"We've done all the stories that can be done with this character."

                       Dick Giordano, speaking to me circa CRISIS.


Come on. Are you kidding? I can't even believe Giordano would utter something so banal unless he was under mandate.

Thanks Nathan for a good summation.

We've gone over this before, but what made Barry Allen interesting as the Flash was the time in which his stories were told. Great and crazy SF ideas were illustrated by Carmine Infantino is a style conducive to the period.

With the "modern" age, Wally was perfect for an era of reader who grew up on the whining of Peter Parker (and I loved it too, don't get me wrong, but Pete is basically Woody Allen in costume). Wally is conflicted. Wally is confused. Wally is not confident. I guess if that makes Wally more interesting, then there's little to argue.

One could say Jay Garrick is the "real" Flash, but he's not. I love the idea of the older Flash, but really...Barry Allen is THE Flash. The popularity of that one character was so great, as Nathan points out, IN HIS TIME, that he personally revitalized superheroes in comic books.

Should it matter if Wally is "better" as a character? How about this...Barry Allen was written by men from the 1950s. Wally is written by men from the 1980s. Why can't men from the 1980s write Barry Allen and make him just as interesting to 1980s readers?

It's a moronic argument. Wally is not "better," he's just written in a different way that appeals to modern readers. Let's take note that DC didn't infuse their icons with much of ANY kind of "character" as we understand it. Reading the JLA of the 1960s, you don't have any idea who is speaking without the little word balloon indicators, the character are as ubiguitous as ants. The comics were written FOR KIDS who just wanted a keen story and some action, not Wally West's latest affair with a married woman.

EDIT spell.

Really, cut the puerile "Wally West is better as a character" gunk...just because Geoff Johns has already turned Barry Allen's new comic into the TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE in two pages doesn't mean that somebody, somebody who is really good, won't do things with Barry Allen that will make you eat your words. The f*cking Killer Moth, written correctly, could be the baddest dude in the DCU. So please get off the Wally West high horse. Because the horse is actually a gelding.

Make no mistake, I very much enjoy the character and think there was plenty more that could have been done with him.  But if they were going to kill a marquee character in Crisis, it made thematic sense that it be Barry.  The fact that Barry ushered in the Silver Age and the multiple Earths made him an ideal character, on a literary level, to kill in the book that jetisoned the concept of multiple Earths and nailed shut the coffin on DC's Silver Age.

If he was so boring, no one would have cared when they killed him and it would have been a non-event.

Strange that.

(and I loved it too, don't get me wrong, but Pete is basically Woody Allen in costume).

******

No he wasn't.