#adampknave

Chase finally got collected, right? 

I troll EVERYONE with it, and it isn’t a butthole it just kinda HAS one.

I’m on a deadline and need to jump offline but only AFTER I TALK ABOUT WALLY WEST. 

As I previously wrote about Dick Grayson, Wally is another one of those beautiful, rare cases where the sidekick gets to grow up and become his own person. Only while Dick created a new identity, Wally actually stepped into the big leagues. While all his friends were still fucking around in the Teen Titans, he graduated early and joined the Justice League. Over time, they came to see him as a peer, not a kid. He went from a womanizer to a family man. He had children. He did things his own way. For 25 years, he was The Flash. And he was infinitely more interesting than Barry Allen. He grasped the power set and the entire concept of the Speed Force in a way Barry never could because he wasn’t a creative, out of the box type. He was careful where Wally was careless, and while Wally was a bigger fuck-up, I kind of appreciated watching Wally fail and learn from those failures. I also identified with his struggle to be worthy of his sainted uncle, in a positive way. One of my grandfathers was a great man who died very suddenly, and far too soon, when I was 16. Having his example was a GOOD thing, it made me want to be better, stronger, more focused on the world in front of me. I think Wally’s relationship to Barry was similar. He had this example to aspire to, and he succeeded. Wally had to run (lol) with the big boys before any of his contemporaries, and that he was able to scale that steep learning curve is a testament to his fitness to wear the boots and his capacity for heroism. The concept of legacy hero thrived first with Wally West, and writ large that concept made the DC Universe a richer and more diverse place. As for the new Wally, well, the kid’s a prick, but we’ll see what happens to him after Future’s End, I guess. He’s around, at least. 

Romantic Ships: Wally/Linda Park <3 

Non-Romantic Ships: Wally/Dick Grayson, Wally/Kyle Rayner, Wally/The Rogues (the dysfunctional uncles thing they had going was just so much fun), Wally/Pied Piper, Wally/John Stewart (In the JLU cartoon). 

Unpopular Opinion: I really, really liked Wally teaming up with his kids towards the end of his run as Flash, before Rebirth. I thought it was a great story. Usually I find that sort of thing hokey, and I know a lot of people did, but I thought it worked. 

Canon Wishes: I wish that before Flashpoint, we’d gotten to see some sort of moment or arc between Wally and Captain Boomerang’s son Owen (“Captain Boomerang Jr.” because why not). Now, Owen’s speed was never adequately explained (Johns at one point implied it came from Meloni Thawne, Bart Allen’s mom, but it was one panel & weird), but the fact that one of Barry’s rogues had a speedster kid about the age Wally was when he put on the boots…I don’t know. I’d have liked to see something done with that, like some attempt to help Owen out. 

I'd like to see Wally have to apologize to all his exes, that string of women he casually used and tossed away in his first few years as Flash. 

adampknave replied to your photoset: A couple of shots from my last day in London,...