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Racing Through Hypertime

by Cecil Adkins

We should have known Mark Waid would give us at least one Hypertime story in Flash before he parted ways with the title. We finally got one, in issue 159.

To be fair, we've known for several months now that Walter West, the so-called Dark Flash, was an alternate reality version of Wally West, so it stood to reason that he was a Hypertime version of Wally, since any new DC Comics alternate reality stories are going to be viewed in the light of Kingdom. But it wasn't until Flash 158 that the Hypertime influence was really confirmed, and issue 159 really brought the concept home.

The Hypertime journey began when Kadabra, one of Flash's oldest foes, attempted to blast Wally West and Linda Park out of existence. Wally managed to save them, but at a price: "It still took everything I had just to hold our atoms together. . . leaving us trapped between dimensions." (158.15.3)

Wally describes his and Linda Park's journey home this way: "But the effort was indescribable. We were pure energy in search of a homing vibration. . . through a minefield of impossibilities -- worlds not ours. Our hold on reality was quickly eroded. After a day, we were overwhelmed. After a week, we had to keep our eyes closed to keep from going insane with confusion and doubt. Familiar vibrations led to one dead end after another." (158.16.3)

Thanks to Impulse, who had been the only character to remember Linda Park after she'd been pulled out of the mainstream DCU Hypertimeline by Kadabra, Wally and Linda found their way home. Everything appeared to be okay, but then a new danger of Hypertime introduced itself. We readers noticed it in issue 158, as a "Hypertemporal hiccup" made itself known in the form of changing fasions. . .

Perhaps this was just a way to poke fun at those Hypertime critics who claimed the concept would be used to explain away trivial coloring mistakes. . . but perhaps not. When Superman and Wonder Woman show up at the end of the issue to interupt Walter West's marriage proposal, you get the feeling something bigger's going on. . .

Issue 159 picks up with a startling revelation: If a person from one Hypertimeline stays in another Hypertimeline too long, barriers between the two Hypertimelines begin to break down, leading to crashes between timelines! This leads to a hearbreaking realization: Since Walter West and his love interest are from different Hypertimelines, they can never be together! The rest of the issue shows Wally and Linda's marriage (again) and the final goodbyes between Walter West and Angela Margolin. In the end, Walter West leaves, trying to find his own Hypertimeline, making a stop in what appears to be our reality briefly!

Incidentally, the idea of the barriers between Hypertimelines weakening harkens back to Planet Krypton, the Kingdom tie-in. In his investigation of the restaurant and its Hypertime "ghosts," Batman postulated that "The echoes are here, in this place, because something -- or someone -- is weakening the walls between their realitis and ours..." (PK 1.17.4) When Batman caught Hunter's espionage force (the "kids" from the Kingdom future), Kid Flash stated: "They seem to be a side effect of our presence here and what we're doing." (PK 1.19.1) Apparently, the "ghosts" were there due to the extended presence of Kid Flash and the others or perhaps the arsenal of Hypertime weapons they were assembling in the restaurant.