The Trial as a Flashpoint #3

I guess I'll never understand Barry's Rogues Gallery, why he seemed to tolerate them...

The Rogues were a collection of foes Barry faced on a consistent basis, criminals who fashioned fantastic personas after the weapons they mastered.

There was Captain Boomerang, Heatwave, Captain Cold, the Mirror Master, Weather Wizard, Pied Piper...all of them completely self-explanatory by their chosen names.

The thing that always puzzled me is that none of them actually posed a direct threat to his incredible speed, only really causing momentary conundrums, no matter how clever, so that a man with his abilities should never have been concerned with any of them for very long.

Barry should always have been too fast to create lasting enemies, except for Eobard.

Instead, the Rogues remained in business for years, and eventually came to understand the concept "strength in numbers."

No hero except Batman ever amassed such a regular contingent of opponents quite the way Barry did. I think it's because he believed in the concept of justice. He worked, after all, in the police department, even when he wasn't dressed in scarlet.

The reason it was so shocking, even if completely inadvertent, when Barry killed Eobard Thawne, was that he had always seemed to have removed himself from the equation, believing himself to be an impartial agent, clinical.

That's why he was always considered so aloof, even by his friends, why it was so easy for the Fasted Man Alive to exist at his own pace.

How he could still be late for personal appointments, even though he could outrun even Superman.

The Rogues, more than any other collection of enemies, exploited that, especially during the trial. They were vicious, most of all because they realized they finally had the advantage.

Barry's high school pal Peter Farley agreed to defend him in court. Any other lawyer probably deserves a fair amount of ribbing, but Peter was one of the good ones.

That made the attack on his life all the more heinous. But was it really so surprising that the Rogues would stoop to that level?