My question is, is there anybody that read BOTH the Baron and Messner-Loebs FLASH, *AND* Waid's FLASH, and prefers the Waid FLASH?
Yup.
I've already explained earlier in this thread why I enjoyed Waid's work on the Flash so much. I thought Mike Baron's issues were clever, I read them and enjoyed them. I gave Messner-Loebs a shot but for some reason I just never liked them that much and dropped the book.
I still say that Waid brought back a sense of wonder and excitement that had been completely lacking in the DCU since Crisis. I just liked it all - the time travel, the legacy, etc. Fun stuff and he pulled it off well.
I'm with him.
This is NOT to dispute many of the Messner-Loebs/Baron stories were clever and interesting. Like that one where he saved the girl falling from the airplane....
And of course it's true that Baron/Messner-Loeb's Flash was scientifically more plausible, with the great deal of eating more and the loss of footware and all that, and limiting his speed to something like Mach Two.
Still...to REALLY fuel himself for such speeds, Wally would have to spend every waking minute eating. Even a few hundred hamburgers, eaten at super-speed, wouldn't last long, not at those speeds....
Besides, there was an elephant in the room--the memory of Barry Allen. Who was an integral part of DC History...and had casually run at near-light speeds, vibrated through solid matter, travelled through time, etc. Of COURSE running at such speeds and with such abilities is ridiculous. But Wally, by definition, can't forget Barry. Many of his villains are grounded in Barry's era.
I was very enthusized by "The Return of Barry Allen" storyline. I thought it was a clever explanation of why Wally couldn't initially run as fast as Barry, and an ingenious way of restoring him (more or less) to full speed...but even so, the part of me that really KNOWS physics knew there HAD to be more to the story.
The "Speed Force" was just vague enough to be workable. There's no way Wally, Barry, or Jay could get enough energy from food to be that fast---there HAD to be some extra force.
As for characterization---if anything, the Baron/Messner-Loebs Wally seemed a deliberate BREAK from the previous portrayals of Wally, who was portrayed in Teen Titans as sort of a Middle-Class small town yokel, in love with "ordinary" life. Baron and MEssner-Loeb's harkened back to an even EARLIER version, Bob Haney's showoff in Tenn Titans, and made him more of a "player", sleeping around, a tendency he hadn't shown before.
Of course, a LOT of us change as we become adults, but it was Baron/Messner-Loeb's Wally that I had trouble reconciling with the Wally I had known before. I thought Waid's introduction of Linda Park as Wally's constant lover was a good touch, and I thought his chracterization of Wally was a good amalgamation of ALL that had gone before.
---Al
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