While briefly possessing the body of one of the Flash family’s greatest enemies, Wally West is forced to relive a famous DCAU episode’s plot.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Flash #771 by Jeremy Adams, Kevin Maguire, Howard Porter, Berat Pekmezci, Bryan Hitch, Max Raynor, Scott Kolins, Tom Derenick, Fernando Pasarin, Oclair Albert, Brandon Peterson, Michael Atiyeh & Steve Wands, on sale now
After being thrown from speedster to speedster as a result of a mysterious surge of energy, the Flash has been finding himself in multiple classic locations throughout DC history.
And in The Flash #771, one of Wally West’s latest stops even effectively throws him into a new version of a classic DC Animated Universe plot — with Wally West having to maintain his cover while being trapped in the body of the Reverse-Flash as he joins the Super Friends’ Legion of Doom.
While trying to remove himself from any future superheroes, Wally West ended up encountering a Speed Force storm that dragged him across time and space. In essence, Wally is catapulted into the bodies of different speedsters from across time, and suddenly desperate to figure out how to survive his unexpected new challenges. One of his jumps is into the body of the Reverse-Flash in the midst of a particularly bright and colorful version of the Legion of Doom. Doing so also emitted a massive blast of lightning — which struck Superman and seemingly killed him, cementing his place among the world’s greatest villains. Wally is revealed to have ended up in an entirely different reality and is forced to stall until his allies on Earth-Prime can figure out a way to bring him back home.
A jealous Lex Luthor tries to keep Reverse-Flash out of the Legion of Doom — and ends up giving the winded but still very much alive Superman of this world the chance to recover. Revealed to have absorbed the Speed Force that Wally needs to return to his own reality, Superman confronts the pair and ends up being blasted by a power dampener. This not only saves the Superman of this world but gives Wally the chance to escape — leaving a dazed and confused Reverse-Flash to be knocked out by an irate Luthor. It’s a largely goofy adventure for Wally, who quickly resumes his travels through the multiverse. But notably, it’s not the only time a version of Wally West was trapped in the body of a villainous member of the Legion of Doom.
The Wally West of the DCAU went through a similar experience during the events of “The Great Brain Robbery” from the final season of Justice League Unlimited. In that episode, Wally West was determined to be the best chance to find Gorilla Grodd, with Doctor Fate and the rest of the Justice League hoping for a brief psychic connection. But instead, Fate’s spell accidentally interfered with the machinations of Lex Luthor — resulting in the two switching bodies. While a super-speed enhanced Luthor was able to cause chaos on the Watchtower and was only barely prevented from escaping back to Earth, Wally was forced to quickly assume his villainous identity to remain undercover — similar to how he keeps his cool in The Flash #771 long enough to get the energy he needed to escape.
A fan-favorite episode of the superhero show, “The Great Brain Robbery” mined a good amount of comedy from the Flash’s attempts to commit to the openly villainous elements of Lex Luthor, even at one point telling Doctor Polaris that he doesn’t wash his hands after using the restroom “because I’m evil.” Meanwhile, his newest encounter throws the speedster into a situation where Lex’s presence is an unavoidable hindrance, and Wally has to figure out how to stay ahead of a Superman who’s unaware of his true identity as well as Luthor’s criminal intellect.
