Inertia (DC Comics)

Inertia
Inertia, in art from Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #5, by Ron Adrian.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Impulse #50 (July 1999)
Created by	Todd DeZago Mike Wieringo
In-story information
Alter ego	Thaddeus Thawne
Team affiliations	Titans East Rogues
Notable aliases	Kid Zoom
Abilities	Former: Superhuman speed Current: Time manipulation in indivudual reference frames

Inertia is a fictional character, a supervillain in the DC Comics universe.

Publication history

Creation

When questioned as to who created Inertia, Ethan van Sciver wrote that he could only accept five percent of the credit. The rest was offered to Mike Wieringo (twenty percent), Grant Morrison (twenty-five percent), and Todd Dezago (fifty percent). He also states that Inertia's appearance is just Impulse's inverted, like a Reverse-Flash. This fits the character's original role as a "Reverse-Impulse" created to antagonize the title character.

Initial appearances

Inertia's initial appearance came in Impulse #50: "First Fool's" (July 1999), followed by #51: "It's All Relative" (August 1999), with Dezago observing. Then, Dezago wrote for Impulse #52: "Tumbling Down" (September 1999). The most character development came in #53: "Threats" (October 1999), with Dezago also writing. Inertia wasn't featured again until Impulse #62 and #66: "Mercury Falling" (July, November 2000), by Dezago. After this, Inertia would not be notably featured again for half a decade.

Revival

About five years after his debut, Inertia began making regular appearances in the DC Universe again, mostly due to his twin Bart Allen becoming The Flash. Inertia appeared in The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #5: “Lightning in a Bottle, Part 5” (December 2006) by Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo. The formula was largely the same. Inertia acted as an antagonist to the title character, Bart Allen, who had changed greatly since his days as Impulse.

In addition to his Flash appearances, Inertia made repeated appearances in Teen Titans (vol. 3). A team-based series, Teen Titans featured Inertia as part of an enemy team, Titans East. The story arc began in Teen Titans (vol. 3) #43 (January 2007) written by Geoff Johns, with art by Tony Daniel and Jonathan Glapion. The arc concluded with Teen Titans (vol. 3) #46 (April 2007) written by Geoff Johns and Adam Beechen.

Fictional character biography

Beginnings

Thaddeus Thawne is a clone of Bart Allen, and was created in the 30th century by Bart's maternal grandfather, President Thawne. Thawne, being the descendant of the Flash's enemy Professor Zoom, got tired of his grandson's crime fighting activities in the 20th century and decided to create a clone of Bart using more Thawne DNA so that he would be more ruthless. In addition to this modification, Thaddeus' growth and development was slowed. This is in contrast to Bart's accelerated development (becoming physically 15 at chronological age 2). This was done to give Thad more training and knowledge than Bart ever would. His mission as the "Reverse-Impulse" was to go back in time and replace Bart, but he was easily defeated.

In his second attempt, upon realizing Impulse was prepared to sacrifice himself to save Max Mercury, he fled, apparently horrified by the contrast between Bart's adopted family and his own grandfather's treatment of him as a weapon.

Return

Appearing again after the One Year Later event, Inertia worked with Manfred Mota. Inertia stated that his agenda involved stealing the speed of all other speedsters in order to become the next "Fastest Man Alive". His first targets include his old rival Bart Allen, who was now the latest Flash and the original Flash, Jay Garrick. After betraying Mota, Inertia used Mota's daughter, Valerie Perez, as bait in a trap he set for Bart. Despite being targeted by a photon cannon specifically designed to target the Speed Force, Bart successfully rescued Valerie before destroying the cannon, racing around the world before returning to the original cannon and moving out of the way of the beam at the last millisecond. After this defeat, Inertia began to gather the Rogues for his next attack.

Inertia was also working with Deathstroke. Due to Bart's encapsulation of the Speed Force, Inertia has been forced to inject himself with Velocity 9, a notoriously unstable substance invented by The Rival which allows the user to move at superhuman speeds. However, Inertia's Velocity 9 has been specially made by Deathstroke, but had shown no ill effects.

After being defeated in The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #8, he returned in #10 when he confronted the captive Heat Wave. He recruited Heat Wave into his newest mysterious plan, telling him that he was talking about something that would "change the world". Getting rid of the Flash would "just be a bonus."

He is also now a member of the new Titans East team in exchange for Deathstroke's help. He begins the attack on the Teen Titans with Titans East teammate Match. Disguising himself as Impulse and Kid Flash, he defeats Robin and Raven, then toys with Wonder Girl in Robin's secret facility. Ultimately, he lets Match knock Wonder Girl unconscious. During the assault, Inertia mentioned that he was going to call himself Kid Zoom after Bart renamed himself from Impulse to Kid Flash, but decided to stick with the name Inertia.

In Teen Titans (vol. 3) #44, he is shown to be romantically involved with his Titans East teammate Sun Girl. It should be noted that in the same issue Sun Girl claims to be Inertia's partner in the future, where they both own an imprisoned Miss Martian as their slave: despite her claims, their future was irrevocably changed later. At the conclusion of the conflict with the Titans East, Inertia and Deathstroke were the only two who escaped, the rest of the team being either defeated or defecting to the heroes' side.

Full Throttle

With Bart Allen as the new Flash, Inertia decided it was time to declare war on his old nemesis. He organized Flash's Rogues together in a grand scheme. He claimed that their goal was to build a machine that could stop time, essentially giving them the freedom to commit crimes without anyone being able to stop them. This operation was apparently in the planning stages for some time, and some of the Rogues' planning sessions were depicted in issues of the weekly series Countdown.

Once the plan was put into action, the Rogues attracted the attention of The Flash, but it was soon revealed that this was Inertia's intention all along. The machine they were building did not stop time. Its function was to drain the Speed Force from the Flash (Bart Allen) and transfer it to Inertia, so he could regain natural speed powers and no longer be dependent on Velocity 9.

Though Bart did lose his speed, the Pied Piper and Abra Kadabra caught on to Inertia's betrayal and subdued him before subduing the Flash. Inertia broke away in an attempt to reach the machine and prevent Bart's girlfriend from releasing the Speed Force, only to be tackled and beaten by a raging Flash, outraged at what his 'clone' had done. Fearing his being repowered, however, the other Rogues killed Bart.

Aftermath

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Inertia is freed by Zoom. Panel from Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge #1, art by Scott Kolins.

Immediately after killing Bart, the Rogues turned their wrath on Inertia, blaming him for the entire fiasco. Inertia ran, but the arrival of the police forced the Rogues to flee before they could give chase, allowing Inertia to escape.

However, at the same time Bart was fighting the Rogues, Wally West, the previous Flash, returned to this plane of existence. Upon hearing of Bart's death, Flash hunted Inertia down, enraged at Inertia's pleasure over Bart's death and the implication that Bart had died because Wally's return prevented him from accessing the Speed Force. Though he considered killing him, Inertia's connection to Bart proved the only thing that prevented Wally from smearing him over a mountain while running at full speed. Instead, he decided to "do something worse." He used his abilities to slow Inertia's movement down to the point where he was totally immobile, essentially a living statue, and subsequently placed Inertia on display at the Flash Museum, facing statues of Bart Allen as Impulse and Kid Flash. Though he could still think, see and hear in normal time, Inertia was doomed to spend eternity in a state of near-total paralysis, staring at Bart's images (ironically enough, a variant of the fate that befell Zoom after attacking Linda for the first time). Wally describes it as being "forced to stare, with eyes that take a hundred years to blink... at the ghost of the man he could never be."

In Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge, as he is about to be transferred from the Flash Museum to Iron Heights, Inertia is struck by a red lightning bolt, which frees him from paralysis. Hearing of the escape on the news, the Rogues decide to hunt him down as payback for being manipulated. After killing his guards, Inertia is about to attack Wally West's children, when he is stopped by the very person who freed him: Hunter Zolomon, aka Zoom, who wants Inertia to become a new Kid Flash.

He battles the Rogues alongside Zoom, even going so far as to rename himself Kid Zoom. When Libra appears with Weather Wizard's infant son as a bargaining chip, Thawne kills the child and attacks Libra, only to be stopped by Zoom. He quickly turns on his mentor, reverting Zoom back to the wheelchair-using Hunter Zolomon. He attempts to defeat the Rogues singlehandedly, but is frozen in place by Pied Piper, then killed from a combination attack from the other Rogues, echoing the way Bart Allen was murdered. His body is teleported to the Keystone City police, with a note that reads "Tell the Flash we're even. - The Rogues".

Powers and abilities

A partial clone of Bart Allen, Inertia is primarily a speedster. He has not demonstrated any other speed related powers, including Bart's resilience to alterations in the time stream. For some time following Infinite Crisis, Inertia remained no longer connected to the Speed Force. Instead, he has begun injecting himself with Velocity 9, a substance that helps him maintain his superhuman speed. Velocity 9 has been notoriously unstable in the past, but Deathstroke's new variant seems to offer no negative side effects. For a brief period before his death, he shares his powers with Zoom, who lends him his speed to pressure him into being a new Kid Flash. His attempt failed, Inertia turns into a maddened Kid Zoom, with absolute mastery over the individual timestream of a human being, able to revert Zoom to the powerless Hunter Zolomon and kill with a simple snap of his fingers before being killed by the assembled forces of the Rogues.

External links

• Profile from "The Flash: Those Who Ride The Lightning website
• Crimson Lightning - An online index to the comic book adventures of the Flash.