Schedule Monthly Number of issues 90 | ||
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Characters Kent ShakespeareBart AllenIris West Similar Bart Allen, Wally West, Kid Flash, Superboy, Artemis of Bana‑Mighdall | ||
Impulse is an identity shared by three comic book superheroes published by DC Comics.
Contents
Publication history
Kent Shakespeare was the first DC Comics superhero known as Impulse, he debuted in Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #12 (October 1990). Bart Allen is the second DC Comics superhero known as Impulse, he debuted in Flash vol. 2 #92 (June 1994). Iris West is the third superhero known as Impulse, she debuted in Flash vol.2 #225 (October 2005)
Kent Shakespeare
Richard Kent Shakespeare was revealed to have used the codename in a flashback sequence in Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 #53.
Bart Allen
Suffering from a hyper-accelerated metabolism, Bart Allen was aging at a faster rate than that of any human being thus causing him to appear the age of twelve when he was chronologically only two years old. To prevent him from developing mental health problems, he was raised in a virtual reality machine which created a simulated world that kept pace with his own scale of time. When it became clear that this method was not helping, his grandmother, Iris Allen, took him back in time to the present where The Flash, Wally West, tricked Bart into a race around the world. By forcing Bart into an extreme burst of speed, Wally managed to shock his hyper-metabolism back to normal. Because he had spent the majority of his childhood in a simulated world, Bart had no concept of danger and was prone to leaping before he looked. The youth proved to be more trouble than Wally could handle, and he was pawned off onto retired superhero speedster Max Mercury, who moved Bart to Manchester, Alabama. In Impulse #50, it was revealed that Batman actually named Bart "Impulse" as a warning, not a compliment.
Iris West
Iris West recently discovered that she and her brother were sharing access to the Speed Force, and decided to end that symbiotic relationship, taking all the power into herself. Jesse Chambers, guided by the late Johnny Quick, uses her Speed formula to save Iris' life. Iris embraces her new role, choosing to take up the mantle of Impulse, which Bart used before he joined the Teen Titans as Kid Flash.
In other media
The Bart Allen version of Impulse is depicted in the live action series Smallville (played by Kyle Gallner) as well as the animated series Young Justice (voiced by Jason Marsden).
