What do you think should be done with Wallace West?

[marhawkman]

It used to be Barry now Wally is back in the main focus again.

It helps that the different speedsters are on different teams to begin with. Barry is with the Infinite Frontier team, Wally is usually associated with the Titans/JL, Wallace is on Teen Titans and Jay is on the JSA.

Build them up on team books before spinning them off on to solo books.

Yeah, way too many speedsters to try to give them all solo books... way WYA too many.... which is why I find myself wondering why they keep making more.

[TheRay]

How about a team up with Space Cabbie?

[Dred]

Yeah, way too many speedsters to try to give them all solo books... way WYA too many.... which is why I find myself wondering why they keep making more.

They made more because they deleted all the ones they had from before. Avery, August, and Wallace are symptoms of DC deleting Wally, Jesse, Jay, Jenni, Bart etc. A writer who comes along and wants to have an expansive cast like Batman or GL or Superman or WW or Aquaman -- literally every other major DC hero -- but isn't allowed to use previous characters because they're too associated with Wally West. So, what was Williamson to do besides make his own new cast?

[Ascended]

Your trying to grade on a curve.

Yeah kind of. I figure a character's success is based on the narrative role they're supposed to fill. Wallace isn't supposed to be a headliner; I judge him by sidekick status (it *is* a low bar) and how he works within the larger franchise (mostly thematic parallels and how he benefits the main character's story). Williamson made it work, and Wallace is now very nearly an interesting character. For what Wallace is supposed to be, that's enough.

And on the business end, Wallace isn't hurting sales and no other Flash filling his spot is likely to generate a sales increase, so there's no real difference on the income sheet.

And that still isn't a very convincing argument. Your pointing out a similarity to try and disprove issues with similarity. Its like trying to convince someone that its not an issue Nightwing is redundant because the others are also redundant.

Being part of the Allen-West clan in the Flash franchise is a *feature,* not a flaw.

The franchise can't really support a big size, so quite a bit can be gained by removing Wallace and clearing space.

A reasonable argument. The franchise is bloated beyond it's ability to showcase everyone (like several franchises these days), and culling the herd might not be a bad thing. And there's plenty of reason to leave Wallace behind. But on the other hand, if DC wanted to be using Jesse, Bart, Max, or any of the others who are MIA, they would be. Getting rid of Wallace won't make DC suddenly change their mind and start using someone else.

DC isn't about to get rid of the first/only black Flash anyway. The optics, you understand. They won't risk the PR blowback until they've got another minority Flash built up in popularity. So until Kid Quick finds a permanent home and solid audience, Wallace is gonna keep showing up. People like Jess so it probably wouldn't take too long....except DC doesn't seem to know where to put them.

Jesse was rescued from the Speed Force, alongside Max Mercury, in Williamson's last Flash arc, Finish Line. So yeah, she exists and is merely in limbo.

Oh yeah. I had heard that (gotta read the last couple trades) somewhere, I think. Thanks for the reminder!

[skyvolt2000]

Yeah, way too many speedsters to try to give them all solo books... way WYA too many.... which is why I find myself wondering why they keep making more.

This is what happens when you are NOT allowed to used certain characters.

If you are told you can't use speedsters linked to Wally-you got two choices for you speedster story.

A NEW character

Or you dig DEEP into DC lore for a speedster that is enough of a blank slate to use.

Abraham Dusk from Wildstorm is blank enough to use.

Impala from Global Guardians or Kid Impala.

DC had quite a few to choose from or revamp.

But that falls on your editor saying using someone already here versus creating a new person.

[John Venus]

Thing is that there is still no JSA book, and that Titans academy focusses mostly on new characters.

And the thing is while Barry, Wally and Jay are usually don't have competion for their places in team books, when it comes to Wallace you could easily put Bart or Wally's kids, or maybe even Alinta on every Teen Titans/Young Justice/... lineup instead of him.

Well, that's now. I don't see DC not doing another JSA book or a Titans book focusing on the NTT generation at some point down the line. When it happens Jay will be on the JSA and Wally can either be on Titans or the JL.

Bart is more associated with Tim's generation with Kon, Cassie and Secret. Plus he's from the future so that's another niche for him to shine in.

Wallace seems to be in the same generation as Damian, Lobo, Crush and Jackson Hyde.

Bart can be on YJ and Wallace on TT. Irey feels too young to be on a team at the moment.

I do agree that there are more characters than there are books at the moment though.

[Alpha]

DC isn't about to get rid of the first/only black Flash anyway. The optics, you understand. They won't risk the PR blowback until they've got another minority Flash built up in popularity. So until Kid Quick finds a permanent home and solid audience, Wallace is gonna keep showing up. People like Jess so it probably wouldn't take too long....except DC doesn't seem to know where to put them.

Don't forget about Bolt in Teen Titans Academy. I love her design and concept.

[marhawkman]

DC isn't about to get rid of the first/only black Flash anyway. The optics, you understand. They won't risk the PR blowback until they've got another minority Flash built up in popularity. So until Kid Quick finds a permanent home and solid audience, Wallace is gonna keep showing up. People like Jess so it probably wouldn't take too long....except DC doesn't seem to know where to put them.

I thought one of them was already a Hispanic?

[John Venus]

There is the question of how long some of these newer speedsters will last. Wallace has some traction thanks to the show and because there is a Kid Flash slot that needs to be filled.

Jesse Quick has the option of taking up her mom's legacy and not being another speedster. Johnny Quick is in the same 'retired hero' role as Jay Garrick and the former can easily be depowered.

Avery Ho, Meena Dhawan, Bolt and August can easily fade into obscurity. The gender fluid Jesse Chamber seems to have been forgotten after DC got their free PR from the announcement.


Btw, is Max dead or not?

[Alpha]

I think the amputee speedster concept is just too great to ignore. Plus she brings so much diversity as a female of color.

Jesse Quick has a cool look too (stolen from Flash Beyond) but the hook just isn't as strong.

[TheRay]

He could be the realist on the Teen Titans.

[Timber Wolf-By-Night]

All the talk about how Wallace's poor beginnings poisoning various people's minds against him forever actually reminds me of Didio explaining in that one interview that one of the reasons he never liked Wally as The Flash was, essentially how he was written in the early (Mike Baron) issues. Baron deliberately wrote Wally with some very un-Barry-like flaws so that Wally wouldn't just be a Barry clone but also so that Wally had somewhere to start from, character development-wise. Which I think most here would agree writers like William Messner-Loebs and Mark Waid capitalized on. But Didio ignored that just to hold onto his negative first impression; which also fits into his editorial view that characters and status quos shouldn't be changing in the first place.

I have no dog in this argument about Wallace West, but I generally think the best thing to do in comics can be summed up as "Don't do what Didio did, dudes."

[John Venus]

Yeah, the arguments in this thread has boiled down to whether you see Wallace an OG character independent of Wally West or whether you see him entirely as a NuWally meant to replace the original and is redundant now that the original is back.

I'm in agreement that just 'pulling a Didio' and just erasing a character because they don't fulfill some subjective pre conceived notions about how the universe 'should' be is a bad idea.

I don't mean in terms of optics. Forget the optics. My perception has always been this: I criticized Wallace when he first debuted because he had nothing in common with classic Wally West. If they wanted a black Wally West they should have kept his backstory, personality and relationships intact. As it stands, Wallace was basically a new character that shared the same name with an older character and had an entirely different history and relationship with Barry. However, the classic Wally West is back now. Both characters are different enough that they could co-exist. There is nothing to be gained by chucking Wallace into limbo now and you lose the possibility of him growing into a meaningful character in his own right.

*hahahah remember when Wolfman wrote Wally out of NTT because he had no idea what to do with him and it took years of effort from Messner-Loebs, Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison for Wally to become the fan favorite he is today? Wallace deserves the same chance, imo .

[Aahz]

Bart is more associated with Tim's generation with Kon, Cassie and Secret. Plus he's from the future so that's another niche for him to shine in.

Wallace seems to be in the same generation as Damian, Lobo, Crush and Jackson Hyde.

Don't know the generations have been blurred alot over the last years. And most incarnations of the Teen titans mixed characters from diffrent generations pretty randomly. I mean we had even Damian and Wallace on a team with Starfire, Raven and Beast Boy.

With Jackson Hyde has also been part of the last incanation of Young Justice with Tim's generation, and since he is now becoming Aquaman, and seems in genaral several years older than characters of Tim's generaion, I doubt we see him in a Teen titans book that soon again.

Emiko is apparently going to team up with Star Girl in the future, who is a character that belongs in Tim's Generation, and Wallace and Crush look also about the same age as the characters Tim's generation did in the last incarnation of Young Justice.

And age wise Irey seems closer to Damian than Wallace.

And I simply don't feel like Damian's generation is as iconic or even well defined as Tim's and Dick's. Having line ups based around the Fab5/NTT or the YJ4 will at least generate the interest of a number readers. So we will definitely books with these lineups agian in the future, but I'm not sure if that will be the case with the Adam Glass Teen Titans line up.

[Godlike13]

*hahahah remember when Wolfman wrote Wally out of NTT because he had no idea what to do with him and it took years of effort from Messner-Loebs, Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison for Wally to become the fan favorite he is today? Wallace deserves the same chance, imo .

Now just imagine if Wolfman didn’t write him out and so they never made him the Flash because he had to be a part of NTT despite contributing little. That chance doesn’t go away if he gets sidelined because he’s not really working.