Comic Couples We Love: Wally West & Linda Park In ‘The Flash’ #142

Welcome to Comics Couples We Love, a special feature for the most romantic week of the year! All week, we’re going to take a peek at some of our favorite comics couples in some of our favorite stories featuring them.

We’re going to kick the week off with one of the most underrated comics pairings — Wally West and Linda Park. And what better story to look at than their wedding in The Flash #142 (1987) by Mark Waid, Bryan Augustyn, Pop Mhan, Chris Ivy, Tom McCraw and Gaspar.

For twenty-two years, Wally West was the Flash. He was the character that proved the rule that legacy characters could work longterm as the primary bearer of the mantle. That was a large part thanks to Waid’s work on the character once he took over the series after William Messner-Loebs’ five year run on the title.

Linda Park, meanwhile, debuted as a minor supporting character early in the 1987 volume of the series. Eventually she developed into Wally’s primary love interest, a move that was a sign that Wally had matured past his teenage identity.

Their love story continued and grew over the next several years. It would be easy to see it as a relationship that mimicked Clark Kent and Lois Lane. After all, Wally was a core Justice Leaguer, and seen as a symbol of hope, while Linda was a fierce and talented reporter who could stand on her own without her superheroic significant other. The biggest differences laid in the characters themselves. Wally was a young man who was growing up and maturing in the public eye, after revealing his secret identity to the world, and Linda had a unique Korean-American heritage that no other comics lead had.

In The Flash #142, their story hit a natural milestone, their wedding.

Now, simply put, if you want a single issue to understand why Waid’s The Flash is a must read, this issue is it. The story begins with pretty standard superheroics. In fact, Wally had been dealing with this particular threat — the terrorist Kobra — off and on for years. But Wally begins to worry that his attacks — particularly on Keystone City Hall — are going to cause bigger problems. Thankfully though, Wally is able to prevent Kobra’s bombing and recover the item he needed, their marriage license.

This issue captures the spirit of this run so well because of what we get to see between Wally and Linda. There’s love and respect, but their relationship is built on partnership as well. In the opening scene, Linda finds out about Kobra stealing the bomb, and immediately lets Wally know, giving the fastest man alive the time he needs to save lives and prevent property damage. When their baker vanishes with their wedding cake, Wally jumps into action to bring (or kidnap) the best pastry chef he knows to help (thankfully there was simply a mix-up in addresses and the cake made it to the venue safely).

And the issue culminates in a series of scenes at the wedding that get to the core of both of these leads. Linda is worried that, given Wally’s terrible relationships with his family, that she might be next, which Wally is able to comfort her and resolve. Wally meanwhile finds himself pulled in every direction, until he has to kick into speed mode to write the vows that he forgot to… and in that split second he realizes that Linda is his beacon, always drawing him home.

I’m not going to spoil how the wedding ends, you need to find the issue yourself for that. But it’s truly great.

This is the Flash that I came to love years ago. Re-reading this has absolutely inspired me to go back to re-read the whole series. This is why we need more couples like this in comics.