Barry Allen

The Flash

Barry Allen

## Biography

### Early Life

Bartholomew Allen was the second child born to optometrist Henry Allen and nurse Nora Allen on March 14th, 1976. As a child, Barry’s family was very happy. While Nora would often be left working overtime, Henry was left in the care of his older brother, Malcolm. Malcolm was more of a jock type, while Barry was more bookish.

Barry got along better with his mom. They would do puzzles together and spend rainy weekends watching musicals together. Barry was very bright, so he did well in school - although he suffered his fair share of bullying, even despite Malcolm’s threats against the bullies.

Barry grew up in Fallville, Iowa, where they were very close with a local family, the Wests. As a kid, Barry developed a crush on their eldest daughter, Iris, who was one year his senior. Malcolm befriended her older brother, Daniel, and the two would sometimes torment their younger siblings.

This is where the first tragedy would strike the Allen family. While driving home from a school dance, Malcolm and Daniel completely vanished, finding only Malcolm’s abandoned truck with burns on the seats. Local police were unable to find any trace of the boys, and eventually, the case went cold.

The disappearance of his son sent Henry into a spiral. He started drinking, and Nora would purposefully overwork herself just to avoid him. When they were both home, they would fight, and Nora would leave to go stay with the Wests. Barry began to suffer more bullying at school, but he became extremely motivated - and was fascinated by true crime after his brother’s disappearance.

One day, when Barry was fourteen years old, he came home and found his mother lying dead in a pool of blood. Henry was arrested for the murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Barry believed his father to be innocent - but there was no proof. This fueled Barry’s love of true crime more.

He was sent to Central City to live with his grandmother, Melanie Thompson. Coincidentally, Joe West had decided to move jobs to the Central City Police Department, allowing him to continue keeping an eye on the boy.

Being in a bigger city, Barry got an escape from the bullying, and befriended his new next door neighbor Patty Spivot. He and Patty both shared an interest in the darker side of humanity  - and both quickly realized their passion for detective work. Patty helped him on his quest to prove his father innocent.

His quest for justice was enough to fuel Barry to get through high school with a 4.0 GPA. In high school, he and Patty started a romantic relationship, but it came to a harsh end when the two fought after Barry was picked for a lucrative full-ride scholarship to Sun City University. He graduated in three years with a major in organic chemistry and a minor in criminology.

He moved back to Central City and moved in with Joe West, due to his grandmother’s recent commitment to a nursing home. Joe pulled some strings and got him a job in the CCPD Forensics Department. He also began dating Iris, who had recently graduated as well.

Barry spent his first year saving paychecks for a plane ticket and legal fund for his father.Just before Christmas of 2000, Barry flew back to Iowa where he hired a top-notch lawyer to visit his dad in prison and outlined a detailed plan to prove Henry’s innocence. During this conversation, Henry broke down and confessed that he had actually killed Nora and told Barry to move on with his life and never to visit him again.

Barry returned to Central City completely heartbroken. In a fit of rage, he wrecked his crime lab and then went to the roof of the police department to jump. As a rainstorm came on, Barry prepared to leap from the roof. As he jumped, he was struck by a bolt of lightning and fell into a coma.

Six months later, Barry awoke in STAR Labs. Doctor Harrison Wells filled him in on what he had missed; informing him that the lightning bolt had actually been an after effect of his sabotaged particle accelerator. Combined with the chemicals he had accidentally doused his body in, the explosion had activated Barry’s meta-gene.

The next few weeks were spent testing the extent of Barry’s new powers - with the help of the entire STAR Labs crew, including engineers Cisco Ramon, Ronnie Raymond, and Caitlin Snow, as well as physicist Martin Stein and the former super-hero turned writer Jay Garrick, who was brought in as a consultant. After releasing Barry from his “medical quarantine”, he and Iris re-united, and Barry proposed.

Inspired by the mentoring of Garrick, Barry decided to harness his abilities for good. With the help of the STAR Labs crew, they created a super-suit for Barry, and on October 7th, 2001, media outlets reported how a “flash of lightning” foiled a bank robbery, and the Flash was born.

### The Flash

As “Team Flash” soon discovered, there were a lot of side effects to the Particle Accelerator explosion. Nearly every member of the team soon developed metahuman powers. Including Cisco, who became the hero Vibe, Ronnie and Martin became the joint hero Firestorm, Caitlin became Chillblaine, and Hartley even became the villain Pied Piper. In addition, many of Central and Keystone City’s inhabitants also developed powers - and most of them chose to use them for nefarious purposes.

On top of that, career criminals Leonard and Lisa Snart started their own gang of high-tech criminals known as the Rogues, who made STAR Labs and other technology conglomerates a constant target. And it only got worse when only a year into his tenure, Barry helped assemble the Justice League to combat an alien invasion.

After the invasion, Barry agreed to pull some strings to get Iris’ nephew, Waly, an internship with the CCPD in the forensics lab. Barry was unaware that Wally was a massive fanboy and had deduced Barry’s secret persona. He convinced Barry to tell him his origin and then attempted to replicate the conditions. In an event that could’ve killed him, it actually gave Wally superpowers - and so he convinced Barry to let him stay in Central City and work as his sidekick, later becoming a founder of the Titans. In 2006, Barry also became a father to a healthy set of twins - Jessie and Bartholomew Jr (also known as Bart).

Barry faced a unique set of foes. Aside from the aforementioned Rogues, there was a mysterious masked speedster employed by the Light to create a drug that granted users super-speed entitled Velocity-9. After a rampage of super-speed super criminals, Barry and Wally confronted the assailant. After a brief battle, he disappeared in a storm of lightning and was presumed dead. However the lingering effects remained - as Velocity-9 proved to be a thorn in the side for a long time. He has been nicknamed Reverse Flash by the team.

The Flash’s support staff began to grow - branching to include police chief David Singh, detective Eddie Thawne, criminal profilers Hunter and Ashley Zolomon, and analytics expert Chester Runk. Barry was also confronted with the resurgence of his ex-girlfriend Patty Spivot - who was now a special agent for the DEO.

After an encounter with the villain the Turtle, Barry, Wally, and Jay discovered that their powers were not unique - rather they tapped into one of the intrinsic energy fields known as the Light, which became confusing when the Titans uncovered a criminal cabal calling themselves that, so it is known more popularly as the Speed Force.

An investigation into the Speed Force led Barry to a shocking discovery - both his and Iris’ brothers were still alive. Both had been kidnapped by a cultist known as Cicada and sacrificed to the “God of Speed”, Savitar. Malcolm was freed from a coma by Savitar, who had bonded him to a mystical device, and unleashed him on Team Flash. Malcolm helped the speedsters gain entry to the Speed Force - where they discovered Daniel living as a ghost within the realm. He escaped, finding his secret son, accidentally infecting him with the Speed Force in the process - turning Max Claiborne into a speedster. Max would take up arms with Barry and became the second Kid Flash, where he joined the Titans.

Barry’s continued service in Central City did not go unrecognized. Millionaire Dexter Myles decided he wanted to dedicate a portion of the Central City Museum to the Flash, dubbing it “the Flash Museum.” It later became a dedication to speedsters from even before Flash’s activities.

When the Death in the Family rocked the superhero world, Wally decided he would retire from superheroes, and so Barry decided to take some time off. After suffering the loss of his grandma, Barry inherited her ranch in Keystone City, where he helped Bart and Jessie harness their abilities on the weekends. Barry also decided to quit working with the CCPD, becoming a full-time professor at Central City College, and helping out at STAR Labs during his free time.

During the time off, Wally moved to Palo Alto with his girlfriend, Artemis Crock, and the two got married in a small ceremony. They decided to step away from superhero activities, which got Barry thinking seriously about extending his sabbatical. However, the Justice League was called into action to liberate Gotham City and the complexities of the OMAC Crisis made Barry want to stay involved - which would be his downfall.

### Death & Legacy

Team Flash operated greatly during this time. Barry would spend as much time as he could researching the Speed Force - desperate to find his brother again, while Wally started going by Impulse and helping further train Max, Barry’s kids, his own kids, and a number of new speedsters that had sprouted up like Avery Ho.

However, this bliss would not last long. When the Reach attempted an invasion of Earth, Barry was part of a counterattack of superheroes finding terraforming devices the Reach had planted across Earth. Barry was the last to find his device, and with no other way to stop it, he ran with it into the Speed Force, destroying the device and incinerating himself in the process.

Central City fell into mourning. After grappling with the weight of the mantle, Wally decided to take up the title of Flash and continue Barry’s legacy - just as a war between two rivaling factions of Rogues began brewing.