My concern was Wally having suicidal thoughts. I just can't reconcile that with the character in grew up reading.I have no idea what you guys are talking about. And this is coming from someone who's spent his life growing up with Wally.
While I do harbor other criticisms about this issue, Wally has been willing to give up being a hero no less than 4 times. Once early on when his powers were hurting him in Wolfman's NTT, once during ROBA, once at the end of Blitz, and once during The Black Flash Arc. It is VERY in character with Wally, in times of crisis or depression, to consider giving it all up and throwing away his hero life because he can't do it anymore and the toll has been too great.
The thing that makes Wally Wally is that, in spite of that, he always put the suit back on when people needed him. Every time. All of his significant writers besides Morrison have done it. Lobdell and Booth are just blatantly reusing one of Wally's more well used character struggles.
That aside, my biggest criticism of this issue was that it was all exposition. All flash, no bang. It could've cut to the premise and engaged the premise 10 pages earlier and instead it did the Lobdellian nonsense of hammering us with exposition boxes that could've been much more condensed. There's a couple of other, weird nitpicks (no fucking way the JL would've put Wally in a prison with all his villains just waiting to kill him, what the heck) but I can see the purpose it serves to frame Wally's pitiful situation. Linda was wasted in this issue, but I suppose they might be saving the mending of their life for the finale and they need to reintroduce her early to set up that throughline. I just wish there was a better writer to handle what should be a very, very significant conversation.
Issue 2, when they actually start exploring the premise of the book, will probably be where I drop my yay or nay on. This book was a lot of air.