:18):
Yeah. So like when you look at it that way,
it's sort of homaging Barry hm. But the steaks don't
feel high enough, right, Well, the problem with it is
that we only got to know this Flash for twelve
issues before they killed them all you guys an issue thirteen. Yeah, yeah,
so like there's that's the problem, and most of it
is him fighting his like crappy roommate. Yeah, Like.

Speaker 2 (03:40:41):
This is going to be this is going to sound
like very arbitrary. But like if that death had happened
in issue twenty five, Bill, I know exactly what you mean,
then I would give it to you because then I'd
be like, Oh, they knew from the beginning they were
going to kill this guy, and they built to it.
But I don't think they knew they were killing him.
I think there was like an off chance and they

(03:41:02):
I mean, you guy, do you know who wrote that issue?

Speaker 1 (03:41:07):
Yes? Who has publicly stated that Bart's death was an
editorial choice and it was not his choice.

Speaker 2 (03:41:15):
You reread this run recently, correct, is there? Let me
ask you this, in the first five issues of this run,
do you get the filling they're going to kill him?

Speaker 1 (03:41:24):
No?

Speaker 2 (03:41:24):
Okay, so it comes if you're reading this series, it
comes out of left field in my opinion, Yes, okay. So,
like again, I'm not against killing him if they build
to it. But apparently they didn't build to it. So
I'm gonna say bad death, bad choice, fair, bad choice, lesson.

Speaker 1 (03:41:42):
Over the end, thank you for the world's shortest Listen,
I don't think so. Groot was shorter. Well, that's fair.
We're gonna talk about Bart's funeral. At Bart's funeral, j
Eric Cyborg, Wonder Girl, and Robin all give ulags, which

(03:42:03):
ended in a goodbye video that Bart made for his
friends in the case of his death. It's super sad.
Was he an adult or was he a kid in
the video? No, he's a kid. It's like young Bart.
How did he know? Well, because you can always you
can always plan on an early death. I think if
you're a superhero that's pretty more mean. It's very sad.
A statue of Kid Flashes erected outside of Titan's Tower

(03:42:26):
next to Superboys statue and inside the Hall of Fallen
Heroes in some continuity. Some continuities don't have a Hall
of Fallen Heroes inside Titan's Tower. I like the idea
that they do. And Mourner's flocked to the Flash Museum
to hold a candlelight vigil in Bart's honor because he died.
As the Flash, Wally avenges Bart's death, for which he
holds himself responsible, freezes Inertia's body in the Speed Force

(03:42:49):
while leaving his brain active to torture him for all
time as punishment for what happened to Bart. In everyone's
favorite series, Final Crisis, Legion of three World, Bart Allen
is resurrected as a teenager once again the best version,
and he is resurrected by my favorite legionaire, Brainiac five,

(03:43:09):
So this is just like an Ashley Perfect story. Bart
doesn't return to the Flash continuity until the Lightning Saga,
which is fairly contemporarily contemporary to the time of this recording,
basically because Brainiac five wanted to use Bart to defeat
Superboy Prime, but he sends Bart back to the twenty
first century through the Speed Force with the help of

(03:43:30):
the Lightning Lads and Lasses and Excess and Barry Allen
who was bouncing around the Speed Force at the time,
who Bart mistaken Lee believed was Max Mercury, so he
follows him, but it actually turns out of Barry Allen. Yeah,
that was a tough paragraph to get through. Flashtime travel
gets really very confusing super quick. Just wait until someday
Jason teaches a five part Legion of Superhero episode. It's

(03:43:52):
not looking likely. Yeah, at this point we have more
requests for Max Mercury. So Bart is brought back to life,
and five seconds later the Legion be legioning, so they
bring back Superboy as well. Then in Flash Rebirth by
Jeff John's, Bart grapples with everything that has changed since
his death, including Barry Allen's return from the grave, multiple

(03:44:16):
Team Titans team, and Bart in fact is so unhappy
by Barry's return, much like myself, that when everybody decides
to go to Barry's Welcome back to Life celebration instead
of Bart's Welcome back to Life celebration, he says he
wishes that things would quote go back to the way
it used to be. End quote when he's talking to
Robin and Wonder Girl, who are the only two people there?

(03:44:38):
Me too, Bart, Me too, Jason. Do you think after
being the Flash and sacrificing his life that Bart is
justified and feeling this way about Barry bringing back to life?
You mean about Barry coming back to life? Yeah, yeah,
about coming back to a world where Bart is, where
Barry's also there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:44:54):
I mean the whole thing is just kind of weird
because that's also a period of the DC comics, Tweeny's
kind of well, it's a weird thing. It's it's it's
like so many people like how Jordan had just come back, Yeah,
Barry had just come back, Batman had just come back,
Impulse had just come back, Oliver Queen had just come back.

Speaker 1 (03:45:15):
Wonder Woman had died like five years earlier and just
come back. So like Batman's about to die and come back.

Speaker 2 (03:45:21):
Well that's why I think Batman at this point is back.
So it's just weird all around because you have like
seventeen characters that have all like had massive deaths and
then they all had massive resurrections and kind of like, well,
how do how does any of them matter more than
the other.

Speaker 1 (03:45:36):
Yeah, totally. Bart has involved in Blackest night check out
our Blackest Night Club episodes and Flashpoint and somety Titan stuff,
but it's all pretty minor for him. So we're gonna
skip right ahead into the recent future and talk about
d C Rebirth, Jason, what's d C raber?

Speaker 2 (03:45:50):
DC Rearbirth is a soft reboot that DC Comics did
in twenty sixteen, basically.

Speaker 1 (03:45:58):
Continuing the New fifty two reboot. Yeah, that's about it,
with lighter costumes. I mean basically. So in the in
DC rever Theressey book called Titans, It's basically they were
like there were too many twenty year olds on the
teen Titans. Give them their own team. So they have
a storyline where they blip into the future and they

(03:46:20):
see weird Evil bart Allen from the original Titans Tomorrow storyline.
The adult Spy possibly Bad bart Allen and adult Spy
possibly Bad bart Allen also appears in the Super Sons
of Tomorrow twenty eighteen storyline, and a statue of him
is seen inside the Flash Museum. Drew out DC Rebirth
and the Flash Rebirth storyline, but O G. Bart Allen

(03:46:42):
adorable teen bart Allen doesn't show up again in the
mainstream continuity until a few more years. Basically, Wally West
and bart Allen break the Force Barrier and they unleash
a bunch of other forces, and Impulse runs out along
with them in the best issue of the Flash of
the Modern Age in my opinion, with an all time
grade final page. Immediately, as all young heroes do, he
joins back up with the Teen Titans and Young Justice

(03:47:04):
and gets an adorable reunion with Connor that I talked
about earlier on in this episode, and that is where
I am going to leave off our lesson on bart
Allen before we accidentally spoil any current continuity and tweet. Okay,
what do we do next?

Speaker 2 (03:47:23):
The next We're going to the roy you said in tweets,
so you kind of I was like, are we going
to the teaching tweet already? That's impossible, But actually it's
going to the recommended reading, where if you go to
geekish lesson dot com slash recommended Reading you can find
all of Ashley's choices for Impulse Reading. You click on
the widget, you get the book at your house, and.

Speaker 1 (03:47:42):
A little bit comes back to us. Takes out as
Jeff Beezo's pocket goes in our pocket.

Speaker 2 (03:47:46):
You help them mind University. I'm very interested in what
these choices are because I think a lot of Impulse
stuff is out of print.

Speaker 1 (03:47:51):
Uh yes, but luckily we live in a world of
digital comics and so a lot of it is actually
more accessible. I'm going to recommend to you the Impulse series,
which is called Impulse and DC keeps pretending like they're
going to print, and then you pre order it and
then they go no, no, no, no no. It is
the best Bart Allen, the best bang for your buck.

(03:48:13):
In my opinion, it's all of Bart Allen all the time.
I reread it for I read it last year, and
then I reread it again for This episode is definitely
a nineties all ages comic series, so there is some
really silly references to like hacking and Yo Yo's and
weird things that adult men thought children were into in

(03:48:33):
the nineties. But Bart's journey is super solid. His relationship
with Max is really interesting, and it leads him to
joining Young Justice, which is very very sweet. I am
going to recommend this is in print. Young Justice will
start with volume one, which is a refriend of the
original series. Yeah, yes, which is really really good and

(03:48:53):
you kind of get to see what Bart is like
as a leader and how he functions on a team,
which is adorable and silly. I am then lastly going
to round out the recommendations with The Flash The Fastest
Man Alive. This is the thirteen issue mini series where
Bart is the Flash. This is an all digital option.
I think it's mixed overall, but it is interesting to

(03:49:16):
see Bart be the Flash and if you want to
see that and you want to see what Bart is
like an adult, as an adult, this is going to
be the most bang for as a collection. I don't
know the answer to that, but it is not currently
in print. It's way out of printed. It is yeah, yeah, yeah,
you can enjoy. There is actually some really good art

(03:49:36):
in there. There are some really good moments. It covers
fantastic the first issue. It's amazing and I think when
you know it's an editorial mandate, I think Mark Gutenheim
does a pretty laudable job with the ending. And then
if you are a narrow Verse fan, you can definitely
see some of where I know Mark didn't work as
heavily on Flash, but you can definitely see where some

(03:49:58):
of the Flash television shows Mary Lance came from. Okay, Jason,
I want to have a really really quick discussion before
we move on. So we're like one hundred and fifty
thousand seasons into the Flash, I don't know that that far.
Everybody knows that Mary Allen is the Flash. We've reset
time seven or eight times. I'm sure should we have

(03:50:18):
gone every season? Should we have got an impulse before now?

Speaker 2 (03:50:23):
Because we're in season seven at the time of this recording,
I believe, So I'm going to say no, poor k Well,
I'm going to try to keep this out of the
television show, just in case you haven't seen the TV show,
because they have introduced other characters that I think have

(03:50:45):
mucked up anything that you would do with Bart Allen.
Like they did a whole storyline with their fake daughter,
their alternate timeline, their version of excess. Yeah, they spent
like two seasons on that. So Laura bart dings the
same bell as that storyline because he's a grandson, and
we don't even know at the time this recording if

(03:51:06):
they're they're Bart is going to be a grandson there,
Bart could be their son there, Bart could be a cousin.

Speaker 1 (03:51:13):
Sure he is. He is a black actor, so he's
I'm assuming that he's a really potential choice. He's some
relations He's probably going to be related somehow. Yeah, yeah,
but we don't.

Speaker 2 (03:51:23):
I mean I would go grandson, but you don't know,
Like they can it's an adoptation. They can do whatever
they want. So yeah, I actually think I actually am
glad they waited. It's interesting because now that they waited
on bart, it makes me wonder if bart is their
spinoff idea, because you usually when you get a show
get it gets around season seven, actors wanna I just

(03:51:47):
don't want to leave between seven and ten. Well, grand
Guston probably loves his job. But Grand Gustin, after doing
seven years of running on a treadmill in front of
a green screen, he's probably like, you know, maybe I
want to send on a beach for a while.

Speaker 1 (03:51:55):
Yah.

Speaker 2 (03:51:55):
Yeah, I wonder if this is their spinoff idea and
that they're throwing I'm Barton here to see how audiences
react to it, to see if like, well maybe this
is the new flash. Maybe this is then we'll do
an impulse show. Shows generally do that.

Speaker 1 (03:52:10):
Well, they could his name is technically Bartholomew don Allen
the second, so you could literally if they did that,
you could call it the Flash. You could have him say,
my name is Mary Allen. I'm the fastest man alive. Yeah,
and you could keep the show going. Now. It'll be hilarious.

Speaker 2 (03:52:25):
And I look forward to the crazy YouTube comments of
people that are watching this in the future in the
future and they're like you, that's exactly what they do
and if you do that, you're an idiot.

Speaker 1 (03:52:35):
But I don't know. That's that's my weird prediction. I
think any earlier it would have just convoluted the show,
and the Flash is a pretty complicated I mean, comic
books travel over the place. I have one more question.
Would what your answer to that question? I'm incredibly biased
because I love Bart Allen. When Wally left the show,

(03:52:56):
I would have brought bart On to replace him immediately, immediately, immediately,
like episode where when he leaves. I would have had
bart blippin at the end because you could just shoot
it with a kid on a green screen and be
like Grandpa, like justin, just like in Young Justice the cartoon. Yeah, sure, okay,
I gotta help you whatever, save time, all right, that's
exactly what I would do. I would have done it
immediately because you preserve that original dynamic, and then there's

(03:53:17):
I think you'd still have done Nora. Okay, or whatever
version of excess they were going to do. My last question,
do you do they call him Impulse or do they
call him Kid Flash? Impulse? Impulse is a better name.

Speaker 2 (03:53:29):
It's a way better name than kid Flash. I'm sorry,
it's just this, Well, kid Flash is silver age. It's so,
it's so super Impulse also has a better costume.

Speaker 1 (03:53:38):
No, that was my sticker. Sorry, okay, Well, what's the
next thing we do? Jason? What's the teaching tweet? The
teaching tweet is where who knows, in how many characters,
Ashley is going to compose a tweet that sums up
this lesson. And you can find this tweet at GHL podcast. Seriously,
you can go there, click on it. You can see

(03:53:59):
exactly what I was going to say, but in text form.
Take it away, Ashley bart Allen, he's the DCU best speedster.
Send tweet you you're gonna write, send tweet. Yeah, that's
like a thing that people do on Twitter. Now, it's
supposed to be funny.

Speaker 2 (03:54:13):
Okay, all right, what what did what is the weird?
Do you remember in Young Justice? What was the thing
that Bart said? Do you say crash all the time?

Speaker 1 (03:54:23):
Oh? Bart always has stupid futures. It's stupid slang, right,
just like Terry, Like this is so crash. I remember
Robin saying whelmed all the time. I think that is
from Batman Beyond. I think it's so crack. I think
they stole that from Batman Beyond. But Batman Beyond has
another dumb slang word, right, schwe Yeah. I hate it's
so dumb. All future speak is dumb. Yeah, I mean

(03:54:46):
like what rox bock? Yeah, but I mean look it's
no dumber than fleek, Like I get it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:54:52):
And then Legion the Superheroes has one too. They have
like a they have like a really oh they Dora
said it on Flash all the time.

Speaker 1 (03:54:58):
Oh god, what is it? I can't. I also said shway,
Yeah did yes? She did. I think Impulse said crash.
I've seen a bunch of every time I see a
nice person at ah at a convention. Now that we
can go to conventions anymore with a shirt that says shway,
I'm like, no, I'd wear it. On shirt. No, okay,
unless you're going to sell it onto public things. You

(03:55:19):
know what is shue though? The honors right? What's that?

Speaker 2 (03:55:22):
The Honor Rolls where if you go to Apple Podcasts,
not iTunes, Apple podcasts.

Speaker 1 (03:55:27):
If you search for iTunes, your Apple podcast comes out.
I mean, iTunes still exists. I have it on my computer.
For some reason. Apple has made it to where that's
the only thing I can play my old music on.
I don't know. Are you going to give me a
new thing? Apple? Are you going to know? Anyways?

Speaker 2 (03:55:37):
Apple Podcasts, you leave a five star review, and because
you help us in the algorithm, we read whatever you
write on the podcast.

Speaker 1 (03:55:44):
Yeah, you literally could write anything in there. We will
read it. Ashley, who enters the Honor Roll this week, Okay,
I want to say that the first one I'm going
to read is my all time favorite five star review,
which ever gotten boy? If you know Ashley read know
where this is going? I mean that's seriously okay, like
my favorite one. I thought this was a joke. This

(03:56:04):
is not a I love my fans. This is from Jmowarp,
who says this is the only podcast I listened to.
Why are you reading this when you should be listening
to GHL that it's the best stick. I want that
on a T shirt. His name Jaywarp. It is Jmo Warpt,
so I'm going to assume that that is their initials, sure, Jmo.

(03:56:25):
They are also joined by Dave nineteen thirty eight. Were
you really born in nineteen thirty eight? Same year Superman?
Because that would be awesome. It's our demographic stretch that
far who says great podcast on all things comic books.
I've been listening to you guys for years, and I'm
sorry that I am just now leaving a review. I'm
not but GHL is just super. Jason and Ashley do
a great job with one on one infos on superheroes

(03:56:47):
and other pop culture characters. Thank you, guys for all
your hard work and entertainment. Two so sweet reviews. So
what's going on in the teachers Laune Jason?

Speaker 2 (03:57:00):
They get to enjoy a speed trap created by Professor Thorn.

Speaker 1 (03:57:06):
Oh yeah, what does Professor Thon teach astrophysis?

Speaker 2 (03:57:10):
Of course, column time travel on astrophysics. It's obvious, by
the way, also obvious. Go click subscribe on Apple Podcasts
or Spotify or Stitcher or any of the other places
that you put podcasts in your holes will really appreciate it.
And if you are a Flash fan or you know
a Flash fan out there, and won't you say, ASKI
Cash listen to somebody out there and your crew be

(03:57:30):
like yo, it's a good speeds for podcast. And while
you do that, you should subscribe and click follow to
GHL and all the social media's and Ashley where can
they do that?

Speaker 1 (03:57:39):
You can do that at Geekistory Lesson dot com, Facebook
dot com slash Geekhistory Lesson or on Twitter at GHL podcast.
And you can be like Scottie Boy, Sam Martinez, Alexis
and Bowen at a Bay Phrase at Camsensus Groad, Frankenstein a,
Katias Stevens at Dick Who's Multiverse, Nick Ronowski, Brandon Bolded,
Matt Jacobs, and Paul Graham, Drew Frisbee, Ken Hello, Corey

(03:58:00):
Burton and at Spider Underscore Hawk who all requested this episode.

Speaker 2 (03:58:04):
Yeah seeing you follow Ashley on Twitter and Instagram at
Ashley V. Robinson. And you can follow myself on Instagram
and Twitter at jaw ii in And don't forget we
have a Patreon Patreon dot com slash jaw on this
JWII in where we do an episode every single week.
Can you hear an extra it's more geek histra lesson,
but you can only hear it on Patreon and Ashley.
What are we going to be talking about this week?

Speaker 1 (03:58:25):
So this week we're going to be talking about how
Bart stacks up in the Flash family. What does he
like next to Barry and Wally? What is his legacy
as a Flash. It's going to be a real Flash war.
So come on over and listen to I get all
kinds of extra podcasts reporting this podcast over at patreon
dot com. Slash JOm when we think all our super
friends that do all right hashtag stick around the final

(03:58:46):
segment of the podcast where we make sure you stuck
through all the plugs nashtan no I tore Peter to
you did? So? Uh? What are we talking about? Who
draws the best Bart Allen here? Because Bart Allen is
the don't leave Flash? Who has an iconic hairstyle?

Speaker 2 (03:59:03):
Is he the only I mean Blackwaally West has a
lightning bolt in his Oh that's true, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (03:59:11):
I think that was added by John boy Myers. I
believe it was the action figure has it?

Speaker 2 (03:59:17):
I mean, for me, the best Impulse artist is Mike Wringo.
I know a lot of people are probably screaming there
going Homberto Romos is, you know, hit the solo artist.
But when I think Impulse, I think that cover by
Mike Oriingo.

Speaker 1 (03:59:30):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (03:59:31):
And I would assume, I don't know, I would assume
Mike Wriingo designed his costume too, So that's why I'm
going to give a double plus to Mike Wringo.

Speaker 1 (03:59:37):
I'm going to say I don't know the answer to that,
but I would also assume, So I would assume who
draws the best Impulse here? Todd Knuck. Todd Knuck, m
hm oh, because he drew in Young Justice, that's right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
he draws my favorite version of the Impulse costume. But
I do like the way where we can go draws
the bottom of bart shoes. I did not think that

(03:59:59):
was going to be the end of that sentence, So
all right, the end of arts? What did you think?
I don't know?

Speaker 2 (04:00:05):
And on that note, thank you all for listening to
geek History lesson. I am Jason not Squigly hair Inman.
I am Ashley Victoria Robinson and Professor Ashley Will you
please close out this podcast.

Speaker 1 (04:00:16):
Class is now dismissed.

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