Ten years from now, Earth’s heroes will die, betrayed and murdered by one of their own.
With no one to stop him, he will cement control over the Earth, hiding his true identity behind a mask and the enigmatic name “Monarch.” But in the year 2030, one man found a way to end Monarch’s reign. In a time-travel experiment, Matthew Ryder became Waverider, able to see into a person’s probable future with a touch. Finding himself in our present, he searches for the one who will eventually be seduced by evil and become the Monarch.
See Also: Into the Future
Family Business
It had been a decade since the Flash disappeared from view. Ten years since he met a young secretary named Bonnie Blackmon, who stumbled upon some of her new employer’s papers that she “wasn’t supposed to see.” The Flash worked with her to discover that Diogenes was not only the king of the underworld, but had the ability to learn everything about a person by merely touching him. Evidence they uncovered put Diogenes and his son Matthew in prison for life, and Wally and Bonnie fell in love (at this time he was not yet dating Linda Park).
Unfortunately, Diogenes managed to touch them both as he left the sentencing. Their families were threatened, and Wally’s mother killed on his and Bonnie’s wedding day. The Wests went into the Witness Protection Program and disappeared.
Ten years later, Diogenes lay dying. Wishing to take care of unfinished business and provide for his son, he enlisted the aid of Leonard Snart, former Captain Cold, to track down the Flash. In Flagstaff, Arizona, an unlucky twist of fate revealed him: young David Edwards, born with his father’s super-speed but without tha aura that protects him from friction, used hsi power to save a girl about to be hit by a truck. Suffering from severe burns, he was rushed to the hospital by his super-speed father.
Diogenes quickly set his trap in motion. He kidnapped the Flash’s son, forcing his father to come out of retirement. Returning to Keystone City, he faced a collection of hypnotized enemies who kept shooting him with strange ray guns. Eventually, he realized that the guns had been sapping his aura, capturing his speed bit by bit. Behind the scenes, they had been using Dr. Jerry McGee to prepare for an energy transference—giving the super-speed to Diogenes’ son. Diogenes began the power transfer—which killed Matthew, because he did not have the right genetic makeup. Diogenes died moments later.
![[Paradox]](bigimages/paradox.jpg)
Free from the threat of Diogenes, Wally and Bonnie were able to return to their own lives again. And, rather than return his powers to himself, Wally chose instead to give them to David, to fill in the critical gap in his own powers.
This was sufficient to convince Waverider that Flash would not become the Monarch. Unfortunately for Bonnie, Waverider’s intervention distracted him long enough for Matthew Diogenes to catch up to her before she could enlist the Flash’s aid. We can only assume that an unpleasant fate overtook her. Other consequences of this were that Golden Glider (who at that time had not yet begun collecting Chillblaines) would misjudge one of her future partners, leading to her death. Oddly, the creepy villain Paradox (pictured), who had two equally psychotic personalities and the ability to speed up or slow down time, has never appeared in the current timeline—except for his hourglass, which appeared in the 27th-Century Time Institute (Flash #115, 1996—see John Fox).
Primary Sources
- “Family Business” - Flash (second series) Annual 4 (1991), Mark Waid
Art
- Waverider - Flash (second series) #94 (September 1994) - Carlos Pacheco and Wayne Faucher/José Marzan, Jr.
- Bonnie, Paradox - Flash (second series) Annual 4 (1991) - Craig Brasfield and Andrew Pepoy
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