DCU Comic Book Reviews

THE FLASH #246

This Was Your Life Wally West, Part Three:  Infection

January 2009

Written by Alan Burnett

Pencils by Carlo Barbieri

Inks by Drew Geraci and Jacob Eguren

Cover by Freddie E. Williams II

Synopsis

After being attacked by Queen Zazzala and stung by bees, Linda Park-West is taken to the Justice League headquarters and into the care of Dr. Mid-Nite.  As Wally West (aka The Flash) sits by her hospital bed, he recalls his relationship with Linda from their initial meeting to their wedding and to the birth of their twins.  Later, Batman arrives to tell Wally that the attack is because Zazzala considers Wally a threat.  The answer can be found on Amanda Waller’s computer.  Wally runs to Florida and finds the information:  the device Zazzala stole taps into the speed force.  Just then, Wally receives word that his wife is getting worse.  Meanwhile, Red Arrow is with Wally’s kids when Linda arrives healthy and ready to return home.  Red Arrow realizes too late it is a trick; the “woman” takes the kids before he can react.  Elsewhere, Wally decides to take a different tact to save his life.  Using Raven as an intermediary, Wally goes to the Spectre, who knows what he wants be still denies his wish.  Linda died today. 

Review by Binkley (e-mail)

I am not quite sure how to respond to this issue.  On the one hand, the overall story and plot is engrossing and it hits at an emotional level with Wally’s wife in mortal danger and Wally unable to do much about it.  The flashbacks helped to cement the depth of their feelings for each other so that when Wally appears before the Spectre the final words really have an impact.  And, yet, there are small bits and pieces that I can’t quite grasp, such as the sheer stupidity of Red Arrow in letting the kids get kidnapped or Wally trying to keep the kids away from Linda’s sick bed in the first place.  Or the length of the flashbacks (almost half the issue), which just seems to be way too much.  Or the appearance of Raven, which baffled me.  I did not realize she had access to the Spectre.  It just seemed like an extraneous scene, why couldn’t Flash just go directly to the Spectre?  But, you know, these are small little nitpicks; overall, I enjoyed this issue. 

This issue generated two really weird reactions from me.  The first is the fact that for a good portion of the flashback to Wally’s life, I have actually read those issues.  Usually when there is a flashback to a character’s life, it chronicles events written during the gold or silver age of comics.  Even the flashbacks for Wally West occurred early in the modern age, long before I started to read comic books.  But things like Zoom and the Spectre (or Geoff Johns’ run), are fairly recent, at least within the previous decade.  It is weird to read a flashback to things I remembering reading. 

I don’t really want to go into too much detail, but the hospital scenes, had an emotional affect on me.  In late 2007 and early 2008, my wife was in the hospital.  She endured nearly a dozen surgeries that caused her to spend 4 months in the hospital.  There were times when I and or two kids would camp out in her room so she wouldn’t be alone.  Looking at the drawings of the kids and Wally sitting with Linda brought back a lot of memories, of those moments when I thought my wife would die or when I worried she would never physically be the same.  I can empathize how Wally felt exactly.