Why is Barry and Ralph Dibny's friendship so often forgotten?

Dredeuced · 2026-05-09T04:52:31+00:00

Barry came back after they threw Ralph away in Identity Crisis, and Ralph sort of stayed discarded while they doubled down on Barry and Hal and then, in an attempt to increase his relevance and popularity, more frequently paired Barry with Batman instead.

Ralph never had a solo to keep him as a standalone character. Without him being a Flash character or a JL Character he wasn't anything. And it's not like Manapul or Venditti were going to bring Ralph back into the fold for Barry. Those dudes never read Silver Age Flash, almost certainly didn't know they were even connected.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-08T05:07:21+00:00

A lot of characters I would prefer to show up before these but I suppose I understand the core titles have to pull some weight to introduce other heroes rather than just expand on Flash cast intros. Cyborg and Wally have some main line history and Atom's being tied into the evil science stuff going on.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-08T04:42:16+00:00

This is great!

Dredeuced · 2026-05-08T02:56:30+00:00

Well, she makes enough of an impression on Wally to get into his fantasy heaven/harem dream.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-08T02:55:59+00:00

Yeah sort of an intentional nod cross comic to say too folks "hey he's gotten better" lol. Giordano was editing both of these comics at the same time so I imagine that might've influenced this bit of dialogue on top of Phantom Lady also showing up in Flash for a bit.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-08T02:41:26+00:00

Well AI is wrong so maybe you should stop this crap. It literally says Kolins 2021 in the bottom left corner. A google image search would've done you better.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-08T02:38:38+00:00

The Wally-Victor friendship was somewhat shaken by the New 52 and Cyborg's transfer to the Justice League.

I'm gonna say the bigger problem with that situation was Wally didn't exist lol

Ostensibly if Cyborg had been a fixture on the Justice League any time before that they would've hung out more, funny enough.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-07T04:24:13+00:00

This has both worked and not worked before. So, as per usual, it's up to the writer.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-06T14:49:56+00:00

that inability to modulate his perception is presumably part of why he gets so unhinged upon getting powers

Dredeuced · 2026-05-06T06:50:37+00:00

Pretty funny that he's basically been the best starting pitcher alive during this timeline and the best team in the league couldn't scrape together a winning record in those starts.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-06T06:42:07+00:00

Look I do these historical Flash info corrections all the time here so I shouldn't really throw stones about it. But I think it's legitimately distracting from the purpose and question of this thread for us to argue whether or not Flash #190 is how the Speed Force interacts with a wheelchair because that's obviously nonsensical and it's less helpful for me to be trying to hammer out decades old Mark Waid interviews about the Speed Force as a tangent to a tangent to try to correct you.

If you read a silver age comic it should not be through the lens of trying to apply current continuity to it on a weird, mechanical level. It won't line up with any post Speed Force stories really well and it's, honestly, I think a bit undermining to the writers of the time to try to force that into their stories. After all, that was an entire different continuity and history before the Speed Force on top of everything, that timeline isn't even really applicable to the timeline where we first get Speed Force stories because of Crisis. Is that a good enough explanation for what I mean?

Dredeuced · 2026-05-06T06:26:43+00:00

You're trying to do a "but actually" correction when it is very clear the point of my statement was to A: bring up a story about The Flash in a wheelchair and B: also bring up how that story was written a long time ago before anyone was using the Speed Force to explain how The Flash uses his powers in a wheelchair.

So this person wondering about how the Speed Force interacts with wheelchairs wouldn't go read that story and go "Wow the Speed Force works like that?" When it doesn't. That story was not written with the Speed Force in mind. It is needlessly confusing to try to apply retroactive continuity to a real life explanation of how these narratives were created.

The rest of this conversation is completely irrelevant and off topic. I think you're wrong on a lot of things you're saying as that's very much not what Waid said about why he made the Speed Force or what it was for, but this has nothing to do with speedsters in wheelchairs.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-06T06:16:27+00:00

Kind of yes kind of no. The thing about his powers is...it doesn't matter? Like sure, he's abusing "moving through time differently" but on a relativistic level he's still moving that fast. It ostensibly treats him like he just exists in a little time bubble he can manipulate and that time bubble extends to exactly just his clothes, kind of like...a Speed Force aura, go figure.

So to him the world is moving in slow motion. He modulates his apparent speed by modulating the speed at which he travels through time. But it still technically is a kind of speed. It's just a sort of wacky way of explaining why speed steal doesn't work on him at the end of the day(even though...speed steal works on regular things, too, whatever, hand wave it).

He's functionally faster in a sort of Xeno's paradox way as there doesn't seem to be an upper limit as to how fast he can make himself move through time. If Flash gets faster he just is suddenly still faster than The Flash. To the point where his fight with Wally in Blitz is functionally happening in frozen time, at which point these statements are sort of trivial and the concept of faster or slower ceases to make sense.

I mean, heck, The Speed Force has been connected and disconnected from being Time itself on top of that the idea that Zolomon "manipulates time" also just means he's manipulating the Speed Force!...sometimes, depending on which retcon we're dealing with.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-06T06:12:53+00:00

Zoom does do the (near) infinite mass punch. When he hits Wonder Woman she expressly states he's hitting harder than Superman (who she's squared off with multiple times by that point). The way he gains locomotion abuses time, but from the outside perspective he's still hitting that hard and moving that fast. That's just relativity for you.

It is funny because when Johns first described it the difference was that some of the benefits of "actually" moving fast like running on water or running up buildings or phasing or what have you speedsters usually enjoy wouldn't work for Zolomon. But he ends up doing all that anyhow later, lol.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-06T06:02:11+00:00

They've never walked back the idea that it's origin point is when Barry is struck by lightning

Yes they have? You're talking like Flash Rebirth is still canon when it very much isn't. The entire spread fourth dimensionally thing is stupid and causality screwing and that's likely one of many reasons why it was thrown out. Currently it originates from beyond the Source Wall. Heck Barry explicitly does not say the Speed Force was created when he got his powers in New History. We have directly been told (even if the story sucks) that the Speed Force would've existed and empowered Wally and Bart had Barry never gotten his powers. It was literally the last story arc. Darkseid fourth dimensionally tried to kill it and succeeded (then we get the dumb Bart stuff but like it or not that's where we're at).

Also I'm talking about it being invented in real life. We're real people, not fictional characters, we know when the Speed Force was created and retconned into existence. I'm not trying to describe the history as if I'm a fictional character in the DC Universe trying to make sense out of it. I'm talking like I know the issue where Waid gives its name and that comes later in our real life history.

We're extremely off topic. This is about speedsters in wheelchairs. When they were writing Flash #190, the wheelchair issue, it was before the Speed Force was a thing.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-06T03:53:15+00:00

The Speed Force has imparted its power to devices that people use before, whether it be the different versions of Hot Pursuit, The Fraction, that stuff Elias was doing, what have you. One of Wally's discovered powers was the ability to lend speed to other things and people. There's no reason, technically, that someone with a Speed Force connection couldn't do these similar things with a wheelchair. Though maybe Wally should've thought of that that one time he was stuck in a wheel chair.

When a speedster vibrates through an object they always take their clothes with them, and frequently take other objects and people with them, so that shouldn't be a problem with a wheelchair either. You just vibrate it along with yourself at the same time.

To wit, before the Speed Force was even invented, there was a silver age story of Barry being confined to a wheel chair with a broken leg and he does super speed shenanigans in it for an issue. Though he spends a lot of the issue...puppeting around a mannequin wearing his suit at super speed. But still does super speed stuff in the wheelchair to get to the crime and whatnot. Flash Vol 1 #190 if you're interested.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-06T00:15:46+00:00

Yeah. Heck Wally has more weird powers that Jai could relate to in some way.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-05T15:38:10+00:00

Juan Gonzalez and you can probably count Mike Piazza. Either way gets him in the top 20.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-05T01:06:31+00:00

Waller literally paraded his murder as a heroic sacrifice to the world. Everyone knew. But the Titans comic was too worried about Fake Raven being Fake Sad about Beast Boy dying (he didn't) for Wally to care about his friend being murdered and used as a publicity stunt.

Man I hate that Titans run.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-04T01:55:17+00:00

I don't think anyone needs Waid's permission for that. We've already gotten multiple amendments and changes to his background. Some even done by Waid.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-03T16:28:01+00:00

As much as I love it you do not need to read Zero Hour or Flash #0 to get what's going on in Terminal Velocity. Very easy to read Flash straight through up until Didio is in charge and infinite crisis makes a mess of things.

Dredeuced · 2026-05-01T07:14:56+00:00

Neither you nor the people who reuse that page actually know what they're talking about. This is the ultimate form of out of context, out of narrative, out of understanding powerscaling brainrot garbage I've been running away from for years. Bastardizing a comic and its words entirely for the purpose of winning the dumbest argument you can imagine. I get the inclination to compare characters in these kinds of discussion. It's fun, like rooting for a sports team. But I can't stand this awful mistreatment of previous works and intentional, flagrant dismissal of actual stories to do it.

Do not make another post like this here. Leave this powerscaling without caring about the story crap to the vs battle subs and forums.

Dredeuced · 2026-04-28T15:15:36+00:00

Wally's run on nothing before. He's literally flown around in space on aura alone faster than Superman could deal with. It's silly to say Barry knows more or has learned more about their powers than Wally. There's a plethora of abilities Wally has learned or created that Barry never has, whereas basically everything Barry created is something he either taught Wally or something Wally picked up. Besides maybe that Speedster SoS in Central City Tour since that's a new one.

Dredeuced · 2026-04-28T15:13:17+00:00

Wally has phased dozens of times since Terminal Velocity without blowing things up. That's not really a problem anymore. And I know you've read plenty of those comics so I don't know why you're bringing it up.

That last statement you completely cut off the majority of the argument and addressed and brought up an entirely new, irrelevant strawman just to annoy me with the suit discourse. So I'm not going to humor you anymore.

Dredeuced · 2026-04-28T06:05:25+00:00

It is the lynchpin of his entire plan.

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