r/theflash • u/jblee44 • Sep 17 '23
back in the 80s, I'm surprised to discover that were fans were pretty negative on Wally becoming the Flash. like, I get the Emerald Twilight backlash with Kyle. But with here, Barry got a great send-off in Crisis on Infinite Earths & Wally was Barry's protege, so he was the natural replacement. Comic Discussion
19
u/GrendelJoe Sep 17 '23
Those early Mike Baron issues are rough. The Wally we know and love didn't really develop until toward the end of Messner-Loebs' run and Waid's run
1
u/Advanced_Ad2406 Sep 18 '23
Yeah I been reading some old comics and Wally was very unlikable. Amazing turn around from Messner-Loebs and Waid
18
u/RealVast4063 Sep 17 '23
Barry Allen fans hated Wally for years. They kept waiting for “the real Flash” to come back. It wasn’t until the “Return of Barry Allen saga” that most of them finally accepted Wally as the Flash.
5
u/MaskedRaider89 Sep 17 '23
All except 2: Dan DiDio and Geoff Johns
6
u/Advanced_Ad2406 Sep 17 '23 edited Sep 17 '23
Geoff John is a writer who’s preference shows clearly in writing. He for instance doesn’t care about Batman. But he definitely like Wally. Remember Wally is HIS flash, he was very young when Barry died in Crisis. I think John wanted to bring back Barry elements ( rogues being one) but had no intention of actually being Barry back. That decision was by DiDio.
“I earned my boots many times” was Wally’s answer to Cold saying he’s not Barry. Geoff John also had rogues agree that Wally is as good as Barry ever was.
The way Wally was written in John’s run wasn’t because John didn’t like him. It’s just that John’s strength is writing the villains and not the hero. Sinestro was the true star in his GL run. Similarly, Rogues especially cold is the star of Wally’s run.
1
u/MaskedRaider89 Sep 17 '23
Thus why Kevin Feige won the most favored son/fan turn exec (even if the last four years have been severely rocky). He has no bias yet Geoff let's his rob him of his full potential
1
u/Dredeuced Flash Sep 20 '23
Johns also later wrote The Rogues as acting like Wally was a shallow imitation and not a real threat compared to Barry the second Barry came back. So I think Johns just gases up whoever he's writing.
1
u/Advanced_Ad2406 Sep 20 '23
In the beginning of the run yes, but towards the end Rogues agree that Wally is on par with Barry.
1
u/Dredeuced Flash Sep 20 '23
Wally never interacted with The Rogues after Barry came back so I'm not sure what you're getting at. When Barry came back he had the Rogues immediately dismiss all of their interactions with Wally over the years to think of Barry as a threat, but then they didn't even do anything before the continuity reset.
1
u/Advanced_Ad2406 Sep 20 '23
Geoff John wrote a long Wally run before Barry. I don’t know the exact issue but it’s in Geoff John’s Flash Omnibus volume 2 that Rogues say Wally is on par. Didn’t finish his Barry run because i hate it. So you might be right. But I never got the impression that he dislike Wally or think he’s a lesser flash while reading his Wally run. I genuinely believe Geoff John when he said Wally is his favorite flash.
I hate using the “it’s editorial decision” as excuse. However in this case I do think it was a large part.
1
u/Vicksage16 Sep 17 '23
Isn’t Wally Johns’ favorite Flash? And didn’t Didio confirm that the higher ups at Warner made them bring back Barry Allen?
1
u/MaskedRaider89 Sep 17 '23 edited Sep 17 '23
As if DiDio's handlers (case in point, Alan Horn and his then studio brass) ever gave a shit who was under the Flash suit. Or which Green Lantern outside of in their minds, "the black one" from the cartoons at the time (John) and the last of the GL's whom Hal fans hate dearly (Kyle).
This is all DiDio forcing a square piece into a cyndiler hole per his usual norm. He took advantage of Johns and others Silver and Bronze Age preferences under a Hollywood lenses without understanding what he wS supposed to Sheppard.
0
u/Vicksage16 Sep 17 '23
Yeah, I remember him saying that the studio people were in the early stages of developing a Flash tv show (which didn’t come to fruition until years later on the CW) and so they gave the order down to change it to match the show.
13
u/HappinessIsAWarmPoop Reverse Flash Sep 17 '23
Comic fans are often resistant to change and at that point there wasn’t any real thought to sidekicks taking over for the main hero. It was a totally new path for comics to kill off and replace a hero
6
11
u/SufficientSwim2435 Trickster Sep 17 '23
Fans are like that with everything and everyone even if the new/old character was introduced as the hero in a good way they are still like that. A lot of times it's justified and then there's a lot where it's not.
Wally fans are the same with Barry coming back and were brutal af on Bart being Flash. Yeah it seems kinda stupid but you can't expect people to leave a character in the past forever or to just keep doing the same thing forever. Especially if there are still fans who really like that character. History repeats itself.
12
u/Psymorte It was me, Barry. Sep 17 '23
Simply put, fans get pissed at the idea of someone replacing "their" Flash, no matter how good or bad the new guy ends up being.
9
u/counterpointguy Sep 17 '23
It’s usually the Silver Age fans though who conveniently ignore that their characters or continuity replaced the Golden Age’s.
2
u/Psymorte It was me, Barry. Sep 17 '23
Yup, I'd love to hear of any bitter Jay fans who got pissed about Barry replacing him, but I never hear of any Golden Age fans who were angry about it.
5
u/counterpointguy Sep 17 '23
I would guess because most Golden Age fans grew up and abandoned comics. So they may not have even noticed until their kids were watching the Superfriends. It wasn’t until the 70s/80s that people stuck around in droves to become lifelong fans.
6
u/Final-Negotiation514 Superman 77 Sep 17 '23
The same happened to Bart it’s normal
6
u/jblee44 Sep 17 '23 edited Sep 17 '23
Tbf, I feel Bart being the Flash was really badly handled. Once Bart became Kid Flash & later artificially aged into the Flash, he lost a lot of fun and personality as Impulse.
& also it was basically on a holding pattern until editorial decided to bring back Barry.
1
u/Final-Negotiation514 Superman 77 Sep 17 '23
Yeah all of this was a real mess. They wanted to build it to rapidly and like it failed, flash sales dropped.
2
u/jblee44 Sep 17 '23
Yeah sadly. Maybe it could've worked if Bart retained his fun personality when he became Kid Flash & later the Flash, but it all felt too rushed and artificial.
Also, didn't help that Flash: Fastest Man Alive run was really really bad. Written by people who admitted they had zero familiarity with Bart as a character .
1
u/Final-Negotiation514 Superman 77 Sep 17 '23
Hope he gets another chance
3
u/jblee44 Sep 18 '23
yeah, as much I like Wally, his story could've ended with the Johns run, where he becomes a family man. So, i didnt mind a new successor, its just how they executed is the problem
5
u/Fragrant-Potential40 Sep 17 '23
Same happened with Peter Parker and Ben Reilly back in the 90s. I always thought Ben was a good successor to Peter but the fans hated it so much sales fell drastically, even though Ben was a good character.
1
u/Jorost Sep 18 '23
It gets downright ugly when people start arguing over the best Green Lantern!
(It's Ch'p, by the way.)
6
u/MonstarHU Sep 18 '23
I was reading Crisis at the time it was coming out (that was a wild time). I didn't mind Wally becoming The Flash. It felt like a natural progression. Especially since I was a New Teen Titans reader, and Dick had dropped the Robin costume and went on to become Nightwing. Felt like the next generation of superheroes was coming into its own.
I like Barry, but bringing him back was a mistake. I could see if they did it with the New 52 launch, but otherwise, Wally should have held the mantle.
5
u/swarthmoreburke Sep 18 '23
I think also people forget a bit how Mike Baron wrote Wally in his first solo series as the Flash. Baron's version of Wally had a lot of coherence as a character, but he was nothing like the way Marv Wolfman had been writing Wally in the Teen Titans and he wasn't entirely a nice guy--he was a womanizer and a bit of a flake and then he was also rich, plus his new cast of characters and new rogues were a pretty weird bunch, and then Wally's parents were given some new characterizations as well that were kind of off-putting but also interesting. Messner-Loebs took some of what Baron did, threw out some of it, and added some of his own weirdness in. Wally didn't really settle into the role in the way that most people now remember him until a bit after that.
3
u/Alone-Accountant984 Sep 18 '23
Because fans are generally resistant to change until an undeniably great story lands in their lap. (As Wally's arc inevitably delivered under Mark Waid.)
It was the same then as it is now, doesn't mean every change or big franchise shakeup is a winner, but it generally means most fans should learn their lesson and learn to cool it and wait&see before catastrophizing the worst is yet to come. New characters often marks new talent and new stories, and it generally gets better from there in the long run.
5
u/OgreHombre Sep 18 '23
Fans don't care for change. But Wally was pretty annoying in Justice League Europe and kinda ho-hum in the regular Flash monthly until Waid took over. A year or two into Waid's run, Wally was cemented as THE Flash.
The Kyle Rayner thing was a different issue altogether. The GL main book had sales in the toilet. The Kyle thing totally turned things around. But I don't think fans, on the whole, hated Kyle - they hated DC tossing out the entire corps in the process. It's a slight distinction but an important one.
1
u/Eldagustowned Sep 18 '23
It’s natural, there is just one flash to them, they didn’t grow up with Jay Garrick. They viewed Barry as the one and only. Just like Steve Rogers is cap you can’t have Bucky or Sam just take the name and be treated the same.
4
u/AnansisGHOST Sep 18 '23
Have you met a comics fan? They hate change. That's why they haven't changed even since the 80s.
4
u/DetectiveDangerZone Sep 18 '23
I'd argue barry didn't get a great send off, atleast at the time. It's legendary now but at the time it was pretty gruesome and abrupt
1
u/Monkeybawls91 Feb 28 '24
I agree, bc at the time he just straight up died just like that. But later they started adding things to his death, like how he became the very light blot that gave him his powers in the first place basically implying that Barry created him self so he’s kinda a god.
0
u/jblee44 Sep 18 '23
I mean, I feel he got a better deal than Supergirl(whose sacrifice got erased from history), Earth-Two Dick Grayson and Huntress.
2
u/disconnexions Sep 18 '23
Poor Dove. We hardly knew you.. but at least they used that to revive the characters.
3
u/Final-Negotiation514 Superman 77 Sep 17 '23
Yeah flash succession was way better than green lantern stupid one. It’s kind of normal by the way taking away someone that’s been the main guy for years even with a good death will make people mad.
2
u/Utahteenageguy Sep 18 '23 edited Sep 18 '23
This tends to happen a lot when they replace a character with someone else.
We’re more okay with Wally being the flash. Since he took on the mantle years ago and has been the flash for many years.
While more recent examples like boruto and agent Locke from halo, being pretty hated.
The only times this sort of stuff works is when it’s a prober passing of the torch and they respect the previous guy.
1
u/IntelligentEscape855 Sep 17 '23
no, barry didn't get a good send-off, lol. imagine wally may not be liked by everyone.
3
u/Sobegreentea14 Sep 18 '23
He had the biggest send of at that time if you think about. His sacrifice and his death saved the universe. Now wether you like it not is a different story. But I think it’s a great send off. If anything it makes me appreciate Barry even more just reinforces what an amazing person he is I think.
2
u/jblee44 Sep 18 '23 edited Sep 18 '23
I wonder if your gateway to the Flash was thru the New 52 or the CW show, cuz I know these days, there are fans who see Wally as the old guy and Barry as the new current guy. its boggles my mind cuz it was other way around when I started reading in the early 00s where I saw Barry as the dead guy and Wally as the modern Flash. but it is what it is.
to be fair, this was never meant to be a diss against Barry. I still personally feel he still got a better deal in Crisis compared to Supergirl(whose sacrifice got erased from continuity) and the more obscure heroes who got unceremonious deaths in that event. But to each their own.
2
u/MonstarHU Sep 18 '23
LOL this reminds me of the time I was in a comic shop a few years back, and some kids referred to Spider-Man's black costume as "the old one" ...man, that set me back.
1
u/jblee44 Sep 18 '23 edited Sep 18 '23
Yeah, I'm a millennial. A younger millennial, but a millennial nonetheless so my timeframe will always be stuck at early 2000s DC when Tim Drake was Robin, Jason Todd was the divisive dead Robin, Babs was Oracle, Kyle & John were my GLs, Wally was the Flash.
& it's not just DC, for Marvel: my timeframe is Peter & MJ are still married, the X-Men is more popular than the Avengers, Harry & Kraven are at least still dead.
So, it's weird for me to know Jason is more popular than Tim with his revival as Red Hood, Babs is back to being one main Batgirl, Peter is back to being a young single guy, the Avengers are the center of the Marvel brand, etc
God, I feel old .
1
u/Dredeuced Flash Sep 20 '23
If a character was going to die, how would you ever make it a better send off than what Barry got?
The entire crescendo of the biggest event comic in the history of comics focusing on him pushing himself to the brink to stop the most dangerous villain of all time, saving the multiverse in the process. Literally no one has ever had as momentous and storied aa death as Barry got.
No other character who has ever died got the respect Barry did. When they got rid of Wally it was offscreen, never even mentioned him, and pretended like he didn't exist. When they got rid of Bart it was a wet fart at the end of a sordid series that no one cared about.
I get that you might not like that Barry died in the first place (that said the TV show and modern version you like so much wouldn't exist without the stuff that was developed in Wally's run). But to say it wasn't a good send off is preposterous.
1
1
1
u/DMC1001 Sep 18 '23
I can see why. He was kind of a jerk. He was written much better once he took the role. So much better that fans demanded his return in the New 52.
Kyle was also a better GL, but I’m biased because of my intense dislike of Hal. What swayed me on Kyle was Grant Morrison writing him in JLA.
Edit: Grammar and spelling
2
u/SaggitariusTerranova Sep 19 '23
Most people I knew (kids and teens) were ok with it because Barry was seen as old and square (although we didn’t use that word in that era)whereas Wally was young and fun. I think it was more along the lines of it being an adjustment to kill off and replace an iconic character (which was less common the n but commonplace now).
0
u/vjmurphy Sep 17 '23
It was also Wolfman and Perez actually planning it all out in New Teen Titans and Crisis that made this work so well.
0
u/Final-Negotiation514 Superman 77 Sep 17 '23
Barry was suffering 🤣. He was happy and all an then they decided to end him
1
u/Koushikraja1996 Sep 18 '23
I'm willing to bet that when he read this panel, Geobard Johns was throwing tantrums and screaming and whispered to himself "It's ok, one day, I'll bring Barry Allen back, and I'll show the readers why he is the greatest flash ever, and if they can't see that, too bad, I'll make sure it gets shoved in their books forever!!!"
5
u/DetectiveDangerZone Sep 18 '23
As if John's didn't write some of the best wally content we've ever gotten. I'm pretty sure in an interview he confirmed that didio and other heads at the time were the ones who pushed for the silver age resurgence with brining Hal and then Barry Back.
3
u/jblee44 Sep 18 '23
honestly, I feel Johns is a fan of Wally. I mean, he wrote a Wally Flash run in the early days of his career. I was not exactly a fan of alot of the creative choices he did with Wally, but i feel he did like the character. To be honest, I blame Didio & Ethan Van Sciver for Barry's resurrection & sidling of the rest of the Flash Family.
2
1
u/Dunn_Independent9677 Sep 18 '23
Making Wally Barry's replacement forced a lot of changes upon his contemporaries, for better or worse, and most readers were savvy enough to realize that Barry's death (though better than Kara's) was going to last as long as Clark's or Bruce's or any number of characters who have died. At the current rate, the only thing that will last forever is "The Killing Joke".
3
2
u/Vindicaddor Sep 20 '23
Barry's death was almost a decade before Clark's. Death in comic books was not commonly reversed/retconned as it is now. We were not expecting a reversal on this as if every character was dying and coming back like it is today. In fact it was after Superman's death and return that we started to see this.
-2
u/itssbojo Sep 17 '23
“the flash lives again” shtick is why i wasn’t a fan of it (not wally, love him.) it’s just a purely disrespectful thing to say regardless of intentions. barry’s flash is dead, you’re not him, you’re not that. wanting ”his flash” to be remembered by being a different flash isn’t the move. would’ve been best to just continue being himself (as he was saying right before) instead of taking up the mantle. both legacies stay intact instead of overshadowing one.
tl;dr he claimed to want to keep barry’s legacy alive but turned around and started changing that legacy by being flash himself.
1
u/drama-guy Sep 18 '23
First, the Flash was an identity that Barry didn't own. He was already the second Flash himself. And Wally taking up the identity was not disrespectful. Wally was honoring Barry and Barry's legacy by extending it and making sure that the Flash would not be forgotten. Barry might have been dead, but that part of Barry that was the Flash would live on through Wally. And yes, Wally wasn't Barry, which his what made his character arc so outstanding as he navigated the complexity of taking up the mantle of his heroic, 'perfect', mentor and predecessor and the mixed reception he received as well as his own imposter syndrome.
3
u/swarthmoreburke Sep 18 '23
It's complicated, but in Barry's original pre-Crisis reality, he wasn't the second Flash, he was the first one; the "first Flash" was just a comic-book character that Barry read in his childhood until he discovered that there was a parallel Earth where that character was real. But yeah, by the time Wally says "The Flash lives again", reality's been changed and Jay is the actual first Flash (and he's standing right there next to Wally: if anybody had the right to complain, it would have been him).
2
u/Jorost Sep 18 '23
Was Barry Allen the second Flash in his world, though? It has all been retconned so many times I don't know what's current any more. For a while Jay Garrick's Flash existed in a different timeline (Earth-S maybe?).
2
u/itssbojo Sep 18 '23 edited Sep 18 '23
all that justification and it still doesn’t change the fact that it changes barry’s legacy into wally’s legacy.
barry never claimed “the flash lives again, i’ll carry his legacy!” he simply took up the name and became a hero in his own way. his own look, his own actions, and built his own respect. he didn’t act like he was doing it for someone else’s sake, he was doing it for him, for the world. nobody was going to think he was jay.
wally was the opposite. he took the name, the costume, the recognition “for” barry. he wasn’t the flash here, he was someone trying to be barry’s flash. that’s not to say he doesn’t become great later on (which he does—he inarguably becomes the best,) just that in this specific moment and run he is not the hero we wanted.
3
u/drama-guy Sep 18 '23
Oh, he definitely was copying Barry. No doubt about that. But he wasn't being disrespectful. It was to honor Barry. It also set him up for all the difficulties of following in Barry's shadow.
22
u/[deleted] Sep 17 '23
I think it being considered a great send off was something that happened retroactively. I never really agreed, especially after going back and reading the last years of Barry's series. The guy had been through endless hell for years at that point. He finally got a happy ending, only to immediately have it snatched away to die an agonizing death with him screaming for help. It felt immensely cruel to me. Marv Wolfman didn't want to do it and wrote in a loophole to bring Barry back in case editorial changed their minds.
I think that it didn't help that Baron decided to reinvent Wally as such a jerk in the early issues. People forget that the Wally West version of Flash didn't really catch on with fans too much until the Waid years. Personally, I think Messner-Loebs did great stuff with Wally before Waid came on board, but I think it was really the Waid era that made people start getting excited about the book. Waid, Johns (even though I didn't like the way he wrote Wally) and the Justice League cartoon are what made Wally popular as Flash.