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    Barry Allen

    Character » Barry Allen appears in 5080 issues.

    Having discovered his mother murdered and his father blamed for the act, forensic scientist Barry Allen sought to clear his father's name and find the real killer. After being doused in chemicals and struck by lightning, Barry was granted the gift of super-speed. Now he protects his hometown of Central City as The Flash, the fastest man alive and founding member of the Justice League.

    How does Barry Allen come back to life?

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    antimonitorrules

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    #1  Edited By antimonitorrules

    The title says it all.
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    Foolkiller

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    #2  Edited By Foolkiller

    jay garrick and wally west were investigating a place in Final Crisis when they found Metron's (the new god) chair. it activated and they saw barry allen running from death. they started running with him and jay garrick ran out when he saw a opening. wally and barry were still running and appeared where the final moments of the crisis were going down. they ran past dark seid, he shot omega beams at them, death focused on dark seid rather than the flashes and took dark seid's spirit, the omega beams stopped, and the flashes were done running.

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    antimonitorrules

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    #3  Edited By antimonitorrules
    @Foolkiller:
    How does he appear in Infinite Crisis?
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    JediXMan

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    #4  Edited By JediXMan  Moderator
    @antimonitorrules said:
    " @Foolkiller: How does he appear in Infinite Crisis? "
    He was still in the Speed Force during that. He, along with many other speedsters, helped Bart pull Superboy Prime into the Speed Force.
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    roadbuster

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    #5  Edited By roadbuster
    @antimonitorrules said:
    " The title says it all. "
    Writer fiat.  The behind-the-scenes story was that Ethan Van Sciver had bills and wanted another success like Green Lantern Rebirth so he pestered Didio (and Johns) relentlessly about bringing Barry back.  After stumbling with Bart and struggling to find footing equal to before Johns left the title, Didio started to warm up to the idea.  Grant Morrison, meanwhile, was pitching Final Crisis and while he wanted a Barry to have a role, his entire intention was for it to be a Barry from a parallel universe- another world- to fit in with his theme of the Multiverse returning with this Barry as its herald (and, if you read Final Crisis, you'd note the various Supermen, etc. of different worlds).  However, Didio and Johns pushed Morrison to make it the "actual" Barry and he claims that once he saw it there way it was better (I suppose, if you see Final Crisis as a regression or reversal of Crisis On Infinite Earths then it does have a sort of thematic sense even if it's not a flattering one). 
     
    As for the in-story explanation... it's pretty much nonsense.  However, the gist is this... Barry never died, he went into the thing he supposedly created, but was no conscious or aware of his own existence- more or less in limbo- except on a subconscious level which when Bart / Wally was in danger versus Superboy-Prime, caused him to emerge from it to help Bart pull Prime into the Force.  Inexplicably, Professor Zoom, Eobard Thawne, knew all this and exploited it by pumping a subliminal message into the Speed Force to cause Barry to emerge, on his own... so Rebirth explains that Barry came out of it, subconsciously because of Thawne's manipulations, but stuck around because of Final Crisis (and Barry assumed it was the Crisis that caused him to emerge).  That's the superficial explanation given in a hurried fashion at the end of Rebirth filled with technobabble that many readers ignored... but if you take a step back it's an explanation filled with plot holes.
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    daredevil21134

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    #6  Edited By daredevil21134
    @Mainline:

    QFT
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    antimonitorrules

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    #7  Edited By antimonitorrules

    But wait, one of the summaries I read said something about him turning into the lightning bolt that turned himself into the Flash in the first place.  And later he's seen going to heaven with the help of the Deadman, which would mean that he DID die.  Then there's the whole, him appearing in front of Wally West, stating that he's going to help him on the three toughest days of his life.  Point is, I'm still confused.
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    Theodore

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    #8  Edited By Theodore

    Professor Zoom
     
     
    Give it a read, it's a pretty good story with excellent art from EVS.

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    MrMiracle77

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    #9  Edited By MrMiracle77

    As a time-traveler, Barry can be intercepted and brought to tangential time-periods during any of his trips between the present, future and past.

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    Theodore

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    #10  Edited By Theodore
    @MrMiracle77: thus the multiple Professor Zooms in Blackest Night: Flash
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    roadbuster

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    #11  Edited By roadbuster
    @antimonitorrules said:

    " But wait, one of the summaries I read said something about him turning into the lightning bolt that turned himself into the Flash in the first place.  And later he's seen going to heaven with the help of the Deadman, which would mean that he DID die.  Then there's the whole, him appearing in front of Wally West, stating that he's going to help him on the three toughest days of his life.  Point is, I'm still confused. "

    You seem to be quoting this article: 
    http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/wheres-barry.html  
     
    No offense to the website- it's one of my favorites- but the entry is out of date and some of the entries are out of context.  The Human Lightning Bolt was never mainstream continuity, it was part of an anthology after Wally was the main Flash (that is, after Barry died) that did something of speculative retcon of Barry's history, while the recursive lightning bolt part has stuck in the imaginations of many, what most will not tell you is that the rest of that story is ridiculous... the lightning bolt doesn't just strike him, it hangs in the air and poses him the question of whether he's willing to become the Flash and shorten his life by dying a hero or live a normal one... a talking lightning bolt meant the origin was never continuity. 
     
    With respect to the afterlife appearances, in general, they would likely be considered non-continuity and editorial oversights, but not a big deal as they tended to be obscure and deal with a character who's been dead for years at that point. 
     
    Appearing in front of Wally West is a matter of time travel (Barry is visiting from his retirement in the future before Crisis), but here and when Barry appears in the Speed Force, there is a bit of retconning involved.  Barry apparently has looked into Wally's history from his vantage point in the future and knows his whole history well enough to know Wally's "three worst days" but either does not know his own place in Wally's history or history has been changed (retconned) since Barry last checked it before being resurrected.  Of course, the visit itself is a retcon because it means that Barry knew Crisis was coming which wasn't the case during Crisis. 
     
    Anyways, Johns has retconned it so that this is the explanation: 
     
    "After your historic sacrifice destroying the Anti-Monitor's Weapon, you were lost to the Speed Force.  Years later, when Bart Allen's life was threatened, you emerged to help your descendant-- but you left the door open.  I sent you a message, a subliminal post, trying to wake up what was left of your self-awareness before it faded away again.  To draw you back under the auspicious guise that you were actually needed to confront a 'great evil.'" - Zoom in Flash Rebirth #4
     
    Now there are a ton of plot holes with this, but for the time being this is the explanation... Barry was chilling in the Speed Force, randomly decided to save Bart (whom he had never met, who has been in worse scrapes before, and not Wally- his surrogate son, partner who likewise has been in worse straights, and not his own son and daughter who actually die), and Zoom goaded Barry into resurrecting himself.  How?  Why?  Who knows!  We're just meant to accept that Barry can resurrect himself at will with sufficient motivation that apparently only Bart and Zoom can trigger.
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    Video_Martian

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    #12  Edited By Video_Martian

    two words: Geoff. Johns.

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    lorex

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    #13  Edited By lorex

    It was a contrived effort on Geoff Johns part to slap the Flash fans (at least the ones spent the last 25 years with Wally as the Flash) in the face, and bring back who he liked as the Flash.

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