August's Flash #785 might hold the key to Dark Crisis

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The 'Search for Barry Allen' storyline could be the blueprint for the return of the dead Justice League

The Flash #785 cover art
The Flash #785 cover art (Image credit: DC)

Don't sleep on The Flash. DC's monthly series, along with the Worlds Without A Justice League specials, may hold the key to writer Joshua Williamson's Dark Crisis event and how long the Justice League will remain 'dead' following the events of Justice League #75.

The Flash #785 variant cover by George Kambadais (Image credit: DC)

The Flash writer Jeremy Adams recently tweeted the covers - by artists Taurin Clarke and George Kambadais, respectively, to August's Flash #785, the latest chapter of a Dark Crisis tie-in story in which the title's star Wally West and the extended Flash Family search for the missing Barry Allen and yes, we're emphasizing missing for a reason.

Flash #785 with art by Amancay Nahuelpan is scheduled for an August 16 release and Newsarama can add to the covers the first look at DC's description of the issue.

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"Just when the speedsters to have snapped Barry out of Pariah's clutches, Wallace seems to be falling in. And the creator of Barry's mind prison isn't about to let the team of Speedsters just run off. And even if they could, where exactly would they run to…?"

The Flash #785 cover by Taurin Clarke (Image credit: DC)

Bookmark "mind prison."

The 'Search for Barry Allen' story arc began in June's The Flash #783 and in July's The Flash #784 Wally and Wallace find Barry on the planet Pariah trapped him on.

Why is that important? Because as we detail elsewhere Barry was seemingly 'killed' by Pariah in 2021's Infinite Frontier in the same exact way Pariah 'killed' the Justice League in Justice League #75 and Barry wound up on a Silver Age-dream-like mind prison instead of dead, and he's apparently still alive enough for the Flash Family to find and interact with him.

The logical next deduction is the alternate dream-like worlds of the Worlds Without a Justice League specials are mind prisons just like Barry's, meaning the Justice Leaguers are still out there waiting to be saved just like Barry.

Dark Crisis #3 variant cover by Ethan Young (Image credit: DC)

But that's getting ahead of the game. There are still seven whole issues of a Dark Crisis series that hasn't even begun yet.

And since we're on the subject, here's a variant cover to August's  Dark Crisis #3, courtesy of Williamson featuring ... wait for it... a new Justice League?

We have our questions, but that's a subject for another time...

DC is almost certainly counting on Dark Crisis becoming one of its most impactful DC events of all time.

Michael Doran

I'm not just the Newsarama founder and editor-in-chief, I'm also a reader. And that reference is just a little bit older than the beginning of my Newsarama journey. I founded what would become the comic book news site in 1996, and except for a brief sojourn at Marvel Comics as its marketing and communications manager in 2003, I've been writing about new comic book titles, creative changes, and occasionally offering my perspective on important industry events and developments for the 25 years since. Despite many changes to Newsarama, my passion for the medium of comic books and the characters makes the last quarter-century (it's crazy to see that in writing) time spent doing what I love most.