Flash’s Most Overpowered Ability Basically Makes Him a God

There is one ability that the Flash possessed in comics that basically turned him into a god. The future Flash, Bart Allen AKA Impulse, once had the power to create time-displaced clones of himself through the Speed Force.

Although Wally West has been regarded as the most powerful Flash in comics throughout recent years, Impulse has often come close. In sequence of their creation, each Flash from Jay Garrick to Barry Allen and onwards appear to outdo their predecessor. Based in the future, Bart Allen is the grandson of Barry, and joined the Flash family as he traveled back in time on multiple occasions. In Impulse #75 written by Todd Dezago with art by Carlo Barberi, inks by Juan Vlasco, with colors by Tom McCraw and Digital Chameleon, Bart levels up and proves himself as a worthy hero of the Speed Force.

In the issue, Bart is struck by a ray of energy which generates in him the ability to create ‘time scouts.’ These replicated energy beings are sentient and can move on their own through time and space, before they are later absorbed back into Bart. Although Barry and Wally can travel through time by utilizing the Cosmic Treadmill, Bart was the one who initially had the power to send dozens of invisible copies of himself throughout the past and the future. Bart showcases just the slightest application of this ability against a villain named Keller, sending three time scouts to disarm him, intercept his bullets, and rescue his hostage. The comics note that time and space are nothing to these time scouts, who move between the moments, tailoring even the finest details of the time stream to Bart’s specifications.

In World Without Young Justice, Bedlam forces Bart to produce an army of time scouts to hypnotize them and do his bidding. In the process, Bedlam manufactures time to his own preferences, using the time scouts to rewrite all of history. In Impulse #86, the scouts can even rewrite Bart’s past, as he alters events to receive Bedlam’s powers and is given magical omnipotence. He becomes a god-like being with abilities that no other Flash has had before or since. As if channeling his will through time and space wasn’t enough, this adventure makes it clear Bart’s time scouts can change his timeline to give him more and different powers – while versions of him do have to run out and make it so, Bart can basically have history unfold however he likes in a process that (from the perspective of the present) isn’t just instantaneous, but has always been the case. Even DC’s explicit god figures would struggle to defeat the skillful application of this power.

Although it’s been argued who is the most powerful Flash with close distinctions between Wally and Barry, Bart Allen is hard to beat. He hardly needs to do anything to cause rampant changes to the timeline as his time scouts take care of it for him. If the future Flash used the power often enough, he could either rule reality or cause it to spin out of control.

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