Who is the best character with speed based powers?

Resisting...urge...to...write...sermon.....thesis.....dissertation......

Really tough to choose between Barry and Jay but I had to go with Barry, The costume is one of the best ever in comics and the police scientist identity was cool and ahead of its time. Plus he was one of us - an everyman, kid of dorky, and he loved comics! Add on the most heroic death ever in comics and he is a true legend.

Agreed 100%! And while some say Wally's powers are superior and all that, Barry defined the type of hero everyone should look up to. Even more than Superman.

Super Sabre!

Na, I had to go with Barry. I like Wally and Jay but Barry is The Flash for me and no speedster is better than he.

Ross and Mike....MUCH props.

Dah BARry.

Ushered in the Silver Age.

Great costume.

Not a commie.

Mark.

Jay and Holt join the props list!

Let me just say right now in advance -- any man enters this thread and votes for non-Barry, I hate that man.

I wouldn't say hate....


Hate's not strong enough!

Then Hate away, because Wally is my guy. He's the flash I read first, and prefer.

Eh, mine is a protest vote based on the wanton exclusion of any non-DC characters from the poll - e.g. Quicksilver. To be fair, Quicksilver wasn't a great character until PAD got ahold of him in X-Factor. But still, he deserves mention before several of the others.

Having said that, while Jay Garrick or Barry Allen deserve props for being "first" or "definitive", respectively, I find that the stories of Wally West have intrigued me more than those of his forebears. Yeah, we can always go back to original sources and whine about subsequent imitations/adaptations/evolutions/improvements. Whatever. Wally is a great example, perhaps the best example, of a "legacy" character who has transcended his "legacy" origin and made the character his own. Kudos to him and his associated writers and artists.

Barry, even though Wally was "my" Flash as a regular reader. Barry was the one I read growing up in old Blue Ribbon Digests here and there, so has the nostalgia factor going strong. Plus he sacrificed himself to save the universe. Can't get much better than that as heroism goes.

Thenkyew!

Actually, the reason I choose Jay Garrick is because he's the hero that Barry looked up to. When you read his stories, he was a hero that did the right thing because he thought it was fun. He didn't explore his powers as far as Barry did, but that was partly because Barry was able to look at the Flash "archives" and move to the next stage.

I also liked Johnny Quick a lot too.

And Jesse Quick is cool too.

Yeah, but...even Wally prefers Barry to Wally!

Multiverse...or at least what was left of it by the time that anti-matter cannon was TOASTED.

Dude all the DCU speedsters are cool. Well. Ok....except for Savatar...oh...and those crazy Russian dudes (Trinity?).

I buy the logic behind Jay's coolness and fully support Jay as Flash Numero Dos...but Barry (for me) trumps Jay cuz Barry did amazing things for an ordinary guy. I mean cosmic level amazing things. He wasn't the powerhouse Wally was and he wasn't the icon Jay was but he was the perfect mix. He was the normal Joe kinda guy that did amazing and heroic things. For Wally its just kinda...eh...save a universe here...vibrate this thing til it blows up there. For Jay it's kind of a "I'm the first, but I won't live up to my potential".

Jay wins the cool wife category though. He's stuck it out with Joan through the years.

But Jay as #2...DEFINITE supportages go out for that one Yo.

John Force.

Bart Allen aka Impulse. The whole single-synapse thing, the connection to both the Flash legacy and the Legion of Superheroes, and the fact that he was just plain fun.

It's obviously the Whizzer.