Yesterday, as comic book shops were laying out their copies of DC Universe 0, a fifty-cent one-shot prelude to this summer’s Final Crisis miniseries, the New York Daily News was giving away the book’s big secret: DC Comics is resurrecting the Flash. Specifically, the character of Barry Allen, who died in the 1985 miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths—while other super-speedy characters would don the Flash costume over the next 23 years, Barry Allen was always held up as the icon of noble sacrifice, the one death at DC that would hold firm against the tendency to revive every seemingly dead hero or villain… until a Justice League/Justice Society crossover storyline last year began to lay the groundwork for his return (but, funnily enough, ultimately served to bring back another Flash who had dropped off the face of the earth).
As the Daily News notes, there’s some symbolic resonance to the move: the introduction of Barry Allen as the Flash in 1956 sparked the revival of the superhero comic, so maybe DC is hoping lightning will strike twice. Not everyone is convinced, though: “Every time you bring these characters back, you undermine the emotional resonance of those original stories surrounding the hero’s tragic demise,” blogs Valerie D’Orazio. “But, I suppose if it’s a choice between maintaining the integrity of some past issues that will probably do ok in backlist trade paperbacks anyhow, and the thought of getting another sales spike, the latter will probably win out.”
Random Happenstance offers a harsher assessment of the comic: “It’s been like three-plus years of ongoing Crisis, and I’m a bit numb to it…I’ll check back later, but for right now, no thanks.” The review hints at one of the book’s biggest problems: Although it’s officially aimed at introducing new readers to the comics, it can still be somewhat obscure—frankly, without the Daily News article to explain things, I don’t think the dramatic reveal, in which the narrator basically transitions from being the consciousness of the universe to realizing that he’s Barry Allen, is all that apparent to readers who weren’t around when he died. Especially since it all takes place in caption boxes.
(J.G. Jones artwork from DC Comics)