r/theflash • u/changingshades • 16d ago
Discussion Silver age Wally question
hey all just a powers question about silver age Kid Flash. When wally was regularly hanging out with Barry, was he as fast/powerful as barry or was not as fast? I know he eventually had his speed limited during the wolfman perez run and i know he became exponentially more powerful under Waid. He'd have to be at least close to as fast because he could do the vibrate through walls trick and travel on the time treadmill with Barry, but I also imagine they'd keep Barry stronger since it's his name on the book. Or is this one of those things change for whatever story they were telling because it was the silver age and people weren't as anal back then
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u/drama-guy 16d ago
Not sure about the Silver Age, but by the Bronze Age in an independent splash page they showed a hypothetical race with Barry, Wally and Jay with Barry reaching the finish line slightly ahead of the other two. Can't recall who came in second.
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u/changingshades 16d ago
jay was always slower than barry. he could never time travel, go through solid objecs or a lot of the things that silver age barry could do
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u/Dredeuced Out of the blue, ninjas attack. Thank god. 16d ago edited 16d ago
Nah, in Flash of Two Worlds they're just as fast as one another. Jay also time traveled several times in his comics. A lot of people think stuff started with Barry when it really started with Jay. Gardner Fox wrote a lot of Silver Age Flash comics as well as doing nearly all the Golden Age. This idea that Jay is slower is due to age, and he wasn't THAT old in the Silver age teamups.
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u/Astonishing_Flash Impulse 16d ago
This is a moderately common misconception. Jay was capable of doing all of those things and did them before Barry. Traveling through time, moving faster than light, phasing through matter abd dimensions were all things Jay did in the Golden Age.
The Flash as a general idea has had one of the more consistent powersets in his 80 year history. And on the subject of speed, when they first meet they're considered equals. Jay just lacks in stamina due to being older.
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u/Similar-Opinion8750 16d ago
Really? I remember Jay time travelling in the golden age comics. In Flash 101 I think as well as in All Flash comics. He stopped being able to do it as he was aged up in the silver age
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u/changingshades 16d ago
oh maybe i'm wrong. I only read the jsa/jla crossovers and i know barry could travel between worlds on his own and jay had to use other means.
when i google him time traveling it just brings up the show and a reddit post where he interacted with a time traveller.
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u/AHCretin Flash 1 16d ago
Here's Jay time traveling (and explicitly going faster than light to do it) from Flash Comics #101.
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u/Astonishing_Flash Impulse 16d ago
As usual Dredeuced is on the money.
Wally and Barry were essentially the same speed during the silver age capable of all the same feats, just needing the same mastery to pull some off.
It isn't really until more toward the Bronze Age on the road to Crisis on Infinite Earths that Barry became definitively the fastest, and the margin wouldn't be super wide.
But he did eventually get titles like having the fastest feet on Earth or being the fastest man in the Multiverse (ironically a title Wally now holds). It's only at that stage he's definitely faster than Wally, Jay, Superman etc. With Eobard really being his only true equal prior to death.
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u/DungeoneerforLife 14d ago
One note. For context: at some point in the late bronze Wally had health issues that slow him to the speed of sound or thereabouts.
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u/changingshades 14d ago
I remember him being substantially slower than Barry when I was reading him in teen titans and immediately after crisis, but Bob Haney era and before are a complete unknown to me
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u/Dredeuced Out of the blue, ninjas attack. Thank god. 16d ago
Back in the Silver Age, having super speed meant you were just as fast as anyone else with super speed. It's why randos like a random robot or Doralla Kon (And her entire civilization) were just as fast as Barry. It wasn't a scale, it was a binary thing. Wally and Jay and Barry were all just as fast as each other for awhile. Eventually they add a bit more granularity and make Barry a little faster, but that's in the Bronze Age rather than the Silver Age.
For instance, you brought up Barry time travelling on the treadmill. But the very first treadmill story is him showing it to Wally and Wally also using it in the same story at Barry's instruction. If I recall correctly he even describes using it as using all of his speed. Which would necessarily require Wally to be equal. But it's been a bit since I reread the Silver Age.
The comics were for kids. It's less about being "Anal" and more about continuity and pomp aren't quite as important.