Alan Kistler's Guide to The Crisis - Prologue

Continued from the Intro.

PROLOGUE TO THE CRISIS

Our story begins in the universe of Earth-1, where the majority of DC comics took place.

Long ago, the Maltusians were one of the oldest races in the universe, nearly immortal and skilled at manipulating energy. On the planet Maltus, a scientist named Krona had attempted to watch the beginning of the universe itself, despite his people’s warnings that this was a bad idea. Krona's machines showed him the image of a white void, in the center of which was a giant hand holding a star field. Krona's machines then exploded, apparently unleashing evil energies across the cosmos and linking the universe with the mirror anti-matter universe.

To make up for his crime, the Maltusians decided they would bring order to the universe and fight evil. They soon split into three groups: the Controllers, who would proactively hunt evil and create weapons to bring down sinister forces; the Zamarons, women who believed in love being the strongest force for good; and the Guardians of the Universe, who would believed in maintaining order and stability.

The Guardians created first a group of androids called the Manhunters and when that project blew up in their faces later on, they decided to recruit sentient beings instead. These recruits were from worlds all over the universe and each was armed with a power ring and a lantern-shaped battery they could use to recharge it. Thus the Green Lantern Corps was founded, ready to combat evil across all 3600 sectors of the universe (as designated by the Guardians of the Universe).

Flash-forward several millennia (pardon the pun) and let’s go to the planet Earth. Specifically, Earth-1.

The Earth had been going through a lot of changes in the past few years. The Justice League of America (Earth's foremost team of super-heroes) had recently abandoned their famous satellite base HQ after it had been seriously damaged during a battle. The team had disbanded and reformed with several new members. Now operating out of a base in Detroit, some wondered if this new version of the League (led by long-time member Martian Manhunter at this time) was up to snuff.

The Batman had left the League a while before, going off to start his own team of vigilantes known as the Outsiders. And Dick Grayson had given up his identity as Robin to become "Nightwing" instead, working alongside his team the Teen Titans. A young boy named Jason Todd had become the new Robin in his place.

A lot of heroes were leaving the life. Hal Jordan had recently left the Green Lantern Corps in order to pursue a normal life with his girlfriend Carol Ferris. Taking his place was the hot-headed architect John Stewart. Meanwhile, Aquaman left the surface world in order to focus on his duties in the undersea kingdom of Atlantis. And another hero to drop off the radar was Barry Allen, the Flash, who had told his friends that he was off to retire and then seemed to vanish off the face of the Earth.

And let's take a step back so we can talk about Barry Allen. Barry was a comic book fan who later suffered a fantastic accident and got the powers of super-speed manipulation. As the Flash, he became a super-hero and founding member of the JLA. Soon after he'd become the Flash, he'd accidentally discovered the existence of Earth-Two and all its heroes.

  

Later, Barry’s girlfriend Iris West introduced him to her nephew Wally, a huge Flash fan. Impossible as it seemed, a nearly identical accident happened and Wally became Kid Flash, fighting crime under Barry's guidance.

Wally later got his own unique costume and became a founding member of the Teen Titans. He later dropped the super-hero life to focus on college, but found himself back in the uniform when the New Teen Titans came together, joining old teammates such as Dick Grayson and Donna Troy (Wonder Girl) and new members such as Cyborg, Changeling (also called Beast Boy) and the alien princess Starfire.

During their partnership, Flash and Kid Flash fought many enemies together. There was Kadabra, a seeming wizard from the 64th century and Gorilla Grodd, a telepathic and psychopathic criminal from a city inhabited by intelligent gorillas and apes. There were thieves such as Captain Cold and Heatwave and the Trickster.

But the worst of Barry's enemies was a scientist named Eobard Thawne. Over the years, Thawne earned several nicknames, such as "Professor Zoom", the "Renegade Flash" and the "Reverse-Flash." Thawne was a villain from the future with a psychotic obsession concerning the historical hero Barry Allen.

After studying Barry's life in the future, he had actually found a way to mimic the Flash's powers and journeyed to the modern-day to kill and replace the hero. At times, Thawne even had his face changed so that he would be identical to Barry. Because he was from the future, Thawne knew various details about the Flash's life from reading history books, such as where he lived and who his best friends were.

Sometime after Barry and Iris finally got married, Thawne crossed the line most super-villains never actually do: he killed the hero’s wife. When Barry and Iris were at a costume party, Thawne approached her secretly and asked that she promise to love him once he'd killed Barry. Iris refused though and the Reverse-Flash took action. Like Barry, Thawne could vibrate the rate of his molecules so that he became intangible and could phase through solid matter. Now he did this with his hand, phasing it through Iris's skull but then allowing himself to regain the tiniest fraction of tangibility, scrambling the woman's brain in the process.

Consumed with rage at the death of his wife, Barry hunted down the Reverse-Flash and they fought viciously. Together, they reached such high speeds that they began to phase out of sync with time and space. The battle ended with Thawne being lost in the timestream, seemingly exiled from the real world for all eternity.

Barry returned to Earth and tried to move on with his life. It was a difficult process. Barry moved to a whole new apartment in a different neighborhood, wishing to escape the memories of his former home.

Months after Iris’s death, Barry met a woman named Fiona Webb and began a very speedy romance. After months of courtship, the two decided they were ready to be married. But on the wedding day, Barry got an unexpected visitor. And readers got their first hint of The Crisis.

One of the Guardians of the Universe approached Barry Allen and informed him that there was a "universal Crisis" coming soon and that already its ripples were being felt. He explained that one such effect was that Thawne had now been freed from his exile and was back on Earth.

On the day Barry was to marry Fiona, the hero was confronted by the Reverse-Flash and the two had a super-speed fight/chase that crossed state-lines and bodies of water. Thawne mocked Barry by asking him, "Guess who’s going to kill your wife again?"

Finally, they reached the chapel and Thawne was about to strike. His hand began phasing, ready to pass through Fiona's skull and fry her brain just as he'd done with Iris. But at the last second, Barry grabbed him in a super-speed headlock, unintentionally snapping the villain's neck. It all happened so fast, Barry didn't realize that Thawne was dead until over a minute later when a nearby police officer informed him that the villain was not merely knocked out cold.

Not wishing to cause an incident or become an outlaw, Barry turned himself into the police. Because of his long-standing good relationship with them, he was not required to remove his mask. News cameras watched as the Flash, the fastest man alive, was brought in on charges of manslaughter.

This started a year-long storyline during which Barry was on trial. During the same year, readers got more and more hints of the Crisis to come. Starting in a New Teen Titans annual, readers learned of two mysterious figures who were watching Earth from a satellite fortress. These two were a man called “Monitor” and a female teenage assistant named Lyla. Sometimes they would just watch, sometimes they would provide weapons to certain super-villains who they would then watch in action. No one knew what their true agenda was.

At least, not yet.

The trial was hard on Barry, especially when during the process he learned that Wally's powers had begun affecting his health. The teenage speedster was forced to retire, lest further use of his abilities strain his body so much that it killed him. In truth, Wally was glad for the excuse, believing at this time that his life needed to be spent focusing on college rather than parading around as a hero.

As the trial neared a close, Barry Allen found out that Iris was actually alive and well. Amazingly, it turned out she’d actually been born in the 30th century originally and had been sent to the 20th century as a baby. Just like Superman, her parents had thought the world was going to end due to a horrible war that had been going on and they'd wanted to save her life. But when the world of the 30th century didn't end after all, the happy couple did all they could to bring their daughter back.

When they realized that Iris would play an important role in Barry Allen’s life if she were left alone, her parents decided not to bring her back into the future until the moment of her death. When Zoom had fried her brain, her parents acted, using their 30th century tech to snatch Iris's consciousness and transfer it into a body they'd set-up to be a duplicate of her own. One moment, Iris was being killed and the next she was waking up in her native 30th century.

Wishing to know that everything turned out all right for her husband, Iris had then gone over historical records and learned that he would later be on trial for manslaughter. Worse, she discovered that the time-traveling villain Kadabra (a long-time enemy of Barry's) would try to alter history by tampering with the trial to make sure that the Flash was sent to jail.

Iris then journeyed back to the modern-day era and foiled Kadabra’s plans. She and Barry were happily reunited and days later the hero was found not guilty of manslaughter. With the trial over, Barry said good-bye to his friends and family and told them he was going away to retire (he didn’t explain that Iris was alive or anything about the time-travel deal). He then left to the 30th century to enjoy a peaceful life with his loving wife, safe in a future were crime was uncommon and there were no super-villains running around who needed to be stopped.

Meanwhile, the villain Kadabra lamented his defeat and revealed to readers that the purpose of his scheme had actually been to keep Barry from becoming involved in the upcoming Crisis and suffering his "final fate", a fate the criminal did not wish upon an enemy whom he respected. Readers knew now that whatever was going to come, it might be bad   for the Scarlet Speedster.

And there was still the mystery of the strange silhoutted figure known only as the Monitor who, along with his assistant Lyla, continued to watch the Earth from above, completely undetected. And he wasn't just watching our Earth, it turned out ...

And now we're ready to begin the main story itself.

Ready? Excellent. Just CLICK ON THIS LINK.

Comments

[Tomo]

ok man, i can see nobody leaves comments.

i think your work makes it a lot clearlier.

thanks a LOT!