Beyond human understanding exists an elemental essence known as the Speed Force, it the source of power that lets those superhumans with the ability of superspeed to move at velocities that far exceeds anything the human body can or should be able to cope with. To join with the Speed Force is to go beyond the limits of physically known speed and to enter a realm that is more a metaphysical afterlife rather than a normal dimension. To those that have attained the ability of superspeed the Speed Force is literally the Creator, and at times it can seem to be an intelligence that guides the fates and destinies of any that are fortunate enough to be part of it. Those that do, for what ever reason, become connected with the Speed Force are destined to became heroes or in the rarer case villains. One name that has become synonymous with the ability is the Flash and the three generations of heroes who have carried the mantel.
The first Flash was Jay Garrick who first gained his superpowers while a student at Midwestern university. He would go onto become one of the stars of the Golden Age and a founding member of the Justice Society of America. Jay retired when the JSA disbanded. Meanwhile police scientist Barry Allen was transformed into a second Flash when his laboratory was struck by a bolt of lightning knocking a cabinet of unknown chemicals onto him. Like his predecessor before him Barry Allen became one of the core members of the superhero community and a founding member of the Justice League of America. The third Flash was Barry Allen's sidekick. His name is Wally West, he is the current Flash and he is the fastest ever man alive.
Wally West grew up with caring but petty parents in a hometown that was so far off the beaten track that he would later describe it as a "wide place in the road". In many ways it was an all to conventional and mundane childhood. Except for three events. The first was being the President of the Blue Valley Official Flash Fan, the second was the guidance of a stranger who urged him to never let go of his dreams (that stranger was later to be revealed to be Wally himself on a roller coaster ride through his own life via the Speed Force), the third was the fact that Wally was the nephew of Iris West, girlfriend of Barry Allen (alias the Flash).
For Wally the West family with its legion of cousins, aunts and uncles where a trap of mundanity that he often wished to escape. However there were two relatives that were different, his grandfather Professor Ira West and his Aunt Iris. She was his best friend and kindred spirit. Wally would spend as much time with her as possible. She arranged for Wally to spend one summer with her in Central City. Shortly after arriving he was lucky enough to witness his idol, the Flash, defeat a robbery. Afterwards Iris introduced Wally to Barry Allen over lunch. Initially Wally was unimpressed with Barry (compared with the adventures of the Flash) but Barry arranged for Wally to met the Flash at his lab (of course Barry Allen was actually the Flash).
Wally was awed to be in the presence of the Flash. He got the Flash to explain how a cabinet of electrified chemicals had exploded granting him superspeed and Wally innocently asked if there was a chance that the same thing would happen to him. As if fate needed to no more promoting a second lightning bolt hit the building recreating the original accident and altering Wally's life forever. Over the next two weeks Wally began to manifest the power of superspeed and the Flash secretly schooled Wally in the use of his power before announcing him to the world as his partner. He initially wanting to use the name Speedy, but that had already been taken by Green Arrow's sidekick and he settled with the alter ego of Kid Flash. Wally started off wearing a cut down version of Barry's costume until an accident with a matter transformer changed it into the classic yellow and red version. Strangely it would be almost a year before Barry told Wally his secret identity.
It was not long before Kid Flash met other sidekicks when he helped Robin I (Dick Grayson) and Aqualad (Garth) stop the evil Mister Twister from terrorising a town. The trio got on well and were drawn together with Speedy (Roy Harper) and Wonder Girl I (Donna Troy) when the Antithesis entity took control of the JLA forcing their younger partners to band together to subdue them. After their success as a team the young heroes decided to form a permanent group called the Teen Titans. Wally started seeing student Francis Kane after they both started attending Senior School. The Titans were reformed by the empath Raven in order to stop her demon father Trigon, initially Wally was resistant to rejoining but Raven secretly helped him deal with some emotional problems and he followed her into the Titans. For a time Wally believed that he was in love with Raven when it was actually the lingering effects of their earlier empathic encounter.
At that time Wally was as fast as Barry, but some have conjectured that Barry was subconsciously transferring speed to Wally in the same way that Wally can now do to others. However things have always been for more complex for Wally. When he first gained his speed Professor Ira West speculated that the superspeed was putting a huge amount of strain on Wally's heart. As Wally grew older his body chemistry began to change and began affecting his superspeed. While fighting the Brotherhood of Evil with the Teen Titans he was caught in a stray blast of power from team-mate Raven which further upset his metabolism. The prognosis from the Doctors was not good, the blast of power and his maturing body had upset the chemsity that gave him superspeed placing a tremendous strain on his heart. Sustained use of his speed would kill him. He was forced to retire as the Kid Flash and instead turned back to his college studies.
While Wally was having his own problem with the Teen Titans Barry had been arrested for the murder of his arch-enemy, Professor Zoom. Zoom had already murdered Wally's aunt Iris and had been about to murder a second woman before Allen was forced to use lethal force to stop him. Wally was forced to testify at the trial. The Flash was proved innocent and decided to make a clean start with Iris in the 30th century. It seemed as if the legacy of the Flash had finally come to an end. During the cosmic Crisis Jay Garrick managed to persuade Kid Flash out of retirement to help the assembled heroes follow the Anti-Monitor to the beginning of time. Afterwards the Anti-Monitor boasted that he had killed the Flash and Wally followed a coalition of heroes to the Anti-Monitor's Fortress in the Anti-Matter Universe to find out the truth. There he discovered Barry's costume and ring. Barry Allen had given his life to save the entire universe.
During the final battle with the Anti-Monitor Wally was caught in an energy blast. Afterwards Jay Garrick's analysis revealed that the blast had undone the effects of Raven's earlier blast and had stabilised his metabolism and superspeed. He was no longer in danger, but his top speed had been reduced to just less than the speed of sound. In memory of Barry Allen Wally donned his costume and became the third Flash. A service was held for Barry Allen, but grief stopped Wally from acknowledging that he was truly gone. It was only after Jay Garrick and Hal Jordan helped him to grow-up a little that Wally finally began to cope with the loss of his friend and mentor.
The next six months would be some of the most unstable in Wally's life as he went through three girlfriends (Fancies Kane, Tina McGee and Connie Noleski), won the lottery only to loose it all in a stock crash, his parents split up, his father was revealed as a Manhunter agent and his mother decided to move in with him. Wally also began to extend his circle of friends in the New York area, husband and wife scientists the McGee's helped him study his loss of speed, the massive Chester Runk (Chunk) was initially an enemy and neighbour Mason Trollbridge even claimed to be the sidekick of the depression era vigilante called the Clipper. Wally move out of Barry's shadow by becoming a founding member of the Justice League Europe. He even developed his own enemies including the Kilg%re, Speed Demon and a long standing feud with the immortal Vandal Savage.
Wally's powers fluctuated and even vanished at one stage. An attempt was made to recreate the accident that have given Wally his powers and for a second he regained the speed that Barry had once possessed. Uncontrolled he blazed a trail of devastation across the US before he slowed down. Wally finally settled down when he moved to Keystone City (Central City was still Barry's city) with friends Hartley Ratherway and Mason Trollbridge. With a salary from the JLE and a quiet home life Wally was able to devote more of his time to fighting crime. His first challenge in Keystone City was to clear out the Turtle from the labyrinth beneath the city. After that he teamed up with Vixen and Rex the Wonder Dog to stop Gorilla Groddfrom turning all of Keystone's animals into a super-intelligent beast army.
A new feature in Wally's life when he moved to Keystone City was the reporter Linda Park. They first met after the Flash's superspeed run across the country when she was a hostile interviewer. Initially she viewed him as a brash young hotshot superhero while he saw her as argumentative journalist with little connection to the audience that she served. Their relationship began to thaw then they both independently began investigating the same new age cult (a group that Wally almost bought into) and then together they managed to dissuade the Kilg%re from its plans to eradicate the human race. Another villain that reappeared was Vandal Savage who attempted to end their feud by killing Wally. In the process of defeating Savage Wally destroyed his costume and changed to a new shiny version created for him at STAR Labs. Eventually Connie left Wally for Chunk and Wally began going out with Linda properly.
Wally was shocked when Barry Allen apparently reappeared in Central City. However it was really Eobard Thawne from the 25th century, he was a big Flash fan who wanted to come back to the 20th century and replace the deceased Barry Allen. While visiting the Flash Museum Thawne made the unfortunate discovery that in his personal future he would become the villain Professor Zoom and that Barry Allen would be responsible for his death. After a battle Wally was able to send Thawne back to the future with no memory of their encounter so that he could encounter Barry for the first time.
Ever since the Crisis Wally had been slowly regaining his top speed. While in the 64th century he encountered one of the entropy rifts that were part of the Zero-Hour crisis, in a desperate attempt to seal the rift he created a superspeed vortex and ran back through it at maximum speed. The attempt failed, but it did push Wally past lightspeed and into the timestream. He glimpsed the energy field that Max Mercury would later call the Speed Force. During a fight with the terrorist Kobra Wally was forced to again pass light speed to save Linda's life, there was a blast of lightning and Wally vanished into the Speed Force, much like Barry had done several years before. Wally was different, the Speed Force transformed him to the point where he now had a "direct line" to the heart of the force that grants all the speedsters their speed. It had transformed his abilities and made him the fasted man that has ever lived. It has also galvanised Wally as never before and forced him to examine his humanity. At last Wally West was the Flash in his own right and only really then took his rightful place as a corner stone of the superhero community.
Wally faced perhaps his greatest challenge in the form of Savitar, who had joined with the Speed Force sometime after the retirement of the original Flash and the emergence of the second. He had devoted his life to the study of the Speed Force and had turned it into his religion. During the course of the battle Johnny Quick lost his life and Wally finally realised that he had to give Savitar what he really wanted. Wally used his speed to boost Savitar to such a velocity that he was propelled into the Valhalla of the Speed Force. Because of his shear speed Wally skimmed the edge of the Speed Force and ended up centuries in the future and found himself teaming up with future Flash John Fox and later the Tornado Twins (the children of Barry Allen).
Faulty records showed John Fox that Wally did not return to the twentieth century after their meeting so he decided to travel back in time and try and take up his mantel. While there he started to convinced Linda that Wally was gone with the result that the emotional bond that anchors Wally to this world started to breakdown leaving him at the mercy of the Speed Force. It took everything that Wally had to return to his own time, make John Fox realise his errors and defeat the bad guys. The emotional bond between Linda and Wally was further reinforced during a recent battle with Neron. It turned out to be that emotional bond that was Wally's ticket to the Speed Force. Whenever he entered the Speed Force he could still return to the mortal world by following Linda's love as a beacon. The villain Abra Kadabra kidnapped Linda on her and Wally's wedding day, he then wove a spell that erased the memory of her from the world.
Wally would have one final meeting with Barry when he discovered that Barry had a evil twin brother called Malcolm Thawne (alias Cobalt Blue). Thawne (an ancestor of Eobard Thawne) had created a magical gem that possessed anybody that held. Its purpose was to plague the Flash Dynasty over the next thousand years and finally kill Barry Allen during the few months that he spent with Iris in the 30th century. Wally gathered together Jesse Quick, , Impulse, Max Mercury, John Fox and Jay Garrick to travel the time stream and warn as many future Flashes as possible. The final show down was in the 30th century when Jay, Barry and Wally teamed up to defeat the magical essence of Cobalt Blue. In a final attack Cobalt Blue would have killed Barry had Wally not jumped back in time to grab him away. In order to finish the threat for all time Wally unleashed the energy of the Speed Force into the draining attack of the Gem dissipating Thawne's essence once and for all.
In defeating Cobalt Blue Wally brushed up against the Speed Force and found himself unable to return because Kadabra had removed him memory of Linda and therefore his beacon back to the real world. Kadabra had been holding Linda in a Fortress between universes and she was able to escape by jumping into the chaos of Hypertime. Linda found herself on a parallel world where the native version of her had died while fighting Kobra, pushing the native Flash (Walter West) close to insanity. Wally was then able to follow Linda to that parallel world and ran head long into his crazed and brutal doppleganger. During a fight with Kadabra Wally was able to temporally merge their molecules to calm Walter thereby restoring his sanity. The conclusion of the fight sent Linda and Wally careering back into Hypertime.
Feeling a debt to Wally for restoring his sanity and thinking that Kadabra had killed him Walter decided to travel to Earth-Zero and continue as a mysterious dark Flash. Meanwhile Wally and Linda drifted phantom like through the worlds of Hypertime until they finally drifted back to Earth-Zero. Wally regained his physical form, but Linda was left as a phantom because of the Kadabra's spell. Wally recruited the help of Walter and the other speedsters in a gamble to reverse the spell. He began impersonating the Reverse-Flash and formed an alliance with Kadabra and the new Replicant. Kadabra finally dispelled the spell just to prove to his allies that he really had made a woman disappear and was not delusional. With Linda restored Wally and his allies dropped the act and quickly defeated the bad guys.
