QUOTE: Didn't that whole thing kind of come out of nowhere? I mean, the CRISIS is just bopping along and suddenly there's this big machine whatisit (I haven't read CRISIS in some time...what was the machine?)

Anti-matter cannon. 

QUOTE: I mean, everybody goes on about Barry Allen...christing Supergirl perished actually nearly destroying the Anti-Monitor barehanded, during a mission to destroy yet another Anti-Monitor death device, so why the hell wasn't she the "saint" of the DCU?

Because less than a year later Superman was rebooted and she never existed as far as the rest of the DCU was considered.

QUOTE: The Flash dies not only miserably, but anonymously. That was even worse...one of the most recognizable superheroes in the world is offed almost as an afterthought.

Several characters died in Crisis as an afterthought (including the Silver Age Wonder Woman), but is Barry really one of them?  He had half the issue to himself, his demise was foreshadowed throughout the story beginning in #2, and the death issue had a defiant looking Barry and the title "The Final Fate of the Flash."  If you didn't like the execution, fine, but it was hardly an afterthought.

QUOTE: As I recall, Barry's death didn't even create "waves." I don't remember people being up in arms about it. A weeping Superman holding dead Supergirl cover became THE iconic moment of CRISIS, not Barry's withered little corpse dwindling to dust.

I suspect that's because no one felt it would stick.  Supergirl may have had her own series (whether solo book or feature in an anothology) for 30 years, but she was still seen as being ancillary to Superman.  The chances of her staying dead were much greater.  Also, while covers like Crisis #7 were relatively few and far between (and that one certainly stands out from the rest due to sheer number of characters), covers with the hero looking defiant are easier to come by so the image doesn't stand out as much.

QUOTE: If folks think Barry Allen was a "stiff," and therefore undeserving of revitalization, as Superman received, as Batman received, both in the 1980s, then I can only say: Barry might have been a "blank slate" like many of DC's heroes, but that's exactly WHY he could be more interesting than Superman and Batman put together.

All of DC's post-Crisis revitalizations involved personality transplants.  Superman went from thinking of himself as a Kryptonian on Earth to an Earthman who just happened to be conceived elsewhere (which is in keeping with the character as originally created, but not as he was since the 50s).  Clark Kent was treated like he was the real guy rather than being a buffoonish mask for Superman.  Wonder Woman decided to go without a secret id altogether and her interest in Steve Trevor never went beyond friendship.  Batman took a grimmer turn, even for him, and started to be way too territorial.

So what would have happened to Barry, in the name of making him "more interesting?"  It could have worked out, but maybe not.  Marv Wolfman's idea was to pop Barry out in the middle of his "final run," always knowing that one day he'll have to return and finish it.  Or go with Stephen's suggestion of a tweak to what they did with Wally - depowered and having to live up to his own reputation.  Or heck, if you want a younger Flash in the present day DCU, start Barry off as a teenager (maybe with more direct ties to Jay Garrick) do the Wonder Woman thing where he "debuts" in Legends and go from there.  But if they went with stuff like that, or something else altogether, do you really have Barry anymore, except in name?

Or is that all that matters?  Sorta like how Superman's greatest foe can be a corrupt businessman (albeit publically seen as a philanthropist) with ties to Perry White instead of an evil jailbird scientist with a lifelong grudge against Superboy/man as long as he's a bald guy named Lex Luthor?

(BTW, I should mention here that I really really liked DC's Post-Crisis revitalizations, since that probably wasn't too apparent in the preceding.  Or the following for that matter.)

Oh, and lest we forget - the Trial of the Flash was an attempt to shake things up, revitalize the book, etc.  These things don't always work out.  (Case in point - your reaction to the first issue of Rebirth.)  Yes, it's true that killing off Barry means you don't get the "monthly fix" anymore.  But that also means that when you do get a new Barry story, it's the real one rather than what's come out of the latest attempt to "revitalize" him. 

Compare that to what fans of the Silver Age Hawkman got.  They kept the names and little else for the Hawkworld revitalization/reboot and now you never get to see the Silver Age's favorite alien superhero couple.  And whenever they do revisit the old days of the JLA, it's with a different Hawkman taking Katar's spot.  If they'd given the Hawkworld incarnation (at least the characters in the ongoing) different names, then you'd still have access to the all the Hawkmans in a way that made sense.

That's kinda been done with Lightning of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.

I think goons like Mirror Master, Abra Kadabra, and Zoom work well...it is just a matter of being creative with teh villains.

The universe was at stake..

Because the Powers That Be decided it was. Let's not pretend Barry's death was somehow the end product of an inevitable chain of events beyond human control.

As the "mirror image" of the Flash (and I do love that color scheme) Prof Zoom hits too close only because he isn't his "own" character but almost literally a mirror image.

What's cool about the cooler "mirror" threats, like Ultraman or the Abomination or the Red Skull or Doc Doom, they aren't exact duplicates of the hero and can stand on their own as characters. Yet it's pretty clear they are evil versions of Superman, the Hulk, Cap, and Reed Richards. Or rather, they are what COULD happen to those characters if they were twisted just so.

I think one of the other reasons I haven't cared for anything to do with the Flash, or Wally as the Flash, has been the flood, nay an army, of characters surrounding Wally and dictating what he should do, or think, in certain ways. I was reading an excellent little miniseries of the Elongated Man from the 1990s, with art by the late Mike Parobeck, and Wally shows up at one point to drop a bit of information laid on him by the Pied Piper.

The fact that Wally is quoting the Pied Piper is disturbing in itself, because it signals in my mind that Wally "lives" with the Rogues...he's somehow tolerant of them in a way Barry wasn't. Then you have Wally's family. And Wally's barf-Speed Force buds, and suddenly he's bland as dishwater to me.

The Rogues are fun, and they definitely should have their own SECRET SIX style comic. The Flash needs, deserves some new/heftier theats. I don't really think it matters whether Barry runs faster or slower or whatever...as with strength and lifting 50 tons or whatever, once you get over two hundred miles an hour, who among us can relate? Outside of Nascar drivers, that is? What's the diff? Flash runs fast...how fast should only be dictated by the story he's in, reaching down into PERSONAL reserves of strength to run faster, faster, faster still. It's what you call dramatic tension built on the characters, not on XXX amount of speed so the physics majors can smile knowingly.

F*ck the Speed Force. Who created that, by the way? Waid?

My idea (and it's sketchy) for the return of Barry Allen involved Wally West using his honed superior speed to travel into time, in a "Search for Barry Allen" arc, knowing Barry can't be dead (of course, this works better like ten years ago.)

Along the way, Barry and Wally once again team up throughout time, have a ton of adventures, all along with Wally slowly discovering he's becoming more aggressive, more angry, more resentful of Barry. Some kind of weird side effect of the time travel is unlocking something in Wally he didn't know was there.

By the time the two heroes are back "status quo," Wally has become infected with an evil, twisted by his good deed into a monster. He has, for all intents, become the new Prof Zoom/Rival, and Barry's deadliest enemy, in this time and all times.

I thought that was a way to keep Wally active (and actually keep Wally the "stronger" of the two, making him a legit all-time threat physically and personally to Barry) and have Wally assume the Prof Zoom role as his own man. Wally then remains a part of Barry's comic, a co-star much in the way the Red Skull was for Cap in the 1960s, a lingering threat seeking a way to destroy Barry Allen.

Of course, this was also before Superboy "turned", so Wally becoming evil just wouldn't have the same gravitas today, I guess.