Wally West got his own form of the Reverse-Flash in Zoom. Here’s how the supervillain completely dismantled Wally’s life in a flash.
While Barry Allen will always be linked to the sinister Eobard Thawne, his one-time successor Wally West received a very different sort of Reverse-Flash in Zoom, a supervillain that exacted an incredibly personal toll against Wally while he defended Central City as The Flash. And in the Scarlet Speedster’s first fateful showdown with the newly minted supervillain, Zoom exacted an incredibly devastating toll on Wally’s personal life that led him to temporarily abandon his superhero role and reassess his life before facing down Zoom for a high-speed rematch.
Zoom is the villainous alter ego of a forensic scientist and criminal profiler Hunter Zolomon, created by Geoff Johns and Scott Kolins in 2002’s The Flash: Secret Files & Origins #3. Zolomon transferred into the Central City Police Department after a case he was working on went horribly wrong, resulting in him receiving a permanently damaged knee, his police detective father-in-law murdered and Zolomon’s marriage completely unraveling. Befriending Wally shortly after his arrival in Central City, Zolomon was paralyzed after enduring a vicious attack at the hands of Gorilla Grodd. After Wally refused to travel back in time to change history to avert the tragedy, Zolomon’s friendship with The Flash ruptured and he broke into the Flash Museum to gain access to the Cosmic Treadmill. The time-travel device exploded and doused Zolomon in its energy, causing him to transform into Zoom. Years later, the Reverse-Flash revealed that he secretly traveled back in time to orchestrate the tragedies leading to Zolomon’s villainous metamorphosis all along.
Instead of drawing his powers from the Speed Force, Zolomon’s Cosmic Treadmill accident gave him the ability to manipulate time’s flow around him giving him a much different sort of super-speed. Deciding that every hero needs to endure a tragedy to emerge stronger just as he had, Zoom targets Wally’s wife Linda Park with the intention to murder her to drive Wally to become a better hero. The resulting storyline “Blitz,” in The Flash #192-200 (vol. 2) by Johns and Kolins, saw the two former friends battle. Wally was able to save Linda’s life and trap Zoom in a temporal loop, rendering him comatose and forced to mentally relive the worst day of his life repeatedly, but the supervillain hit Linda with a supersonic shockwave emitted from snapping his fingers. Linda recovered but the baby that she was carrying was lost by the brutal attack.
Wally and Linda spent some time apart in the immediate aftermath and Wally summoned the Spectre to erase the public’s knowledge of his secret identity to prevent any potential future attacks on him through his loved ones. As Wally and Linda eventually reconciled and Wally resumed his superhero career as The Flash, Central City’s rogues went to war with one another. Zoom emerged from his coma and decided to team up with a time-traveling Reverse-Flash to resume his vendetta against the Flash Family. Barry, pursuing Thawne at a time before his own death during Crisis on Infinite Earths, appeared to give Wally, Jay Garrick and Bart Allen a much-needed assist to defeat the two Reverse-Flashes. As Wally and Zoom race through time, they alter history by restoring Linda’s pregnancy, resulting in the birth of her and Wally’s twins.