Wally West: The Flash Appreciation 2021

[Robanker]

It's armor but it doesn't really look like armor. It's not too busy with a bunch of random lines and it's still recognizably a Flash suit.

I would take that armor over the thick segmented plates they use in suits like Bale's TDK Bat suit or Injustice Flash.

Sure, but I'd take the DC Rebirth suit over Walter's Dark Future suit any day of the week, even if it looks a bit like Kid Flash and reminds of HiC.

I just don't like it, but it is clearly a Flash suit. I will give it that.

[LAWtoyoto 432]

Just have a discussion with the other Flash threads, apparently Barry and Wally co-exist as " A Flash" is quite acceptable by most of the fans. They said when asking on the platforms and social media. Their response was "because Everyone needs to Know and Recognise Wally as THE Flash" instead of A Flash. This is quite a selfish act and the same goes from the previous higher-up. It's like calling Peter Parker "The Spider-Man" instead of calling "Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man" while Mile is active. So, A Flash is quite okay for them so that they need to stop fight against their will.

[married guy]

I've found MOST fans (much like myself) aren't Barry OR Wally.
Almost all would be absolutely delighted if DC would simply give us both.
Both characters have a long, rich history. Scrapping one in favour of the other does a disservice to both of them.
Hell, I haven't even mentioned Jay yet!!

[PennyDreadful]

I've found MOST fans (much like myself) aren't Barry OR Wally.
Almost all would be absolutely delighted if DC would simply give us both.
Both characters have a long, rich history. Scrapping one in favour of the other does a disservice to both of them.
Hell, I haven't even mentioned Jay yet!!

Agreed. Which is why I hope Barry is rescued from that Flash earth from Infinite Frontier soon. Let him be the multiverse-hopping Flash and Wally be the Earth-based, slice-of-life Flash.

[Dataweaver]

Agreed. Which is why I hope Barry is rescued from that Flash earth from Infinite Frontier soon. Let him be the multiverse-hopping Flash and Wally be the Earth-based, slice-of-life Flash.

That's unlikely to happen. The way that Barry got trapped there shows all the signs of setting up for a crisis event; and given that Pariah is involved and has essentially equated Multiverse 2 with the pre-crisis multiverse, it will not surprise me if said upcoming crisis doesn't get resolved until 2025, the 40th anniversary of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. So I'm expecting Barry to be sidelined for another four years or so.

[Vordan]

That's unlikely to happen. The way that Barry got trapped there shows all the signs of setting up for a crisis event; and given that Pariah is involved and has essentially equated Multiverse 2 with the pre-crisis multiverse, it will not surprise me if said upcoming crisis doesn't get resolved until 2025, the 40th anniversary of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. So I'm expecting Barry to be sidelined for another four years or so.

Not happening. Williamson’s plotlines will wrap by 2023 at the latest, and more likely the upcoming 2022 event will see Barry return. He’s got a movie coming, he’ll be back in the DCU by then.

[The_Sneezing_Stormtrooper]

I like Barry fine enough when he's well written but we aren't even 12 issues out of an almost entirely Barry-centric decade so I definitely don't feel like I'm missing him right now either. I do think his fans should be able to read about him somewhere though. My ideal would be him being rescued from that Earth and joining the Justice League Incarnate book. I don't see why he and Avery can't both be on the team and it might be nice to see more of a bond develop with them working together there.

Nothing against Barry or his fans. I just don't want this current Wally run to end so soon. The cynical part of me says 2 years tops until the Crisis and then Barry will retake the book and I'll have to start reading Titans because it'll be the only place I'll be able to read about Wally.

Two Flash books so that people can read about whichever one they want has always been the ideal though. I don't get why DC seems to insist that it's something that has to be off the table when it seems like the easy answer and they've never even tried it to say it's an idea with a proven record of failure.

[Lucas 35]

[married guy]

Well, there's the first issue of Titans Academy I'll be buying....

[Frontier]

The boys are back .

[Waterfall]

The art is so bad...When will Wally get a passable artist at least?

[Waterfall]

From Francis Manapul's new interview: http://www.multiversitycomics.com/in...ancis-manapul/

What eventually led to you wanting to get off that book or did DC say, alright, we want to move you someplace else?

FM: So I think at that point, my Wally itch was getting really, really itchy. And I had pitched a way to bring Wally into the New 52.

Do you remember what that mechanism was going to be to introduce him?

FM: I do. And this is kind of funny, and I don’t know if Dan will read this, but maybe he’ll laugh. So we wanted to introduce Wally, similar to the Silver Age books, in which he was going to be Iris’s nephew. I had even storyboarded a whole scene, but this the scene that I storyboarded was, was while he was becoming the Flash, but it was for the future because I needed to see where it was going in order to go backwards. So because one of the things that Dan was really adamant about was that there was going to be no other Flash, he didn’t want to muddy the water. So I totally get it.

Even though there was a Kid Flash in Teen Titans at that time

FM: Look, I made that argument. So I came up with this very simple idea of Wally West being introduced as Iris’s nephew, and he was going to be in a wheelchair, right. So he was going to be this kid that had an illness that prevented him from walking to show Dan that look, “he can’t run. So there’s no possible way of this ever happening. Right?” You know, and I wanted to create this, this big emotional arc, where, you know, Barry became the Flash as a result of this accident, righ? And he kind of learned how to deal with it. Wally wanted to be the Flash, right and essentially, he was going to betrying to figure out a way to get to run. And you saw, I kind of teased a little bit of that, when, in the issue where Iris West ran in a suit. And, you know, if you’ve ever ridden a bike or driven a car, and you remember in The Fast and the Furious where they’re drifting so the centrifugal force would pull the person behind. So my idea was that Barry was going to come up with something that would kind of for that moment, help Wally run. It wasn’t gonna be to make him the Flash, it was just to give this kid who’s never experienced running an opportunity to run. At that time, one of the most satisfying things about writing “The Flash” is I would get emails with people who were like, “I’m in a wheelchair, and I love ‘The Flash’ because it’s pure escapism.” I wanted to get that real fan feeling of somebody accomplishing their dreams.

And one of the things that we said was that the wheelchair also represented Dan in that Wally can’t become the Flash. He can’t run in that Dan is preventing Wally from running, you know? I just wanted to introduce the wider range of the Flash family because, you know, when Barry has this kind of very, like, father-like, thing to his character, he’s very old school and I think they wanted to make him cool. But, I mean, it’s not that he’s uncool…

He can’t be cool on the way that Wally can be cool.

FM: Exactly, exactly, you know, and I just wanted to expand on on his supporting cast. “I promise you, He will not become the Flash, just let us introduce him, please. You know, I fucking wrote this whole story arc, and I’ll be honest, I, I can’t find it. And I am so frustrated because I can’t find that file. You know, I had what I call ‘the great big computer crash’ and I lost a lot of files. I’ll be honest, one of the things really drove me off the book was that I was like, you know, at this point, the better part of my 20s and 30s were spent on “The Flash.” I drew “The Flash” for a year with Geoff, I wrote and drew “The Flash” with Brian for another four years. At that age, that’s a big chunk of my life, and I felt like, if I’m going to dedicate even more time to this book, I’d really like to bring in some of the characters that I love. And when I couldn’t, I was just like, “Okay, I think I’m done,” you know? Yeah. To be honest, I am still very pissed off that as soon as I left, they brought Wally back, you know? And I remember asking, like, “What the ****, man, how come I couldn’t bring him back?”

He was introduced in a “Flash” annual in June of 2014. That must have been just a few months after you left the book.

FM: That ate at me, you know. And what they said was “we were afraid that when you left, sales would drop, so we needed to do something”. And I was like, “if you gave me Wally, maybe the sales would have gone up?” I think that was the beginning where it felt like things were much more reactionary rather than proactive.

I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t the right guy to do it. I know that Dan has this sort of rule where sometimes he doesn’t like creators who have too much reverence for certain characters. Which, I don’t know. I mean, that works pretty well for Geoff, who greatly loves every one of these characters.I think when you look at the decisions being made at that time, it makes sense at that time. You know, so that’s why it’s hard to really play Monday morning quarterback with all this stuff. At that time, they thought those were the right decisions.

What a shame that he never got to work with Wally. Wally's luck with artists have always been terrible. Not a fan of any artist in this run so far either. Manapul would have made wonders with a character he loved and not a forgettable series.

[married guy]

I would give my left nut for a Francis Manapul Wally west Flash book.
He was the only thing keeping me buying during the 'dark times'.

[BohemiaDrinker]

From Francis Manapul's new interview: http://www.multiversitycomics.com/in...ancis-manapul/



What a shame that he never got to work with Wally. Wally's luck with artists have always been terrible. Not a fan of any artist in this run so far either. Manapul would have made wonders with a character he loved and not a forgettable series.

Holy ****... that's worse than I thought.

[Dred]

That's a nice one to link to whenever people want to talk about what was wrong with the New 52. God a freaking checklist of things you had to do every issue, that sounds stupid.