Tag Archives: Wally West

Super-Hero Weddings

Originally posted way back in 2003, long before the infamous Green Arrow/Black Canary wedding!

Cover: Flash #165 Over the past few weeks I’ve been going through the Silver Age Flash series, cataloging character appearances. I’m almost done – only 25 issues left – but it reminded me of something:

Why is it that super-hero weddings are almost always interrupted by super-villains – even when the hero’s identity is secret?

Is it just that readers expect a story with some sort of fight in it, and if it’s just a wedding they’ll be disappointed?

Consider these examples:

Flash II (Barry Allen) and Iris West: the wedding is interrupted when Professor Zoom disguises himself as the groom, and the Flash has to get rid of him and then make it to the wedding himself.
Flash II (Barry Allen) and Fiona Webb (after Iris’ death): Zoom returns, Flash spends the whole day chasing him around the globe, and eventually Fiona gives up and runs out of the chapel, just in time for Zoom to try to kill her. (Flash stops him with a last-second choke-hold which breaks his neck, leading to a manslaughter trial, the disappearance of Barry Allen, and finally the cancellation of the series.)
Flash III (Wally West) and Linda Park: at the moment the rings are exchanged, Abra Kadabra kidnaps Linda, sends everyone home, and casts a massive forget spell, erasing all memory and records of her back to the point she met Wally. Eventually she escapes, Kadabra is tricked into reversing the spell, and they hold a new wedding – 18 issues later.

And it’s not just the main characters who get this treatment: Continue reading →

Classic Flash: Cool Moments, Lame Bits, and…Octopus Fighting?

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Some more linkblogging…

CSBG’s Cool Comic Book Moments #245 features the death of Barry Allen from Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Crimson Lightning finishes up the Super-Powers retrospective with the original mini-comic that came with the action figure.

Silver Age Comics brings up 3 extremely lame bits about Kid Flash. Coincidence, costume change, and…do you dare read on to learn the third?

Indie Squid Kid presents the golden age of octopus fighting. No, really!

Update: Newsarama’s Friday Flashback looks back at the classic Flash #0 by Mark Waid & Mike Wieringo. This classic post-Zero Hour book told a stand-alone story of Wally West bouncing around in time and, at one point, meeting his younger self, reassuring him that everything would work out. It also set things in motion for the epic Terminal Velocity, which started the following month.

Flash News from Fan Expo: Rebirth, Series Launch & More

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Between Ethan Van Sciver’s presence and the fact that Flash: Rebirth #4 had just been released two days earlier, there was a lot of Flash talk at Friday’s DC Nation panel at Fan Expo.

Newsarama’s article has a lot of Flash coverage, including this interesting statement by Flash: Rebirth artist Ethan Van Sciver:

I’m having a great time. It’s the book I pestered [Dan Didio] for over three years. I love Barry Allen. I love the Flash. The Flash is probably my favorite superhero. Barry has been gone 25 years and I though that was a pretty fair homage to pay for Crisis, but it was time to bring him back. When Geoff and I finally convinced Dan to let us do it, we built a huge gigantic story that really needed every single Flash, even some that had been missing, in order for it to work.

Flash Rebirth is Part 1 of that. It’s assembling all the pieces, putting them back together where we needed them to be, and then explain one little segment of what the speed force is. Again, Geoff is only giving you a taste of what it is. It’s so much more broad. Professor Zoom ties into it big time and it’s going to lead to a long, fruitful, and very successful ongoing series after this.

Jesse Quick

He added that Jesse Quick/Liberty Belle “has a great scene” in issue #5, and Dan Didio remarked that DC will be “exploring more about” Liberty Belle and Hourman. “They could be one of the more fun DC couples coming out right now.”

Bart Allen

CBR’s coverage includes some remarks that Ethan Van Sciver made about Kid Flash:

“How great is it to see Bart Allen again? I started on Impulse…I fed my family drawing Bart Allen as a young husband,” Sciver recalled “the look on Bart’s face in issue #4 was the look on my face when I drew it.”

Wally West

~~Joey Cavalieri~~ Ethan Van Sciver joked that, as far as Wally West’s role in the rest of the series, we should “See Blackest Night.” Nice.

Didio went on to state that, unlike with Green Lantern, “Wally was the perfect replacement. Everybody had moved on so now it’s not a story about somebody who has to fix something broken in his absence, but somebody who is coming back to see if he was relevant still. What I’m talking about actually plays into what the story is about.”

Nasty Trick?

There’s also apparently a “nasty trick” coming up, regarding which EVS said, “Keep reading, it’ll all make sense.” I’m beginning to wonder whether Cavalieri’s joke about Wally may have been hiding the truth in plain sight.

We know Blackest Night: Flash focuses on Barry and Wally and has live Rogues vs. dead Rogues. What if Wally West dies at the end of Flash: Rebirth, and Blackest Night: Flash has live Barry vs. Black Lantern Wally West? There has been speculation that at least some of the Black Lanterns will return to life by the end of Blackest Night, and Wally could be brought back by the end of the event. Kind of like the way Kyle Rayner was temporarily bonded to Parallax during Sinestro Corps War.

Ongoing Series

And now for a scoop by @liabrown1: At the DC Universe panel on Saturday, they announced that the Flash ongoing series will launch in March 2010. This lines up with the 3-issue Blackest Night: Flash miniseries starting in December. With any luck, September may be our last month without a Flash book for a long time!

She adds that DC is “not ready to announce” the artist on the Kid Flash series, which implies that they’ve at least got someone in mind.

Update: CBR’s coverage of the DCU panel is up.

Update 2: Newsarma’s DCU Editorial write-up is up too, and there’s a bit of confusion as to how many Flash books are launching when.

New Speedster Names (Humor)

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Last night I logged into Twitter and found myself in the middle of a storm in which people were posting joke names for speedsters. It all started when Geoff Johns posted the following:

@GeoffJohns0: RT @Brainiacphive Hello. I have a name for you for a Flash character: Speed Date. #newspeedsters #

Well, people went with it! You can read them all at #newspeedsters until the posts drop off of Twitter search’s radar in a few weeks. Some of my favorites:

jonahlantern: this one is easy. Bad guy team. Jamaican, with ice powers on top of speed. Cool Runnings. #
blacaucasian: Runs Really Fast. Because he runs really fast. #
mgrabois: Usain Bolt # (a popular suggestion, but I think this was the first)
jester1436: Quickstep and Foxtrot #
MarkWaid: Charlie Hustle #
Knippenberg: Captain 23-Skidoo #
mattfraction: Th Flsh # (@shanajeanh remarked, “too fast for vowels?” #)
Mike2112McKone suggested several, including: Zip, Zap, Whoosh, Reverb, Skid and iSpeed.
Bart_Allen: All Day I Dream About Speed– another corporate sponsored speedster # (in response to my suggestion of Sprint – and in case you’re wondering, look at the first letters.)
ValVictory: Krackle and Pop as in the sounds of the speedforce # (I suggested “The Sounds of the Speed Force” it sounded like a band, and VV agreed, saying “Anyone play bass?”)
ValVictory: happy fun American run fast time man — That one is from overseas. #
ValVictory: Sir speeds a lot — The U.K. flash #
bobbynash: Fast Bastard #
housetoastonish: Speedy Alberto Gonzales – He’s Quick To Judge #

Stephen Wacker chimed in with a number of characters based on people in the comics industry.

Ran Didio. Slow-ey Cavalieri. Street Tomasi. Matt Traction. Slowing Gates. “On your Mark, get set, WAID!” #
I can’t stop….Drag Rucka. Ethan Van Slider. Slow Quesada. Richard Running. gRANt. Chasin’ Aaron. Axel Alonso. #

And here are my own humble contributions:

Mr. Zip, of course! (As in the panels from “The Return of Barry Allen.” I was really surprised no one had suggested it yet.)
The Running Man
Sprint(tm), the corporate-sponsored speedster
The Hot Flash
Zoom’s little brother, Vrooom
Greased Lightning
Spud Racer – the Mr. Potato-Head Flash.
Theed Racer, the Flash from Naboo
Race Windu. He’s powered by Force Speed instead of the Speed Force.

Can the Flash Survive Another 6-Part Epic Relaunch?

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The writers and artists have changed. The face under the Flash’s mask has changed. But there’s one thing that the three Flash relaunches we’ve seen since Infinite Crisis all share: pacing.

For some reason, every time DC has relaunched the Flash lately, they’ve done it with a slow burn.

Rising Action: Speedsters Slowing Down

Now, I have no problem with slow burns in general. I really did like most of Final Crisis, for instance (and that was almost all slow burn), and as frustrating as Flash: Ignition was at the time, I really like the story in retrospect — but as a break from the crazy pace of Run Riot and Blitz. Just about everything I’ve read or watched by JMS has used a slow build-up to something huge, from Babylon 5 to Squadron Supreme (some to better effect than others).

But I don’t think it’s the best structure to launch a character whose main claim to fame is speed…especially when it’s serialized.

Continue reading →

Speed Reading: Middle Generation, Sonic, Dark Flash, and More

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Some end-of-the-week linkblogging

Collected Editions considers DC’s middle generation and the Nightwing problem — Dick Grayson, Wally West, Donna Troy, Kyle Rayner, etc. — and what DC’s future might have in store for them after Superman returns from New Krypton and Bruce Wayne returns from…wherever he is.

Factpile wants to know who would win in a fight: Sonic the Hedgehog vs. the Flash.

The Flash-Back Podcast reviews the “Dark Flash” storyline from the Mark Waid/Brian Augustyn run.

Crimson Lightning has found a photo of people in Flash and Quicksilver costumes at Chicago Comic-Con last week.

Around the Web

DVDs Worth Watching notes that the next DC Animated film (after Superman/Batman: Public Enemies) will be Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths. No word on whether it’ll adapt the original “Crisis on Earth-One” and “Crisis on Earth-Two” story or something else entirely.

Here’s a great mock-up of an article by Peter Parker on The Mutant Problem, complete with sidebar photos and profiles. (via Robot6)