Things are happening well, fast in the pages of DC Comics' The Flash. not only has Barry Allen lost his powers, he's recruited Godspeed, a former friend-turned-villain, to help him reconnect to the Speed Force while taking on a terminally ill Gorilla Grodd. Of course, this doesn't sit well with the newly-formed Flash Family, and appears to be adding fuel to the fire that will be "Flash War" once the threat of Grodd is dealt with.

CBR caught up with The Flash's Josh Williamson this year at Emerald City Comic Con. There, we got him to elaborate on his plans for the future of Barry Allen and the Wallys West, both moving into the highly anticipated "Flash War" story and beyond.

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CBR: As we're building up towards "Flash War," we've got a lot of characters on the playing field. Most notably right now, August is back and active as Godspeed. Can you talk about how that particular relationship between him and Barry is going to play out as things progress?

Josh Williamson: August is in a weird zone right now. Back during the "Cold Day in Hell" arc, he had that moment where he admitted he was wrong and he realized he had messed up, but he knows that he can't just say, "I messed up" and bounce back from it. He and Barry are going through these similar -- I don't want to use the word "redemption" for their arcs, but it's a similar feeling of guilt.

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Really, since Eobard, Barry has been being a little selfish. Barry broke August out knowing that August wouldn't want to be broken out -- he wants to stay in Iron Heights -- but Barry knows that August also wants to help. There's a scene in issue #42 where August calls him out; he says, "You have people you can go to for help, but you chose me, and it's not because you think I'm the only one with speed here, it's because you know that I'm the bad friend, I'm the friend that will say 'oh, it's okay Barry,' and I'll sign off on it."

He's the enabler.

Right. But now August is going to say that he's not signing off on this. He confronts Barry for some of that stuff. That's a big part of his story. He's starting to realize what Barry really thinks of him. He trusts him, but he does see August as the bad guy. The "bad friend."

We have a lot of fun stuff planned for August -- I feel like the two of them, Barry and August, are really at the center of the story I want to tell. The really big plan I have for them and their development is all doled out in little bits and pieces. Especially once you get to the end of "Flash War" and look back through those 50 issues, hopefully you'll be able to see it all there.

Barry is at his best when he's bouncing off people, and it's really helped me develop him to have these characters with him who challenge him. August and Barry have very similar ideas, but August is all about revenge, where Barry is all about justice.

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Speaking of character interactions, the last time we spoke, you pointed out that Wally West has traditionally been the Flash who is more centered around the idea of building a family, but Barry is a character who works well bouncing off people. What's the big difference there?

Between Wally and Barry? It's actually something I have conversations about a lot. When I was first getting started, I had this conversation with my editor, Brian Cunningham, when I was saying I wanted to have Barry rebuild the Flash Family. He said, "Well, if you look back, really, Barry was more of a loner." I mean, he had Kid Flash but... you know, he wasn't really as close to Jay as we like to think he was. That was a Wally thing.

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And sure, some things come in because of retrofitting, but Wally was a character who didn't feel connected to something, didn't have a family, so he built one. But Barry was always very alone in his head -- I think he really found comfort in running alone. I don't think Wally ever had that, he had Barry from the beginning.

I think that really separates them. There's actually a scene in "Flash War" where this does kind of come up. Barry says, "I refuse to let what happened to me happen to anyone else." I think that's a huge part of who Barry is, and it means a lot of things. It's not just about growing up tragically, it can just be about something as simple as growing up alone. That's why he ended up telling younger Wally who he was -- he saw this kid growing up alone and didn't want him to stay that way.

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With Wally, there are certain parts of "Flash War" where he sees Barry making decisions because he doesn't want Wally to go through what he went through, but Wally has to turn around and say "I'm my own person, I can make these decisions for myself."

So that's Barry's tension between older and younger Wally -- now let's talk about older and young Wally versus one another. Do you think there's room, either in Barry's ideology of heroism that he's trying to impose on everyone or in older Wally's idea of a Flash Family for both he and Kid Flash to coexist when this is through?

Yeah! That's one thing about the Flashes, all of them, is that they welcome everybody. One thing that we're trying to focus on to make both of the Wallys work, they've got to be able to stand as individuals -- they all need to stand on their own.

For a minute there, especially once he came back, it felt like Barry's personality was really mimicking Wally's personality. In the New 52, it really felt like those two characters were completely merging. So part of what I've been trying to do here is show that these people -- all three of these characters -- are different they all have a purpose. They all have their own niche. They all have their own dynamic.

That's how you make room for everybody.

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In the current story, clearly we've got Grodd, we've got Savitar. Since Rebirth, we've gotten to see the Rogues, we've had Eobard... who else do you want to bring to Central City to face off against Barry? Beyond "Flash War," what are you planning?

Oh, man -- there's all kinds of people I have plans to use. There are a lot of villains I want to bring in, there are some old ones coming, some new ones that we've created for the book. There are a couple of villains that I'm really excited about that Barry's never gone up against, too.

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But one of the goals I have -- something I think Geoff [Johns] did really well -- is to not break the Rogues up, but really work on them as individuals. It's one of the challenges of writing Barry. Imagine if, at some point in, like, the early '70s, and a writer was working on Batman. That writer takes Scarecrow, Two Face, Poison Ivy, Penguin and, let's say, Man-Bat -- those five, and they put them on a team. And from that point forward, those characters always had to appear together, you know? [Laughs] That's what the Rogues are.

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It's a huge challenge. If you have one, you know that those four others are going to be there, too. It's a humongous chunk of Barry's villains that are always expected to be together. So that's one of the things I want to try and do -- not break them up, but work on them apart from one another. I want show that they can really take on Barry by themselves, you know? They weren't always "The Rogues." I want them to stand alone as people.

"Flash War" kicks off officially later this summer, following the conclusion of the six-part "Perfect Storm" arc.