I read final crisis, and have been following Rebirth very closely and what I have come up with is that now apparently Barry "Created" the speed force, when lightning struck his body, having been douced by chemicals. Ok, pretty hard to swallow, now I know that this is really nit picking, and I'm sure theres a perfectly reasonable explanation, hopefully not having to do with aliens. But, what excalty accounted for Jay G.'s speed all those years, while Barry was still working nights in the forensics? As far as the whole lightning + chemicals = the speed force? The speed force is like this un defined amount of energy powering all the speedsters. but how can they be trapped inside of it? Was zoom also trapped inside?

The reason Jay, Max Mercury, and the whole Hee-Haw gang got their powers is Barry's accident created a speed force that went both ways through time and space. The reason speedsters could get trapped in that power is that it's still basically a dimension that Barry generates where the standard laws of physics don't really apply.

Zoom was not trapped in the Speed Force... he created the antithesis of it for his powers.


TJB

Noooo, Jay came waaaay before Barry. thats what I'm saying, is Jay like just a muntant like quicksilver then, because in his so called "official" origin it says the he inhaled Hard water vapors (which if I'm not mistaken dont really give people super-powers, but hey it was the 40s) that activated his metagene. Sooo, right?

Nope. The issue pretty clearly states that the Speed Force both a.) empowers all speedsters and b.) comes from Barry Allen. That's why Max Mercury jumped forward in time every time he touched the Speed Force... he was heading toward Barry's location in time. The Force expands to reach all dimensions and all eras... meaning there's been a speed force connected to and generated from Barry Allen since the dawn of time.

Anything else we'd ever heard is now retconned. Which includes Jay's metagene.


TJB

I must admit, I'm very disappointed that Johns is essentially using an extension of his "seven colors" Green Lantern idea here. Wasn't the Speed Force generally implied to have something to do with the Fourth World's Source?

It's been described as a Valhalla for speedsters so often, turning into some sort of insanely wide-ranging effect of Barry's accident seems like an astoundingly ham-handed way of making him the center of all Flash lore. That's not just a problem in story terms, it also rather bizarrely interacts with the real-world publishing history. Barry Allen's not the first or only speedster in-story or even in publication terms by any stretch, yet that's being jammed in by Rebirth.

As to Thawne/Zoom embodying an evil reverse Speed Force principle....yeah. I don't think we need a Flash Sinestro Corps with its own power source either. Zoom's always been convoluted enough -- a time-traveling Rogue from the future who duplicated the Flash's powers -- that various later efforts to further complicate him (the Thawne-Allen rivalry, this Reverse Speed Force thingie) have detracted fromt he original character more than added to it. (Waid's take worked largely because at that point Zoom was technically "dead;" he was creating successor villains, not trying to revamp the existing ones.)

It also screws up Final Crisis (which is *not* redundant in this case), given the way that story rather clearly made Barry's return the universe's counterpart to Libra's. We even got the Speed Force as a counterbalance to Anti-Life, for Pete's sake! That simply doesn't work with Rebirth's revisions.

Between this and the "Henry Allen dies in prison" thing -- which screws up Johns's own Top storyline from the Identity Crisis tie-ins -- this Reborth is turning into a real boondoggle. It's actually managed to dampen my interest in the upcoming Flash series, something I thought was impossible given how much I wanted Johns back on the speedsters up til now.

I kind of have to agree, although I'm perfectly OK with ignoring the Speed Force connections to the Fourth World and Final Crisis. The Henry Allen bit is especially annoying to me. I'm waiting for the swerve that it was time-travelling Thawne that killed Nora Allen and ruined Henry's life in order to mess with Barry, thereby changing the timeline (and accidentally resurrecting the Top!), but I'm still not sure that'll save this idea.


TJB