How many Flashes are there?
Simple answer: Four. • Jay Garrick was the Flash from 1940-1951. He was kept somewhat young by his powers, and has come out of retirement to work with the Justice Society of America. • Barry Allen was the Flash from 1956-1986. He died in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and is coming back in 2008’s Final Crisis. • Wally West was Barry’s teen sidekick, Kid Flash, until 1986. He was the Flash from 1986-2006. He disappeared for 1.5 years after Infinite Crisis, and returned to be the Flash again starting in 2007. • Bart Allen is Barry’s grandson. He first appeared as the teen super-hero Impulse in 1994, became Kid Flash in 2003, and took over as the Flash in 2006. He was killed after only 13 issues. Complicated answer: Well, six if you include John Fox and Walter West, who each filled in for several months during the 1990s. Seven if you include Lady Flash, but she’s a villain now. And then there are all the possible future Flashes…
Over the continental 48 states, an average of 20,000,000 cloud-to-ground flashes have been detected every year since the lightning detection network covered all of the continental US in 1989. In addition, about half of all flashes have more than one ground strike point, so at least 30 million points on the ground are struck on the average each year in the US. Besides cloud-to-ground flashes, there are roughly 5 to 10 times as many cloud flashes as there are to ground.
