The Flashes Messed Up... Again

The third installment of the Flash War gave us some pretty big insight into Barry Allen and Wally West's current relationship, how it's changed from their relationship in the past, and some really surprising information about the Speed Force. If you are a new comic reader and are unfamiliar with some of the information I cover in this post, I will explain all of this information in-depth later on in other posts.

Let's go into the dynamic between Barry Allen and Wally West. Barry Allen is the first Flash of the DC Universe, and was the mentor and father figure to Kid-Flash, who at the time was Wally West (the ginger one. There are two in comics right now, but let's forget about the other one for now. Right now we are talking about the original Wally West). However, Barry Allen, after the Crisis on Infinite Earths where Allen sacrificed himself to save the entire multiverse, Wally West took up the mantle of the Flash.

For a while, Wally West seemed to be slower than the Flash but also seemed better at using the Speed Force, the source of energy that gives most Speedsters their powers. The reason West was slower was because he did not want to be faster than Barry Allen out of respect. Once this mental block was out of the way Wally West did some pretty crazy things. He once raced a species of aliens to Earth. West was on his feet, and the aliens were in a spaceship. And. Wally. Won. Yeah, that's how fast he is. For reasons that I will not go into, Wally was not a part of the DC landscape for a while.

When DC Comics decided to finally bring the original Wally West back, Wally became his own Flash, which I believe presents Wally as an equal to Barry as "The Flash" is now a mantle that they both share. However, Wally was never shown to be faster than Barry in terms of speed. Until The Flash #49, which doesn't only show Wally go faster than Barry, it shows him do this:

My name is not Barry Allen, and I am the fastest man alive.

Since Wally has done so much crazy stuff with his speed, one would assume that he is faster than Barry. But we never really had the two race, and since that day has finally come, we now know that Wally West is the fastest man alive. Look at the panel above. Wally's costume is now mostly blue, with blue spreading over the red by his legs. All that means is that Wally is moving so fast that he is going into the Speed Force. Essentially he is becoming the lightning that trails behind him when he runs. This isn't the important bit though. What is important is the color. The lightning's color look blue, but it's really white, and the color of a speedster's lightning is vastly important to their speed. Why? Well we are going to go into some physics. Not hardcore physics that'll blow your mind, just a simple concept: The Visible Light Spectrum.

When you were a kid, you might have been told about ROYGBV, which stands for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Visible light that is red has a longer wavelength, which also means that its the weakest, and the closer that you get to Violet, the shorter wavelengths, which means more energy, also meaning that its the strongest. Barry's lightning is yellow, which means, yeah he's pretty fast, faster than any of us will ever be, but Wally's... Wally's is white. White light is the light that you see when all the colors of the spectrum are combined, meaning that it has the most energy, and is, therefore, the strongest lightning you can have if you were to look at color. So it is no surprise that Wally West triumphs over Barry. But Wally has been shown to have white lightning for the last two years, so why show that he's faster now?

The quick answer is that Wally never needed to be faster than Barry. Wally West never had to go against Barry Allen like this before, Barry hasn't really tried to stop him from doing what he feels he needed to do. Now, the reason that Barry is trying to stop Wally is because Wally wants to go back in time and destroy the Speed Force because he believes his children are trapped in the Speed Force. Barry has experience in time travel and its repercussions. Barry went back in time to save his mom from being murdered, and that messed up the entire timeline and created a messed up version of Earth. And that was Barry Allen going back in time to save one person. Wally West is trying to break a multiversal force. So he'd screw up not just Earth, he'd screw up all of existence. Which is not entirely an ideal situation, to be honest.

But since Wally is faster he succeeds anyways, and "breaks" the Speed Force. He doesn't really destroy it, otherwise, he would lose his powers, and he still has them, but he does make other multiversal forces known to the DC Universe.

Alright, so we're gonna step back a bit for a second. Wally West found out that his kids were trapped in the Speed Force by his Reverse-Flash equivalent. Zoom, a.k.a Hunter Zolomon. You may be wondering, why would Wally West believe his arch-nemesis? Well, that's because the two were friends. Hunter Zolomon got into an accident and lost his ability to walk, and asked Wally to go back in time to change that, but he refused. So Hunter Zolomon used the cosmic treadmill, which is a machine used to help speedsters pinpoint a location in time or in the multiverse that they need to go to, and gained powers. After Zolomon got his powers, he became a villain, not because he wanted to take revenge on Wally West, but because he wanted Wally to be the best hero he could be. Yeah man, Zolomon is crazy, most arch-nemesis (nemisi?) are.

Anyways, Hunter Zolomon shows Wally West that he doesn't have his powers, and is telling the truth about his kids. Which leads to Wally West trying to save his kids that are trapped in the Speed Force, and also leads Barry to try and stop Wally West.

Going forward again. Wally West has done something to the Speed Force that makes other multiversal forces known to the DC Universe. And who makes it known to the heroes of the DC Universe? Zoom? Yeah, he kind of lied. I mean, Wally's kids are probably in the Speed Force, yeah, but Zoom needed someone to give him access to all the Force powers. And by telling Wally that his kids are probably in the Speed Force, which is a sucky thing to be trapped in, he guarantees that his plan will succeed because Wally isn't going to abandon his kids to suffer inside the Speed Force for all eternity.

So we know there is a Speed Force, but there is more than just that. Zoom spent time researching in the 25th century and discovered that if one were to break the Force Barrier, he would be able to gain access to the Speed Force: which lets you run fast, go back or forward in time, or go to different realities, the Sage Force: which bestows telekinetic and telepathic powers upon the user, and the Strength Force and I'll be honest I have no idea what the hell that does. It makes you stronger I guess... It's only been introduced like three days ago and showed up for two pages, so I know just about as much as you guys do. Zoom, being able to tap into these forces, then reveals his plan. To become the one true Flash, Zoom dons a copy of Barry Allen's costume and gets ready to fight both Wally West and Barry Allen. The two fastest men alive are going to fight the strengthiest? and the sage-ist? man alive. So this is going to be an insane fight, which comes out in TheFlash #50.

That really concludes this post. This was a really long one, packed with information but I tried to make it as understandable as I could. I'll be going over some more Flash stuff, including history, more Detective Comics, and maybe some Saga, then some Marvel. So feel free to check out my other posts in my profile until I post my next one. See you in the next post!

Note: I do not own the art, characters or panels shown in this post. All characters, art, and panels belong to respective owners.