Linda Park is a committed television news reporter whose career brought her in frequent contact with the Flash (Wally West).
Initially unimpressed with the hero's attitude, Linda began to see another side to the brash hero as time went on and their relationship blossomed from friendship to lovers and soon led to marriage.
Sharing many adventures and battles alongside her husband, Linda is now a mother to a pair of super-powered twins and an expert in Speed Force-orientated technobiology while still maintaining a successful career in the media news industry.
Background[]
Linda Kiyo Park was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Lisa and John Park, a third generation Iowa family of Korean descent. Growing up, Linda became a television news reporter for Channel 2 News in New York. During this time, Linda married a chemist working for Royal Industries named Rick Shavers, however, the relationship quickly deteriorated and they got an annulment within two weeks of the wedding.
While working a story at Swainsville, New Mexico, about the local "Porcupine Man" legend, she discovered that the Flash was actually the "mythic beast" following an incident with his speed which left thousands of dollars of property damage across several states. Appalled by the hero's attitude and behavior, she deemed him responsible for the destruction and hounded him mercilessly while he accused her of being a sensationalist who only cared about her reviews instead of the truth. She would eventually run into the hero again in New York while covering a series of homicides involving the city's homeless by a metahuman serial killer called "the Comforter". Her opinion of the hero did not change even after moving to Keystone City and encountering him again while covering the death of the Keystone Police Chief, who had been killed by one of the Joker's former henchmen. During the incident West (his identity as the Flash being public) flirted with her and, despite her guarded demeanor, invited her to a housewarming party and a concert after that.
On her first job for Keystone City’s WKEY-TV KFMB Channel 4, Linda became suspicious of a spiritual-retreat called the Celestial Enlightenment Ranch that Wally had become involved with. Teaming up the hero and discovering the retreat to be a scam, Linda found herself channeling the spirit of an 800-year-old Irish bard named Seamus O’Relkig. Wally helped her deal with this possession, which turned out to actually be an electronic being known as Kilg%re, and she helped him on several more cases which eventually led to the two became close friends and, after Wally pursued her when she was on the verge of moving to and accepting a job offering in Midway City, the pair began dating. After Wally’s house was destroyed, they bought a house together in an outlying suburb of Keystone City.
Everything was going great between the two of them until Frances Kane, an old girlfriend of Wally's from his time as Kid Flash, returned for revenge as the villain Magenta. When Wally was resorted to kissing Frances in order to stop her, Linda began feeling that she didn't belong in his "clubhouse of super-heroes".
When Linda began investigating into the disappearances of various serpent cults in Keystone, she became targeted by the Kobra Cult. Having recently experienced a vision of Linda dying at the hands of Kobra during an adventure through time, Wally attempted to stop Kobra himself while also attempting to hold back his speed so as not to brush against the future again. However, Linda detected that Wally was hiding something from her and continued her investigations despite his pleading requests not to.
Eventually discovering that the cult intended to tap into sources of energy within the city to bring about the Age of Chaos, Linda discovered the cult's lair but fell into an ambush from which she was saved from death by Wally, who had to abandon his attempt at self-control and return to full speed to save her; which resulted in him being consumed by the Speed Force. Thinking that Kobra had killed Wally, Linda destroyed the lair in an act of vengeance, however, Wally soon returned from the Speed Force and together they destroyed the cult's plans for Keystone.
After Linda suffered another bout of self-doubt over their relationship; feeling unsure that she could live up to Wally's love for her, and receiving a call from her ex-husband to investigate Royal Industries, where the pair discovered and disrupted a demonic ritual that was occurring beneath the company's facility, she eventually became one of the hosts of the television program The Scene, with co-hosts Vicki Vale, Tawny Young, and Lia Briggs.
After a series of further adventures where Linda's life became constantly threatened due to association with Wally, a brush with the Black Flash apparently claimed Linda's life, however, Wally was able to save her from the Speed Force and he proposed to her shortly there after, but she then disappeared off the face of the earth, and no one, not even Wally, remembered her.
It was later discovered that Linda's disappearance was caused by Abra Kadabra who tried to break the bond that repeatedly drew Wally back to this dimension; he had abducted her from a time prior to when she originally meet Wally and kept her imprisoned within Limbo. However, Linda escaped from her prison and landed in an alternate Keystone City, where Wally, who had gotten lost in the Speed Force yet again after fighting Cobalt Blue, was drawn to her and, together with the alternate Earth's Flash, Walter West, they defeated Kadabra and returned her place in the timestream. Linda and Wally later completed their marriage. With various heroes witnessing and Nightwing as Wally's best man. Shortly after this, Linda left her journalism career after being unable to reconcile between the conflicting notions of the public’s right to "know of a coming threat" and report it versus a superhero's chance to "resolve the threat before people start to panic" and let Wally resolve it before it becomes public knowledge. Linda decided to leave journalism and go into pediatrics. Fortunately she had enough pre-med background from her college years to enroll in Central City Medical School.
Linda soon became pregnant with twins, but during the early months of her pregnancy she was attacked by Zoom; who intended to kill her to make Wally a "better hero", which caused her to miscarry and left her unable to bear children. After Zoom was defeated, Wally, after realizing the number of times Linda had been attacked specifically to get to him, asked the Spectre (Hal Jordan) to remove the knowledge of the Flash's identity from the world. While the spirit granted his wish, Wally had also forgotten who he was and, after remembering, had to reveal his identity to his love ones once again and to Linda; who had begun to blame the Flash for her miscarry.
Trying to reconcile her love for Wally and her anger at the Flash, Linda spontaneously left Keystone to rethink her life. After a brief time alone, she returned to Keystone and Wally, re-employed as a news reporter. A later battle between Zoom and Flash spontaneously restored her pregnancy when Zoom and the Wally travelled back nine months in time to their original battle, with Zoom unintentionally taking the brunt of his original attack. Her pregnancy restored in the present, Linda's stomach spontaneously grew and she went into labor; giving birth to the twins.
During the Infinite Crisis, a battle with Superboy-Prime caused Wally to start disappearing into the Speed Force. Rushing to Linda to say goodbye before he is consumed, she instead grabs the twins and kisses him; disappearing into the Speed Force with him where they are soon shunted into the alter-dimensional world, Savoth (aka Planet Flash).
Living in relative peace in their new home, the West children soon began to exhibit Speed Force–fueled growth spurts due to their father's DNA. Concerned, Linda managed to convince the world's ruling council to teach her what they knew of the Speed Force and technobiology and, with her extended medical knowledge, she was able to stabilize the speed-related powers of her children.
Back on Earth, seven members of the Legion of Super-Heroes secretly arrived in the 21st Century to enact a secret mission using resurrection rods where; when the rods are struck by lightning, one member is killed and another is resurrected. The Legion is successful in their mission and all seven Legionaries survive. However, as an unexpected bonus, Wally, together with Linda and the twins, 'rides' the lightning bolts and returns to Earth alive and well.
Involvement[]
- While yet to appear in the DC Universe Online game, Linda makes a cameo appearance in DC Universe Online: Legends #0 as her husband races to respond to an emergency call from the Justice League.
Trivia[]
- Linda first appeared in Flash #28 (July, 1989)
- Linda is a big fan of the Keystone City Combines hockey team.
- As a symbol of their love, Linda wears the treasured Flash ring that Barry Allen gave to Wally during their first meeting back before Wally had become Kid Flash.
- Linda is actually a few years older than her husband.
- Once entering the Speed Force, individuals run the risk of becoming one with the energy and need a "lightning rod" to ground themselves with their original realities in order to return. For the Flashes, their loved ones are their "lightning rods" and Wally's love for Linda enabled him to become the first speedster to enter the Speed Force and successfully return unscathed.
- Linda is friends with former newsboy Billy Batson.
- In an effort to cure Linda of her feelings of alienation due to knowing nothing of what Wally's world is like, Wally temporarily gave her Super Speed so that she might experience what life as a speedster is like.
- The names of Linda and Wally's children are Iris West and Jai West.
External links[]
- Linda Park (comics) Wikipedia
- Linda_Park DC Database
- Linda Park Those Who Ride the Lightning