Where’s Waldo: Wally West Returns In Flash Annual #3

I have been to two San Diego Comic-Cons and one Boston Comic Con since DC kicked off their New 52 reboot (and one just before, when most of DC’s plans for the characters after the reboot had become public), and there has been one question asked almost more than any other: “Excuse me, sir? You, the middle aged guy with the ponytail? Where the hell are your pants?”

But that is not the most asked question. It is vastly surpassed by, “If you see a woman in a Batgirl costume, can you give me a quick heads-up? And also pretend to be me, Dan DiDio?”

But even more asked than those everyday questions is: “What happened to Wally West, and are when we going to see him again?” It seems like you can’t swing a dead cat at SDCC without hitting a pissed-off Wally West fan, or being screamed at by outraged furries.

And the answer has always been something along the lines of, “Barry Allen is The Flash now, and that’s that.”  Despite the fact that Wally West was The Flash for just about as long as Barry Allen ever was, and that there were two generations of comic book fans who only knew Barry as Flash if they’d read Crisis On Infinite Earths, it has seemed for about two and a half years that Wally West had been consigned to the quarter bin of history.

Except, yeah: apparently he’s coming back in The Flash Annual #3.