and I’m there before she knows it
I’ll be gone before she sees me
with my hand around her waist
I pull her back to safety
by the time she knows what’s happened
there’ll be someone else who needs me
because time keeps dragging on
and on
and on
and on- “The Ballad of Barry Allen” by Jim’s Big Ego (2003)
Wow. I never knew that The Flash had a song all of his own. And it’s really not bad.
Barry Allen was the alter-ego of the second superhero to be called The Flash. While I’ll always cite Hal Jordan‘s Green Lantern as my favorite superhero ever, I must admit that Barry Allen’s Flash was the first one to catch my fascination. I started reading The Flash comics toward the very end of a run that started in 1963. Like most DC Comics, the early issues of The Flash are rife with silliness. The Day The Flash Gained 1,000 Pounds! The Fastest Man Alive Becomes The Heaviest Man Alive! (These were two different issues, by the way.)
But where I stepped into the series (about 1984 or so), Barry Allen was dealing with far more reality. He was a widower on facing charges for breaking the neck of a man who attempted to murder his soon-to-be second wife — the same man that killed his first. For this, Barry Allen was put on trial for murder. Legal logistics aside, the pathos of a superhero on trial was just what I wanted/needed to read. Soon after, I got sucked into Crisis On Infinite Earths (mentioned here) and my fate was sealed. So long as I could find a reasonably compelling story in amongst those four-color pages, I would be a fan of comic books.
