Wally West: The Flash Appreciation 2023

[Dred]

He got really sad and went on a PCP-fueled rampage?

No, but it seems like they're in a weird place where Barry and Iris' relationship, which has to happen because of Bart, didn't really happen. So how do you reintroduce the part of the Flash storyline that begets Bart?

Well, step 1, kill Iris.

Step 2, Iris' future parents bring her soul to the future

Step 3, Barry goes to the future because he has a sort of cosmic spanning memory cuz Speed Force and thinks to check there again.

And now we get the updated version of the Tornado Twins that Williamson dealt with and Barry and Iris get a happily ever after temporarily in the future, and come back to the present older having lived and raised their kids or something.

[Frontier]

Preview of the next issue is already out: https://comicbookdispatch.com/the-flash-791-preview/

Flash sidekick team-up .

[dornwolf]

So who was all at Wallys BBQ. I know Mr.Terrific, Roy, and Piper. I don't know who the blonde guy or the brown haired woman was. I'm assuming the woman with Roy and Piper is Donna.

[Refrax5]

No, but it seems like they're in a weird place where Barry and Iris' relationship, which has to happen because of Bart, didn't really happen. So how do you reintroduce the part of the Flash storyline that begets Bart?

Well, step 1, kill Iris.

Step 2, Iris' future parents bring her soul to the future

Step 3, Barry goes to the future because he has a sort of cosmic spanning memory cuz Speed Force and thinks to check there again.

And now we get the updated version of the Tornado Twins that Williamson dealt with and Barry and Iris get a happily ever after temporarily in the future, and come back to the present older having lived and raised their kids or something.

I feel like they're not just going to repeat that same story, especially since all the stuff with Iris having her soul brought to the future by her real parents was convoluted, even by comic standards.

[Digifiend]

I could see them doing something like that actually... if her soul is brought to the future, but put in a new body, that's an excuse to redesign her. Remember, Iris is black in both the movies and the TV show. They tried to do synergy with that in the digital comics in late 2020, but of course all that did was make those stories not fit into canon.

The "everything counts" mantra never would make sense anyways, it just a cope out for them to cherry pick whatever they want from the previous canon and roll with it. The New 52 and Rebirth can't work with the Pre-Flashpoint timeline cause most things don't match.

At this point i don't even try to make sense of this canon, i just enjoy the stories for what they are.

Yeah, Shazam seems to ignore pre-Flashpoint outright. Supergirl's been re-established as active in the silver age, thus negating her later origins from the 2000s and New 52. They're clearly cherry picking.

A surprising number of golden age women are suppose to still be alive: Miss America, Joan Garrick, Molly Mayne, Libby, the retired Sandra Knight.

Wouldn't they all be 100 years old by now? Unless they time travelled and thus are younger, or have powers that slow their aging, they should be dead. Sadly, it makes sense that Joan appears to have been killed off.

[Primal Slayer]

[Frontier]

Wally and Raven...what a fraught affair that was...

[Batgrayson]

So who was all at Wallys BBQ. I know Mr.Terrific, Roy, and Piper. I don't know who the blonde guy or the brown haired woman was. I'm assuming the woman with Roy and Piper is Donna.

Apparently they were Animal Man and Mr Terrific together, and then Animal Man's wife, Piper, Donna and Roy.

But there were many color mistakes.

[Maxi]

Yeah, Shazam seems to ignore pre-Flashpoint outright. Supergirl's been re-established as active in the silver age, thus negating her later origins from the 2000s and New 52. They're clearly cherry picking.

What they mean with "everything counts" is "the entire continuity pool is availabe for writers to choose their preferred version of events" which honestly is the best possible solution for me considering how broken beyond repair everything is, so you may as well give creators the entire toolbox to work with instead of limiting them like New 52 did. Nobody wants an empty DCU without their favorite toys. It's pretty obvious why Supergirl was around in the Silver Age again since that happened for the first time in World's Finest and that's written by Waid.

Still, it's fun to think about the f#ck up of Barry and Iris not being married, since now who the hell raised Bart in the future and why did he came back?

[dornwolf]

What they mean with "everything counts" is "the entire continuity pool is availabe for writers to choose their preferred version of events" which honestly is the best possible solution for me considering how broken beyond repair everything is, so you may as well give creators the entire toolbox to work with instead of limiting them like New 52 did. Nobody wants an empty DCU without their favorite toys. It's pretty obvious why Supergirl was around in the Silver Age again since that happened for the first time in World's Finest and that's written by Waid.

Still, it's fun to think about the f#ck up of Barry and Iris not being married, since now who the hell raised Bart in the future and why did he came back?

Didn’t they establish the tornado twins, them plus Bart existing means Barry and Iris would eventually get married. What’s interesting is that hasn’t been a high priority. Once Rebirth hit and well in Wally’s case the great repair some couples were just back together and implied married. Like did Aquaman and Mera remarry or were they just married again with no answer.

[Frontier]

Didn’t they establish the tornado twins, them plus Bart existing means Barry and Iris would eventually get married. What’s interesting is that hasn’t been a high priority. Once Rebirth hit and well in Wally’s case the great repair some couples were just back together and implied married. Like did Aquaman and Mera remarry or were they just married again with no answer.

Arthur and Mera remarried at the end of KSD's Aquaman run.

[SanityOrMadness]

I could see them doing something like that actually... if her soul is brought to the future, but put in a new body, that's an excuse to redesign her. Remember, Iris is black in both the movies and the TV show. They tried to do synergy with that in the digital comics in late 2020, but of course all that did was make those stories not fit into canon.

Yeah, that's basically "Lois Lane in 'I Am Curious Black'." It wouldn't go over well.

If they'd done the New 52 a few years later, they would probably have race-swapped Iris then, but doing it as anything other than a retcon leads to charges of blackface, not unjustifiably.

Yeah, Shazam seems to ignore pre-Flashpoint outright.

Not quite. Tim Sheridan referenced Billy's part in Underworld Unleashed. And also had someone call him "Captain M--" before he cut them off. It's a mess.

The most curious one for me was having Wonder Girl/Cassie meet Artemis anew for the first time shortly after Death Metal (When the "everyone remembers everything" thing was still fresh), when the latter had been her mentor for a big chunk of the 90s. I'm not even sure the story needed them to be strangers.

Wouldn't they all be 100 years old by now? Unless they time travelled and thus are younger, or have powers that slow their aging, they should be dead. Sadly, it makes sense that Joan appears to have been killed off.

There's a story... I think it was Roy Thomas (unsurprisingly), where the JSA and various supporting characters, including Joan, got bathed in "shadow energy" that slowed all their aging. That got stripped from the active JSA members by Extant in Zero Hour, killing most of them (although James Robinson later tweaked that so that not all of the survivors were as old as they "should be", noting that while Wesley Dodds was that old, Ted Knight was physically in his 60s or so), and those that remained active were largely given new reasons (Alan was unaffected because of Starheart Stuff, Jay got better from Speed Force, Morrison gave Wildcat "nine lives" so presumably he died and Got Better) - but the likes of Joan Garrick were never affected by Extant and never lost that.

What they mean with "everything counts" is "the entire continuity pool is availabe for writers to choose their preferred version of events" which honestly is the best possible solution for me considering how broken beyond repair everything is, so you may as well give creators the entire toolbox to work with instead of limiting them like New 52 did. Nobody wants an empty DCU without their favorite toys. It's pretty obvious why Supergirl was around in the Silver Age again since that happened for the first time in World's Finest and that's written by Waid.

I mean, it's not that hard to construct some sort of high-level overview of Supergirl's history that makes most of it exist* - it would be fairly forced and entail much rewriting of the actual story details, of course, but that's been DC policy since 1986 to some extent - or even before, since her last series before Crisis essentially deaged her without comment.

(*She died as shown in Crisis, came back amnesiac when 2000s Kara first showed up as part of some bad guy plot which is why she was initially bad, never actually regained her memories until Death Metal. New 52 would be the hardest part to integrate, possibly unless you chose that *over* the early 2000s version. It would also explain why she was younger, since between amnesia and not aging while she was "dead", she could be played as younger.)

Still, it's fun to think about the f#ck up of Barry and Iris not being married, since now who the hell raised Bart in the future and why did he came back?

Bart's been a temporal anomaly since at least that time Kadabra "erased" Linda. Kind of like the post-Johns Thawne until he was "grounded" and sort-of erased by Williamson.

Again, if you want to push it... technically, marriages are dissolved by a death certificate (while no-one *actually* comes back in real life, there have been cases of people remarrying after their partner was officially marked as dead, and they weren't classed as bigamists when they turned out to be alive). Iris was definitely killed as far as the law was concerned - Barry is more questionable - and then Iris lived 20 years without him after he died in Crisis. [And we know per Williamson that she already remembered all of that before Death Metal, even if Barry didn't.] Between the two, they could be considered non-married AND have reason to break up since they were effectively different people after that level of separation, and only started growing closer again recently.

[Cronus]

So I'm still not sure what were they thinking here. lol I get that Wally was like 21 at the time but were they purposely trying to make him unlikable. That was the first Annual of him as the new Flash, they should've probably been a little more self-aware. Seems like they could get away with anything in 1987.

"Izzat you John Wayne? Is this me?"

Lol.

[Drako]

Two weeks in a row reading Flash is treat.

[sifighter]

Two weeks in a row reading Flash is treat.

Well get ready because we have 3 in one month, the one minute war special releases on January 31st.