Wally West, Porcupine Man

[shankie]

The Flash #24-#28, in which Wally gets turned into basically a monster covered in spikes.

Heh.




Oh yes, and then lots of pseudo-science. Seriously. This was before the Speed Force had been introduced to the DCU, so now and then the issue of just why Wally was so darn fast, or why Barry was, comes up. In this, Wally's lost his powers, and he's angsting hardcore. His pals want to fix that.

Tina has an idea to restart Wally's powers...

And muses about them for a bit.

Pause for Batman reference!





So, despite being an egomaniac, Wally has some serious self-esteem issues. Stimulating the pleasure centers to fix that sounds... dirty.



I would totally not get in that thing. No way man.

It may have worked, so Wally get's all set to make a run...

Has his powers back, may be more powerful than ever, and... doesn't work out very well.

The following is an example of just how destructive superpowers gone wrong can be...




So everyone thinks Wally exploded and is dead.

Issue #25, they angst about this, then things get a little strange...


Then Chunk gets a creepy phone call.

So they go on a road trip...

Along the way, Tina's bringing up that thing about Barry Allen not being human again. When she finally talks to Wally about this, I forget in which issue, he flips out. The idea that Wally isn't human freaks him out to no end, and when he is changed into a Speed Force avatar during Chain Lightning he flips out big time.

But I digress.

The road trip ends up in this town in the middle of nowhere, Texas, and they come across a random weirdo local in Wally's cowl before finding the crater that Wally supposedly exploded in.







They're convinced he's still alive.

And he is.




So Wally's all naked and covered in spines, eh? I think the artist liked drawing this a little too much.

Issue #26, the calvary is hanging out in this little town, and hears rumours about this "porcupine man" legend. A waitress overhears them talking, and invites them to her house to maybe get a glimpse of it.

And what a glimpse they get.











::pets the poor Wally::

Definitely liked drawing that too much, yes indeed...

So, not only is Wally a big spiny freak, he's acting more or less like a terrified wild animal and hallucinating. Which leads to him being cleaned up and fed like a family pet.








More pseudo-science and teh weird...

And Captain Cold, during his "good guy" phase, shows up with his sister. Hoo boy.



The reasons for Flash-cowl boy being all crazy are explained...

And Chunk looks like a Mr. Potato Head through the Wally-vision.

#27: Chunk does his whole singularity thing to try and fix whatever's wrong with Wally... some nonsense about being on the wrong vibrational frequency... or something...







I think writers for the Flash liked making Wally talk like a two year old a little too much...


#28; Wally's flipping out, Captain Cold and Golden Glider are on the scene... but Wally doesn't let a little mental dysfunction get in the way of a good fight.






Golden Glider is a nutcase.





Wally's body is kinda terrifying sometimes. He can't do that thing where he creates his costumes through actual Speed Force material yet... but even so. Absorbing pretty much anything in his system, burning through chemicals in his bloodstream like nothing... man.




Yeah, he steals the costume from Crazy Thinks He's Flash kid and saves some kids with a shovel by digging a big hole to get them out of a cave-in. And everyone ends up happy.

The end.

Comments

[kirke-novak.livejournal.com]

Flash ring!!! :D:D:D
Gosh, poor Wally, I actually felt for him when he cowered naked in that corner (it also turned me on). I'd hug him but y'know, spikes...

[victoria-wayne.livejournal.com]

Yeah... spikes kinda get in the way of hugging...

[tmelange.livejournal.com]

Hey Shae, where is Wally now in the present continuum? I was looking at JLA #1 and it mentions that they're considering Bart for membership but I haven' gotten up to the present in my reading yet to know what happened with Wally...

I like Wally...

He's not dead, is he?

[victoria-wayne.livejournal.com]

He's in Nonspecific Happy Land with Linda and the twins. Bart talks about how he's seen them, but the only reference at all to Wally after IC is one line in 52 that confirms he is, in fact, alive.

But he could be literally anywhere.

[tmelange.livejournal.com]

I don't understand. Why did he go away?

[victoria-wayne.livejournal.com]

You ever see on S_D, for a while, everyone would use "SUPERBOY PUNCHED A HOLE THROUGH TIME!" as a generic excuse for something unexplainable?

Wally, Bart, and Jay were the only speedsters left in the DCU at that time (everyone else being dead/depowered/otherwise gone) and when the battle with Superboy Prime as going south, they had an idea; throw him into the Speed Force.

Of course, that meant going into the Speed Force themselves, which is a dangerous thing to do, especially in such an uncontrolled situation. Jay didn't actually follow them, being as he's a metahuman, his speed doesn't allow him to go that fast.

Yeah, there's a difference between speedsters and metahumans in the DCU, it's all very complicated and I vague, the idea being that they're baseline humans with a connexion to a power source, not actually structurally different. But Barry Allen totally was, so... I got nothing.

Superboy Prime escapes anyway, punching his way through the fabric of the cosmos. Bart re-appears on the scene in Barry's uniform, now 21, to more or less terrorize him. People who fight speedsters are, generally, slightly terrified of facing them again afterwards, unless they're nuts, which is something that came up in the recent Catwoman, but I digress.

When Bart comes back, he mentions that he was the only one left who could still run back from... wherever Wally is. He then loses his speed, or at least says he did; it's looking at this point that the loss was psychological, which happened to Wally a few times in the past.

The next reference is the panels of Bart in 52, and I haven't been able to read Flash #3 yet, but the first two didn't leave anything more than hints. I took them as Wally is in another dimension via the Speed Force, and is able to contact Bart that way. Could be wrong.

[tmelange.livejournal.com]

OMG, you don't have Flash #3 yet! I thought you were going to the store yesterday! Here, you can grab it from this link:

http://rapidshare.de/files/30536042/Flash_-_The_Fastest_Man_Alive_03__2006___CamelotScans-DCP_.cbz

I'm so sorry! Why didn't you email me?

[victoria-wayne.livejournal.com]

::does the dance of joy::

I did go, bastards at the store that actually sell that on a regular basis were out... ::sigh:: It's looking like I'll either have to drive an hour or order a copy online if I want a paper version, which blows.

But that's totally awesome. Thank you so much, I just thought you still didn't have one. XD

[tmelange.livejournal.com]

So Wally went into the speed force and never came back, and it's implied that he can't come back. The speed force sends people to the future?

But Bart came back years older. And said that he knows that Wally is happy in the future...but how is that possible? Wouldn't there be two Wallys anywhere he ended up? And how would his wife and kids have joined him?

Or is Bart implying that Wally is still somewhere in the present, just without his powers and not wanting to be bothered?

[victoria-wayne.livejournal.com]

The Speed Force can send people into the future. It can also be used to travel into the past, and once or twice, to go across dimentional barriers. Think of it as an enterable energy source that spans across time and space, like a roaring river. If you can navigate it without getting swept away, there's no limits to where you can go.

It's the getting swept away part that's the rub; Barry Allen was pretty good at using it for time travel, and Wally did a few times (and almost didn't make it back pretty much every time).

He might be in the present. If he is, he's seriously dropped off the radar, but since in the last issue of his run in The Flash, which happened before IC, he actually retired to be with his family, so it's entirely possible.

[victoria-wayne.livejournal.com]

Must add that it's unlikely he's actually in the present, even if possible, because there's mention of how Bart has lost his best friend, referring to Wally, OYL. So he'd have to be really far away and buried and unreachable to still be in the present. Like, on another planet.

[tmelange.livejournal.com]

But in what situation would it be plausible for his family to have joined him if he's not in the present?

[victoria-wayne.livejournal.com]

I got nothing.

And I have a suspicion that's why his location OYL hasn't been further clarified; even DC isn't sure. Or hasn't made up their minds yet.

[practical-pig.livejournal.com]

Oh man...

Talk about confusing.