An Attack Of The Flash Facts, Part 2 (By Eric Farwell)

On Monday, Eric Farwell gave us Part 1 of a primer on The Flash and his enemies, and how they've evolved from comic book to television.  Today, Part 2 explores the origin stories of the various incarnations of The Flash and the casting choices made for the television series.  SPOILER ALERT: there may be some key plot points revealed in this article about the TV show.   --Dave

There’s no origin more boring than a random accident; thus every Flash used to have a boring origin. Jay Garrick was a college student who went oops in a science lab and breathed in some (wha?) hard water fumes, endowing him with super-speed. Barry Allen was working in his lab as a police scientist when a lightning bolt came out of nowhere and splashed him with chemicals. When Iris’s nephew, Wally West, was taking a tour of that very same police lab, another lightning bolt struck… and voila! Meet Kid Flash! The fastest yawn alive! Eventually, Wally would get the greatest costume in side-kick history, and a personality that meshed well with his team, the Teen Titans. He would also have a memorable twenty-five year run as the Flash, after his Uncle Barry died saving the universe in Crisis on Infinite Earths. But he would always have that lame-o origin, because it was an arbitrary repeat of the dull and random origin of the Silver Age Flash. Would the Flash ever shrug off the burden of his inauspicious beginnings?

                Yes. Oh, yes.

How do you fix an origin that’s inextricably tied-in with the character, especially after millions witnessed it in the 1990 Flash TV series starring John Wesley Shipp? The producers of the new TV series could have gone with one of the other Flashes, like Barry’s grandson from the future, Bart Allen. He was, perhaps, the cleverest fictional creation with super-speed, since he was an annoying adolescent with ADHD, called Impulse.

Choosing Barry for the TV show was the best bet, however, because he’s a Crime Scene Investigator. A super hero and a CSI? Talk about audience crossover! But two things had to be done with that origin. One: it had to be less random. Two: the most meaningful aspects of Barry’s story had to be culled from his decades in comics.

Even though Mark Waid, Johns, and others had done wonders with Wally West during Barry Allen’s decades as a dead man, fans never stopped clamoring for the return of their favorite Flash. In super hero comic books, it’s completely normal for characters to die and come back to life. It’s become so common that nobody took Batman’s death seriously several years ago. Barry’s demise in 1985 seemed like an easier death to undo than most, yet DC held firm that he wasn’t coming back. Perhaps it was because of Wally’s fatherhood and retirement, and Bart’s disastrous 13-issue turn as The Flash, that Barry’s return became possible. 

Barry Allen was the one character who had always been a nexus for DC Comics rebirth. He had renewed the company with the dawn of the Silver Age, and he had been the first to bridge the gap back into the Golden Age. In the early ‘60s, he accidentally went to a parallel Earth and met the older Flash, Jay Garrick. Thus were born Earths One and Two. More Earths were added to the DC canon; one for every faltering comic book company it bought, like Fawcett (Shazam) and Charlton (Blue Beetle). After decades of crossovers, then combining of universes into one, then blowing them apart again, the sorting has been done: there are now 52 parallel Earths. Now Barry Allen is the primary Flash again, on the primary world, Earth 0. Yet within this more manageable continuity, lives can still be shaken up on a grand scale.

Barry’s most evil enemy used time-travel to alter history, scarring him permanently with childhood trauma that is arguably worse for fans to contemplate than Bruce Wayne’s initiation as Batman. Those of us who grew up on a diet of Flash stories took some comfort in Barry’s contentment. To mess with that, Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash, was the perfect villain for Johns to use as he updated Barry’s origin. In his psychopathic need to inflict as much pain on Barry as possible, Thawne time-travelled into Barry’s childhood, killing his mother before his eyes, and framing his father for the crime. He even appeared at times to invisibly bully young Barry, once knocking him down a flight of stairs. What better way to get nerds and geeks to identify with our hero than to scar him during childhood, with a rosy picture of what should have been just lurking in the background? For Batman, it had always been his destiny to see his parents gunned down. For the Flash, his happier destiny had been ruthlessly stolen.

Cue the TV series. At the CW network, Green Arrow had been successfully adapted into Arrow. They were using origin flashbacks as skillfully as Lost, had a companionable team to support their hero, and now they were ready to use that formula in a spinoff. In bringing the Flash to the screen, they borrowed a plot device that had worked on Smallville (kryptonite) to explain why there were so many super powered enemies around… and improved upon it. By creating a crisis event at Central City’s Star Labs, they not only made FX super powers more plausible, they also managed to fix that last nagging part of the Flash’s origin: the lightning bolt. Now it was no longer random. Now it was part of a far-reaching event.

As if to compensate for the loss of Barry’s happier life, his support team is also a circle of friends, and he’s no longer the solitary hero he was in his erased timeline. But all is not well. The woman he loves, Iris (Candice Patton) is dating “Detective Pretty Boy,” Eddie Thawne (Rick Cosnett). Is this Professor Zoom, or one of his ancestors? Stealing Barry’s destined wife is just like something Zoom would do, but there’s something clueless about Eddie. Meanwhile Barry’s new mentor, Dr. Harrison Wells, is secretly ruthless in his protection of the Flash. He has ultra-tech that peers into future events, and he had foreknowledge of Barry’s origin.


The actor who plays him, Tom Cavanaugh, looks a lot like futuristic villain Abra Kadabra. Or maybe he’s another DC character like Rip Hunter, Time Master. Time will tell. Lots of clues to future events have already been sprinkled through the episodes for DC fans to find. There’s a busted-open cage at Star Labs with the name “Grodd” on it. Ronnie Raymond “died,” but we know he’s destined to become the hero Firestorm, just as achingly gorgeous Danielle Panabaker is destined to play the villain Killer Frost.

In any epic about the hero’s journey, one essential ingredient is heart. How appropriate it was for them to cast 1990’s Flash, John Wesley Shipp, as Barry’s imprisoned dad. Jesse L. Martin is formidable as the cop who served as Barry’s surrogate father, yet his sentimentality is close to the surface. Carlos Valdes is perfect as the brilliant and funny Cisco, a Johnny-on-the-spot with all the tech that Barry might need. And as the Flash, Grant Gustin brings all the brains and resourcefulness of Barry Allen, all the youthful brashness and appetite of Wally West, and all the stalwart righteousness of Jay Garrick. Back in the beginning, the Flash dressed like Mercury, and let us not forget what our modern super heroes are: the mythological gods of today.