Tom King's Thoughts On Wally West

[Dred]

King can say he loves Wally West till the cows come home but this series proves that he doesn't really know who Wally West is. I don't know who's been fucked over the hardest since Didio took over. Wally or Dick. Both of them have been put into positions where they're no longer allowed to be themselves. Both of them have had everything fans love about them unnecessarily stripped away. But whose situation is worse?

Of the Fab Five it's Roy > Donna >= Wally > Dick > Garth for getting fucked over. Garth had the least amount of fucking over available to him since he was rarely in a comic, so that's a bit skewed. During Didio's tenure Dick has, amusingly, had a lot of great things come his way. Grayson, Batman and Robin, Court of Owls, Black Mirror, etc etc. Ric is really his biggest failure under Didio's tenure and that's, as awful as it is, only been a handful of months of awfulness. He never erased Dick from history or cancelled his comic.

Donna and Wally is a tossup, Wally lost more and got fucked over more only because he had more before Didio, but Donna basically got fucked over in every way she could just like Wally.

No one comes close to Roy. Fucking Cry for Justice, Rise of Arsenal, Lian, Red Hood Sidekickism, existing for Roy has been a struggle since 2005. He had like maybe 2 good years at the start in JLA where he was Red Arrow before it was just...awful.

[Timothy Hunter]

Yes. When Tom King told Didio there was going to be a hero who killed a bunch of other heroes, Didio told him to make it Wally West.

HaHaHa! Classic DiDio!

[Hol]

I would ask, then, if you have read Wally's stories, why is he like this when he has experienced and fought through these exact things before? Why, now, do his powers kill everyone around him when if that were the case Bart and his kids would've been walking murder machines? Why, now, is Wally the smartest or second smartest man alive who could baffle Bruce Wayne for a week without him ever getting close? Why is he the most successful criminal genius in history? A myriad of other questions that rips him away from being anything resembling Wally West besides a powerset and a dead family.

And that is just my problem -- to King, Wally IS nothing but a powerset and his dead family. In all his interviews about Heroes in Crisis he does not ONCE talk about Wally as a character, merely as a being who lost his family. Look at this interview you just linked. All he does is take Wally, boil him down to his most basic traumas, ignore anything about who he is as a person and character, and then inserts himself and tragedy into it. He plainly admits he is purely writing himself, writing an extension of how he felt after coming back from War and forcing that headspace onto a wholly different situation and a wholly different person. I can't name a single thing about Wally West in this comic that is like Wally West besides the events that have happened to him. Tom King literally rewrote his wedding to Linda, one of my favorite moments in comics history, to insert his own somber selfmade poetry into it. I don't see how anyone who holds those comics dear even recognizes the character anymore. I sure don't.

Hell, at one point in King's own rambling, bumbling dialogue, he literally has Wally say, "I'm not good with words." Wally West, the man who made everyone in the world associate The Flash with being a quick witted and funny, whose entire comic run is built on the beauty of his inner dialogue...isn't good with words. The solution, of course, is that Tom King can't explain the things he made Wally did, so he makes Wally incapable of explaining the things he did with any sort of satisfaction.

Bingo! You said it all.

This interview did nothing but confirm for me that Tom King does not know Wally West. Hell, this story wasn't even written for him. Nuff said right there.

[Johnny]

What he says about Wally is basically an advertisement for a 2020 Wally West book.

[DragonsChi]

Yes. When Tom King told Didio there was going to be a hero who killed a bunch of other heroes, Didio told him to make it Wally West.

Just for any of those people who keep saying Didio doesn't have an axe to grind, who I still see pop up all the time to defend the man.

Has Didio ever explained why he hates Wally so much? Because this just weird at this point.

[Blue22]

Has Didio ever explained why he hates Wally so much? Because this just weird at this point.

Didio's issue with Wally and other legacy characters seems to stem from this weird notion that they make their mentors redundant. If he had ever actually read anything with said characters, he'd know how utterly stupid that sounds.

[Dred]

Has Didio ever explained why he hates Wally so much? Because this just weird at this point.

Because he prefers Barry and he believes the original Teen Titans generation act as a threat to the "true" heroes of DC, the Satellite era JL. That they age and progress and grow as characters mean that, when they stand side by side with the JL, they make the JL look older and Didio can't accept that the JL could be old, because old = bad. He's said this before, explicitly, that the reason he hates Dick Grayson is he makes the Trinity old. It's actually on a youtube video somewhere, wonder if I can find it. In a world where Wally is a grown man with kids, how can Barry be a young, cool hero?

Regardless, he originally planned to bring Barry back in Infinite Crisis. Which is why Infinite Crisis had Barry show up to save the day when Wally and Bart couldn't handle it and got rid of Wally. Didio came into power in 2004, IC was 2005. The timeline kind of explains itself at that point.

[DragonsChi]

Because he prefers Barry and he believes the original Teen Titans generation act as a threat to the "true" heroes of DC, the Satellite era JL. That they age and progress and grow as characters mean that, when they stand side by side with the JL, they make the JL look older and Didio can't accept that the JL could be old, because old = bad. He's said this before, explicitly, that the reason he hates Dick Grayson is he makes the Trinity old. It's actually on a youtube video somewhere, wonder if I can find it. In a world where Wally is a grown man with kids, how can Barry be a young, cool hero?

Regardless, he originally planned to bring Barry back in Infinite Crisis. Which is why Infinite Crisis had Barry show up to save the day when Wally and Bart couldn't handle it and got rid of Wally. Didio came into power in 2004, IC was 2005. The timeline kind of explains itself at that point.

Didio's issue with Wally and other legacy characters seems to stem from this weird notion that they make their mentors redundant. If he had ever actually read anything with said characters, he'd know how utterly stupid that sounds.

What a silly idea and decision. I think Sidekicks work DC Comics. It a big part of their history and ever growing story.

I think the exact opposite about the Marvel universe. The sidekick deal goes directly in the face of what Stan Lee created and wanted for that universe. (Which recent years have done pretty well to prove how right he was)

But it's one of the corner stones of DC. Such a shame that the man stirring the running the place is standing in the way of the company. Only so many times you can tick people off before they give up, stop caring, and then stop buying.

[Jekyll]

[QUOTE=Stingo;4378395]

I would ask, then, if you have read Wally's stories, why is he like this when he has experienced and fought through these exact things before? Why, now, do his powers kill everyone around him when if that were the case Bart and his kids would've been walking murder machines? Why, now, is Wally the smartest or second smartest man alive who could baffle Bruce Wayne for a week without him ever getting close? Why is he the most successful criminal genius in history? A myriad of other questions that rips him away from being anything resembling Wally West besides a powerset and a dead family.[/QUOTE

Hi Dred,

I understand your issues with Heroes In Crisis and you might note that I mentioned I had one or two reservations about the series as a whole. One of those problems was with the penultimate issue: It seemed rushed in a way that the seven issues leading up to it hadn't and this came from - in my opinion - a not very solid rationale on Wally's part (as written by Mr. King) to alter the landscape of Sanctuary by burying any evidence that he was to blame for the deaths of his friends. However, there is still one issue left and I'm going to wait to see how things are tied up.

Again, I respect your right to not like this story without asking for your Wally "credentials." I can tell you're a huge fan of the character. It's cool. So am I. Doesn't mean we can't agree to disagree in a civil manner.

Tom King, is that you?!

[EsotericFailures]

King can say he loves Wally West till the cows come home but this series proves that he doesn't really know who Wally West is. I don't know who's been fucked over the hardest since Didio took over. Wally or Dick. Both of them have been put into positions where they're no longer allowed to be themselves. Both of them have had everything fans love about them unnecessarily stripped away. But whose situation is worse?

No contest. Dick has had a lot of great moments under Didio. Both his tenure as Batman and Agent of Spyral were brilliant. Wally on the other hand...

[Dred]

No contest. Dick has had a lot of great moments under Didio. Both his tenure as Batman and Agent of Spyral were brilliant. Wally on the other hand...

And there's a reason for that.

For all the distaste he has openly stated for Dick, Dick is safer in his eyes for one very explicit reason: Dick isn't really a threat to replace Bruce. Despite doing it on a very short term basis, Morrison had no intention of it being a permanent situation and had plans to bring Bruce back. No fans of any number really clamor for Dick to take the mantle of the Bat from Bruce because Bruce is far and away the most popular character in DC comics and that is not going to change until DC's no longer making comics.

Wally, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of that with Barry. Writers have outright said part of the reason Wally was completely excised from the New 52 was because the higher ups feared people would rather have Wally as The Flash than Barry (and at that time, they would've been right). The goal was to build Barry's fanbase at the expense of Wally fans until they could reintroduce Wally A: in a way that was less threatening to Barry and B: Once Barry was stable enough to maintain his role as the permanent main Flash. That leads us to New 52 Wally, a bastardized character conceived solely to maintain Barry's status as The Flash while trying to cash in on the name Wally West. Wally is everything Didio fears about later generation heroes made manifest, and it is why he gets treated so expressly poorly despite being such a popular character. It is active, understood, and advertised sabotage and it always has been.

And this all leads back into this interview. Tom King told Dan Didio he was going to have a hero murder a bunch of other heroes, and Dan Didio told him to make it Wally West. I'm sure, as the world's most meager and shallow empathy, King turned it into an accident after spending months advertising it as a murder. Maybe that one, small, pathetic forfeiture to the concept was King's love of Wally peaking through. But we are where we are because one man actively sabotages a character and has for a decade and a half.

[Punjabi_Hitman]

You don’t like something vote with your wallet. The worse DC sales get the sooner Didio leaves. Look at Marvel and Axel Alonso gone because sales were shitting the bed.

Rebirth happened because sales were shitting the bed. Yet somehow Heroes in Crisis outsells War of the Realms. And one is a garbage story while the other is one of Marvel’s better events in a long ass time.

[Blue22]

Oh it was still a murder. The minute Wally went to all of those lengths to cover it up and frame two innocent people, who were trying to get help (good lord I just called Harley Quinn innocent), is when the accident excuse got thrown right out the door. Wally's kind of a piece of **** now. Made even worse by the fact that he used time travel to cover his tracks instead of using it to save everyone.

[Punjabi_Hitman]

Oh it was still a murder. The minute Wally went to all of those lengths to cover it up and frame two innocent people, who were trying to get help (good lord I just called Harley Quinn innocent), is when the accident excuse got thrown right out the door. Wally's kind of a piece of **** now. Made even worse by the fact that he used time travel to cover his tracks instead of using it to save everyone.

If we can forgive Harley for the hundreds of murders she’s committed and let her roam free, why is it so hard to forgive Wally?

[Blue22]

Whether or not Wally can or should be forgiven isn't really the issue here. He would have been forgiven had he just owned up to what he did and told the league what happened in the first place. But, instead, he went into full on villain mode, right the hell out of nowhere, and thinks his suicide will make it all better. Just because villains have been reformed in the past doesn't mean they deserved forgiveness, nor does it mean Wally should be forgiven for this (but, of course, he will be forgiven. Even worse, he'll be probably be treated like a victim rather than the culprit)