I recall reading once that Wally West thinks really fast. I believe it was when he found out about the mindwiping that Barry Allen had a hand in, and he was resolutely against it. There was an inner monologue where Wally mentions that he can consider a problem from every angle in less than a second, and so that's why he never changes his mind about things, because you can't bring up a point he hasn't already considered. So, two questions related to this:
1) Is Wally's mind always like that, or is it something he does consciously? So if he's not trying, his thought processes work at the same speed as your average person, but if he feels like it, he could accelerate his thinking. I'm guessing it's the former, though the second would make sense (to me anyway). After all, Wally has to think about it to move his body at super-speed, why not his thoughts?
2) Does it work the same way with Superman? He has super-speed, so can he evaluate situations from all angles in an instant without effort? Or would he have to have to focus on that to do it? With him, I'm betting it's the latter. he seems to forget he has super-speed a lot of times (though that's likely a writer trying to keep Superman from ending a fight or crisis in less than a panel), so I figure it's not as natural for him as it is for Flashes.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
It used to be that way for Superman before John Byrne and Frank Miller got ahold of him. Then he became, depending on your interpretation, a somewhat dense farm boy or a somewhat dense tool for the man.
Kurt Busiek recently gave Kal-El his super-intelligence back, so perhaps he's back to being a bit smarter.
I think the flashes all have the super-speed thought processes. I remember reading through a teen titans trade featuring Impulse/Kid Flash/whatever he is now (dead?).
He decided he wanted to get serious, so started studying every book in the San Francisco Library, and then a couple issues later was using that knowledge (so it's not a temporary boost thing), much to the shock of Robin and the others.
In some of the other Flash-focused comics I've read there always seems to be a comment from Flash that the world seems to move too slow (which is why he's often impatient). That could be the superspeed thought as well. Doesn't make him super-intelligent though, he just thinks faster than everyone else. So he jumps to conclusions even faster than an ordinary human.
I did not know this! Wally may think at super-speed, but he still not the sharpest tack in the box. (nudge nudge, wink, wink)
fortress keeper: He was pretty on the ball back in the Silver Age from what I've seen. he read everything in the Library of Congress once, and apparently retained it, so that's pretty slick.
seangreyson: I remember that story with Bart. The interesting thing was, earlier he commented to Jay and Wally that he remembered everything he read, and they acted surprised, so maybe they don't have that capability.
sallyp: Well, I suppose that when Wally considers a problem, he can only look at it from points of view he can conceive of, and all super-speed does is help him run through those faster, rather than help him come up with any new ones.
Post a Comment