The biggest story of Barry Allen's life

When Geoff Johns reintroduced Barry Allen in THE FLASH: REBIRTH, he refashioned Barry’s personal arc to include the murder of his mother by the Reverse Flash, something that haunted him his whole life, and was the driving story of FLASHPOINT. Readers of an earlier generation had a different narrative, one recently reprinted in SHOWCASE PRESENTS: THE TRIAL OF THE FLASH, which featured twenty-four key issues from the last years of Barry’s life prior to his death in CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, which include THE FLASH #s 323-327, 329-336, and 340-350, all the way to the end of the series, from a period that spanned 1983-1985.

Written by Cary Bates with art from Carmine Infantino, THE TRIAL OF THE FLASH covers Barry Allen’s murder of Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, and subsequent legal troubles, and actually omits a considerable amount of relevant material, including the original inciting event, Thawne’s murder of Iris Allen, Barry’s wife, in THE FLASH #275 (though helpful editor’s notes reference every issue that predates those collected in the volume).

On a par with “Death in the Family” as one of the most shocking stories of the 1980s, Barry Allen’s ordeals stretched on for years and led directly to his famous death, in a fashion Grant Morrison might have been thinking about when he so deliberately juxtaposed “Batman R.I.P.” with FINAL CRISIS, an emotional crisis followed by a character’s “death,” (though admittedly, Barry stayed dead for twenty-three years, far longer than any other revival has taken in comics, aside from Ed Brubaker’s sensational Bucky Barnes comeback story).

The trial story arc was almost doomed to remain a forgotten element of The Flash’s legacy, something Mark Waid fondly recalled and liked to reference, but firmly entrenched in the back issue bins. While Barry’s death in CRISIS was one of the most famous events in comic book history his trial gradually faded into obscurity, uncollected for decades.

The storytelling constantly tends towards the melodramatic, and feels incredibly dated, but the story itself is still remarkably compelling, and is no doubt the reason why it was finally reprinted, even if it’s in black and white; at nearly six hundred pages it’s unlikely and in fact nearly impossible for so much material to have been collected any other way, at least in one volume. Given the nature of the way it was written, this is the best way to read the trial experience and receive maximum impact.

Bates was able to write something like this because he knew that sales were down and that the character was scheduled to die (a fate referenced in the final issue a number of ways, including the concluding line, “And they lived happily ever after…for a while…” which is itself more than enough to mark the story as memorable) and be replaced by Wally West, who carried the mantle for more than two decades, in the process and with the help of Waid and Johns virtually eclipse his predecessor’s legacy. Predating in-continuity game-changers like IDENTITY CRISIS and CIVIL WAR, Barry’s trial marked a transition that left superheroes exposed to the problems of the real world for the first time. Given that his first appearance brought in the Silver Age (not to mention his meeting with the original Flash indirectly leading both to the event that killed him and the one that brought him back), the fact that Barry Allen helped make history again long deserved to be preserved in popular memory.

SHOWCASE PRESENTS: THE TRIAL OF THE FLASH is arguably the most important reprint of the past few years, and it is also entertaining, enlightening (Barry murders Thawne as the villain is about to murder Barry’s second bride-to-be, and who even knew he had any other relationships besides Iris?), and full of classic encounters, featuring the infamous Rogues Gallery and an assortment of other foes, as well as a key moment in the ongoing war between the Flash and the Reverse Flash. While Sinestro may be an on-and-off member of Hal Jordan’s own Green Lantern Corps and General Zod may be another Kryptonian, neither has made it their life’s purpose the way Eobard Thawne has to make his foe’s life a living hell. If such a conflict led to such a moment as featured in this story, then it surely deserves to be memorialized.

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Read The Trial as a Flashpoint!

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