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This Flash quiz has 50 free questions with answers and runs from Flash Comics #1 in 1940 to the multiverse-hopping 2023 movie. It covers all four men to wear the lightning bolt: Jay Garrick and his winged helmet, Barry Allen and the lightning-and-chemicals accident that kicked off the Silver Age, Wally West's promotion after Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Bart Allen's brief, doomed turn. It also takes in the Rogues and their code, Eobard Thawne's grudge from the 25th century, Flashpoint and the timeline it wrecked, and the story that invented the DC multiverse. The screen Flashes get their due too: John Wesley Shipp's 1990 CBS series with its Danny Elfman theme and $100,000 of suits, Grant Gustin's nine seasons on The CW, and Ezra Miller's film with Michael Keaton back in the cowl. About a third of the questions are entry level; the rest are for people who know which issue Barry vibrated into Keystone City. Every answer has been checked against a cited source, shown under each explanation.
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Q 01Which writer created the original Flash with artist Harry Lampert in Flash Comics #1 (1940)?
Gardner Fox
Jay Garrick, a college football star turned scientist, became the first chairman of the Justice Society of America.
Q 02How did Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash, get his super-speed?
Inhaling hard water vapours in his lab
He had stopped for a cigarette break in the laboratory. Later writers quietly changed 'hard water' to 'heavy water' to sound more scientific.
Q 03Jay Garrick's winged metal helmet is modelled on which Roman god?
Mercury
In later continuity the helmet itself belonged to his father Joseph, who wore it in the First World War.
Q 04Barry Allen's debut in Showcase #4 in October 1956 is generally regarded as the start of what?
The Silver Age of comics
DC's decision to revive a 1940s hero with a science-fiction origin set the template for reviving Green Lantern, the Atom and Hawkman too.
Q 05What is Barry Allen's day job?
Police forensic scientist
The running joke is that the fastest man alive was chronically late and slow before the accident. Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino created him.
Q 06What gave Barry Allen his powers?
Lightning striking a shelf of chemicals in his lab
The TV series later added a S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator as the trigger for the lightning. In the comics it was simply a freak storm.
Q 07Where does Barry Allen keep his costume when he is in civilian clothes?
Compressed inside a ring
The ring ejects the compressed suit, which expands on contact with air. He created the ring himself with his chemistry know-how.
Q 08The Flash #123 (1961), 'Flash of Two Worlds', is famous for introducing what to DC Comics?
The multiverse and Earth-Two
Barry vibrates his molecules during a stage show and finds himself in Keystone City, where the Golden Age Flash he read about in comics as a boy turns out to be real.
Q 09On Barry Allen's Earth, what was Jay Garrick believed to be before 'Flash of Two Worlds'?
A fictional comic book character
The story was written by the character's original creator and edited by Julius Schwartz, whose own autobiography was titled Man of Two Worlds.
Q 10Barry Allen operates out of which fictional town?
Central City
Keystone City belongs to Jay Garrick, and in later continuity the two are twin cities across a river.
Q 11Kid Flash was introduced in 1959. How is he related to Barry Allen?
His nephew by marriage
He gained his powers when Barry's lab accident was recreated in front of him. Fans generally rate him the fastest Flash of all.
Q 12In which 1985 event did Barry Allen die a hero's death?
Crisis on Infinite Earths
He ran himself to death destroying the Anti-Monitor's cannon in issue #8. Wally West took over as the Flash the following year.
Q 13The third Flash took over in 1986. Who did he marry during Mark Waid's celebrated run on the title?
Linda Park
Q 21In Flash: Rebirth, Thawne was revealed to have killed which member of Barry's family?
His mother Nora
Barry's father was wrongly jailed for the murder. The retcon gave Barry a tragic origin he had never had before, and it became the spine of the TV series.
Q 22Hunter Zolomon, the arch-enemy of the third Flash, is better known by which name?
Zoom
He is the second Reverse-Flash. Unlike Thawne he does not use the Speed Force at all; he alters his own position in time.
Q 23What device did Barry Allen invent that allows precise time travel?
The Cosmic Treadmill
A speedster runs on it at a set vibration to reach a target date. It has been wrecked and rebuilt more times than anyone has counted.
The TV reporter became his anchor to reality, literally: his love for her is what let him return from the Speed Force. They have twins, Jai and Irey.
Q 14Which speedster is called the fastest Flash of all, faster even than the Speed Force?
Wally West
He was written out of continuity in the New 52 and returned in DC Rebirth (2016) to a world that had forgotten him.
Q 15Bart Allen debuted as Impulse in 1994. What is his family connection to Barry Allen?
His grandson from the 30th century
His Speed Force metabolism made him age so fast he looked twelve at two. Created by Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo, he later became Kid Flash and, briefly, the fourth Flash.
Q 16Which villains killed Bart Allen during his short run as the Flash in 2007?
Captain Cold, Heat Wave and Weather Wizard
The Rogues beat him to death in issue 13 of The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive, breaking their own rule against killing. Bart was later resurrected.
Q 17Who leads the Rogues, the Flash's regular gallery of villains?
Captain Cold
Leonard Snart's gun can freeze anything to absolute zero. His sister Lisa is the Golden Glider.
Q 18The Rogues operate under a strict code. Which of these is part of it?
No drugs and no killing unless necessary
They socialise together and rarely have ambitions beyond robbery, which is why fans regard them as blue-collar villains rather than would-be world conquerors.
Q 19Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, comes from which century?
The 25th
He began as a scientist who idolised the Flash and turned obsessive. He first appeared in The Flash #139 in September 1963.
Q 20How did Barry Allen kill the Reverse-Flash, leading to the 'Trial of the Flash' storyline?
He broke his neck
Thawne was about to kill Barry's new bride, having already murdered Iris. Barry was tried for murder and found guilty by the jury.
Q 24The 2011 crossover in which Barry Allen breaks the timeline by saving his mother was written by whom?
Geoff Johns
Andy Kubert pencilled it. Barry wakes in a timeline where Thomas Wayne is Batman and a war between Wonder Woman and Aquaman has devastated Europe, all because he saved his mother.
Q 25In the altered timeline of that 2011 crossover, who is Batman?
Thomas Wayne
Bruce died in Crime Alley instead of his parents; his father became a gun-toting Batman and his mother the Joker. The story led straight into DC's New 52 relaunch.
Q 26What is the Speed Force?
An extradimensional energy source for speedsters
It also acts as a kind of afterlife for dead speedsters, which is how so many of them keep coming back.
Q 27The 1990 live-action Flash series starring John Wesley Shipp aired on which US network?
CBS
It ran a single season from September 1990 to May 1991. Danny Elfman, fresh from Batman, wrote the theme.
Q 28Which Star Wars actor played the Trickster in the 1990 Flash series and again in the 2014 show?
Mark Hamill
His James Jesse was a psychopathic mass murderer with multiple personalities, and the role helped him land the Joker in Batman: The Animated Series.
Q 29The four Flash suits made for John Wesley Shipp in the 1990 series cost how much in total?
$100,000
The show's expense was a big reason CBS dropped it after one season. Shipp came back as Barry's father Henry, and as Jay Garrick, in the 2014 series.
Q 30The Flash TV series that began in 2014 was a spin-off from which show?
Arrow
Grant Gustin's Barry Allen debuted in two Arrow episodes first. The shared universe became known as the Arrowverse.