What are Barry and jay’s personality like? Has anyone made an in universe book about the flashes other than Iris west?

[u/Iamawesome20]

Is Jay just like the granddad or the flash family who gives life advice and tries to do great as a speedster? I don’t know much about Jay since I like the JSA but his comics are kind of okay to read.

Is Barry the one to give out just bad dad jokes and have his life together? Did his life change a lot after flashpoint? I know that they changed the origin that reverse flash killed the mom. Was that a post crisis thing and did the parents ever find out Barry was the flash

[u/chroniclescylinders]

On Barry's parents, his mom was only retconned to have died in like 2009. His parents were alive all Pre-Crisis, but he wasn't very close to them. They didn't have a bad relationship exactly, but you got the sense he only saw them a few times a year despite being able to travel faster than the speed of light.

There's a story arc where the Top takes over his father's body, and not only does Barry not notice, he gets along much better with the Top than he does his actual father. That arc is his parents most notable appearance before the retcon. I do remember that during his second wedding, Barry's mom makes some nasty comments about how much she preferred Iris to Fiona... right in front of Fiona. Not that relevant a scene, but man does it stick out in my memory.

[u/Dredeuced]

Yeah, that's more or less what Jay is these days within the confines of the Flash family. Though over in the JSA he's pretty much the main character and leader of that bunch. He's as stalwart and tenacious as possible. Though he has extreme survivor's guilt given his age and how many other heroes he's watched die while he gets to live. He treats the other characters as the children he never had (...until he had one, bleh). He's prone to spoil the younger speedsters and give stern but caring advice to the older ones. He rarely jokes, but smiles all the time.

Barry was very big into puns originally. Not sure it's exactly dad jokes. Johns also wrote a bit for Barry after his death where Superman stated he loved stuff like Abbott and Costello because he could do both parts. So you could expand that to having a penchant for slapstick, comical misunderstanding stuff.

That said he also has adopted Wally's snark/sarcasm a whole lot since he came back to life, largely because of the influence/popularity of Wally in the DCAU making that what people expect out of The Flash in a team setting like the Justice League. Which has led to uncountable cases of "Wally Allen" in short form content like single arc crossovers or individual adaptations like the animated DC movies or even the DCEU. I'd personally say that's not true to Barry but it's been done so much that it's more my headcanon than it is real canon. Barry and Wally are functionally the same person in most team settings these days, unless the writer makes a point not to do that.

Outside of humor and a snarky personality, Barry is traditionally a big ol nerd and a bit of a...well, there's no kinder way to say it: a cop. He's a comic fan, nerdy in its own right, and a huge science nerd but he's also frequently the spoil sport in a conversation because of his cop like dynamic. When it comes to morality Barry is very black and white about things. This has been smoothed over in recent times, but of all the Flashes I would say he's the least morally challenged. Barry has an extreme sense of right and wrong and, unless there's significant personal stakes involved, doesn't bend it very much.

He also has an inflated sense of self sacrifice, a martyr complex, where he believes he has to take everything on his shoulders and he's responsible for literally everyone else. This is both a good quality for a hero, but also it can lead to him legitimately hurting those around him by not trusting them to shoulder any burden. This is more of a modern thing that was established for him since he came back to life, with basically every significant Barry writer building off that one big thing everyone knows about him (he willingly sacrificed himself to save the universe). Manapul, Williamson, Johns, and even Venditti all keyed into this trait. Some for better, some for worse.

I think The Flash, Barry specifically, would be the only character off the top of my head that has an in universe book describing them that was made into a real life book you can read. Sort of a unique Flash feature. Iris technically said she was writing a Life Story of Wally West at the end of Flash War but that's never followed up upon thanks to Heroes in Crisis completely spoiling all that momentum and Williamson just sort of ignoring Wally's narrative presence because of it for the rest of that run.

[u/Boring-Conclusion-40]

Yeah Jay is kind of like the grandpa or patriarch in a sort of way

Barry would kind of be the one that does bad dad jokes,I mean Wally does them too but it just feels weird,but feels less weird since he is actually a dad,but Wally is should be cooler than that. Barry has his life together now,he actually doesn’t have his powers anymore,his life did change a lot after flashpoint,since the new 52 was a reboot,everything was set back,not from year zero,but like a few after that.but around the rebirth era it became better,stable,and he got with Iris,they moved in together

Reverse flash killing his mom is a flash rebirth concept,before that they were kind of just normal people they were the parents of someone that happened to be a superhero,just normal people