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.
| Character | 2011 Rank | 2007 Rank | Points | 1st Place Votes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jay Garrick (Flash) | #45 | #41 | 374 | 0 |
| Bart Allen (Impulse/Kid Flash) | #36 | #42 | 545 | 6 |
| Barry Allen (Flash) | #9 | #29 | 1604 | 27 |
| Wally West (Flash/Kid Flash) | #6 | #3 | 2471 | 67 |
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!
YES!!! Go Wally!
To only drop three spots after not being around much for the last few years is definitely a testament to how much people like Wally.
Brilliant news.
I know fans keep raising it, but has Dan DiDio actually adressed the point about Wally allegedly working against Barry’s ‘uniqueness’ when there are multiple Bat-characters and Green Lanterns active?
It’s pretty simple; Flash isn’t yet at the scale of either Batman or Green Lantern. Without multiple books, it doesn’t make sense to have 6 different versions of every character.
That said, there are still multiple Flashes – in 2010 DC will be publishing books that regularly feature Jay, Barry and Bart.
It’s only Wally that’s not on the table. Yet – I’m sure we’ll see him in new comics eventually…whenever DC figures out how they want to reinvent Wally for the new DCU.
I’ve expressed elsewhere my wariness of polls, but it is nice to see Wally is far from forgotten: despite their best efforts to drive Wally six feet under…he’s #6 instead. I love that kind of irony.
He’d better be in a replacement book! If he is not, then DC is truly, hopelessly blind.
Love that comment!
“despite their best efforts to drive Wally six feet under…he’s #6 instead. I love that kind of irony.”
I can’t imagine another company in another industry burying their 6th most popular product.
See, under normal conditions, I’d agree. But comics are special in that they’ve got a built in audience of people who will buy the Flash, sight unseen, like it or not, just to have a full run. I mean, I’m an X-Men addict, big fan of Superman, and lover of the JLA. Consequently, I am WAY more familiar with the work of Chuck Austen than I ever needed to be.
DC can bury a popular product because they know a goodly chunk of us will buy the replacement product even if we don’t like it. It’s why they get away with so much crap.
Well hopefully when DC see this it’ll shake them up! We love Barry DC, but we also love Wally. He needs his own series, but could you imagine if Wally’s book outsold Barry’s?
It’s interesting, too, when you look at which of the other top characters have their own books … Wally is the most conspicuous one without one. Assuming the top five are going to be Superman, Batman, GL Hal, Dick Grayson and maybe the Joker: they all have their own books except the Joker, a villain. In fact, all of the top 25 are headlining books (or the top character in a team book) except Power Girl, Lex Luthor (another villain), Rorschach, and Captain Marvel.
That’s even better than the IGN poll of the greatest superheroes of all time. Wally came in #8, and the article added that he’s “one of the greatest heroes in the DCU, even if he doesn’t qualify as the original Scarlet Speedster.”
for what can we see in the preview of teen titans this Kid Flash is not related in any way with Barry Allen
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=9901
Well, as far as Barry & the League knows, anyway.