A very popular concept in the world of pop culture is the idea of "consolidation." What we mean is, you find ways to create lasting connections between characters so that there is a natural reason why they are drawn together all of the time. So suddenly, a bunch of characters on a TV show all get a job at the same company, or all attend the same college or all decide to become roommates. The same is true in superhero comic books, as there is always a desire to come up with "families" of characters so that you have more characters available for any given story. When it comes to speedsters in the DC Universe, the way that they are "consolidated" is through the Speed Force.
The Speed Force is the unifying force that connects all humans on Earth who have super speed. It has made its way to the Flash TV series, as well, since it works so well to connect all of the speedsters on that program. As powerful as the Speed Force is, however, it is also extremely mysterious and has gone through some changes over the years as DC Comics' continuity has gone through some changes of its own. The one constant with the force, though, has been its importance in the life of the Flash, whether it's Barry Allen, Wally West or others. Seeing the varying effects it has on different characters, though, makes the Speed Force a fascinating subject of interest.
20 IT FIRST APPEARED IN A NON-FLASH COMIC
In the early 1940s, what we now know of as DC Comics was really a collection of a few different comic book companies that were working together. One company published Detective Comics only. One company, National Comics, published Action Comics, Superman and other titles. Finally, one company, All-American Comics, published the Flash, Green Lantern and Wonder Woman.
So, in 1941, National Comics put out their own speedster hero in More Fun Comics called Johnny Quick. Johnny gained his powers by accessing some mysterious force that led him to run really fast. It was never explicitly called such, but that's clearly the Speed Force, right?
19 IT APPEARED A DECADE AFTER BARRY ALLEN DISAPPEARED
It being the 1940s, when comic book stories tended not to go into such ideas with any great detail, Johnny Quick never explored where Johnny's speed powers came from, exactly. Johnny Quick actually outlasted the original Flash, with his feature in More Fun Comics ceasing to exist in 1954.
Two years later, a new Flash, Barry Allen, debuted, and we never explored where Barry's powers came from, outside of a mixture of chemicals. Then Barry passed on and his nephew, Wally West, took over. In 1994's Flash #91, Wally ran so fast that he entered into a new realm that was dubbed the Speed Force.
18 YOU CAN GET TRAPPED IN IT
During Wally's tenure as the Flash, the villain that he had the hardest time with was Abra Kadabra, the evil being from the future that used his future technology to disguise it as "magic." Abra Kadabra nearly ended Wally's life on numerous occasions, including one fight in the future during Zero Hour where Wally seemed to disintegrate.
In reality, Wally had once more entered the Speed Force, but this time he discovered that you could actually run so fast that you enter the Speed Force and could become trapped there forever. Wally eventually found his way home, but not before traveling through time and visiting himself as a child.
17 LOVE CAN BREAK YOU OUT OF IT
During an attack on Wally's hometown by the evil terrorist organization known as Kobra, the villains developed a weapon that could wipe out the entire town. Wally had received a premonition that he was going to merge with the Speed Force if he ran too fast to stop this weapon, so he kept trying to groom other speedsters to take his spot.
In the end, he had to do it and he ran so fast that he again entered the Speed Force, only this time it seemed to be for good. However, Wally had recently fallen in love with Linda Park and her love proved to be too strong for the Speed Force and he was able to break out to come back to her.
16 DIFFERENT CHARACTERS TAP INTO IT IN DIFFERENT WAYS
As noted in the introduction, the Speed Force was DC's way of connecting its various speedster characters together. The issue there, of course, is that their speedsters were all seemingly very different. For instance, Barry Allen and Wally West gained their powers by chemicals splashing on them. Jay Garrick inhaled heavy water fumes. Johnny Quick recited a unique math formula.
As it turned out, though, the Speed Force worked in such a way that different people simply had different ways of accessing it. So what seemed to be chemicals, heavy water or a math formula, were really just their specific entry points into the Speed Force.
15 IT CAN AGE OR DE-AGE PEOPLE
After the new Flash, Barry Allen, was around for a few years, DC decided to re-introduce the original Flash, Jay Garrick. The explanation was that the two characters lived on alternate versions of Earth. For decades, this is how they teamed up. Then, in the mid-1980s, DC merged the two Earths into a single planet.
Now, Jay Garrick was the Flash during World War II and Barry was the Flash later on. As the years ticked by, though, it was tough to explain why there were still heroes from World War II running around. Thus, the Speed Force was used to explain why Jay Garrick did not age as fast as he could. It also aged Bart Allen, to boot.
14 IT TEMPORARILY VANISHED
Bart had been artificially aged when he was born, turned from a toddler into a pre-teen seemingly instantly, with a virtual reality education to make him feel like he grew up normally. Later on, during Infinite Crisis, Bart and Wally West teamed up to use the Speed Force to attack the super-powerful Superboy Prime.
In the process, Wally and his wife and infant children, were seemingly trapped within the Speed Force and Bart was not only aged to young adulthood by it, but he seemingly absorbed the force entirely. For a short period in time, Bart was the only speedster in the DC Universe!
13 TIME WORKS DIFFERENTLY
Bart's stint as the new Flash was seemingly very brief, as he was tragically attacked by the Flash's Rogues and they beat him until he left this mortal coil. Then, during a crossover of the Justice League, the Justice Society and a group of Legion of Super-Heroes members trapped in their past (our present), special lightning rods were used to bring the Flash back to Earth... but it was the Wally West Flash!
While he and his wife and kids had been gone for only a year, his children had grown from infants to young children, as time works differently within the Speed Force.
12 YOU CAN CREATE OBJECTS USING THE SPEED FORCE
Just like how different characters have different access points into the Speed Force, so too can people have multiple ways of using the Speed Force. Wally West broke his legs in a really bad way at one point. Thus, he was unable to help out his fellow speedsters when they had to deal with a new villainous threat. Jay Garrick filled in as the main Flash.
Ultimately, the others could not handle the new villain, so Wally actually used the Speed Force to create a special "speed suit" that allowed him to run with broken legs. Later, he adapted that speed suit into his new costume.
11 IMPULSE CREATED PEOPLE FROM THE SPEED FORCE
While Wally discovered the ability to create constructs from the Speed Force, Bart Allen went one step further and found that he could create people! Yes, Bart found out that he could create, in effect, clones of himself using the Speed Force that he could send through time to see what was going to happen in the future. He called them his "Speed Scouts."
The problem for him occurred during the crossover event, Our Worlds at War, when the villainous Imperiex actually extinguished one of Bart's Speed Scouts. Bart's mind was connected to it, so it felt to him as if his life ended, as well. He tried not to use that power as much after that.
10 IT GAVE BART ALLEN A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY
Another trauma was coming soon for Bart, as Deathstroke the Terminator was possessed by his son, the former Titan known as Jericho, and Jericho wanted to show the young Teen Titans that their world was too dangerous for them. So the possessed Deathstroke shot Bart in the kneecap.
This affected Bart's ability to run, as his now artificial replacement knee limited how fast Bart could go at the peak of his speed. Instead, Bart discovered that the Speed Force gave him other abilities, like the power to read and process information faster than normal. So Bart read every book he could get his hands on and learned all sorts of new skills.
9 OTHER PLANETS KNEW ABOUT IT DECADES AGO
Jay Garrick did not realize that the Speed Force was a thing when he was the original Flash, even though it would take a supernatural force to explain why his hat never flew off of his head when he ran. However, while he did not get the meaning of the force, that doesn't mean that there weren't others out there who did know more about it.
The alien planet known as Sardoth had a scientist who developed a Speed Force cannon that brought Jay to that planet to help ward off an alien invasion. Years later, when Wally West and Wally's family entered the Speed Force, they accidentally were transported to Sardoth, as well. They lived there for a while.
8 HAL JORDAN ALMOST BROKE INTO THE SPEED FORCE
As we have seen, since there are multiple access points into the Speed Force, it is not something that is some sort of "destined" state of being. I You could break into it on your own if you happened to fins a way in there.
Amazingly enough, Hal Jordan almost found his way into the Speed Force in a recent issue of Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps. Hal was trying to catch up with the speedy New God known as Lightray by using a supersonic jet plane ring construct. Hal was lagging behind before he threw caution to the wind and really pushed the speed of the plane. This led to a brief moment where Hal touched right up against the Speed Force.
7 THE SPEED FORCE IS STRONGER THAN THE ANTI-LIFE EQUATION
During the crossover event, Final Crisis, the world was shocked by Barry Allen miraculously returning to life to help take down Darkseid. It appeared as though the Black Racer sort of cut a deal to let Barry return. Naturally, one of the first things that Barry wanted to do was check in on his wife, Iris West Allen.
The problem is that Darkseid had finally succeeded in accessing the Anti-Life Equation, which gave him control over most of the people on Earth, including Iris! However, Barry's Speed Force connection, mixed in with the power of love, allowed him to cure Iris of the Anti-Life Equation via one heck of a kiss.
6 BARRY ALLEN CREATED THE SPEED FORCE
After Barry returned to life during Final Crisis, he discovered a shocking fact about his connection to the Speed Force. It turned out that the Force was actually created by Barry himself! When Barry's powers first kicked in, they created so much kinetic energy that they traveled through time and space and they created the Speed Force.
This is tied to a revelation following Crisis on Infinite Earths that once Barry's life ended as he merged into the Speed Force, he actually traveled back in time to become the very bolt of lightning that had given him his powers in the first place!
5 THERE IS A NEGATIVE SPEED FORCE
Around the same time that Barry learned of his unique connection to the Speed Force, he also discovered that there is actually another version of the Speed Force out there that is called the Negative Speed Force. Generally speaking, for every action that exists in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Thus, while Barry was out there creating the powerful Speed Force, the Reverse Flash, Zoom, was powering the Negative Speed Force in reverse. The Negative Speed Force allows Zoom and others to take away speed from people and to also transfer it into other beings temporarily.
4 THE SPEED FORCE IS MORE POWERFUL THAN RETCONS
In 2011, Barry Allen accidentally created an altered reality by traveling back in time to save his mother's life from an attack by the Reverse Flash. When Barry realized what he had done, he went back in time and fixed it. However, a mysterious force intervened and created a brand-new continuity when Barry got back called the "New 52." Part of the New 52 meant that Wally West no longer existed.
However, during DC Universe: Rebirth, we discovered that Wally had somehow managed to stay alive within the Speed Force while this new reboot took place. As everyone who knew him began to forget all about him, however, he began to fade from existence. Luckily, Barry Allen remembered him and Wally's life was saved.
3 IT CREATED GORILLA CITY
We have seen how the Speed Force manifested itself differently within Wally West and Bart Allen, with Wally able to create physical constructs and Bart able to create time-traveling "speed scouts." However, the Speed Force can have these sorts of effects on non-speedsters, as well.
The Speed Force, within the "New 52," would often bleed into the regular universe; on one of these occasions, it altered the minds of a group of Gorillas and transformed them into super-intelligent beings that would form Gorilla City. One of their number, the evil Gorilla Grodd, used his Speed Force abilities to become a supervillain.
2 THERE ARE ISLANDS WITHIN THE SPEED FORCE
In the New 52, the Speed Force was much more unstable than it was beforehand. If it wasn't for Barry Allen, it seems as though the whole thing would eventually overload and explode. Luckily, Barry's connection to the Force calmed it down a little bit.
That did not prevent portals from opening up over the years that sucked land masses into the Speed Force itself. These land masses show up as floating islands within the Speed Force, with whole groups of people now essentially trapped and forced to live within the Force! Since time works differently within the Force, people from different time periods all live together as one people.
1 THE BLACK FLASH HUNTS SPEEDSTERS FROM THE SPEED FORCE
Throughout the history of the DC Universe, there have been different depictions of what comes next for people after their life ends. The New Gods famously have the Black Racer, who chases people down as their life finishes. With speedsters, though, there is the Black Flash.
The Black Flash is aspeed force generated by the Speed Force whenever a speedster's time on Earth is almost up. It will appear to the runner and they will be given a chance to outrun this almost supernatural entity. If they do so, they can continue to exist on this plane. If not, they merge into the Speed Force. It was retroactively revealed to be in the background when both Barry Allen and Johnny Quick both passed on.