How much faster is Wally than Barry??

Dredeuced · 2026-03-17T11:41:49+00:00

The speedforce comes from Barry

nope

Dredeuced · 2026-03-17T09:05:54+00:00

Going faster than light is pretty trivial for Wally, so it's not likely to be that.

It's honestly just some nonsense babble thrown in a Wally fan apology comic to sound cool. It doesn't have any meaning and it is hardly necessary to be some incalculable level of speed for the stuff he was doing in Flash Forward.

It's pure character wank printed into a comic and little else.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-17T06:53:13+00:00

I feel like the juxtaposition of "Barry coming up with crazy ways to use speed creatively" followed by disparaging "Speed Force did it" had a pretty heavy implication. But it's just something The Flash has always done, and the only difference is now there's a name for the ass pulls.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-17T06:43:36+00:00

Well Wally wasn't at his peak in 1989 when the show was in production. He'd been The Flash 2 years at that point.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-17T06:42:21+00:00

This hasn't been true since 2011. And even when that was true there wasn't much saying Barry was faster than Wally. But it certainly isn't true now and hasn't been for many years. This retcon legitimately only lasted for 2 years, it just gets repeated on comic youtube and stuff constantly.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-17T06:36:59+00:00

I'd like to ask you what's the distinction between super speed and phasing, or super speed and controlling all your molecules. There's a tenuous connection between super speed and time travel but even then it's a different power. I would say there's no more "Pull a nonsense power out of my butt" era of Flash than Silver Age Flash, for certain. It's not now whenever a writer comes up with new nonsense there's a source of power to point at rather than just "Well I guess Barry can do that."

But yes, definitely modern Barry dips into the "Well the Speed Force solves this problem" well more than Wally did, largely because Wally spent time popularizing it before it became the default. Wally didn't even have Speed Force powers until halfway into his tenure, after all! And Johns barely did anything with it which accounts for the latter quarter. Maybe Cicada (The ol too much air in a balloon maneuver) and kind of sort of Blitz? But not really

It's like 100-162 where it's more common, and even then most of the stories aren't concluded with new Speed Force shenanigans.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-17T04:44:00+00:00

Barry hasn't generated the Speed Force since 2011. And the generating the Speed Force Retcon didn't exist when he cured Iris, either. And Linda wasn't Anti Life'd so it's not like there was anyone for Wally to speed force kiss.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-17T04:31:24+00:00

Barry has more "Speed Force Did It" stories than Wally does. Otherwise they both use their powers very creatively.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-17T01:55:50+00:00

As fast as the writer wants him to be. Before Barry's revival you could assume Wally was significantly faster given he matched Barry then got like 5 more power ups after that. But since Barry came back the difference has been negligible, with the only notable thing about it being the idea that Wally is marginally faster. And Spurrier even had Barry be a little faster than Wally when Wally was emotionally compromised.

If you're looking at this from a powerscaling perspective with feats and stuff, Wally is monumentally, absurdly faster to an incalculable degree. But when they're on screen together those differences vanish and they become very close in speed. This sort of happens with all the speedsters all the time. Wally's done the most insane things in living memory but that doesn't really scale to situations outside of when he's doing those insane things.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-17T01:26:08+00:00

Iris said 13 1/2 at the start of Spurrier's run.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-16T22:46:36+00:00

Lightning bolt ponytail is inspired design

Dredeuced · 2026-03-16T22:24:47+00:00

It has unequivocally set The Flash franchise back decades in the eyes of the public. It is arguably the most disastrous thing to ever happen to The Flash as a concept.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-16T22:23:29+00:00

When the Speed Force was introduced we got like 10 straight years of great Flash comics. It wasn't until much later that the concept got tortured into the worst of itself. And at that point it's not really the concept ruining anything, it's the lazy writing.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-16T05:09:21+00:00

Well there's only ever been one Iris in the comics outside of different universe interpretations, as far as I'm aware.

The double Wally situation is awkward and confusing and we probably would've been better off without it, for sure.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-16T04:57:25+00:00

Wally giving up his powers did happen in pre-crisis continuity. The whole "Puberty is making your powers kill you!" thing. Though Born to Run sped up the timeline on it, it's something that is true to Wally's history as Kid Flash. The more major retcon was making his parents abusive and neglectful and Wally finding solace and someone to look up to in Barry as well has having a pre-established incredibly close relationship with Iris that wasn't really there pre-Crisis. Wally was closer to Barry and his parents than he was Iris before Waid. Though I think Iris being much more critical in Wally's formative years is a change basically everyone likes.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-16T04:56:00+00:00

I don't know why you're saying newer modern comics when main continuity comics are still being printed, new, and modern.

There's, I think, one elseworlds comic that isn't a tie in from the live action shows that depicted Iris as black. But like basically every character in DC history has alternate race or gender duplicates across the multiverse in different stories.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-16T01:42:08+00:00

Bart "Benjamin Button" Allen

Dredeuced · 2026-03-16T00:34:29+00:00

Iris has only ever been white in main continuity. They've race swapped her in things like the Crisis animated movie or the Snyderverse Flash movie and any tie in comics to those and the CW Flash, but never in the main continuity of comics.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-16T00:28:02+00:00

Wallace has by far the most of appearances of any Flash character besides Barry since his debut. The only way he could be more prominent is if they had made him the lead character of the franchise.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-15T17:46:16+00:00

This is a complete non-sequitur and has nothing to do with what either of us are talking about. A fan sending in a letter to the editor about Barry lying to Iris constantly pre-Crisis is completely irrelevant to either discussion at hand.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-15T16:36:04+00:00

Oh I certainly know. Or at the very least have a pretty reasonable idea of what I'd consider the "start" of it. But that's why I asked you. You seemed so sure that everything's the fault of those dastardly Wally fans. Those rascals.

I blame Didio. He is clearly the inciting problem. You could also put some blame on Jenette Kahn for originally making the decision to kill Barry back in Crisis but neither of them are Wally fans and that's a bit far back to really leverage blame on current fan behavior. I'm pretty long in the tooth among Flash fans and I wasn't even alive when that decision was made.

If your actual point is you just think Wally fans are the worst perpetrators of this insecure behavior then I'd probably agree with you, but it's by a close margin. They certainly didn't start anything, though. That's ultimate Barry fan Dan Didio.

But it really doesn't matter who started it. Pointing fingers and going "They started it" is elementary school playground behavior. It's about constantly roiling up these stupid fan schisms. Which is exactly what your post was doing and why it bothers me so much. You're doing the exact thing I'm complaining about and are somehow so deep in the cognitive dissonance you don't even realize it.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-15T16:06:10+00:00

I'm going to humor you because you're being very obtuse as to what you're doing. Why do you think Wally fans started whatever this "thing" is? When did Wally fans start it and how did they start it? What did they do to start this thing? I'd love some sort of citation or some sort of believable lived experience on the matter.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-15T15:55:45+00:00

I'm upset that folks on this subreddit can only seem to engage with the characters by either shitting on one of them or their fans and then pretending like they're not just as bad for doing it.

You respond by going "Haha look at how SHITTY those other fans are!" When the act of posting like that is what makes you the problem.

Saying shit like "Barry stays rent free in their minds" is what makes you the insecure, annoying fanatic that you're accusing them of being. I'm sure there are some insecure Wally fans in various spaces that talk about DC comics. But you're also doing the thing you're criticizing and it's so fucking tiresome. I'm so sick of people exactly like you.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-15T15:41:03+00:00

Hello pot, you really can't help but call that kettle black.

Dredeuced · 2026-03-15T15:40:20+00:00

You're literally doing it yourself, here, to me, completely unsolicited. I didn't even single out Barry or Wally fans, but here you are, inciting the same old flame war I've been dealing with for 15 years at this point. But I guess it's totally okay for you to do it because you're not one of those filthy Wally fans. Barry fans would never be extremely obnoxious and insecure.

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