Impulse #25
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeImpulse #25 delivers the first appearance of President Thaddeus Thawne — the 30th-century Earthgov ruler, Bart Allen's maternal grandfather, and the architect of the centuries-long Allen-Thawne feud — establishing a villain whose DNA-obsessed schemes would later give rise to Inertia, one of Bart's most significant antagonists. The issue also serves as the emotional capstone of Mark Waid's 30th-century arc, with Meloni Allen's wrenching sacrifice (surrendering her freedom to protect Bart and end the inter-family war) giving the normally breezy Impulse series an unusually resonant gut-punch. Within the broader Flash family mythology, the story solidifies the interconnected Allen-Thawne bloodline — connecting Impulse, XS, and the future Rogues — that writers would mine for decades. It exemplifies what set the Waid-Ramos run apart: domestic emotional stakes wrapped inside a superhero premise.
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The issue sits squarely in the mid-run of the Waid-Ramos creative partnership that launched the Impulse solo series in April 1995, with Wayne Faucher inking throughout and Brian Augustyn and Mike Carlin sharing editorial duties. Waid's approach to the series — deliberately light-hearted and character-driven, concentrating on Bart's life in suburban Manchester, Alabama rather than endless villain slugfests — made it a deliberate aesthetic counterweight to the post-speculator-bubble grimness of mid-1990s superhero comics. The 30th-century arc capping around issues #23–25 allowed Waid to pay off backstory threads seeded since Bart's earliest appearances in The Flash, culminating in this issue's farewell between Bart and his mother. Artists Ramos and Faucher even inserted themselves as background cameos in the 30th-century sequences, a playful in-joke consistent with the series' irreverent tone.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: May 1997 (on-sale April 1997); part of the Impulse ongoing series (Volume 1), which ran from April 1995 to October 2002 across 89 issues and 2 annuals.
- Written by Mark Waid; pencils by Humberto Ramos; inks by Wayne Faucher; edited by Brian Augustyn and Mike Carlin.
- First appearance of President Thaddeus Thawne — 30th-century ruler of Earthgov, Bart Allen's maternal grandfather, and the manipulative power behind the Allen-Thawne blood feud — listed as an antagonist debut in the DC Database.
- Story title: 'You and Me Against the World.' Bart and his mother Meloni travel to the 30th century; Meloni agrees to remain with her father Thaddeus and end the Allen-Thawne feud in exchange for Bart's safe return to the 20th century, separating mother and son.
- A two-year-old Jenni Ognats (future Legion of Super-Heroes member XS and Bart's cousin) appears in the 30th-century sequences as a hostage of President Thawne; her first full appearance as XS occurred earlier, in Legionnaires #0 (October 1994).
- Bart returns to the 20th century via the Cosmic Treadmill — a recurring Flash-family time-travel device — only to find an empty house, closing the arc on an unexpectedly melancholy note.
- Artists Humberto Ramos and Wayne Faucher make a self-referential in-story cameo appearance set in the 30th century, consistent with the series' light-hearted creative voice.
- R.J. Brande (Legion of Super-Heroes benefactor) appears in cameo, tying the issue into the broader Legion continuity that Jenni Ognats/XS inhabits.
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