Much like the fastest man alive himself, it’s taken me an ironically, hilariously long time to put together a Flash reading order. For the hero with my all-time favorite costume this is a darn shame!
Nonetheless, below you’ll find the new Comic Book Herald flash reading order, as well as some of the other DC character reading orders around the site:
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View Comments (3)
A Aquaman reading order could lighten up my mood . Plz make one .
My two cents on the Flash:
I've never read the Golden Age Jay Garrick run, so I can't comment, but I do like Jay in his appearances in various books from the Silver Age on.
The Silver Age Barry Allen run is good-to-great from about 1960 to 1967, give or take a year, especially the issues written by John Broome. After that, we have nearly 20 years of mediocrity, although Cary Bates did introduce two new Rogues who I always felt had potential: the Golden Glider and the Rainbow Raider.
The Wally West run gets off to an awkward start with Mike Baron at the helm. But then, in issue 15, a new creative team of writer Bill Loebs & penciler Greg LaRocque sets on the book on...if you'll forgive the pun...the right track. The Loebs/LaRocque run, which lasts through issue 61, is in my opinion the most underrated era of not only the Wally Flash, but of all the Flash runs.
Mention must also be made of the 1990 giant-size Flash Special, by various writers and artists, including Mark Waid on the framing sequences, and Waid's second Flash story, in Annual 4, a tie-in to the Armageddon 2001 event, which was my introduction to the DCU.
As the Flash's ongoing writer, Mark Waid got off to a promising start, with LaRocque still on pencils, with the Born to Run arc (62-65), which fleshed out Wally's backstory. After that, the book spins its wheels for several issues until Waid hits paydrit with the superb Return of Barry Allen arc (75-79), which was the first Flash arc I read as a then-current arc, and is also LaRocque's farewell to the book. His replacement, Mike Wieringo, was a jarring shift in styles at first, but he improved quickly, and with Wieringo and several guest artists plugging away, Waid kept on rolling until he hit what I consider his peak, the Terminal Velocity arc (95-100, plus issue zero.)
There were still some good stories after that, but those two-dozen-plus issues are, to me, the quintessence of the Waid Flash era.
I despise the Geoff Johns era, so I'm not going to go into any detail about it. I haven't read any Flash since, because I think most of what DC has published over the past 13 years is awful.
Awesome analysis, thanks for sharing.
I really need to dig up that pre-Waid Wally run, if only because it is so strangely under represented!