In Death is not the End, we spotlight the outlandish explanations for comic book characters (mostly super-villains) surviving seeming certain death.

Today we look at how Bart Allen survived being beaten to death by a bunch of Rogues.

In the final issue of "Flash: The Fastest Man Alive" (#13), Marc Guggenheim and Tony Daniel (plus a bunch of inkers), the villainous Inertia steals the speed from the Flash (who was, at the time, Bart Allen aged into adulthood, after Wally West and his wife and kids disappeared into the Speed Force while fighting against Superboy Prime, that same attack is what aged Bart to adulthood) and then the Rogues ended up feeling that they had to beat the Flash to death so that they wouldn't go to jail...

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Pretty bleak stuff.

Soon after, during the Justice League/Justice Society crossover, "The Lightning Saga," the Legion of Superheroes came back in time, carrying lightning rods like the lightning rods that they used in the classic "Adventure Comics" #312 when they brought Lightning Lad back to life...

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In "Justice League of America" #10 (by Brad Meltzer, Ed Benes and Sandra Hope), we see why they were using those lightning rods...

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So that seemed to be it.

However, a few years later, in "Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds" #3 (by Geoff Johns, George Perez and Scott Koblish), the Legion were using the lightning rods again while fighting against Superboy Prime in the future...

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So...wait...huh?

The same creative team explained it all in the following issue, and by "explained it all," I mean that in the loosest possible sense of the word...

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So, okay, Bart left part of himself in the speed force and then Brainiac 5 was able to reconstitute Bart from that, along with capturing his "soul" as soon as he died and then combined them all in a younger version of Bart in the future. Hmmm...yeah, okay, I guess that explains that.

If there are any other superhero (or supervillain) deaths that you're curious about how they were explained away, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com and I might feature them in a future edition of Death is not the End!