Riding the Lightning to Greatness: Wally West Appreciation, Part 2

In the interest of making way for several more DCnU roundtables between my friend Ed and myself, I am going to lickety-split finish up my love letter to Wally West by counting down my other ten favorite moments in his run as The Flash.

Currently these moments are not ranked in any particular way. I mean, I'm presenting in chronological order (though I have a major soft spot for Flash jumping out of a plane), to represent Wally's maturation over time -- from jerky whiner to family man in a few short lightning bursts.

BEST WALLY WEST MOMENTS,
PART DEUX

From Flash #101:

Not everything is hunky-dory for our hero after he returns from heaven to defend Keystone and make time with his lady love. In fact, she kinda can't cope with the fact he actually choose her over Speed Force heaven. Certainly it's a lot of pressure to put on a relationship. How could a person live up to a dream deferred? Wally thinks it's no biggie, Linda thinks he's not seeing the forest for the trees. Which might be a real problem, if he becomes so powerful, she can't even relate to him.

11) So in one of the most interesting allelgorical moments of Mark Waid's run, Wally -- having just realized he can share his powers with others, thanks to his return trip from Speed Vahalla --takes Linda jogging with him at 100 miles per hour. He shares part of his world with her in a way he was never able to before, while realizing that giving her the chance to live the way he does won't solve all their problems. He's only taking things one step at a time, putting in the work everyone needs to put in for their relationship to last. Linda acknowledges this, and they're off and running, a look of excitement and shock on her face. It's a beautiful moment in a complex relationship that deservedly ended in marriage and kids.

From Flash #111:

While struggling to train an impulsive protege and keep the Flash family (The Quicks, Jay Garrick and beaten up Max Mercury) from being shredded by speed ninjas, Wally also has to contend with their psychotic leader, Savitar, a man anxious to kill all speedsters and lay claim to the mysterious Speed Force that now serves double duty as heaven and power source for fast folk. In the "Dead Heat" storyline, Wally separates himself from his team in an effort to find a way to stop the cult-leading maniac.

12) A surprise visit from a descendent from the future (this happens more and more as Waid's run examines the nature of time on both a universal and human scale, i.e., proving there's never enough time, while simultaneously pointing out you can always make time for the adventures you really want to have) gives Wally the answer. He can't outrun the villain, but he can give him what he wants: eternity with the force he's hording. Wally'll run Savitar into the Speed Force, where he'll be dissolved into a billion particles of light, and no longer be a threat to friends and family. In a fluid splash page, Wally stretches out his powers and gives Savitar speed enough to reach the force. "I'll drive," Wally says with determination while Savitar cackles with insane laughter in the background.

It's an incredibly cool-looking shot, but what I love most about it is the difference in temperament displayed by our hero and the villain. Savitar spends most of his time killing his followers, in order to steal their powers and chase Flashes some more. Wally does everything he can to save his fellow heroes, and is clear-eyed enough to risk sacrificing his life for their comfort. Savitar, on the other hand, is blind to his fate, living only as an infinitesimal bit of bits, scattered across heaven and powerless.

In this arc, Wally becomes the self-sacrificing hero his uncle was, taking the step from superhero to experienced leader in a single run towards oblivion.

From Flash #117:

Brushing against the Speed Force sometimes sends you hurtling through time. Don't ask me how this works. As Waid expanded the powers gifted to Wally by hanging out in heaven, he also opened a deus ex machina that pushed Wally into different eras -- different eras he had to run through to reach his present life and love Linda Park (instant story tension, that!).

After killing Savitar, Wally gets thrown several millenia into the future, and his race back to Linda proves fraught. But not as fraught as what he returns to. A frozen popsicle of a girlfriend and a new Ice Age looming over Keystone. Man, wearing those yellow boots can be rough on a guy!

13) Wally's response to this crisis is one of his most badass moments. It involves a crazy-good bluff on the villain Polaris. Taking the purple-suited menace in a headlock, Wall points him at the glacier engulfing the city -- a glacier Polaris helped created. "So, now that I have your attention ... let's review your choices," Flash says. One: Polaris can change the course of the water and ice before it crushes him; Two: Wally can leave him to get crushed by a frozen tsunami (which he'll do, since Linda's been hurt and he owes Polaris nothing.) "Choose! NOW!" Wally shouts, as Polaris uses his magnetic laser beams to push the flow back into the river.

Pretty gutsy move from a desperate guy. But at the same time, you gotta admire a man who gives a bad person the opportunity to do the right thing.

From Flash #119:

Once things in Keystone calm down, of course all hell breaks loose elsewhere! At some point, a suneater devours the sun and the whole world is left to freeze to death, all while Linda's still recovering from being recently iced herself.

In a spin-off issue to the "Final Night" saga, Wally stops city looters and does what he can to keep from panicking about the near-certain death facing humanity. When Linda gets the chance to report about the possibility that the superheroes' last ditch plan may actually incinerate the Earth, Wally demands she not say anything, for fear of driving people into even deeper despair. She argues that people always need to be prepared for the worst, since it allows them to say what they mean, to say goodbye. At this, Wally of course runs into the night to avoid bidding farewell to his girlfriend.

14) But eventually, he ends up at a hospital waiting room, where tons of stranded people are watching Linda report the risk associated with saving the sun. And he listens to her comfort her audience, telling them to have faith in their heroes, even when the night looks blackest. "So long as their confidence shines," she says, "they will not let us down." A little girl reaches up and takes Wally's hand, and tears shimmer in his eyes. "Find the hope to let strength flourish," Linda finishes.

It's her confidence in Wally that prompts him to say goodbye to her by issue's end, to tell her loves her "till the end of time," but that he has a job to do in the long night ahead of him regardless of his fears. And he reaches this point not because he's powerful, but because people like Linda inspire him to keep moving forward. Of everything Mark Waid has to say about what heroes represent to him, this tiny thing may be most important: Our heroes are the people we believe in, but their belief in us is important for their work to succeed. It's a two-way street, in which everyone becomes a hero. Even that little girl who took Flash's hand.

From Flash #129

15) So I've already pointed out how crazy I think it is that Peter Parker and Mary Jane sold their love to the devil. But I gotta say, it's a gimmick The Flash got right. After both Wally and Linda give their love to DC Satan (aka, Neron), they expect that the reign of released hell hounds and dead Barry Allen Rogues he managed to stop running amok. Suffice it to say, they're let down. O. Henry-like bargains don't tickle Neron's fancy.

So what stops his run at taking over the world? Wally and Linda's love for one another. That's right, folks. Their love is corrupting the devil. He's even starting to give food and water to the demons he's been starving since the fall of Rome! He desperately crawls up to Earth to return their hideous kindness, but in an amazing set of panels, Wally and Linda look at one another, then look at Neron, and refuse to take their love back.

Heartbroken over their lost passion or not, Wally and Linda both understand something bigger than them is going on, vis a vis the world succumbing to a hellacious frenzy. So they bargain; they'll only ease Neron's suffering and take their love IF he returns everything to the way it was; no exceptions. He does, and they continue their happily ever after.

If anything, these panels of Wally/Linda shared thought demonstrate how alike in cleverness and brazenness the two are, and how deep their trust runs when it comes to atoning for mistakes and taking a chance on one another.

From Flash #137:

Waid needed a break on his long run on The Flash going into 1998, so he worked with hip young kids Grant Morrison and Mark Millar to keep Wally hitting new speeds in his absence. My favorite of their story arcs is "The Human Race," in which Morrison takes Waid's examination of human potential and multiples it by a bajillion, making the whole human race fight for their survival alongside their champion marathoner, Wally West.

16) Chosen to run a race imposed on Earth by inter-dimensional couch potato space gamblers, Wally struggles while running against a being from a radio frequency world (and this is one of Morrison's less wacky plots!). Exhausted after days of running across planets and through pocket universes, Wally collapses in a pink desert. The headset he wears while running connects him to Linda, who gives him the pep talk of a lifetime. Did Planet Earth ask the other Flashes to run this race? Did they ask Superman? NO! They voted for Wally West--

Wally struggles ...

--Because he's The Flash! He's the fastest man alive!

Wally finally stands up.

"And then some, baby," he says to himself as he begins to run. "And then some."

Getting up and keeping going, even when you're at your limits ... well, that's just what The Flash is all about.

From Flash #150:

In a waaaaaaaay complicated (some might argue too complicated) series of events, Wally finds himself racing across time with the other Flashes, to save each successive generation from being butchered by Barry Allen's identical twin brother, who's crazy and out to kill the legacy of The Flash, aka, everyone and everything Wally cherishes.

At the conclusion of this adventure, Wally finds all his colleagues have gone down in battle, and he alone must change the past to save everyone. Except he can't. Time and again, he tries to undo the damage that's been done, but he fails. Finally, he realizes that the greatest lesson Barry ever taught him was to put his faith in his future, in his ability to shape tomorrow -- "by living up to the standards" Barry had set. In fact, "by living beyond them."

17) He races back to the present, grabs the evil twin and shoves him up to high speed, aiming for dissolving them both into the Speed Force. A sacrifice (once again) worth making, but for perhaps the most touching reason of all: loyalty to the people one cares about. Everything Wally does boils down to the final words he shares with Barry's twin:

"I stop now, you're after Barry like a shot! You hated him! But I loved him! And do you know what that means? That means I WIN!"

And KRA-koom! The villain dissolves into eternity, the day is saved and Wally dies an honorable death (for like the millionth time). But there's no sense grieving, because Wally has fulfilled his destiny -- to surpass the legacy of the other Flashes, to do the title proud, and to succeed based not on guts or glory, but in the gift of gaining total and unselfish love.

Of course, he comes back from this one, too. But it doesn't make the end of Waid's big run on the character any less interesting ...

From Flash #159:

So The Flash finally got married in issue 159, after Morrison and Millar laid the groundwork and Waid ruined one version of a wedding. And Flash mostly gets this second ceremony together because he's worried he'll turn into a creepy alternate universe version of himself. And Linda's not having any of that. So, she objects to her own wedding, when the minister asks if anyone has any words to share, "or forever may you hold your peace."

18) Wally protests that fear of turning into alter-Flash is only one of the reasons he rushed the marriage, and in a stunning bit of business on writer Waid and long-time editor Brian Augustyn's part, he makes up his own vows on the spot, telling Linda he can't wait to find out what they can learn from each other for the rest of their lives. This, of course, melts her worries, and the two are hitched on the spot -- proof positive that no problem is insurmountable if your love is epic and you know how to communicate. Thanks for the lesson, Wally!

From Flash #205:

From the looks of the letters column at the back of each comic during Alberto Dose's run, many were not fans of his artwork. I actually found it delicate, if overly inked, and appropriate to Geoff Johns' noirish tale of everyone forgetting (including our hero), then remembering that Wally West is The Flash.

Johns took the reins from Waid and a series of guest writers, and while I don't think he gets Wally as much as his predecessor did, he built up a Detroit-like Keystone and gave Wally a dogged Midwesternness that served him well in tight jams. I highly disagree with Johns' handling of Barry's return in light of Wally's maturation since 1987 (he's downplayed all of Wally's achievements and made Barry create the Speed Force, just to give the guy a single way to be greater than the other runners), and I definitely disagree with DC's need to erase Wally from their timeline (if that's indeed what they're doing). But every once in a while during his too-Rogues heavy run, Johns found an elegant moment for Wally.

19) This one occurs after Linda's endured a tragic miscarriage, brought on by the villain Zoom, a time-displaced sociopath hell-bent on making Wally a better hero through heartbreak. Linda was going to have twins, but now she's not, thanks to a violent altercation with Zoom. And in response to that accident, Wally talked with God's vengeful spirit, aka The Spectre, and forced everyone on Earth to forget he was The Flash, including himself and Linda. After a while, he figured out who he was, but he can't tell Linda, because she's still reeling from the loss of her children.

She's sitting at their local diner, eating with Wally and talking about quitting medical school (a noble pursuit for her, while Wally's stuck fixing cars, despite his smarts at science -- seriously, GJ?), and he wonders why. She admits it's because people look at her funny when they talk about birth trauma; it's raining outside and it looks cloudy in her eyes, too. He stands, walks over to her, picks her up and holds her. And then we see the rain freeze in drops. Wally literally vibrates both their molecules in a hug to make the seconds stretch out so he can hold her longer. It is a subtle and stunning change of art. Then he lets go and tells her that they'll survive, that nothing is her fault, that her living is more than enough for him. She agrees it's fine for her, too.

And the strength of their relationship in its small moments shines through. Seriously, I can think of no other comic where a husband's comfort is showcased as a heroic moment. Which, of course, it is.

From Flash: Rebirth #6:

Like I said, I'm not nuts about how Barry Allen was made the center of every speedster's (and everyONE's universe in "Flashpoint") during his reintegration as the prominent hero-runner at DC. And I think Flash: Rebirth is a largely wasted opportunity to bring new fans to the book; GJ does almost nothing to explain any of the subjects mulled over by various writers over the years, including the Speed Force, and he can't stop Barry Allen from being boring as paint, or someone we can cheer for outside his old feats.

But there is one way Johns succeeds. It's in a moment of extreme Wally fan service, but it also serves as a nice closer to over twenty years of stories about a young man looking up to, surpassing, and then redeeming his mentor through heroic actions and building a family of his own.

20) And so we come to our final moment with Wally West. By the time Flash: Rebirth rolled around, Wally had kids, the twins who were restored to him through a twist in time, and had taken a confident place at the head of The Flash family table. So when Barry returns from death, he has to step up and help his mentor readjust to society and find a purpose in being alive again.

There's a bunch of malarkey about Professor Zoom, the Reverse-Flash, creating a negative Speed Force (is that hell?), and none of it makes much sense. But things get serious when Zoom runs back through time to kill Barry's wife and Wally's aunt, Iris. Understandably, Barry freaks out and barrels ahead without conserving his energy, burning out and sure he'll lose the only woman he's ever loved. Then Wally appears in the timestream, running hard and grasping his uncle by the arm, saying, "I've got you."

"I've got you." He sure does. Wally may have had to carry the mantle of The Flash only to return it to Barry Allen, but his run on the character deserved all the praise it got. Wally strapped himself in for a wild ride and never gave up; even when facing insurmountable odds, he was always able to quip a joke and think up a solution to the problem facing him, all while learning from his mistake and honoring those who came before.

That's some hero.

I hope he returns someday.

We should be so lucky.

My Name is Wally West. I'm the Flash. The Fastest Man Alive.

Last Friday, Brian Cunningham, the editor of the DCnU Flash book posted the following on The Source blog:

"The Flash is a single man. He’s a bachelor who has never been married."

This is the most major change in the Flash history that I've heard about so far. And it explained to me just HOW the folks at DC intended to disappear my favorite of the five Flashes that have existed in continuity since the late 1980s/early 1990s. That favorite is Wally West.

Barry Allen, the Silver Age Flash who will be the focus of this rebooted book, used to be married to crusading reporter and time traveler Iris Allen. Iris West-Allen, to be exact -- aka, Wally West's aunt, and the person who ushered Wally into his first meeting with the Flash, and so is in some part responsible for his receiving the power of super-speed in the first place, which led to him becoming The Flash in the last place.

(Actually, technically, Barry's the one who ensured Wally was standing next to a weird batch of chemicals that fell all over Wally when he got hit by lightning and gave him super-speed, but that's such a ridiculous origin, I don't really want to go into it.)

By making Iris a supporting player in Barry's book (now she's a crusading blogger, so she's hip with the times), the DC editors are essentially making sure Wally and Barry never meet. This is about the cleverest way I can think of for DC to resolve having no more than one Flash running at top-speed at one time (apparently having five million Batmans is okay, but having two Flashes crowds the buyers' market.).

This change reminds me what a family-based book Wally's Flash has always been. The emphasis has always been on a legacy of heroes growing up underneath each others' wings. But also, almost every Flash is related to one another: uncle, nephew, grandson, son and daughter, etc. What makes The Flash a strong hero is his family and friends, and seeing Barry without his wife will give a whole new slant to a legacy book that's been running on family fumes for the last twenty years or more. Certainly it will mean the emphasis will be on a loner and not a paragon of a family man.

Brian Cunningham continues his thoughts on this change by saying:

"... I make no apologies for opening up a traditional storytelling avenue with our hero’s romantic life, something that’s been shut closed for a very long time now. This is no indictment of marriage. I’m a married man and wouldn’t trade it for anything. But in the realm of fiction, I feel strongly that this change to Barry opens up fresh, new creative directions and exciting new storylines."

He further points out that Barry's romantic life needs to be freshened up for 2011. This reasoning reminds me of what's going on with Superman's love triangle with Lois Lane. Like Lois, Barry will start his book with a new significant other. And my feelings about this change and DC's general attitude toward marriage and divorce can be found in other blog posts.

What really makes me sad about downsizing Iris is that it effectively takes Wally West out of the picture (as well as makes Iris a girl Friday, instead of an agent in her own story). My favorite Flash grew from being an inexperienced, scared, often whiny blowhard after Barry's death, to the most creative, honest and human hero I can think of. As a reader, I was able to relate to his ego and fears as well as his desire to make good on the legacy laid before him by a fallen comrade.

All these factors contributed to many fans hating him when he first debuted in Flash #1 waaaay back in 1987, but I've always found him fascinating. Because he had personality flaws to work on, because he had doubts but squelched them to do what was right, because he made mistakes and tried desperately to correct them. Because he struggled to become the kind of adult his Uncle Barry would be proud of. Who hasn't had these types of growing pains?

And watching a character grow to fulfill the promise that lay inside them all along ... well, I can't think of a more satisfying or American journey. And I'm sad I won't be seeing Wally grow into old age with his wife and kids. But in honor of his memory, I'm posting a list of my all-time favorite Wally West moments, from the twenty-four years of his run as a character. Because I'll still have those stories, even though he's been taken out of the DC Universe (for now, maybe forever). And I think you ought to share in the memories, too. They're fun, they're heartfelt and they show what comics writers can do when they allow their heroes to touch the ground and build a life, as well as run around and be rad.

BEST WALLY WEST MOMENTS

From Flash #1:

The first ever Wally Flash comic took the titular hero in a whole new direction. After Barry's death, Wally moves to New York City and takes up the mantle of The Flash (having been known as Kid Flash for years). Celebrating his twentieth birthday with the Teen Titans takes up the majority of the first part of this issue, but things really get going when Wally's engaged with the task of running a heart across the country in order for doctors to complete a transplant on time. He does the job with gusto, then demands health insurance in exchange for his good deed, claiming Barry died a pauper and it's only right he find a way to protect himself, however selfish he looks. Jaws drop and he skulks away towards a flight home, paid for by the hospital.

So already we have an unlikeable protagonist, a man who is expected not to cover his own back because he wears a costume. Wally callously ignores the looks he gets at the hospital, but the impact of these judgements (and a run-in with immortal villain Vandal Savage) haven't gone away. Which leads me to "Favorite Moments 1 and 2!"

1) Wally's describing Barry's debts via narration as he runs to the plane. Wally reminds himself that Barry taught him he had to treat his powers as a precious gift, but that he died with no money and left the Justice League to pay for his funeral. "He left me his costumes," Wally points out. "And a picture of what a hero should be." It's the emptiness of both those items, costumes and a picture, that drew me to Wally immediately upon meeting him. How hard it is to know what the right action is when all you have are totems and not the actual man to guide you. In moments like this, Wally's immaturity belies his loss and self-doubt.

2) Now comfortably ensconced on the plane, Wally looks up from the crossword he's completing to see terrorists attempting to take over the flight. "I don't think about it," his narration states. "I can't think about it," referring to both his previous Barry wallowing and the guy having a heart seizure in the seat next to him. He zips out of his seat and lunges at a man with a gun.

"Speed, properly focused, becomes power," he claims as he punches the guy once. Then he punches the guy twenty-five more times at super-speed, feels his knuckles break, and hits him twelve more times. Geez, Wally, subdue that dude much? Here we see Wally for what he is -- a man so burdened by the loss of his uncle, that fear drives him to be callous and angry, in the guise of protecting himself and others. It's a trait we see develop in his actions and relationships over the course of premiere writer Mike Baron's run, and it marks this guy as a hero to both dislike and pity. Control is key, Wally thinks he has it, but he couldn't be more wrong about that as he sleeps with another man's wife, gets hopped up on Velocity 9, a speed drug, and has to learn how to live with his overbearing, insufferable mother.

From Flash #19:

After a year or so of stories, Mike Baron made way as writer of The Flash, and William Messner-Loebs joined the title. He stayed on the book for four years and was an extremely popular scribe. He went a long way towards turning Baron's grittier, jerkier version of Wally into the heroic Flash he's considered today. Along the way, he had Flash tackle the issue of AIDS, homelessness and the wealth gap in 1980s America. For me, this stuff wasn't always a good fit, but lightening Wally up from his grief led to his gaining a solid support cast of scientists, villains, girlfriends, and a guy who had a black hole inside him. The goofier moments and gentler, more amiable tone of Wally makes this run a fun read, and nothing exemplifies that more than Flash #19, in which he crashes a party thrown by Barry's old Rogues Gallery with his sometime-lady, hot but dumb model Connie.

3) Looking for a way to impress her with NYC nightlife, Wally ushers Connie into a party of low lives and half-reformed psychopaths, with such ridiculous names as Captain Cold, Mirror Master and Rainbow Raider (who's colorblind but throws color at you, I guess?). As the party reaches its paranoid climax, Rainbow Raider and Weather Wizard get into a skirmish over a body mike he's wearing to sell their story to the National Snoop.

The result of this betrayal? A rainstorm inside the posh hotel where the event's taking place! In a hilarious set of panels, the Wizard runs from the room and everyone gets drenched. Captain Cold asks Wally what he's going to do about it, and Wally asks what he should catch the man for, "Raining without a permit?" Besides, he points out, no one really wants the Wizard to come back. With that, the party returns to normal, and the hobnobbing continues.

That Wally has good priorities when it comes right down to it. I wouldn't leave the party, either.

From Flash 34:

4) While being held by super-slow villain The Turtle, Wally is forced into a deprivation chamber where he hallucinates his worst fears, chief of which is disappointing Barry. Beaten down by his mentor's insults and judgements about his performance as The Flash, Wally finally retaliates, unleashing the thinly veiled resentment he's had for the man since issue 1. He lunges at Barry, both sporting Flash costumes. "You pretended to love me," he screams as they wrestle with one another. "Then you left! You died! You betrayed me! I'm a monster, but so are you!" He begins to choke Barry. "I'll kill you!"

Up till now, Wally has never expressed his extreme sense of betrayal as the result of Barry's noble sacrifice (he basically saved the entire universe in 1985, dying in the process). Messner-Loebs had lightened up Wally's anguish considerably by this point, but here we see it scream to the forefront during an Oedpial explosion that leads to Wally pwning Barry, killing him, claiming his rightful place as The Flash and realizing nothing he's being seeing or doing is real, all in the space of two pages. Barry's often a peaceful guide to Wally in later issues, but it's here, in Wally's struggle to best his mentor, that we see how deeply ambivalent Wally can feel about the shadow of expectations and grief that lay over him. Only by confronting these feelings can he become a true hero to others, something Mark Waid picks up in his run on the title. But I'll get to that in a bit.

From Flash #54:

5) Nobody Dies: This might be the craziest "done-in-one" story in Flash history. At this point in Messner-Loebs' run, Wally is working for the federal government to catch baddies who ran out on paying their taxes. In this issue, Wally impressively saves someone from falling out a window first, and then when the plane he's aboard later is sabotaged, he realizes that the escaped air pressure has sucked the stewardess he'd had a lovely chat with out into the open air.

What can he do? He's not Superman, but he had a nice conversation with this lady, and he wants to do what he can.

SO HE JUMPS OUT OF THE PLANE.

Just to sum up, Flash can't fly. At all. And in a priceless splash page, you see his tiny frame rocket out of the damaged plane, and his narration opines, "This is so stupid."

Miraculously, he finds the stewardess, she feeds him some peanuts to help his super-metabolism and he's magically able to motor them down to the ground by winding his legs around a lot. (I think?) It all sounds ridiculously dumb when I type it. But on the page, it is chock-a-block with the tension of someone attempting the impossible and succeeding.

Because that's what The Flash does. And this is the first time Wally realizes that. It's why the audacious plane splash page is moment number five.

From Flash #72:

And now we come to the Mark Waid era of The Flash. Waid has said that he IS Wally, and it'd be a hard thing to argue. He took this character from the ridiculous/hard-hitting stories previous writers had involved him with, and made the character's journey into adulthood and hero-dom somehow achingly personal. No one has the speed this man has, but Waid's use of the Flash mantle as an allegory for the quest each man and woman goes through in order to fulfill their amazing potential -- well, that gets at what the heart of Wally West is to me, and justifies why comics are our modern mythology. But I digress.

7) Waid is a romantic at heart, and he pairs Wally with epic love Linda Park in issue 72. He and this TV news reporter had a love/hate relationship when Messner-Loebs first introduced her, but Waid takes their attraction to new levels early in his run, by having Linda ask for once and all if she and Wally are more than friends. She's leaving for Midway City for a new job, and if he wants to keep her in Keystone (where he's relocated to pal around with the first Flash, Jay Garrick), he needs to make a move.

After almost being encased in gold, he does. Once he's defeated Dr. Alchemy, he races her train to keep her close to him. In a series of amazing Greg LaRoque panels, we watch as Wally races the train in the same amount of time it takes Linda's purse to fall from the baggage loft in her car.

And just when you wonder if he won't make it before the train hits her destination, he catches the purse. He's fast enough to deflect Linda's protestations that he showed up at the last minute and kisses her. Then he picks her up, as well as her baggage, and runs off the train. To which she asks, what'll I tell the folks in Midway City? To which he replies, "Tell them the truth. Tell them you got carried away."

Mushy? Yup. Corny? You betcha. And yet, somehow perfect for these two people and Wally's strides towards being an adult and making a serious connection.

From Flash #77:

So in an incredible move, Waid and company brought back Barry Allen to usurp Wally's place as The Flash in 1993. My friend Nick found this to be Silver Age garbage, but I'd argue his take on Geoff Johns' run on the Barry Allen Flash suffers far more from putting things back as they were in order to live out the comics he loved as a kid (You probably wouldn't think this unless you'd read the entirety of Wally's run as The Flash, which lamely enough, I have). There's nothing wrong with the Silver Age revamp in theory, but I don't want to go along for that nostalgia ride, especially when Waid does a great job of having Wally face his fears here. Is Waid always the most adventurous storyteller? Not always. But he kills when it comes to generating strong character arcs, and it is in "The Return of Barry Allen" that Wally lets go of comparing himself to Barry, who's gone insane and may not be who he says he is.

8) This culminates in one of the best splash pages of LaRoque's run on the character. Barry's just trounced Jay Garrick at a construction site, and Wally (who's been pitying himself at home while watching the destruction on TV) arrives too late, picking up the unconscious Jay's helmet and staring into the distance. Knowing now who Barry REALLY is, and knowing he's the only one who can stop him, Wally narrates, "I wasn't fast enough. But those days are over. My name is Wally West. I'm the Flash. And now that I know the secret of Barry Allen, I'm going to bring him down ... or die trying."

In most circumstances, this would be waaay melodramatic, but Wally's simple assertion of his identity shows that he's ready to take this fight to the next level, and take on the responsibility of doing hard things as a hero. And that makes for an exciting conclusion to the story!

From Flash #91:

After having Wally finally, truly step out from under Barry's shadow in his first major character arc, Waid moved on to having Wally accept one of the hardest things about being a hero: You can't be everywhere at once.

9) In this issue, Wally uses the Speed Formula (some weird arithmetic that will increase his velocity) to effectively freeze time. One of his swifter friends, Max Mercury, points out why using this trick is a terrible idea. They walk around Keystone City and Max shows him all the people he can't help in the same frozen second, people trapped in fires and crashed cars. Wally didn't know about these people when he froze time to avoid a helicopter disaster, and he can't prioritize everyone. All he can do is help where he can, all he can do is make a choice, or he'll be immobilized in time forever, just like he is now.

In several solid, workman-like panels, artist Mike Wieringo shows Wally heading back to the helicopter, and during this frozen time, stopping its crash, all the while narrating, "There are always choices to be made. ... In the end, all I can do is find the courage to keep choosing ... and make those choices count." Then he whispers, "Go."

And time starts again. Because Wally has to move forward in his life, just as the world does.

From Flash #100:

In "Terminal Velocity," Wally dies to save Linda Park and the whole universe from eco-terrorists intent on using the world's resources to destroy the planet. In comics land, Wally goes to heaven by running too fast to stop a laser beam from hitting his lady. But his link to this heaven, the Speed Force (a name Waid always hated), is also what gives him super-speed. And it's love for Linda that allows him to re-materialize his atoms and return to a long, loving life with her.

10) Basically, Wally dies in issue 99 and this issue opens with Linda losing it, picking up a gun and kicking some serious eco-terrorist ass, along with Wally's bereft superhero and non-superhero friends. But a ghost-like Wally returns to amp up the speed, heal a broken Jesse Quick and take down the villain, Kobra. Then he vanishes in an explosion.

And Linda loses it again, running from the friends pleading with her to accept his death. But when she runs, she runs smack-dab into Wally. They kiss, and she exclaims, "I knew! I knew you were back! But what ... How did ...?" To which Wally replies, "Took you long enough to get over here."

Typical. And perfect. Wally goes to heaven, comes back because his love for Linda won't let him dissolve yet, and it ain't no thang.

Yikes. Even for a nerd, this post is long. I'm going to take a break and let you catch your breath from my gushing. Part two, or Wally's next ten greatest moments according to me, will be coming up real soon.

Till WHAT Do You Part?

Okay, so all this talk about dismantling Clark and Kent and Lois Lane's marriage, only twelve years old, has had me thinking a lot lately.

About wedding bells.

About marriage vows.

About power couples who travel across dimensions and somehow still have time to work on their relationship, like these happy people:

Basically, I've spent a lot of time thinking about marriage in comics and what it means, overall. Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman seem to have it figured out (despite the world's worst, least feminist-friendly superhero names). How is it their marriage remains relatively un-messed with by writers and editors alike, while Clark and Lois will be hitting the reset button on their antagonist rival reporter relationship come this fall. I'm telling you now, look forward to plenty of old school Siegel style banter:

Wow, tell us how you really feel, Lois. Don't you know your nerdy co-worker is sensitive? Exhibit A, from a later Lois Lane comic:

All in all, I feel like marriage is taken for granted as a chance for character growth within mainstream superhero comics. It's just something that happens, and it's something that ends as easily. Often, marriage is dismantled with nary a thought to the impact it has on the characters within hero books. I suppose this shouldn't surprise me, given that I can think of maybe three writers in past DC stables (Greg Rucka, Mark Waid and Kurt Busiek) who were able to drum up marital conflict without resorting to soap operatic misunderstandings, cliches about somebody being in danger while hubby's out on patrol, or running themes of miscommunication until somebody ends up in a mental hospital (thanks, Daredevil--you're great with the ladies, but once you're in an actual relationship, women don't fare well in your book).

Side note: Is it any wonder the writers I mentioned above no longer work at DC full-time? They're too realistic (actually, they all have personal side projects to work on, but many of those projects probe into the superhero as an allegory for American life in amazing ways)! In his run on Superman, Rucka had Clark and Lois grow apart simply because Superman was having a lousy time at work and Lois was assigned to follow a war in another country. Realistic, everyday things like time and distance separated them, and the sadness they both feel at their limited communication is palpable. Check out this short series of panels, in which Lois heads out for her assignment. I defy you to find a better depiction of two people who want to say a lot but can only manage to say a little under the circumstances:

DC's competition fares no better at allowing married couples to act as married couples do, I fear. Hell, Joe Quesada over at Marvel made one of the least popular editorial decisions in that company's history by breaking up Peter Parker and Mary Jane's marriage. How he do this? He had the couple make a deal with the devil. Seriously. Mephisto vows to save his Spidey's older aunt, who's lived a long, long life in exchange for the following thing:

Diabolical. What he does with their love is anyone's guess. At least when DC's version of the devil, Neron, stole Wally West and Linda Park's love, he ended up cuddling and comforting all the minions he'd been torturing only hours before. Still ridiculous. Then again, Mark Waid also had Wally race into a Vahalla for speedsters, only to come back because Linda's love was his beacon back to Earth. Corny, I know. But still believable, in its fairy tale way. Perhaps more astonishingly, Waid took Wally from being this guy--

--To being this guy:

Articulate, a leader of heroes, and just plain adorable in his marriage proposal. (Of course, Waid had help from Mark Millar and Grant Morrison here. Good on ya, guys!)

But this rather picture-happy rambling forces me to come to a point. What's a more mature, courageous decision than dedicating your life to the support, love and protection of another human being? (You might even call it heroic.) In comics, marriages should be taken at least as seriously as they are in real life, given that character actions in comics often stand as huge metaphors, slipping into allegories, about the everyday heroism displayed and required by real people. What do writers have to say about marriage? How can they make understand the state of the union in a contemporary context through a pulpy, pop culture medium? Could they surprise us? Often, they don't.

Like when, say, Black Canary has to murder her husband on their honeymoon, but it turns out that he's an impostor, so no consequential blow-back happens -- despite having harbored the impression that somebody killed the man they loved for more than a few moments. I gotta think that such plots rob the exploration of marriage any validity or meaning beyond spinning the wheels of a character's lifespan. Rather than showing what a major and somewhat terrifying commitment marriage is, to prove our hero an even greater hero, writers sometimes pull the rug out from under a reader and create false drama.

Not only can violent conflicts be upended using the impostor angle, not only can marriages be stolen by the devil rather than allowed to run a natural course into lovelessness and exhaustion (based on compelling character mistakes), they can be thrown into the jaws of death and THEN snatched right back, as if nothing bad ever happened in the first place. It's okay. Green Arrow and Black Canary are still together today, those crazy kids.

Ultimately, I think it's the impermanence of the marriage institution that drives me a little crazy. Maybe I'm revealing myself to be a prude here, believing in marriage as an institution when half of marriage fail nowadays. But let me be clear: I don't think divorce should be kept out of comics, I don't think everyone should be married, and watching superheroes come to that conclusion would be FASCINATING. An emotional landscape they can't conquer is rare to find; why not explore something more complicated?

But the marketing departments at DC and Marvel seems to think the readers of comic books can't handle a sticky situation involving one's spouse. Rather than go for the heart, they go for the entrails and the easier solution--death, mistaken identities, curses, etc.--rather than explore real conflict between two people. We're already dependent on technology to connect for us; avoiding actual human interaction in our art, substituting it with gore and sophomoric horror and compromises--what does that say about us about an American culture?

I imagine this avoidance mindset grew out of the male-created romance comics from the 1940s and 1950s, where women were either temptresses or pure as snow, and fulfilled their boyfriend's every wish because that was what was expected of them. These comics were written for young girls to bask in sudsy, forbidden predicaments, true, but they also reinforced both the fantasies and nightmares believed of women by nerdy male writers, which led to things like this:

Liking girls, or having any kind of sexual or emotional dependence on anyone--regardless of gender in few cases--leads to compromise, and I'm sometimes told, a lack of action in superhero books. In other words, when heroes get married, they're a snorefest. Well, that's only true if a woman's either a Madonna or a whore. Making her a character in her own right is a step in the right direction for creating good stories and making honest statements about marriage in a surprising context. What makes Mr. Fantastic and Sue Storm work probably has a lot to do with the fact that they star in a book dedicated to showcasing the weird families we make for ourselves, just as The Fantastic Four does after being irradiated into being superheroes. Because of their choice to stick together as a family, strong characters are formed, and marriage features easily in the book, and will always be a permanent feature in it.

I'd love to see more of this. I'd love to see more characters working through the regular stress of a relationship within heightened, universe-shattering circumstances; that's drama on a goofy, adventure-sized level. It could be meaningless, but the right writer could pack it with significance, showing us why we love the characters we're reading in the first place, and how they can prove to us us when we need to suck it up and get on with our lives.

But you don't get that attitude often. More often, you end up with dead ghost detectives, or worse, rebooted lives with a strange new set of circumstances to tangle with--not deep issues, just plot-driven ones. (Check out the Superman 2000 proposal, later cannibalized by several writers involved in the rejected project, for an example of an O. Henry-esque sacrifice to effectively reboot Clark and Lois' relationship, as their marriage is wiped out of everyone's minds: http://superman.nu/theages/History/2000/SUPERMAN2000.php.)

Marriage can be active, it can be as nail-biting as any villain's deathtrap; Aquaman and Mera (they're basically eco-terrorists now), Reed and Sue (um, they travel through dimensions and have kids), and Clark and Lois (balancing work with his constant absence) have proved this on and off--overcoming obstacles that make their feelings for one another even more epic. Getting hitched allows characters to face a new type of conflict and react in ways that makes them even more likeable, complex and adventurous. In that light, de-institutionalizing the concept of marriage, or making characters' choice of it insignificant via rebooted circumstances is a travesty of wasted opportunities. I hope the writers at DC remember this when they decide to have Clark pop the question again years from now.

Why I Hate the Flash (An Opinion Which Causes Undue Concern Amongst My Peers, But Which Remains Valid, Nonetheless)

Metropolis Is Actually Chicago Proudly Presents a Guest Post by Nick Philpott!

There is a problem in comic books today, and that problem has a face.

And that face is The Flash.

The Scarlet Speedster. If you ask anyone who their favorite Justice Leaguer is, you will probably get either Batman or Superman as an answer (my feminist friends skew toward Wonder Woman hate because "she doesn't wear any damn pants"). You rarely hear someone say, "You know who the baddest motherfucker in the Justice League is? The Flash. That motherfucker is fast." Because while it is valid that he is fast, that is all he ever seems to be.

I'll let you insert your own dirty jokes about what he is fast at. Yes, I ended that last sentence with a preposition.

The only time I can recall being particularly moved by the Flash before sitting down to write this article/retrospective/disorganized ramble was probably the only time 90% of comic book fans have felt strongly connected to him: the one time four years before I was born when he died by running too fast. I'm just gonna let that sink in for a bit. Also, let's remember, that, while noble, Barry Allen's sacrifice happens in like, the third month of twelve in Crisis on Infinite Earths. It was a stumbling block for the Anti-Monitor, but only a stumble.

I think Barry Allen is a good place to start with why I hate the Flash. Every fucking person in those books is related to everyfuckingbody else. Barry Allen and Professor Zoom/Reverse Flash/That Asshole From the Future Who Won't Pick A Name are in-laws, for Christ's sake. Which is not to discount the inherent villainy amongst in-law relationships.

The first independent Flash book I read (independent as in, it was not a Justice League team-up, and I was not under the impression that Batman would show up) was Geoff Johns's The Flash: Rebirth, because I loved what Geoff had done with Green Lantern in the same fashion. Say what you will about him, he is a man who knows what makes a superhero a superhero to everyone and what they need to deal with to come back from the dead after a couple of decades, etc.

ANYWAY, Flash: Rebirth. For the first issue and a half, let's say, I felt like I had gotten lost in some freakish family reunion of the Wests and Allens, with "Aunt Iris Allen" and "Linda Park-West" and "Bart Allen," the grandson that was born to Barry's children that he and Iris had in the 30th century. after he died in the Crisis, somehow (this kind of time-hopping, trip-happy near-paradox is why most people find comic books to be, in a word, retarded).

On the whole, though, I thought Rebirth was fantastic. Seeing the Flash and Reverse Flash explicitly shown as two sides of the same coin in an electrical sense, a temporal sense, etc., was pretty excellent. They're a battery, and one side can't function without the other to function against. The unstoppable force and the immovable object, if you will. And the notion of Barry actually being the Speed Force. Brilliant. It's these kind of humongous gestures that make comic books the most endearing medium to me, because they know no budgetary limitations, there is no derision for bad CGI, it is whatever the artists and the writer can wrangle from their brains. Sometimes, it's incoherent drivel, but sometimes, you get a glimpse of genius.

So I thought, "Hey, a book where I actually cared about the Flash, and the fact that he was pretty fast. Maybe I should do some research." And sure enough, one of the biggest Flash-fans out there , Sarah Bowden (author of this blog!--Ed.), had several volumes on-hand that she wanted me to read. I will not pretend that reading Rebirth and the two books she gave me make me a Flash-factmaster, but they gave me enough to articulate (with evidence!) why I think 98% of Flash stories can die in a fire, and how that is representative of the stagnation endemic to comic books as a larger medium.

The books she loaned me were The Return of Barry Allen by Mark Waid, a saga from the early '90s, which notably pre-dates the Speed Force and therefore the notion that Barry Allen was merely a part of the Speed Force (or the Speed Force itself), and The Human Race by Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, which is actually two smaller stories in one volume. I will go ahead and say that, while in general, I'm a Grant Morrison fanatic, a casual fan of Mark Millar, and a person who would like to see Mark Waid just retire before he be allowed to ruin things any further, but Sarah assured me that I would find Return of Barry Allen (which I have been assured is not only a classic of the Flash canon, but comics in general) enlightening, Flash-wise, so I held my tongue, checked my mental baggage and dove into it headfirst.

I'm going to skip to the end, without summarizing the book, and say that I hated it, with a fire that I reserve for few things. One of things about the Flash that I found admirable, if not particularly interesting per se, was that when the Flash Family died, they capital-D Died. After Barry Allen outran the Anti-Monitor's gizmo, he was Dead. When Professor Zoom vibrated his hand into Iris' head, she was Dead. That generation was gone, and it was time for Wally and Linda to shine, albeit with an occasional hand from Jay Garrick, who is just too goddamn lovable to keep down (like a grandpa that just will not take a goddamn nap). The Return of Barry Allen came out in 1993, just shy of a decade after Barry's death. Granted, in superhero-time, eights months is an eternity, so the fact that they made it a whole year, much less eight, is laudable. Hell, Superman was only dead for like, seven months and Captain America and Batman were more accurately gone than dead. But regardless, it was only eight years. Infinite Crisis was only six years ago, to put that in perspective.

This isn't to say I was anti-Barry Allen returning. I've got no beef with Barry, mostly because I never knew him. I've got a beef with comic book writers feeling slighted because they never got to tell "their" stories with their favorite superheroes (see also: the return of Jason Todd, people who still write Justice Society of America books), so they resurrect them, usually by cosmic coincidence or convenient amnesia.

I mean, come on, people. There has to be a line between comic books and soap operas, or else, what has this all been about?

So there's Mark Waid, bringing back Barry Allen. The whole point of the arc was a noble one. Making Wally overcome his limitations to be faster than Barry opened up a whole 'nother side of of Wally that was pretty rad to explore, as far as temporal/spatial distortions and faster-than-time-travel. My problem lies with Waid's methods. Because not only did he feel like he needed to bring "Barry" back, but he's made Professor Zoom's hatred of Barry rooted in a fucking time paradox. (Author's note: I fucking hate time paradoxes.)

Summary: basically Zoom grows up in the 25th century (or some fuckin' nonsense) idolizing Barry Allen, has plastic surgery to LOOK like Barry Allen, (this part is fuzzy, it might just be a clever mask), buys the Cosmic Treadmill at a thrift store, makes himself super fast by doing future experiments of some indeterminate but painful sort, runs back in time, but far enough to meet Barry, goes to the Flash museum to mope, finds out that Barry's nemesis Zoom is actually himself and that one day in his future/the Flash's past, Barry Allen will snap Zoom's neck for generally being a complete and total bastard. Wally has a battle of wits with Zoom in the Flash Museum and gets Zoom to run back into the future on the Cosmic Treadmill, which somehow erases his memory because that's convenient. Oh, and Zoom read all about Barry's biography in a book called THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE FLASH by -- wait for it -- Iris Allen.

This summary seems like it is haphazard , but I assure you, it was written less than a week after reading the book.

ANYWAYS, The Return of Barry Allen. Aside from the fact that Zoom hates the Flash because Zoom hates the Flash (metaphysics, people, it's not hard), the endgame of the whole saga is (a) yes, Barry is gone, (b) yes, Professor Zoom is still a dick, (c) Wally had the power all along, he just had to believe in himself (gag), (d) I don't think Johnny Quick's "Speed Formula" makes any goddamn sense, mathematically or otherwise, (e) even I was shocked at the rampant objectification of women in the book [Come on, Linda, no one cooks things at the stove for dinner in just their panties {especially not bacon. That grease will spatter and it will burn you.}], and (f) I have no idea why Mark Waid keeps getting work, but I also know exactly why he keeps getting work. He only deals with the familiar, which is the gateway to my larger thesis.

Each person who has to write an ongoing comic series essentially agrees to two things: (1) I have this cast of characters who do these set things, and within that framework, I will do as I please, and (2) I will not fuck with that which has come before, unless it can be fixed before the end of the arc. Everyone who signed on to write Green Lantern Pre-Rebirth knew that he could make anything he willed out of his ring, he had an oath to say to recharge his ring in a battery, and his ring did not work on things that were yellow. Good writers, like Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison, take these parameters, figure out a reason why they're there, and subvert them into something new, i.e., Parallax, the yellow impurity, Superboy-Prime escaping the pocket universe to "fix" ours.

Sub-par writers, like Mark Waid, Tony S. Daniel, and Judd Winick (to name a few, and risk burning some bridges), take those confines and do what they can without stepping on any tails. People have said that Mark Waid is too nostalgic for Silver-Age comics to be writing a current ongoing series, and I'm hard-pressed to come up with evidence to the contrary.

Therein lies my problem with the Flash: writers who are willing to go different places with the Flash are few and far between. For example, it shouldn't be groundbreaking to me that because Wally West can run at the speed of light, he can time travel, because that is basic relativistic physics. But it is groundbreaking for me, and that's exactly what I loved about the Grant Morrison/Mark Millar Flash arcs.

In the second arc in the book (I think the arc itself is called "The Black Flash" or "Death Comes to Wally West" or something in that vein. Regardless, it was self-explanatory), Mark Millar takes Wally to his limits by killing Linda in the first issue and making him literally beat Death in a race.

Sidebar: I think it's fair to say that the Black Flash is one of my favorite comic book characters and I have literally no idea why. That's a whole other article, honestly. Double sidebar: why is there no Flash/Black Flash The Seventh Seal parody?

ANYWAY, in this arc, instead of having it revealed that a character is still alive (and somehow in the 30th century, setting the stage for a really awkward reunion), the removal of Linda forces Wally to redefine himself as a person and as the Flash. All the growth of character in The Return of Barry Allen happens in the last issue in about five pages while Zoom relishes how evil he is and how soundly he has beaten Wally (even though that was a Mark Waid story, where the good guys can't lose). In the Black Flash arc, Wally grows a little bit in each issue, until it builds to a very satisfying conclusion where, (HERE THERE BE SPOILERS) he races Death to the end of time and then voluntarily runs into the Speed Force to retrieve Linda (END OF SPOILERS).

This is remarkable on several levels. Beating Death is impressive, but depending on how fast you define Wally to be, it's something that could easily be written. In this case, it's a measure of Wally's tactical skill and not his speed. He knows he can't just keep running from the Black Flash forever, so he runs to the end of time, when there IS no forever, and where there can be no Death because there is no Life by which to measure it.

Also, before this issue, the speedsters had discovered the Speed Force, but it was still largely foreign to them, with Max Mercury hyper-meditating and getting even closer to it, but never entering it fully. Wally, who several issues before was wallowing about being powerless and alone forever, about being a useless, overgrown child with more in common with a track team than the Justice League, has gained such confidence in himself and his abilities that he runs in to the Speed Force to retrieve Linda, because he knows he can run back out.

In the final analysis, what I'm saying here is this: there is an ever-expanding group of writers who are afraid to tackle comics for what they can be, to touch on fresh, and frankly, mature ideas. The industry is at a similar place to the early '80s, where by and large, the books have no depth, and are there merely to continue to grind on sworn fans. It is time for another revolution, now that Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore have sort of fallen off the radar.

What makes writers so afraid of the unknown? What better place is there for narrative experimentation than a comic book? Hell, Grant Morrison's Final Crisis was about the entire universe realizing that they were all fictional characters and fighting against the enemy, which was a blank page.

How fucking rad is that?

I'm sorry for singling out Mark Waid and naming other names, but honestly, they're going to get a paycheck this week for writing comics, and I'm not, so I don't feel too bad. It'd just be nice if this blog reminds writers at large that there's no reason to run the book into the unknown. Because you know you can always run back.

Nick Philpott is a playwright and comic book fan/sometimes author living in Athens, Ohio. His best time for the mile is 12m 36s, and he's fucking proud of it.

POST SCRIPT: For the other side of the debate coin, re: The Flash, check out Siskoid's blog about The Return of Barry Allen (8/1/07) ...