Bartholemew "Bart" Allen, originally known as Impulse and currently as Kid Flash is a fictional character in the DC Comics universe; he first appeared in The Flash vol. 2 #91 (1994).

Fictional Biography

Bart Allen is the hyperactive grandson of Barry Allen, Allen having spent several of the last years of his life living with his wife in the 30th century. Bart is the son of Barry's son Don, one of the infamous Tornado Twins , and Meloni Thawne, the daughter of the unscrupulous President of Earth and descendent of Professor Zoom, the Reverse-Flash (Bart would later get his own "Reverse-Impulse" in the form of Inertia).

He was raised by a virtual reality machine, leaving him ill-equipped to deal with reality. Eventually his grandmother (Iris Allen) took back in time to the present, where he became the ward of the Flash (Wally West) and the retired superhero Max Mercury. He was one of the primary members of the Young Justice team. Following Max's disappearance, he was taken in by Jay Garrick (the Golden Age Flash) and his wife.

Bart has proven to have some abilities other speedsters don't. He has the ability to produce "scouts", speed-force avatars he could send through the timestream, but has infrequently used it since the death of one put him in a coma. He has also proven resistant to alterations in the time stream. Most recently, it has been discovered that, unlike previous Flashes, he can permenantly recall "speed-reading".

Following the breakup of Young Justice, Impulse joined the new Teen Titans, where, after temporarily having his kneecap blown out by Deathstroke the Terminator, he decided to reinvent himself as the new Kid Flash. While recovering, he read every single book in the San Francisco Public Library. Although one of his kneecaps is now artificial, he can still run close to light speed.