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Future Origins
Infant Iris Allen was sent to the 20th century from the 30th century by her parents to spare her from almost certain nuclear war. She was found and adopted by the West family. She grew up a child in the 20th century, and moved to Central City, where she got a job as a reporter for the Picture News and met Barry Allen (the Flash). Iris' nephew Wally worshiped the Flash and soon enough, a similar accident that granted Barry his powers made Wally West into Kid Flash, the Flash's teen sidekick. After a long courtship, Iris marries Barry Allen (the Flash).
Barry and Iris enjoyed a happy marriage until the Reverse Flash, Flash's mortal enemy, seemingly killed Iris at a costume ball. In truth, Iris' life essence was plucked from her in the moment of death and transplanted into a new, living body using 30th century technology. In the past, Barry Allen eventually learns of this and transports himself into the 30th century to be reunited with his wife. One month later, plucked from a future of happiness, Barry dies during the Crisis on Infinite Earths saving the universe from the Anti-Monitor. In the time they were together, they conceived twins, although Barry does not live to learn this.
Birth of Bart
Barry and Iris' twins, Don and Dawn, are born; Both have their father's speed powers. The twins grow up to become the heroes known as the Tornado Twins. Dawn gives birth to Jenni Ognats (XS of the Legion of Superheroes). Don Allen's wife, Meloni, gives birth to Bart Allen (who later becomes Impulse).
Bart was born with super-speed as well, but it had an unfortunate side effect: Bart was aging at an accelerated rate. Although only chronologically two, he appeared to be a boy of about twelve. Earthgov scientists placed Bart in a virtual reality chamber and kept him for observation. The virtual reality program allowed Bart to age in a virtual world so it seemed, at least in his mind, that he was aging at a normal rate.
Don and Dawn Allen, operating as the Tornado Twins, are killed by Dominator agents under the guidance of Meloni's father, sworn enemy of the Allen clan. Iris Allen kidnaps the rapidly aging Bart, and takes him to the 20th century where Wally can help temper Bart's powers.
Back to the Past
Now removed from his virtual reality program, Wally and company are able to figure out a way that Bart ages at a normal rate. But separated from a virtual reality environment, Bart does not grasp the concept of danger and doesn't fully consider the consequences of his actions. Bart, now dubbed Impulse, aids Wally in defeating Kobra.
Following that, Bart moves to Manchester, Alabama with Max Mercury (posing as Max's nephew), who becomes the boy's mentor and father figure. Slowly and arduously, Max has been working at making Bart consider his actions carefully before acting so... impulsively.
Bart joined Arsenal's team of Titans following the events of Zero Hour. Bart served as a member for a time, and developed an unrequited crush on fellow team mate, Rose Wilson. Eventually, the newest incarnation of the Titans disbanded, as each member seemed less dedicated to the team at the time.
However, Bart upheld the teen sidekick supergroup tradition as a founding member of Young Justice.
Teen Titans
Recently, A mysterious conglomerate known as Optitron offered to sponsor the Titans and Young Justice after summoning them to San Francisco. Before any decisions could be made, a mysterious cybernetic girl known as Indigo emerged from the future. Unwittingly, she somehow activated a rogue Superman android, resulting in the deaths of Troia and Omen. At Troia's funeral, Nightwing disbanded the Titans.
Meanwhile, members of Young Justice, especially Wonder Girl, felt responsible for the tragic deaths. This led Wonder Girl, Robin, Impulse and Superboy to form a new group of Teen Titans under the guidance of the more experienced Cyborg, Starfire and Beast Boy.
Bart Allen's powers mirror those of Wally West, with one major exception: Bart also has the ability to remember everything he reads at super-speed. Currently, he resides in Keystone City with Jay Garrick - the original Flash - and Jay's wife Joan. Despite Wally West's misgivings, Bart accepted an invitation to join the new Teen Titans. Recently, Bart was injured when Deathstroke put a shotgun to his leg. Thankfully, his accelerated healing enabled a handful of skeptical surgeons to replace his kneecap with an artificial one, and Bart was back on his feet in a matter of hours. But the effects of this encounter were much more than physical. Feeling unsure, and tired of being underestimated, Bart went to the local public library and read every single book in the build-ing. He retained that knowledge, but what he'll do with it from here, and how it will balance with his lack of experience, is anyone's guess.
Super-speed; Ability to vibrate through objects
Flash (second series) #91-94 [1994]: Wally's Aunt Iris travels to the 20th century for refuge for herself and her grandson, Bart Allen. (Iris West returned to the 30th century and was reunited with her husband Barry Allen just before his death). Iris sought help for Bart, who had accelerated super-speed and was aging rapidly. Wally was able to cure Bart, who went on to become Impulse, a superhero in his own right. First appearance of Bart Allen in issue #91. First full appearance in issue #92.
Flash (second series) #96-100 [1994-1995]: Shortly after Iris's arrival, the evil organization Kobra threatened Keystone City. Bart, Iris and Linda Park aided Wally in defeating Kobra, with the help of other fellow speedsters, including Jay Garrick, Max Mercury and Jesse Quick. In an effort to teach Bart responsibility, Wally named Jesse as his successor. This was actually a deception by Wally to get Bart to rise to the challenge and take adventuring more seriously.
New Titans #0, 115 [1994]: Under government control, Arsenal leads a new team of Titans, including Impulse, Damage, Green Lantern, Darkstar, Mirage, and Terra. Government funded and based in New Jersey. Changeling betrays the team. First issue with new Titans members Terra II, Mirage, Impulse and Damage having already joined the team.
New Titans Annual #11 [1995]: A YEAR ONE tale featuring Arsenal's Titans team. The Time Trapper reveals Mirage, Deathwing and Terra are all from this timeline. Mirage is a street urchin from Brazil. Terra destroys the Time Trapper's message before it reveals her origins, and later unearths the original Terra's coffin to find it empty. Minion adjusts to like on earth. Supergirl recounts how she first met Arsenal and when she was asked to join the team.
New Titans #126 [1995]: A great downtime issue featuring Arsenal's Titans team and art by Rick Mays. Arsenal assesses his new role as leader. The Titans play wargames. Fellow Titan Donna Troy tries to reach out to her, but Rose rejects her, still reeling over the death of her mother. Fellow Titan Impulse confesses a crush on her but she is oblivious to his affections. Mirage continues to exhibit new abilities.
Creating Impulse
WAY BACK IN THE THIRTIETH CENTURY...
Like many things Mark Waid is involved with, IMPULSE starts out as a time-travel story. As you've no doubt read in the origin recap elsewhere in the interesting, comic-art portion of our magazine, young Bart Allen comes from the home-era of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Through machinations so complex they make my temples throb, Bart is the grandson of Iris West-Allen and Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash. As must be obvious, Bart's here in the twentieth century for the long haul now, having made his debut in the pages of FLASH where the young speedster played a mondo-major role in the just completed smash-hit storyline "Terminal Velocity."
Regardless of how far in the future Bart was born, or when in the very near past he first appeared, the story of Impulse begins more than three years ago, shortly after Mark took over the writing of FLASH. For reasons lost to the mists of time, somewhere in the midst of plotting the "Born to Run" four-parter it suddenly dawned on us to remember that Barry and Iris had children while they lived in the future - but before Barry went off to sainthood in the CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS maxiseries. We didn't make this up; the unfortunately named Tornado Twins had been around for years, were known as Don and Dawn Allen, and had been for some time all but officially acknowledged as the twin offspring of the fastest man alive and his time-tossed newswoman spouse. While we were traveling down this road, Mark mentioned that it had since been established that Don had married and had himself become a parent of an as yet unknown child - "...the grandchild of the Flash I" Mark and I shouted into the phone at each other with way too much giddy enthusiasm for a couple of adult media professionals.
As far as I'm concerned, if Mark said all of this was true, it was gospel. Never a big reader of those colorful super-teens from the future, I defer to Mark in his capacity as Legion fan #1 (a gift of knowledge that serves him well as writer and guiding spirit of both LSH and LEGIONNAIRES). Beyond the simple fact of my lack of clubhouse familiarity, I have a now legendary lack of time-travel convergence. Even talking about time paradoxes and guys meeting and dating their great-grandmothers makes my head ache like a bad tooth. That Mark and I remain close friends and collaborators in spite of this is testament to something touching, since Mark is gaga for tales of temporal traversal.
So while the glow of that fan-boy satori was still on our cheeks, I began to grow restive because I could sense where the conversation about Barry's unknown grandchild was going to lead us. Any time Mark and I start out a story concept with evil, let's-get-away-with-something chuckling, we're headed for trouble. So, because I don't know my way around the Science Police, and because time travel makes me queasy, and mostly because we were both feeling way too sneakily gleeful. I began to balk. But that's always a lost cause, because even more than our telltale smug amusement, my early resistance almost always means we're onto something good.
Oddly, the incredible senses-shattering story that grew out of that first realization never happened. As we had it figured then, Bart Allen (actually, Barry Allen II, at the time) would leave the future twenty-five years past his birth during the Legion's time and arrive on a desperate mission in Wally's time as an exact replica of his grandfather. If memory serves, he would've shown up at the door on Christmas Eve to blow Wally's bright yellow booties right off. We chortled, we schemed... we went way too far. In what seemed like a great idea then, we were bound and determined to bring a Barry Allen/Flash to life, if not specifically the Barry Allen/Flash - thereby having our cake and scarfing it too.
In the cold light of day, we began to realize the error of our ways; having a Barry replica would be cool, but not terribly interesting and much, much too expected of a couple of Flash-fanatics like Mark and me - that along with the fact that the idea of Barry's seeming return transmogrified into something way, way cooler.
"What if we give everybody their fondest desire - Barry's return - and just when they're starting to really enjoy it and planning statues in our honor, we twist the knife and have him turn totally evil?" Mark asked with a voice dripping with ill humor. The evil chuckles quickly swelled to malefic howls and we knew we had it. The story that began as a visit from a good-guy doppelganger relative of Barry's morphed and twisted into "The Return of Barry Allen" story arc that put FLASH back on the map.
It is, by now, a given that the first amazing idea that Mark and I come up with while plotting a story will enthrall us, draw us into a great story and suddenly become irrelevant to the evolved plot and have to be tossed out. The more we love an idea like a beautiful child, the more it is doomed; it serves its purpose to prime the pump, then drops out of sight as if it had never been there. Rest assured, though, out of sight does not mean out of mind. No truly good idea is ever completely discarded around here. After we knew where the "Return" story was going to go, we began to plan to head to what became "Terminal Velocity," and Mark said, "You know, I still want to do this ‘Barry's Grandchild' thing somehow." I asked how, and we were off figuring out all of the everything that eventually became Impulse and IMPULSE. So there.
MY HERO, MARK WAID...
Between my FLASH letter columns and Mark's of late copious interviews we've fostered the idea that the reason Mark is able to make Wally West such an appealing and realistic character is that Mark and Wally are very similar. I almost always point out that, apart from the fact that Wally is in terrific shape, has an incredibly healthy head of hair and the ability to move at super-speed, he and Mark are virtually identical, although Mark almost never brings this up. Still, this is more than just hyperbole; Mark seriously identifies with all his characters, and none more so than the impatient, slightly hotheaded Mr. West. It's just one of the secrets of Mark's genius: he's writing about people he knows and understands - people just like him.
If all of this is true (and of course, it must be), I'm here to guarantee that Mark is going to write Impulse better than any of his previous characters! Mark may be like Wally in many ways, but he is Bart in many more (except for the fact that Bart is in terrific shape, has an incredibly healthy head of hair and that super-speed deal). How are the writer and his creation alike? Let me count the ways:
1. Bart is really a two-year-old in the body of an older person - Mark is really a two-year-old in the slightly puffy body of a much older person.
2. Bawl learned everything he knows about life in virtual reality simulation - Mark learned everything he knows about life from reading comic books.
3. Bart does now, thinks later - Mark spends hundreds of dollars on himself every week at Toys ‘R' Us.
4. Bawl is trapped in a primitive world and doesn't know how to fit in - Mark learned everything he knows about life from reading comics.
5. Bart entered junior high at two, looking fifteen - Mark entered college when he was fifteen, looking two.
6. Bawl, not yet mature, wants to do everything, right now - Mark is writing twelve comics a month.
7. Bawl thinks he should become Flash someday - Mark thinks he should be Flash someday.
And the amazing synchronicity goes on and on. Mark is the perfect writer for IMPULSE - and now you know why.
LIVING IN A SOUTHERN STATE OF MIND...
As you must have noticed, IMPULSE takes place in the fictional city of Manchester, Alabama. This is partially to put the impulsive and impatient young hero in a place that moves considerably more slowly than he; more to the point, IMPULSE is set in the American South because Mark wants to write about places he knows intimately. That's right, yet another similarity between hero and creator; Mark was born and bred in the heart of Dixie (a phrase that Yankees like me are probably not even allowed to utter).
Born in Hueytown, Alabama - a place presumably named after that beloved first among duck nephews - Mark knows the environs of this book firsthand and remembers it all with great fondness. From Richmond to Memphis to Dallas, our scribe has wandered through more of the south than most tractor-pull touring shows and has a wealth of experience that should serve stories for years to come.
None of this explains why Mark would rather listen to ABBA and K.C. and the Sunshine Band more than Willie and Waylon, but some mysteries are best left unsolved.
Our fabulous penciller, Humberto Ramos, is not literally a southerner, though being from Mexico City at least means he can be considered as coming from farther south than most. His terrific art teammate, Wayne Faucher, is from Pennsylvania and, like me, doesn't really know the south at all. But, we all trust in Mark and his regional knowledge and photo reference. We're all gonna be just fine. (By the way, now would be the perfect time to profusely thank Birmingham resident Nick Patterson. Nick, a longtime Flash fan, is an old junior high chum of Mark's and is currently a reporter for the Birmingham Post-Herald. Ever the pal, Nick hit the streets and provided tons of photos, books and eyewitness accounts to make sure we got the area down cold. Thanks a million, Nick, we couldn't have done it without you!)
- Brian Augustyn
Arsenal's New Titans Team
A New Start
"Eduardo [Barretto]'s art is wonderful ... but not being the editor, not working with the artist directly, not being able to control anything - because at that point DC did not have the strongest editors-nothing was clicking."
With the advent of Zero Hour, however, Wolfman swears that's no longer the case. Now Titans has a new editor [Pat Garrahy], a new artist [JR. Jones], and front the sound of it, a new Teen Titans. "I think we disappointed a lot or readers in the last year," Wolfman admits. "I know I had problems with some of the material we did, but ... I can only argue so long. So rather than fixing up something that people are already disappointed with, we felt strongly 'Let's create a new Titans, let's go back to the basics."'
In this case, that means going to the DC Universe for Teen Titans, rather than the other way around: the new team will include longtime Titans Donna Troy (now a Darkstar) and Speedy (now Arsenal), as well as new members Damage, Impulse, Terra, Mirage, and Kyle Rayner (the new Green Lantern). For Wolfman, it's like going back to square one yet again.
"It forces me to rethink everything," Wolfman agrees, "because you can't just go on rote. Over the next couple of years, as we bring in some of the Titans we've already seen, we're wondering what happened to them. We can bring back some of the other ones without having the disappointment of the last year." Wolfman says.
The Premise
The Titans were pressured to place themselves under the government's watchful eye, due to increased public scrutiny [NEW TITANS #93-114]. Sarge Steel was their chief liaison, and Nightwing stepped down as leader and allowed Arsenal to take command. Arsenal led this new group of Titans [NEW TITANS #114], and was consistently challenged by the burdens of leadership. Many members left, but new faces emerged as well. Arsenal's team consisted of Darkstar (Donna Troy), Green Lantern, Supergirl, Damage, Mirage, Terra II, Minion, Impulse and Rose Wilson. Eventually, each members' dedication to the team began to waver, and the team disbanded.
The series lacked some focus, as team members were introduced, then not used, then reintroduced into the series.
"The Titans have had a series of problems in the past year," says Titans writer Marv Wolfman. 'They lost a number of members. They were sued by the government and people generally hated them. Finally, their leader Dick Grayson - Nightwing - left them."
Left in such disarray, the road to rebirth has been a long one. "Even before Zero Hour, Ray Harper, once known as Speedy and more recently known as Arsenal, was approached by Checkmate's leader, Sarge Steel, to align the Titans with the government," Wolfman says. "It seems that the JLA has broken ties with the government and Checkmate wanted a new superhero team to replace them. After going over the problems and being assured [his team] will have complete autonomy, Roy agreed to sign with Checkmate.
"Trouble is, he had no members to go with him. On his own and with Sarge Steel, new members are found recruited and a brand new Titans is formed." Wolfman reports that this new group will have a slightly different focus than past Titans teams. "Long ago, when the Titans were first created, the team featured already-existent heroes. In many ways we are going back to that original premise," be maintains. "Arsenal leads a group consisting of Damage, Green Lantern and Impulse, characters who either have their own titles, or in Impulse's case, is featured in Flash. Also in the New Titans are Mirage and Terra from the now-defunct Team Titans. Finally, rounding out the title is Donna Troy, now a Darkstar. So we're bringing in characters from other books as well as several already-known Titans.
"Interestingly, all the heroes mentioned are in one way or another orphans whose past lives are shrouded in mystery," he continues. "Where the last Titans team came together to fight Raven's demonical father, Trigon, the new team comes and stays together because they are all in a similar situation. The Titans is a place for these people to get together, to find themselves, to be with others like themselves. They are not coming together to fight some great battle, but to understand themselves and to grow. This common need will allow them to become close and eventually became friends.
"So the role of the New Titans is a club for the young DC heroes, a way of getting together with their peers, a place where they can be with their own kind and learn from each other as they grow."
"The book has gone under a lot of changes in the past few years, but all were evolutionary," Wolfman says. "Heroes died, new heroes replaced them, tempers flared and, because they were young, mistakes were often made. That is the way life is. But now we begin with a new group. A revolution, so to speak. New heroes, all with their own lives, hopes and desires. This allows us to create a very different kind of Titans book."
The Commentary
The Arsenal-led Titans didn't last too long [from NEW TITANS #115-130]. Sales on the book had slid, and many readers had already left the book. When the series was canceled in 1995 with #130, the Titans team was still active, although with some members having left. It wasn't until TITANS SECRET FILES #1 that we saw the final dissolution of the team.
The team had potential. Check out NEW TITANS #126 and NEW TITANS ANNUAL #11 to see what the team might have been.
Impulse as a Titan on Arsenal's Team
Impulse's Titans Membership:
New Titans #0, 115-130
Impulse served as a Titan on Arsenal's team from New Titans #115-130. Impulse didn't do much in the 'fabric' of the Titans team; He did have a fair amount of 'panel time' - and his youthful zest at being a member was refreshing, following the depressing tone on New Titans #100-112...
Impulse's membership makes sense in the context of the direction Marv Wolfman plotted: "So the role of the New Titans is a club for the young DC heroes, a way of getting together with their peers, a place where they can be with their own kind and learn from each other as they grow." In that respect, Impulse fits in the team perfectly. Impulse did befriend some of the younger members of the team, including Damage and Terra. He also confessed a crush on Rose Wilson in issue #126. Sadly, these glimmers of future developments were squashed with the title's impending cancellation. Impulse didn't take part in the last four-part storyline; His last 'real' issue as a Titans was in issue #127.
