CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS #8

TODAY'S NEWS
12/19/02

Maybe I'm perverse or something, but I've been asked so many times how I intended to resurrect Barry (The Flash) Allen - I let slip the fact that I had an 'out' for his death (thought of back in 1985) in my introduction to the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" collection - that I decided to put the answer here on marvwolfman.com. The thing is, I also decided not to tell anyone where I put it. It's here. Somewhere. I guarantee it. And it's not that hidden, truth to tell, but there is no direct link to it. That's my holiday mystery gift for everyone - so get the Scoobies together and find it if you can but please don't spoil the fun by telling everyone else where it is. You can, of course, talk about whether you agree with my solution or not, and if you have a better way of resurrecting Barry on my message boards.

What The--? So many people actually paid attention to the comment I made in my forward to the collected Crisis On Infinite Earths edition about asking me at a convention to explain how I intended to bring Barry (The Flash) Allen back from the dead that I finally got tired of explaining it. So that I don't ever have to explain it again, here it is now, once and for all. Please remember, this is a very comic booky answer and you can probably blow holes in it somehow (but then nobody really complained how an anti-matter villain could co-exist with a positive matter good guy, so maybe physics isn't anyone's strong suit). This is what I proposed to DC back in 1985. Please note that I didn't think it was a good idea to kill The Flash but those were my marching orders, so I did the best I could to make his death as moving as I could. Here is the given I worked from: Much of the reason the people in charge didn't care for Barry Allen was that he was considered dull. I felt if I could come up with a way of making him vital again while keeping him alive, that perhaps Barry would be given a second lease on life. I came up with the idea of Flash moving back through time, flashing into our dimension even as he was dying. So, thought I, what if Barry was plucked out of the time stream at one of those moments he appeared? What if that meant from this point on Barry knew that he was literally living on borrowed time, that at any moment the time stream could close in on him and take him to his inevitable death. What would this mean to Barry? 1: from now on the fastest man alive would literally be running for his life. 2: He knew he didn't have much time left and believed (as Barry would) that he had to devote it to helping others. 3: This meant Barry would become driven and desperate to help others with each passing tick of the clock. I felt this new revitalized attitude might be enough to make the formerly dull police scientist into someone who now had to push himself as he never had to before. I was hoping that this would make the character interesting enough to live. Earlier, I said my explanation was comic booky. In many ways it is because none of us knows when we are going to die. But this knowledge would haunt a man like Barry Allen and change him from an unassuming character into a driven hero. At least that was the plan! Now, aren't you glad you asked? And aren't you glad you found this explanation. Don't go telling everyone where it's hidden. Let them find it themselves! Thanks.