Speed Force

The results are in! Comics Should Be Good has posted the top ten greatest Barry Allen stories ever told, as chosen by the blog’s readers.

The breakdown is interesting:

• 6 Silver-Age stories
• 2 Bronze-Age stories (one of which is the Death of Iris Allen storyline which Greg has heavily annotated here)
• Crisis on Infinite Earths #8
• 1 Secret Origins tale

Both the Flash’s origin tale and his death make the list…and the Secret Origins story retells both (and links them together)!

The writer breakdown is also interesting, especially when compared with the more focused results of the Wally West poll last year:

• 3 John Broome
• 2 Gardner Fox
• 2 Cary Bates
• 1 Robert Kanigher
• 1 Marv Wolfman
• 1 Robert Loren Fleming

Also neat: “Flash of Two Worlds” made both this list and the greatest Gardner Fox stories list a few weeks ago!

Comics Should Be Good is running a poll all month for the greatest ____ stories ever told. Currently up for voting: Barry Allen. Send in your top 10 choices to CSBG by Tuesday, November 22.

Earlier this month, they featured the greatest Gardner Fox stories, and last year they featured the greatest Wally West stories, greatest Mark Waid stories, and greatest Geoff Johns stories ever told.

We’ve been following Comics Should Be Good as they count down the results of their Top 50 DC & Marvel Characters survey. Wally West ranks #6 on the DC list. He hasn’t been seen much since DC decided to re-focus The Flash on Barry Allen a few years back, but Wally remains a popular character — more popular among the survey respondents than the current headliner, though as we saw a few days ago, Barry made the top 10 as well.

I hope DC considers this when the time comes around for mid-season replacements or expanding the New 52. If there’s room for 12(?) Bat-books including spots for current and past Robins Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian… If there’s room for four Lantern books including spots for all four human Green Lanterns… If there’s room for four Super-books… Then surely there’s room for a second Flash series featuring Wally West, or at the very least a spot on a team book. Barry’s got the main Flash series, Bart’s in Teen Titans, and presumably Jay will be showing up in the Earth-2-set Justice Society of America series when it launches.

Here are the final rankings of the Flashes for this survey and the previous one in 2007.

• 2011 Complete List
• 2007 Complete List

About the points: The way voting worked was that you listed your top 10 favorite characters, in order. Your first-place choice got 10 points, your second-place choice got 9 points, etc. According to CSBG, more than 1400 people voted in the survey.

Keep an eye on Comics Should Be Good as they count down the top five!

Comics Should Be Good continues counting down the results of their Top 50 DC Characters survey, and Barry Allen comes in at #9. The reborn Flash received 1604 total points, and 27 voters named him their favorite DC character.

A Top 10 spot is a big climb from the #29 rank he took in 2007. DC Comics has clearly been successful at building up Barry Allen’s popularity in the years since he’s returned.

We’ve seen three of the four main Flashes so far, with Bart Allen and Jay Garrick at #36 and #45. Still no sign of Wally West, but given his popularity among online fans, it’s unlikely that he dropped below Bart and Jay.

With Robin (Tim Drake) ranked #8, there are seven slots left. Sure bets include:

• Superman
• Batman (Bruce Wayne)
• Wonder Woman
• Batman/Nightwing (Dick Grayson)
• Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)

That leaves two up for grabs. Based on other people’s comments and my own gut feeling, I’d say the remaining two slots are likely to be Flash (Wally West) and the Joker.

The question is: What order?

Keep an eye on Comics Should Be Good as they continue the Top 50 countdown!

Comics Should Be Good is down to #12 in their Top 50 DC Characters Countdown, and there’s no sign yet of Barry Allen or Wally West. I can definitely see Barry climbing the charts in the last few years (he was still dead during the last poll, after all), and while I can see Wally falling a bit, I can’t imagine him falling so far that he’d miss the top 50 entirely — especially with Jay Garrick and Bart Allen in the running at #45 and #36.

So, what do you think? Is there room for two Flashes in the Top 11 most popular DC characters? Which Flash will come out ahead, and by how much?

Comics Should Be Good! has been reporting on the results of their new Top 100 DC and Marvel Characters survey, and has released #50-#26 of the DC results. We’ve seen two Flashes so far, and it’s a safe bet that the others are on their way.

#45: Jay Garrick, down slightly from #41 last time.
#36: Bart Allen, up from #42 last time.

When the poll was first done in 2007, Barry Allen came in at #29 and Wally West at #3. It’ll be interesting to see how far Barry has climbed the ranks since his 2008 return, and where Wally is since being moved off-page post-Flash: Rebirth.

Just wondering, since I do a lot of link-sharing and occasional commentary that fits multiple social networks. If you’re following someone on more than one network, and they post the same thing to both, would you rather get it out of the way all at once, or see it staggered over time?

This doesn’t apply to “A new post is up!” notifications – IMO those should always go up immediately. I’m thinking more along the lines of a minipost that can fit in a Facebook status, or links to other sites, or links back to older posts that have become relevant again. Stuff that’s not time-critical. [Edited to clarify.]

Also, assume the cross-post is properly tailored for each network, so you don’t have #hashtags on the Facebook post, the Twitter post doesn’t link to a Facebook status, links on Google+ and Facebook have previews, etc.

Thanks!

The Top 100 Marvel/DC characters poll at Comics Should Be Good ends this Thursday, on August 25, so this is your last chance to vote. Be sure to submit your top 10 favorite characters from each company! Make sure your favorite Flash(es) are represented!

Comics Should Be Good is doing a new Top 100 Marvel/DC characters poll. List your favorite 10 from each company in order, and they’ll tally all the votes.

When they ran the same poll four years ago, Wally West, Barry Allen, Jay Garrick and Bart Allen all made it into the top 50 DC characters. It’s been a complicated few years for the Flash (to say the least), so it’ll be interesting to see how the audience’s reactions have changed over that time.

» Vote in the new poll!

Speed Force is currently on Facebook, Twitter, and Buzz, and by that I mean that updates are pushed to those sites, and I try to post links and respond to comments on those sites. (Well, Facebook and Twitter, anyway. Buzz has kind of fallen by the wayside, but with roughly 750 followers on Twitter, 600 on Facebook, and 22 on Buzz, it doesn’t seem like there’s much demand. Updates are automatic, though.)

In the interest of making it easy for you to keep up with the site, so I wonder what else is out there that might be worth connecting to the blog. Obviously, there are a lot of sites out there, but one key piece of social media advice has stuck in my head: “What’s the best social network to use? The one you’ll actually keep up with.”

So here’s my question:

If I were to add Speed Force to one more social network, what would you want it to be?

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