Creation Story
Most supervillains get invented. The Reverse-Flash got reverse-engineered.
By 1963 the Silver Age Flash was DC’s most dependable villain factory. John Broome and Carmine Infantino, working under editor Julius Schwartz, had stocked Central City’s rogues’ gallery one gimmick criminal at a time: arm a crook with a trick, point him at the Flash, let the fastest man alive run him down. The Reverse-Flash inverts the whole design. His powers come out of the Flash’s own spare costume, his suit is that costume with the colors reversed, and his name is the hero’s name turned around. He is the one rogue built entirely from the hero he opposes.
Broome had tested the idea before. In 1949 he and Joe Kubert gave the Golden Age Flash an evil analogue called the Rival, in Flash Comics #104. The record treats the Rival as a precursor of the Reverse-Flash; the name and the mantle begin in 1963. The second attempt stuck. The crook from the 25th century became the archenemy of Barry Allen, with six decades of deaths, returns, and retcons hanging off one Silver Age story.
First Appearance: The Flash #139
The Flash #139 carries a September 1963 cover date and a 12-cent cover price. The story, “Menace of the Reverse-Flash!”, comes from the title’s core unit: Broome scripting, Infantino pencilling, Joe Giella inking, with a cover by Infantino and Murphy Anderson and Schwartz editing.
For collectors, the book does double duty. Price guides key it as both the first appearance of Professor Zoom and the origin of Professor Zoom, and dealer listings compress the same point into a single line. That doubling settles in advance the questions that complicate other villain keys. There is no cameo before it and no separate origin issue after it, and no guide or dealer treats any other issue as the first Reverse-Flash appearance. One book carries the entire claim.
The story opens in the present. Dr. Walter Drake seals an atomic clock and a spare Flash costume inside a time capsule and sends it to the 25th century. Five hundred years on, a criminal called the Professor finds the capsule and puts future science to work on its contents. He amplifies the costume’s wave patterns to charge himself with its speed energy, then reverses the suit’s colors and goes to work as the Flash’s opposite. He operates under two names, Professor Zoom and the Reverse-Flash, and both are used in the debut issue itself. DC never had to retrofit either one; the character arrived with his full billing in place.
Barry Allen crosses the five centuries on the cosmic treadmill to run him down, and the defeat turns on the villain’s own precaution: Zoom has treated himself with a protective chemical coating, and Barry exploits the coating to beat him.
The crook in the reversed suit is Eobard Thawne, a resident of the 25th century, and the issue resolves with his defeat. The returns started a year later. The Flash #147 (September 1964) brought him back, and The Flash #165 (November 1966), the wedding issue, brought him back again.
Iris West, Fiona Webb, and The Flash #324
The rivalry turned murderous in the Bronze Age. Iris West rejected Thawne’s romantic pursuits, so Thawne killed her. After Barry found love again, Thawne threatened to kill Fiona Webb, Barry’s fiancée, on their wedding day. Fearful that history was repeating itself, Barry killed Thawne by breaking his neck. The issue is The Flash #324 (August 1983).
A hero snapping his archenemy’s neck on his own wedding day was a hard ending by 1983 standards, and it held as the character’s fixed point. The next major Thawne story is built on it.
The Return of Barry Allen
The Flash vol. 2 #74-79 (March-August 1993), Mark Waid’s “The Return of Barry Allen”, opens on an impossibility: Barry Allen, back from the dead. The returned Barry is Thawne.
He is a 25th-century scientist obsessed with his idol. He underwent cosmetic surgery to resemble the Flash, gained the Flash’s powers by replicating the electrochemical accident that created them, and obtained the cosmic treadmill from an antique shop to travel back in time and meet his idol. He arrived several years too late. Barry was already dead, and at the Flash Museum Thawne learned what history recorded about him: that he was destined to become Professor Zoom, the Reverse-Flash, and to die at his idol’s hands. Only after learning that did he convince himself he was Barry Allen. The storyline is Wally West’s coming-of-age story, and it works because the reader knows where Thawne’s road ends: a broken neck in The Flash #324.
Rebirth, Flashpoint, and The Button
Flash: Rebirth, a six-issue limited series written by Geoff Johns and illustrated by Ethan Van Sciver, put Thawne back at the center of the franchise; the first issue was published on April 1, 2009. Thawne returns as the primary antagonist and claims responsibility for every tragedy in Barry’s life, including the murder of Barry’s mother, Nora, and the framing of his father. The Nora Allen retcon rewires Barry’s origin into something Thawne built. The series also gives him his own negative Speed Force, created to contaminate Barry and the other heroic speedsters.
Flashpoint (2011) runs directly off that retcon. Thawne murdered Nora. The timeline came from Barry: he went back in time to stop the murder, and that trip is what created the altered Flashpoint world.
The Button (April-May 2017) is a four-part crossover between Batman vol. 3 #21-22 and The Flash vol. 5 #21-22, written by Joshua Williamson and Tom King with art by Jason Fabok and Howard Porter. A mysterious blue lightning bolt had already restored Thawne to his pre-New 52 incarnation in The Flash #19; The Button hands him his strangest death. In Batman #21 he touches the button, returns mutilated, describes the thing he met as “God”, and seemingly dies; Barry finds his corpse. The Flash #22 shows the cause in flashback: an entity disintegrates him and deposits the body back in the Batcave. The crossover’s final pages confirm Doctor Manhattan’s introduction into the DC Universe. The story implies Manhattan is what Thawne met. It never confirms it.
Thawne has died and come back more than once since. As of September 2026 he remains active in DC continuity.
The other Reverse-Flashes
Two more principal bearers have carried the name, and their first appearances are separate issues.
Hunter Zolomon, the second Reverse-Flash, debuted in The Flash: Secret Files & Origins #3 (November 2001), created by Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins. Zolomon is a criminal profiler left paraplegic by Gorilla Grodd. He breaks into the Flash Museum, and the resulting cosmic treadmill explosion cures his paralysis and gives him superhuman speed. He first appears as Zoom in The Flash vol. 2 #197 (June 2003), and his feud belongs to the next generation: Zolomon is the archnemesis of Wally West rather than Barry Allen. The record splits his debut: 2001 for the man, 2003 for the villain.
Daniel West, the most recent bearer, is the younger brother of Iris West. He debuted in The Flash vol. 4 #0 (November 2012), created by Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato, and was revealed as the Reverse-Flash in 2013, across The Flash #23 and #23.2. The run was short. DC killed him off in New Suicide Squad Annual #1 (2015).
