Barry Allen will have his first solo movie in the upcoming film The Flash, but Ezra Miller’s iteration is hardly the first live-action version of the Scarlet Speedster. The Flash has been a major DC Comics superhero since the Golden Age of comic books. Barry Allen and other iterations of The Flash have appeared in numerous live-action adaptations, making the hero one of DC’s most popular characters outside of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

Fascinatingly, Barry Allen’s introduction set DC Comics on a course toward a plethora of reboots and multiversal storytelling. Allen’s debut acknowledges Jay Garrick, prompting DC to later explain that the two heroes are each The Flash of their respective realities. Moreover, Barry Allen’s powers (later explained as a connection to a cosmic energy force known as the Speed Force) allow him to travel through time and into other realities, further popularizing the concept of the multiverse.