Some thoughts about The Flash #768

Can Wally West return to his glory days?

Wally is still unsure of himself after the mistakes he made but he's willing to make one last race along with Barry without knowing that this is far from his last one.

This was what a lot of us were waiting for, the return of Wally West as The Flash... unfortunately, it doesn't come with the best execution.

Jeremy Adams is the one responsible for this back to basics for The Fastest Man Alive and while some of the intentions might be sound, some of the choices are just odd. For example, right from the beginning you still see Wally doubting himself because of the events in Heroes in Crisis (and some people still don't trust him because of it, especially Ollie due to what happened to Roy) and I think most people are already tired of this whole portrayal. In fact, both Joshua Williamson and even Scott Lobdell tried to go beyond that to show a Wally that was getting over what happened, the portrayal in this issue feels a bit regressive.

Speaking about Lobdell, I can't help but also think that his work in Flash Forward was much more promising early on, particularly because of the implementation of classic Wally Rogues and concepts. This in comparison feels more generic due to the use of other characters and villains that are not related to the protagonist.

And now that I mentioned the word "generic", yeah, the writing itself is not particularly unique, or even that good. The dialogue is by the numbers and the presentation is not exactly creative (I think is a bit soon for Wally to start talking to himself when he just landed in another timeline), that's without even mentioning the plot that feels out of place for The Flash until the very end when it starts to connect to other Speed Force characters (Yes, Wally fighting dinosaurs might seem a bit cool but not that fitting for the series). The only thing I can give credit for is the amount of content that this issue provides but when such content is not engaging, what is even the point?

Brandon Peterson, Marco Santucci and David LaFuente handle the art and they all do a decent job but their styles (aside from maybe LaFuente's) seem out of place for a Flash book. Huh, start to notice a trend here.

Overall, an average read. I guess most of us were hyping this up for a proper back to basics for Wally but sadly, this isn't it, not yet at least.