The Flash is the Fastest Man Alive in the DC Universe in almost every iteration of their Multiverse. If a reality has a Flash, he's always one of the speediest heroes around. This included Kingdom Come, a dark future storyline that ramped up the Scarlet Speedster's velocity to unimaginable levels.
Kingdom Come is an incredibly iconic "Elseworlds" story, though its premise isn't especially kind to DC's greatest heroes. Bereft, sullen, and passed over by the world at large, many of these iconic do-gooders had turned their backs on humanity. However, Kingdom Come's Flash ran faster than ever to protect Keystone City. Here's how the classic Mark Waid/Alex Ross story took The Flash's heroism to new, strange places.
Kingdom Come Featured Several DC Heroes at Their Darkest
Waid and Ross' Kingdom Come was essentially a response to gritty trends in superhero fiction during the 1990s. The rise of Image Comics had brought dark antiheroes like Todd McFarlane's Spawn and Rob Liefeld's X-Force into the spotlight. Clearly fans of more "traditional" takes on costumed heroes, Ross and Waid crafted a story that looked at these brutal characters through a dystopian lens. In this version of the DC Universe's future, violent antiheroes ruled the streets, their desire to save the world giving way to lust for wanton destruction. With no regard for human life or property, this new generation of "heroes" had no real ties to the champions who had come before.
This was due in part to heroes like Superman exiling themselves after falling out of favor with the public. The Man of Steel in particular was, perhaps fittingly, seen as antiquated when he decried the death of The Joker at the hands of a younger hero named Magog, whose design was clearly based on Marvel's mutant commando Cable and the sword-wielding Shatterstar, even as his helmet evoked the Biblical golden calf. Like other dark timelines, including Injustice, the Joker had murdered the Daily Planet's staff, including Lois Lane, but the Man of Steel was rejected when he decried the Clown Prince of Crime's summary execution.
In Kingdom Come, other major DC heroes had taken their own paths. Batman had become a more authoritarian individual, turning Gotham City into a police state patrolled by enormous Bat-Bots. Arthur Curry/Orin had retired as Aquaman, passing the mantle to his protégé Tempest and ruling Atlantis, largely ignoring humanity. In spite of this darkness and depression, though, one fleet-footed hero was still running against all odds.
Kingdom Come's Flash Seemed Godlike
The Flash briefly appears in Kingdom Come when the book is establishing its world's status quo. Described as living "between the ticks of a second," the Scarlet Speedster has turned his home of Keystone City into a crime-free paradise. He'd pushed himself so hard and gotten so fast that he was effectively omnipresent and could easily stop any disturbance before it began. However, in the process, Wally West had stopped slowing down to do human things like talk to people or sleep. Unlike Superman and Batman, he was one of the few classic heroes still operating in his traditional role.
Kingdom Come's Flash only briefly takes a break and makes any sort of human connection later in the story when he reunites with his old friends: the original Teen Titans. Because of his devotion to his work, his family life was much different in this universe. Instead of Linda Park, his wife in this continuity was a woman named Angela, the mother of his children, Barry and Iris West, and his daughter Iris became the new Kid Flash. Wally's usually considered the most relatable version of the Flash but even as he was still walking the hero's path, his very tenuous grasp on his humanity was clearly a problem.
Kingdom Come's Flash and Green Lantern Were Golden Age Throwbacks
Though The Flash in Kingdom Come may have been Wally West, he certainly didn't look like his normal self. His winged Greco-Roman helmet modeled after the gods Hermes and Mercury was far more evocative of Jay Garrick, the Golden Age Flash. Combined with his purely red color scheme made Wally's Kingdom Come design an amalgam of several Flashes and perhaps even fellow speedster, Johnny Quick. This might have puzzled some fans, but it makes sense given how the futuristic story handled another DC icon.
The Green Lantern of Kingdom Come eschewed the character's usual look for emerald armor, like a medieval knight's. Even more surprising, this Green Lantern was Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern who had debuted far before the idea of the Green Lantern Corps had. Strangely, though, the usually earthbound Lantern guards a space station dubbed "New Oa," which connects more to the Corps than Scott's own mystical mythology. This was because Kingdom Come's artist, Alex Ross, didn't like Kyle Rayner, who had recently taken up Green Lantern's mantle and was offended by the way DC Comics had canonically turned the previous Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, into the villainous Parallax. Ross refused to use Kyle Rayner as even a background character in Kingdom Come. Instead, he compromised and made the largely unrelated Alan Scott KC's Emerald Knight, even if his rendering of Scott made him look like an older Hal Jordan.
The Flash and Green Lantern have often been tied together as the "Brave and the Bold," with Jay, Barry, and Wally befriending Alan, Hal and Kyle in turn. Seeing both heroic legacies tied together this way made sense for Kingdom Come, which was a melancholy celebration of the DC Universe. To this end, the miniseries pushed several DC icons to their logical limits, transforming former metahuman heroes into gods on Earth. Though he may have physically resembled the other Flashes, the Kingdom Come Flash was Wally West through and through, racing faster than any other Flash and barely keeping ahold of his humanity in the process.