Still too much a bad guy to make the hero list.
He was #10 on the list until I thought of those damn WT rings!
But he had an incredibly cool mask and he carried a mace.
I just don’t think you can hold a hero that high in the pantheon when he’s just a notch above The Incredible Mister Limpet.
The characters didn’t actually have rings; they just needed physical contact (and apparantly the dumbest catchphrase of all time) to use their powers. The rings came later as merchandising, referenced in an episode of Family Guy.
Aagh! Nonono!
OK, here’s the thing. Aquaman does not fit into the same superhero mold as Spider-Man, Superman, whoever. Suggestions like that, or giving him psychic control of water (which I think I saw done in the comic gag), are attempts to turn him into a land-based traveling superdude. Which he’s not. He’s a character who belongs in his own alien setting. Frankly, Aquaman belongs in the JLA & that superhero paradigm approximately as much as Adam Strange; or marginally more than the Warlord. But to fans (& unfortunately writers & editors) who expect all superheroes to be like Spider-Man, Superman, & Captain America, Aquaman seems puzzling, deficient. But it’s their defects, their limited expectations of what a superhero comic is, that are the problem.
(Also, Namor is cooler, but that’s another story. 
)
Actually, I’d put the Wonder Twins ahead of the Flash, but only for those of an age to have watched cartoons in the 1970’s & 1980’s.