But at this point, I don’t think we can expect a new main Flash for a long time. The job has changed hands (boots?) three times in as many years. Much as I love him, I didn’t want Barry to come back — his influence as a dead character has been too important for too long — but one thing that helps is the unspoken promise of stability at long last. They’ve got to stick with Barry now, at least for a few years; they’ve invested too much in his return.

That makes things a little… complicated for the current generation of readers. As you say, Barry was our parents’ Flash, Wally was ours. (I came in at #42, during the excellent Bill Loebs run that’s sadly overlooked nowadays.) But our kids? They’ll have the same situation with Flash that they do with Green Lantern — a sort of equilibrium, with the first three heroes all bearing the name at once. Our three guys are safe; although I shudder to think of Wally getting bounced from title to title like Kyle Rayner, Kyle’s still doing pretty well for himself. But new kids won’t have a Flash to call their own. They’ll just have to learn the history of the ones we’ve got.

That’s why it’ll be so important, once Rebirth wraps up, to tell new Barry stories that don’t rely too heavily on the old ones. If he’s our main Flash again, then he has to be accessible for new readers. I wish I could be optimistic about that… unfortunately, Geoff Johns is the most continuity-obsessed writer to hit comics since Roy Thomas. He’s very good at stories for diehard fans, very bad at welcoming newcomers.

I hope by the time I have kids and they’re old enough for comics, DC has something akin to the Marvel Age line. In so many ways, their main line is just not for kids anymore.

ANYWAY. All that said, I’d love to see Iris be the Flash someday. Bart is still ahead of her in line, but I have a feeling that if he ever takes up the cowl again, it’ll be in some future era. There’s precedent for that (ask Barry) and DC won’t want to repeat their failure with Bart-Flash in the present.

I also agree about Joan, Iris, and Linda being superb female supporting characters. Joan even continued to be one in Wally’s book during the years that Jay was “dead”. But for my money, Iris takes the cake; as written by Cary Bates (for 10 years!), she was the best non-superhero wife in any comic. Waid made a big deal of Linda being important and independent and so on; Bates just quietly wrote Iris that way. She’s a model that modern comics would do well to follow.

I vote second feature in Kid Flash, it’ll be fun to watch Bart get annoyed with Iris.