The Flash: The Road to Rebirth Omnibus

The Flash (2011) #5-9

by Geoff Johns, Robert Venditti, Ivan Reis (Illustrator)

When everything moves faster, so do the consequences.

In this pulse-pounding omnibus, Barry Allen tries to outrun his past—but the future keeps catching up. From the nightmare visions of Reverse-Flash to the seismic shifts of “Flash War,” this is a saga of identity, sacrifice, and the burden of being the fastest.
Spanning eras and crises, this definitive edition speeds through The Flash’s most transformative arcs as Barry, Wally, and the Flash Family struggle to hold together what matters most: each other.

This omnibus collects The Flash #25–52, The Flash Annual #3, Secret Origins #7, The Flash: Futures End #1, and DC Universe: Rebirth #1.

Genres: Comics

904 pages, Hardcover

Published April 14, 2026

About the author

Geoff Johns originally hails from Detroit, Michigan. He attended Michigan State University, where he earned a degree in Media Arts and Film. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s in search of work within the film industry. Through perseverance, Geoff ended up as the assistant to Richard Donner, working on Conspiracy Theory and Lethal Weapon 4. During that time, he also began his comics career writing Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. and JSA (co-written with David S. Goyer) for DC Comics. He worked with Richard Donner for four years, leaving the company to pursue writing full-time.

His first comics assignments led to a critically acclaimed five-year run on the The Flash. Since then, he has quickly become one of the most popular and prolific comics writers today, working on such titles including a highly successful re-imagining of Green Lantern, Action Comics (co-written with Richard Donner), Teen Titans, Justice Society of America, Infinite Crisis and the experimental breakout hit series 52 for DC with Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid. Geoff received the Wizard Fan Award for Breakout Talent of 2002 and Writer of the Year for 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 as well as the CBG Writer of the Year 2003 thru 2005, 2007 and CBG Best Comic Book Series for JSA 2001 thru 2005. Geoff also developed BLADE: THE SERIES with David S. Goyer, as well as penned the acclaimed “Legion” episode of SMALLVILLE. He also served as staff writer for the fourth season of ROBOT CHICKEN.

Geoff recently became a New York Times Bestselling author with the graphic novel Superman: Brainiac with art by Gary Frank.

Reviews

[James DeSantis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sadly this run is a dud. It says a lot when the best part of the entire book is a Rebirth One shot at the end. Everything else is either okay at best (Like first 10 issues) but quickly falls into the trappings of bringing in old bad guys like Zoom (Who is actually the original reverse flash) but not doing anything special with them. I just felt the writing and art had way to many downs to say this flash omnibus is really worth reading. Just jump into Rebirth. It's far better.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 2 out of 5]

This volume is a mess, and it's a bit of a shock because I love Venditti's X-O Manowar run, and he wrote most of this volume.

But, it continues the worst excesses of the new 52. Somehow Venditti and Jensen write 23 issues and we only manage three or four arcs. The early ones especially are just dragged out to an inch of their life. (For example the Future Flash is coming back from the future for pretty much forever while Barry deals with a murderer that we really don't care about.)

The action is non-stop and too often non-interesting, and we largely lose our supporting cast, as happened in many of the New 52 books.

It feels like Manapul & Buccellato managed to succeed somewhat despite the very bad editorial mandates of New 52, but Venditti and Jensen don't manage at all.

We also continue to get the weird lack of care for Flash Lore, which _was_ something that was a problem in the previous run. So the Speed Force continues to be a primitive world, but we at least get some explanation for that as a nexus caused by a rip in the Speed Force. And then we get a new take on Prof. Zoom which is super-weird because he's a time-traveling immortal and all the other folks touched by the Speed Force suddenly have weird other powers that aren't running fast. And Zoom needs these other people to support him.

There's also character assassination (or at least bad characterization all along) aplenty. It's unbelievable that Barry Allen goes bad in the future, it's unbelievable that Frye goes bad in the present. It's unbelievable how Patty just disappears from Barry's life. It's ....

And then there's the whol bit where they removed decades of Flash comics from continuity so that they could replace Wally with a new character from the TV show. TV shows will come or go; DC shooting themselves in their foot to support one for a couple of years is just stupid (and starts to be repaired by the end of this run).

So, yeah, not a fan.