Wallace West (DC Comics)

Wallace West
Wallace West, the fourth Kid Flash in the DC Rebirth era. Art by Jim Lee.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	The Flash Annual #3 (June 2014)
Created by	Van Jensen Robert Venditti Ron Frenz Brett Booth
In-story information
Team affiliations	Flash Family Teen Titans Defiance
Partnerships	Barry Allen Wally West Deathstroke
Abilities	Superhuman speed, reflexes, agility, stamina Molecular acceleration Electrokinesis Energy absorption Speed Force contructs Frictionless aura Speed steal Vortex creations

Wallace West is a fictional character in the DC Comics Universe. Originally introduced as a new interpretation of Wally West, as part of DC's The New 52 relaunch, the comic DC Rebirth #1 later established that he is, in fact, a new character of the same name, being Wally's cousin, both named after their great-grandfather.^[1] To avoid confusion, the character was renamed in later comics as Wallace West.

Publication history

The "reintroduction" of this Wally West to DC Comics following its 2011 The New 52 reboot, which removed Wally West from continuity, was first announced in January 2014.^[2] Originally conceived of as a biracial reinterpretation of the classic Wally West character. Wallace is stated in his introductory comics and creators as being the son of Iris West's brother Rudy, as in pre-New 52 stories.^[3][4][5] However, the original interpretation of Wally West, having been the starring character in the Flash for many years, was still missed by DC's fans, and so the company decided to bring the original Wally back into continuity in Geoff Johns' DC Rebirth #1 (2016). Rebirth retroactively established that Wallace's father was not Rudy, as previously stated; he was the son of Iris's other brother, the then-recently introduced Daniel West, also the latest incarnation of Reverse Flash, who had redeemed and sacrificed himself as a member of the Suicide Squad.

Fictional character biography

Wallace first appears in The Flash Annual #3 (June 2014) in a story set twenty years in the future, when a jaded, older Flash (Barry Allen) reads about Wallace's funeral and vows to change history.^[6] Tying in with the ongoing story The New 52: Futures End, the story The Flash: Futures End #1 depicts an encounter between Barry of five years in the future (when Wallace is supposed to die) and the Barry of 20 years in the future, who is out to prevent it. In the course of the story, Wallace ends up learning that Barry is the Flash and absorbs part of the Speed Force — the source of the Flash's abilities — during the battle between Barry and his future counterpart. He becomes a speedster but his hero career is short-lived; he sacrifices himself to fix a wound in the speed force. Due to the effects of time travel, however, this has implications for Wallace earlier in his history. Around the same time, in the present-day narrative of The Flash, Barry meets Wallace for the first time through Iris. He is struck by lightning and acquires super speed abilities; an apparition of his future self-explains that, as a consequence of how his future-self had died repairing the Speed Force, all the power within him was able to travel back in time and use Wallace's lightning accident as a catalyst. Wallace's first act as a speedster is to use his powers to protect a classmate from a bully, using the same artistic elements as Professor Zoom's powers.^[7]

DC Rebirth #1, part of a company-wide event of the same name, marked DC's attempts to restore much of what it lost in the New 52 reboot, both in tone and in the stories of its characters. It features Wally West watching his younger cousin, Wallace, from outside of time, proud and amazed that he too has become a speedster, and reflecting on how they are both named for the same grandfather. Wally is brought back to reality by Barry, who remembers him for the first time since the events of Flashpoint. Teen Titans Rebirth #1, shows Wallace joining the Teen Titans superhero team as Kid Flash.

Wallace, as Kid Flash, meets Wally West, as the Flash, when assisting Barry in dealing with a bridge accident, although Wally doesn't explicitly introduce himself to his cousin, simply identifying himself as an ally of Barry, although Wallace accepts him after they work together to save Barry from a temporary infusion of Speed Force energy.

While escaping from the time wave, Wallace discovered that he himself is nothing but a bad product after the Flashpoint timeline that Barry created. As a result, he moved from Iris's house to stayed at the Teen Titans' base to live with his teammates.

Alternate versions

In other media

References