Any idea(s) on why The Flash never developed a really popular female Speedster?

[Riv86672]

By developed I mean in the same way Supergirl and Batgirl were introduced decades ago. Aquaman’s had Mera (Aquagirl not so much).
Even Wonder Woman got in on the act w. Donna Troy.

I know it wasn’t just Flash out of the Big Seven that this applied to, but J’onn finally got Miss Martian in 2006 I think, and even though there have been female GLs for some time I think it’s Jessica Cruz that broke the glass ceiling in that franchise and that took forever. But no Flash.

Like GL, there are female speedsters yeah, but none have had the kind of success I’m thinking of as I type this.
Just want to see if there’s any conversation to be had on this subject thanks.

[Frontier]

I think Jesse's kind of close. She was used a lot in season 3 of The Flash TV show and she's pretty much the most prominent female Speedster in the Flash Family.

[Will Evans]

Yeah, but Jessie’s closer to Jade than Jessica Cruz.

Jessie’s origin depends on her parents being prior heroes. I think that’s why Jade isn’t merchandised and franchised across media like Jessica Cruz is.

The same applies to Jesse Quick.

For awhile I thought they would take Avery Ho in that direction.


I wish XS and Meena Dhawan had more focus too.

[Sutekh]

Bart was pre-sexual so long, and kind of blithely ignored when Conner would get babe-crazy back in the Young Justice days, that I could almost imagine that he could have been a girl, just as easily.

It's interesting that the TV show went deeper into fleshing out Jenni / XS as the 'girl speedster' than the comics seemed to.

[K7P5V]

Probably a controversial choice, but I always thought Iris West's Kid Flash had potential...

[Korath]

Avery Ho, the Flash of China is getting more prominence (and I jsut with JL of China was revived with its own title if DC doesn't trust Kong Kenan to carry the title alone !)

https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Avery_Ho_(Prime_Earth)

[married guy]

Historically Flash never developed a female speedster.
Until Waid introduced the Flash Family and pushed Jesse front & centre - and even then she a glorified McGuffin.
Jenni got a little love and then Iris got a bump with Kingdom Come.

[Godlike13]

Cause getting the Flash over hasn’t always been easy.

[Aahz]

I think it comes also down to Flash not really being a team book and not being strong enough as a franchise to support many spin off characters (I think Impulse is the only one who ever had his own ongoing book outside of the main book).

The "problem" with Jesse Quick is also, that she isn't really a Flash character and has strong ties to the JSA.

[John Venus]

If the continuity from Jay to Barry to Wally had been allowed to continue then Iris could have been it.

[Digifiend]

Historically Flash never developed a female speedster.
Until Waid introduced the Flash Family and pushed Jesse front & centre - and even then she a glorified McGuffin.
Jenni got a little love and then Iris got a bump with Kingdom Come.

Well, they all got screwed over in the end. Jesse got messed around in Titans, leading to her being depowered in The Flash, and then moved to JSA where she became Liberty Belle and then within a couple of arcs had also regained her speed powers, later reverting back to Jesse Quick. Then New 52 erased her and she's only just come back a few months ago, in the Finish Line arc of The Flash, where Barry rescued her and Max Mercury from the Speed Force.

XS got screwed when Legion of Super-Heroes rebooted, even though her relationship to Barry and Bart means she really needs to be immune to Legion reboots. She returned in the same arc as Jesse, retrieved by Iris (who'd been to fetch speedsters from across the multiverse and time), who in the main universe is still a kid and the second Impulse. She only lasted a couple of years in that role before New 52 stopped her. She came back, with her brother Jai, in Flash Forward.

It remains to be seen if Avery Ho will have any better luck.

[Will Evans]

If they used a female Flash in the DC Superhero Girls multimedia, who would they use?

[kcekada]

I really liked the Kingdom Come female Flash. I think Wally was the all red guy with the Jay Garrick hat, but it's been a while since I read it. I actually have an action figure of the female Flash -- along with Nightstar and Jade from that series.

I also like Jesse and XS. It's a shame XS didn't show up in Bendis's Legion -- especially since he wanted to make it more diverse.

[Digifiend]

And considering he was writing Bart in Young Justice - he could've had the two books cross over as the cousins are reunited!

[DrNewGod]

When Kid Flash debuted in the Silver Age, superhero comics were still viewed as Little Boys' Toys. By the time publishers began catching on to the fact that readers liked female superheroes too (I think it's fair to say that was somewhere in the late 1970s-early 1980s), Flash was in a state of decline that didn't lend itself to an expanded supporting cast. There was little point - I imagine editors thought - in trying to generate excitement in a new derivative character when the anchor-character didn't really have that much pull any more.

Now, by the mid 1980s, Flash was experimenting with female speedsters, like Ivana Christina Molotova of Blue Trinity, and Cassiopeia of Red Trinity (both Soviet creations). Molotova was actually rebranded as Lady Flash for a while.

So, in addition to Jesse Quick (mentioned by others), it has been tried. No idea why it didn't work better.