Once again,
It's
And a lot of speculation grows around Wally's return to the DC Universe in the New52.
How he'll be presented,
His attitude and personality,
his ethnicity?!?
all have been given question marks and as we approach his arrival they get mixed with a few Exclamation points!
I'll try to touch on those in a bit but first, It's time for a Wally West
FLASH-BACK!![/B]
Today we examine an issue from Wally's Early days as the Fastest Man Alive.
It's issue #5
and the story is Titled:
We open the comic to find a couple arguing It's Jerry and Tina McGee. Tina has just informed Jerry of her intention to seek a divorce. Jerry, who has already become aware of Tina's extramarital relationship with Wally takes the news badly o say the least.
After yelling at her about her being with Wally and that a regular guy like him can't measure up to a punk who can run at 600mph (Wally's top speed at that time) He promptly beats Tina . He then returns to his lab determined to use the steroid to make him as fast as the Flash.
Wally, meanwhile is putting ogether his entertainment center wearing.... well, see for yourself
YIKES!!! uhm..... ANYWAY!!!
Wally get's a call from Tina and finds out what happened. He agrees to meet her and races to meet her in Manhattan. at this point it should be noted that Wally is still wearing Barry's traditional Uniform (design by C. Infantino) and would not update it for another 45 issues
When Wally sees Tina he insists that she call the Police. Unknown to either of them a private detective his watching Tina from across the street and reporting their activities to Jerry.
Actually, after the beating she took:
she actually didn't look as bad as I expected her to
Tina refuses police involvement claiming to owe Jerry that much. Wally feeds his hyperdrive metabolism as Tina tells him she doesn't want to stay in the city as Jerry can find her there. Wally doubts that but relents and whisks her off to his home in Long Island.
The private detective admits to losing them (not Hard to understand and Jerry dismisses the news at non-problematic stating......."i'll find them myself"
Jerry is now shown in the costume he's wearing on the cover above (sans mask) he's sheved his head completely bald (or his hair fell out in the experiment) and he has small electrodes attached to his scalp.
The mask Jerry wears is designed to detect Tina's PH balance and perfume's mixture and give him a trail to follow. he tears out of the lab and is in Manhattan in no time. during his passing through the city he leaps over cars and other obstacles while moving at terrific speed but his inability to control his power is evidenced when he crashes into both a police horse and a brick wall. while Jerry remains unharmed both the horse and the wall suffer for the collisions. a police officer who was riding the horse fires on Jerry but as Jerry runs away at about the same speed the bullets appear to stand still to him. after he collides with the wall he's approached by an old man who's witnessed the second collision but when the poor old guy asks him about it Jerry first tells him to mind his business and then hits him (with his increased strength it's logical to believe the poor old guy is killed in the attack.
Meanwhile Tina gushes over Wally's long Island mansion. Wally takes a bath and awakens to find the doorbell ringing he arrives at the door to find his Father (Rudolph West) who has arrived having left Wally's mother due to their own marital difficulties. Wally is puzzled but offers his father a room in the mansion and takes Tina out to dinner explaining that they were never really close. (a departure from Wally's silver age history where he and his Father (Bob West) were about as close as any father and son.)
After dinner they return home to find wally's dad (having found the bar) is passed out dead drunk snoring his head off.
Wally and Tina bid each other good night but a few minutes or panels later, Tina's back in wally's room in her skimpy negligee asking him to hold her. They're just about to "have-fun" together when they hear a few crashes and the burglar alarm come on. It's at that point that Jerry bursts through the wall threatening to break every bone Wally has for stealing his wife. Wally tries to fight him off but Jerry's impervious to Wally's attack and gasses him with mustard gas before throwing Wally around like a rag-doll. jerry then grabs Tina and smashes his way out of the house through the window with Tina slung over his shoulder. Wally get's to the window in time to see Jerry careen through a chain fence into a Fuel depot causing a massive explosion that closes out the issue.
My reaction.
This issue occurs in the Dark early days of Wally's career. He's largely hormone driven and despite the heroic example he held Barry up as he still talks about his monitor and predecessor as if Barry was a penniless tramp living on the streets. (i don't recall Barry's situation ever being
that desperate!)
Jerry McGee and Tina take the marital abuse and infidelity tale to it's extremes. Jerry's so focused on his work that he has little time to pay attention to his relationship with his wife.As a result, she starts spending more than just her professional time with Wally. Jerry see's this and uses his experiments to build himself up to the standard he believes his wife now prefers. when this backfires in her asking for a divorce he of course, over-reacts and beats her before going to extremes. (This story is both a case-book example of two cautionary tales. One being the problems with non-communicative spouses leading to domestic violence as well as the severity of the harmful effects of steroids) Perhaps wally's biggest flaw in these early days is his childish views towards his personal life. He doesn't care about the long-term ramifications of his relationship with tina, he just wants to have her because it makes him "feel Good" He's a publicly identified Super-Hero who has a locatable address where any villain could attack at any time but refuses to acknowledge how that adversely affects the community in which he lives. It's not Wally's shining moment of course (add to that it's only the first part of this particular story. butthe upside is that in time Wally WILL grow into a much more responsible and mature hero. Keeping this in mind we can look back on this story and say. "Hey! Flash was just as "young and Stupid" as any of us and
HE grew out of it! so maybe there
is hope for the rest of us!"
Now then, Onto the present day.
THE FLASH #31
Written by ROBERT VENDITTI and VAN JENSEN
Art and cover by BRETT BOOTH and NORM RAPMUND
1:25 BATMAN ’66 variant cover by MICHAEL ALLRED
On sale MAY 28 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T
Continued from THE FLASH ANNUAL #3! Guest starring Future Flash, Future Mirror Master and…Wally West! The future is invading Central City and the fates of Wally West and his Aunt Iris hang in the balance!
Ok so.let's get onto some of the discussions that have appearing. we already know that Brett Booth has said Wally will be different but we don't know how yet.
We
do know that he made a slight parentage mix-up when he referred to Wally being the son of Iris' sister. (Pre-Rebirth, Iris had both a Brother (Bob, later Rudolph West)
and a sister (Charlotte about whom Wally claimed always talked down to him*))
We also know that Wally is Daniel West's son. With this plus Daniels actions as the Reverse Flash this leads us to wonder is Wally no longer a Flash fan. could he be in fact Anti-Flash?
Given that Iris and Barry both seem to be in their late twenties or early thirties I think we can safely assume that Wally will be considerably de-aged. (I think Wally was between 30-35 Years Old before Flashpoint)
Now then, the ethnicity question. It was apparently reported by bleeding cool news that there was a rumor Wally West would be portrayed as African American.
Given that the West family is undergoing such an ethnic shift in the upcoming CW TV series this is not unheard of.
DC
does have a history of altering it's characters to reflect Warner Bros Television's example.
i.e.: putting Lex Luthor in Smallville during Clark's Early years,
making Ma and Pa Kent look a bit younger than they had previously,
removing the yellow oval from Batman's uniform. (the Animated series did it first)
and of course making John Stewart the Justice League's primary Green Lantern after the animated Justice League got rolling into high gear.
The leaking of this story had evidently received an angry reply by someone involved in the decision for spoiling the revelation. which in a sense, possibly confirmed it as there was no real denial involved in the mentioned reaction.
This of course has led to some very loud mutterings of dissent or even outrage. (I personally am not big on the idea. It's one thing to retire or kill off a character and replace him/her with someone else of a different ethnicity wearing a variant uniform and taking up the code name, it's another thing entirely to retcon a
50-60 year old character who has been established for so long as being totally different from what they have always been.)
Let me be clear on this matter, I don't mind the idea of having a Flash of a different color as it were (uniform
or ethnicity). I'm all if favor of it. As I've said so many times The More the Merrier. But I don't think we should so dramatically alter an existing character to fill that role.
Well, that's it for this month See you next time.