Wally West Chronicles #1: Flash #9

Hey X-Maniacs, tis I, the great and powerful X, here with a bonus post for the week!!!  You see, a few years back I did a couple of posts called the Jason Todd Chronicles, where I'd take an old Batman comic book, something pre-1988 and with Jason Todd in it and do a picture-type review for it...  What do you mean Batman's only been around since 2011?!  There WAS A DCU before the New 52, you know!  Anyway, I'd mix "comedy"(and I use the term loosely) and pictures and presto, I'd have a post!  Now, that lovable scamp, JT, loved those posts(for some reason...) and would often mention them during our conversations.  He's weird like that.  In order to shut him up... I mean, in order to appease him, I told him he could pick a comic book out of my collection and I'd dazzle the readers of this blog with a new post.  Much to my dismay...  I mean, much to my joy, JT took me up on the offer, which brings us to this post.  Unlike my regular reviews, I won't be scoring these issues because, well, I'm simply reading these comics with the express purpose of having a little fun.  So there ya go, that's what you've gotten yourself into by checking this post out.  One last thing before I get started...  If this post sucks as much as I suspect it will, this was JT's idea, JT's choice of book, in other words, JT, this is ALL your fault!!

Flash #9(Feb 1988)

This issue kicks off with Wally West, you know, THE ONE TRUE FLASH, talking to his psychiatrist about his father...  Um, that's interesting, I guess...  Don't know if I'd put it in a comic though...  Maybe this is why Didio and Johns hate Wally...  While rapping with the shrink, a woman barges in and exclaims that somebody was stealing from the diamond exchange down the hall...  Well that's weird.  Why would there be a diamond exchange down the hall?  Luckily, Wally is THE ONE TRUE FLASH and all and runs down to the hall to find...  Oh.  Oh no.  Damn you, JT!  The Chunk stealing the diamonds!

See, I told you, The Chunk.

Like most of us when we see a deformed, morbidly obese man, Wally immediately attacks.  Unfortunately for Wally though, the Chunk SPITS a diamond at him and hits him in the temple...  Now let's all think about that sequence for a moment...  Wally is THE FLASH.  Fastest Man Alive(or at least he was in the 1980's, 1990's and 2000's).  He's battling against a 500 pound man wearing a bow tie.  He's felled by a diamond that was SPIT at him?!  Ugh...

Apparently there's no way to avoid that attack, Fastest Man Alive or not.

To make matters worse, The Chunk then spits a mess of diamonds at Wally, shredding his costume and disorienting him.  And with good reason!  Who could have seen THAT coming!  The Chunk slowly lumbers out the door and by the time Wally gets up, he realizes that The Chunk was GONE!!!  Gone I say!!!

That's got to be the most embarrassing loss suffered by any superhero ever!

Jeez, after that I understand why Wally is seeing a shrink...  Anyway, Wally heads home and finds his mother and girlfriend(who just so happens to be married to another man...  Yeah, and?) arguing.  Wally gets a notice to go to a City Council meeting, but since that doesn't really go anywhere, I'm going to blissfully ignore it.  The next day, The Chunk strikes again!  This time he climbs into a truck carrying 1900 pounds of gold and disappears with it.

Well that was easy!

As luck would have it, Wally's shrink had heard of a young man fitting The Chunk's description (500 pounds and deformed?) so Wally goes to Cyborg and asks him to hack into some medical and school files hoping to figure out just who The Chunk was.  Cyborg is seemingly fine with the whole invasion of privacy thing and gives Wally The Chunk's real name.  With that, Wally goes to dinner with his girlfriend...  Instead of, oh, I don't know, looking for The Chunk!

Huh, he actually said hello for Cyborg...  I never do that...

Later on, The Chunk is robbing a museum that was showing some platinum...  Why they were showing it, I have no idea, but there we go.  Wally races in and buys time for The Chunk's hostages to escape.  Wally then tries to reason with The Chunk since he knew his real name and all.  Long story short, The Chunk ate a miniature matter transmitter and became a walking singularity because...  Hey, look out behind you!!  Ahem...  Anyway, being a walking singularity will make you really hungry(trust me, I'd know!), so The Chunk has been gorging himself on dense materials.  The Chunk also calls Wally "smooth, cool and popular".  Not anymore, The Chunk...  Not anymore...

Sure you could wear a suit like that, The Chunk!  You just probably shouldn't is all...

Unfortunately, Wally makes the mistake of swiping The Chunk's bag o' platinum, so The Chunk sucks Wally over and teleports them into... Um, himself?  Another dimension?  A black hole?  I'll be damned if I know, but he teleports Wally somewhere and tells him that he was never getting back home!  Holy cliffhanger, Batman!

Wally West is mmm, mmm, good!

Final Thoughts: Well that was... something...  I guess this post will make all of those The Chunk fans happy...  I mean, there are The Chunk fans out there.  Probably.  Like JT!  He MUST be a fan of The Chunk!  That's the only reason I can imagine he'd subject me to this comic book!  Plus, if nothing else, this post gives you somebody being defeated by spitfire diamonds...  HA!  Get it, "spitfire"?!  Eh.  I'm mercifully done here, until next time, X out.

Flash #2

It's time for the next issue of the Flash! And I'm not talking about the sucky current series, I'm talking about the AWESOME Wally West series. Let's get to it!

Flash #2:

What Happened: Wally manages to defeat the suddenly magical Vandal Savage by tossing him into the magic Savage surrounded his apartment with. From there, Wally cashed his lottery ticket which was good for six and a half million(!). Wally takes his girlfriend Magenta out to dinner but the two are interrupted by another attack by Savage. Wally manages to toss Savage out the 27th story window of the restaurant, but Savage teleports to safety. With Savage gone for now, Wally begins spending money like crazy, buying a Porsche and ending this issue by buying a mansion.

The Good: I'm enjoying the Wally West: Millionaire parts of this comic. The battle between Wally and Savage in the restaurant was a fun little romp.

The Bad: The battles between Savage and Wally ended inconclusively both times... The way Wally defeated Savage the first time was particularly weak. I found myself getting bored during parts of this comic.

The Verdict: This issue was definitely a step back from the last one. Sure, we got two battles between Wally and Vandal Savage, but they didn't really go anywhere... I guess that's my main qualm with this issue, it didn't really go anywhere. Wally fought Savage(to two no-contests) and started burning through his money... Not exactly the most interesting of comics.

Score: 6 out of 10.Wait, how does looking at somebody constitute taunting them?!

Flash #1

While DC has thus far done an okay job with their reboot, there's one thing they, in plain English, fucked up royally, that would leaving Barry “Boring” Allen as the Flash over Wally West. Yeah yeah yeah, I know, the old school DC fans and the DC fanboys who claim DC can do no wrong would tell me that Barry Allen is NOT boring, but is a dynamic, exciting, use your own overly positive adjective, character. To that I simply say this: No, he's not. Barry Allen is a bland character whose gimmick is that he's never on time, even though he's a speedster. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! I know, hilarity. To show my disgust at DC pushing Bland Barry to the forefront while hanging Wally out to dry, I've decided to post a review for the Wally West Flash series every time DC releases a Bland Barry Flash comic book. So DC released Flash #1 today? I'll review Flash #1 today. Just not the Flash #1 most people would expect to see... And I'll continue to do this until DC rights their wrong and kills Barry back off, paving the way for Wally West to reclaim his rightful position as DC's main Flash. So rejoice fellow fans of Wally West, it's time to relive some greatness!

Flash #1:

What Happened: It's Wally West's 20th birthday! He starts his day by buying some lottery tickets and lots of candy bars before heading to his apartment where his Teen Titans friends were waiting for him. While celebrating, Wally gets a call from a hospital and is asked to deliver a heart to Seattle from New York. Wally races cross country and happens upon Vandal Savage murdering some guy in Wyoming. Wally races over but Savage manages to teleport away before Wally could lay a hand on him. Wally tells the local police about the body and manages to reach the hospital just in time to pass out from his overexertion. He wakes up 17 hours later, finds out that the heart transplant surgery went smoothly, hops an airplane where he stops some terrorists from hijacking the plane and gets home. Wally puts on the TV and discovers that he'd won the lottery(!?!) before discovering an unopened present sitting on his table. Inside is a human heart and behind Wally is an angry Vandal Savage.

The Good: It was Wally West! There's your good! This issue did a great job of establishing who Wally was, and how big the shoes he was filling were. The swerve with the wining lottery ticket was unexpected and should lead to a lot of storyline opportunities down the road. The story was fast-moving and easy to get into. The cliffhanger was strong.

The Bad: Wally came across as immature and kind of dickish at times. The fact that Wally ran across the entire country and somehow happened across the very spot Vandal Savage was committing a murder was a bit much... Speaking of a bit much, Wally was taking an airplane from Seattle to New York and some terrorists hijack it wanting to go to Cuba. Now, it's bad enough that they happen to pick the plane the Flash was on, but shouldn't they have been hijacking an airplane a bit closer to Cuba?! That's a hell of a long flight!

The Verdict: I liked this issue more this time than I did the first time I read it, which you can check out here. On the plus side, I haven't read any of the next 80 or so Flash comics, so I have lots and lots of new reading material to get through until DC wises up and brings Wally back. All in all though, this was a good first issue with some promise for the future. Here's hoping you enjoyed this post, we Wally West fans need to stick together, boycott every comic Bland Barry appears in and hopefully one day Wally will be back where he belongs.

Score: 8 out of 10.Take that, suckas!

New Comic Day! March 2nd edition.

Another Wednesday, another New Comic Day post... I'm going to have to make this post kind of brief as I have a paper due for my Literature class and I should probably be working on that instead of this here post... But much like a junkie, I can't completely ditch my weekly NCD fix, so here we are. Let's get right into last week's books so I can quickly get into what I picked up earlier today... Last week's Pick of the Litter, Fantastic Four #588, was actually a bit of a disappointment to me, only garnering a 7 1/2 for a score. I mean it had its good parts, but I was expecting SO much more... Last week's Runt on the other hand more than surpassed my expectations for it. I wasn't expecting much from Detective Comics #874, but it impressed, getting a score of 8 1/2. In my defense though, I really didn't have my heart in picking Detective as the Runt, but I had to pick SOMETHING, and Detective wound up being it.

Okay, moving speedily along, here's the subscription books I'm expecting to receive eventually... Batman: Streets of Gotham #20, Green Lantern #63(My GOD, didn't I just suffer through this?!), Daken: Dark Wolverine #6 and X-Factor #216. With that out of the way, here's what I snagged at the comic shop earlier today. Brightest Day #21(once again, my GOD, didn't I just suffer through this!?), Freedom Fighters #7(sadly not long for this world), Secret Six #31, Avengers Academy #10, Wolverine/Hercules #1(I'm not sure why...), Deadpool #33.1, Thunderbolts #154, Wolverine: The Best There Is #4(are we really already up to issue #4?), Captain America and Falcon #1, Daken: Dark Wolverine #6 and Annihilators #1. Yeah, that's right, I have Daken #6 coming in the mail AND I picked it up today as well! I couldn't resist! I also snagged the Batman Beyond trade collecting that recent mini-series. Not a HUGE week for me, with only 11 comic shop books and 4 subscription titles, but a decent enough pull for yours truly. I'm going to grace Daken: Dark Wolverine #6 with the title of Pick of this Week's Litter, as it is one of my favorite ongoing books. As for this week's Runt, need you even ask?! It's Brightest Day #21 hands down! Just THINKING about reading that comic is getting me angry! So yeah, that's going to have to do it for me, as I REALLY need to get back to work! Thanks for stopping by, and until next time, X out.

The Random Scan of the Week!I miss the good old Flash days...