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Today, we look at how Wally West was redeemed for his actions during Heroes in Crisis.
This is “Walkin’ Backwards,” a feature where I look into how superheroes who turned to villainy were walked back from their heel turn and turned into superheroes once more.
This installment’s example is a bit tricky, because it is because the original story that has Wally “go bad” went out of its way to argue that Wally didn’t REALLY go bad, but at the same time, Wally still did some messed up stuff, enough so that I think it’s probably reasonable enough to count this (I mean, he does end the series in literal handcuffs, ya know?). Part of that is that writer Tom King did not have a specific superhero in mind for his miniseries, Heroes in Crisis, as he explained to ComicBook.com, “As I’ve said many times before, I don’t pick the characters for my story; I give my plot to the editors and then the editors pick the characters for me. So I told them in the beginning, ‘this is what it’s going to be — it’s going to be about one hero who’s made a mistake and it’s going to be about the two heroes that get framed for that mistake.’ And they said, ‘okay, it’s Booster, Harley, and Wally, those are the three characters.’ I mean they’re a joy to write, I love writing them.”
So it was never his intention to specifically have this happen to Wally. That was just the choice that editorial made and he worked the story around that. But what story WAS that, first?
WHAT HAPPENED IN HEROES IN CRISIS
Heroes in Crisis #1 (by Tom King, Clay Mann and Tomeu Morey) opens with the Justice League rushing to Sanctuary, a special site in Nebraska that was built to help superheroes deal with trauma. It was built with Kryptonian technology and uses virtual reality and artificial intelligence robots that each have the will of Batman, compassion of Wonder Woman and honor of Superman to help the patients there.
Well, in the first issue, a number of heroes are found seemingly murdered, including Wally West and Roy Harper…
There were various clues at the seeming murder site that suggested that it was either Harley Quinn or Booster Gold, and both Booster and Harley believed that the other one was the one who committed the murders.
Finally, in Heroes in Crisis #8 (by King and Mitch Gerads), we discovered that the killer was actually Wally West. He had lost control of his powers after stealing the files on the various heroes and being overwhelmed with emotion and the explosion had killed the heroes near him, including his good friend, Roy Harper…
But then Wally made the decision to trick Booster and Harley into thinking that the other had committed the murders and then Wally positioned the bodies just so (and brought his own body back from the future) to frame them to give him time to at least expose Sanctuary before he would then kill himself to close the loop, as it were.
In the final issue of the series (with Mann and Morey back on art duties), Booster, Blue Beetle, Batgirl and Harley figure out the truth and go to confront Wally before he kills, well, himself. They overhear Wally, in effect, talk to himself and they realize that it was an accident…
Still, involuntary manslaughter is still a crime, ya know? Plus the whole framing Harley and Booster thing, which Harley gives him a piece of her mind over (and her foot)…
Beetle and Booster close the loop with a cloned body of Wally and Wally is then takin to, like, super jail, I guess?
HOW WAS WALLY REDEEMED?
He then goes on a journey through time, saving his family who had seemingly been lost after the events of Flashpoint, but in the process, he has to become basically the new Metron, only with Doctor Manhattan’s powers, as well…
Well, then in Flash #761 (by Joshua Williamson, Howard Porter and Hi-Fi), we learn that the villainous Reverse-Flash had used his powers to subconsciously force Wally to have the mental problems to go to Sanctuary in the first place and then he was then who made Wally do the framing stuff, all the really bad stuff that couldn’t be excused as being an accident…
That was step one. Step two occurred in the most recent Flash Annual (by Jeremy Adams, Fernando Pasarin and Hi-Fi), where Wally had been traveling through time, taking over people’s bodies along the way tracking a disturbance in the Speed Force and finally, he discovered it, right back at Heroes in Crisis, where Wally realizes that it was the Speed Force disturbance that caused the explosion that killed the other heroes, not him!
It turned out that the Speed Force disturbance was the villainous Savitar escaping from the Speed Force and therefore, it was Savitar who killed the people in Heroes in Crisis and not Wally!
Wally then defeats Savitar, so there you have it, Wally didn’t actually kill anyone and the sketchy stuff he did after the deaths were forced on him by Reverse-Flash using his weird whisper powers. The next step, of course, will be for some future writer to just reverse the deaths period (we’ve already had Roy Harper return), but that, I suppose, is a whole other deal that doesn’t have to do with Wally’s redemption, which now appears to be complete. It only took three years, which is relatively short for these sort of things, really.
Thanks to my pal, Martin Gray, for suggesting that I write about this issue (albeit not precisely the area Martin wanted me to discuss, but close enough!).
Okay, folks, feel free to suggest more examples of this sort of thing! Obscure ones, famous ones, whatever! Send your suggestions to brianc@cbr.com!
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