Poll: Who Is Your All-Time Favorite Marvel or DC Replacement Superhero?

[t hedge coke]

Barry will never be a replacement Flash. He's the original. You may prefer Wally, and that's fine

Um... I do prefer Wally, but they're neither of them the original speedster named the Flash. Barry taking the name was even very early on established as a connection to the earlier Flash.

[CSTowle]

Right, all new stuff. Except the powers, basic concept, and name. Oh, and superheroes falling out of favor with the comic buying public for 10 years making all characters "failures" except Batman and Superman. Sure, they're completely unique and not at all knock-off legacy characters recycling old material to appeal to a new audience. As I said, amusing.

[Ultimate Rentaroomyman]

i can understand why Wally is first. I think that Miles is like the Wally of Marvel in a way that some people prefer him than the original. But what I don't get is why is Bucky as Captain America so high up? I never really read any of the books but I liked him more as an anti-hero than Captain America.

[lancerman]

Right, all new stuff. Except the powers, basic concept, and name. Oh, and superheroes falling out of favor with the comic buying public for 10 years making all characters "failures" except Batman and Superman. Sure, they're completely unique and not at all knock-off legacy characters recycling old material to appeal to a new audience. As I said, amusing.

Not exactly true. For instance lets look at Green Lantern.

The name is the same, certain things about the power set are the same *for years Alan Scott really just had a green beam that could do a few things, creating objects was much later. That's about it.

Things that were unique to Hal. His costume. The majority and scope of his powers. The requirments to use said powers. The weakness to yellow (Alan was weak against wood). The alien origin which informs vast amounts of the current Green Lantern mythology. The space cop angle, which is also huge. The fact that they are chosen and that there are more than one, another huge aspect. The Guardians. Oa. Basically the modern Green Lantern mythology (like most of DC) stems from the silver age and everything comes off that tree. Alan was more of a prototype than anything else.

Same with Barry and Jay. Aside from having the common power of super speed, the name, and a red color scheme, they were very different characters. Obviously yeah it took inspiration from Jay, but it wasn't a direct descedent of Jay. Wally directly follows Barry, and exists as Barry's legacy. Not Jay. Jay was a comic character Barry was inspired by, who was later shown to be an alternate world character, who was later retconned in the main world.

[Michael P]

Your read on Hal and Alan is way off. The scope of powers were exactly the same, as was the requirement to recharge the ring in the lantern. They both had oaths (Hal's oath was even used by Alan at one point before being repurposed in the Silver Age).

Jay and Barry, meanwhile, had pretty much the same civilian identity, just with different names.

Without Jay and Alan, there is no Barry or Hal. Pretending otherwise is just disingenuous.

[CSTowle]

Not exactly true. For instance lets look at Green Lantern.

The name is the same, certain things about the power set are the same *for years Alan Scott really just had a green beam that could do a few things, creating objects was much later. That's about it.

Things that were unique to Hal. His costume. The majority and scope of his powers. The requirments to use said powers. The weakness to yellow (Alan was weak against wood). The alien origin which informs vast amounts of the current Green Lantern mythology. The space cop angle, which is also huge. The fact that they are chosen and that there are more than one, another huge aspect. The Guardians. Oa. Basically the modern Green Lantern mythology (like most of DC) stems from the silver age and everything comes off that tree. Alan was more of a prototype than anything else.

Same with Barry and Jay. Aside from having the common power of super speed, the name, and a red color scheme, they were very different characters. Obviously yeah it took inspiration from Jay, but it wasn't a direct descedent of Jay. Wally directly follows Barry, and exists as Barry's legacy. Not Jay. Jay was a comic character Barry was inspired by, who was later shown to be an alternate world character, who was later retconned in the main world.

Basically came back to say what Michael said. These characters are clearly legacy characters. Details between the originals and their silver age legacies are different, as are the costumes, but the same could be said of every incarnation of Green Lantern, Flash, Batgirl, Robin, etc. They weren't "inspired", they were new versions of the same characters updated for the audience of the time.

Why this bothers fans of theirs so much I don't know. I suspect it has something to do with wanting to delegitimize other legacy characters who came after their favorites, and perhaps a bit with wanting to consider Hal and Barry as being on the same level as Batman and Superman (other than Wonder Woman, nobody is) and seeing their knock-off status as making them somehow less. It's foolish, they're legacies but they've had a longer run than the originals. Embrace and accept it, or keep on denying it (and providing me with amusement).

[icctrombone]

I voted for Wally. But i agree with what a few others said about him being the successor rather than the replacement. Beta ray doesn't count for me because he never replaced Thor, he just won the hammer for a few issues.

[suss2it]

i can understand why Wally is first. I think that Miles is like the Wally of Marvel in a way that some people prefer him than the original. But what I don't get is why is Bucky as Captain America so high up? I never really read any of the books but I liked him more as an anti-hero than Captain America.

So maybe try reading the books to see why fans love BuckyCap

Basically came back to say what Michael said. These characters are clearly legacy characters. Details between the originals and their silver age legacies are different, as are the costumes, but the same could be said of every incarnation of Green Lantern, Flash, Batgirl, Robin, etc. They weren't "inspired", they were new versions of the same characters updated for the audience of the time.

Why this bothers fans of theirs so much I don't know. I suspect it has something to do with wanting to delegitimize other legacy characters who came after their favorites, and perhaps a bit with wanting to consider Hal and Barry as being on the same level as Batman and Superman (other than Wonder Woman, nobody is) and seeing their knock-off status as making them somehow less. It's foolish, they're legacies but they've had a longer run than the originals. Embrace and accept it, or keep on denying it (and providing me with amusement).

Pretty much agree with everything you said, but not even Wonder Woman is on the same level as Bats and Supes.

[sifls]

Does Little Loki count?

[Brave Sir Robin]

I voted for Kamila because this could be the best super hero book I have ever read. I will admit that I am not a huge fan of the genre and when I do read them, I tend to read the females because the writers get more lattitude to make real human beings. I don't even know who Kamila was replacing, but that book and her character are fantastic.

[lancerman]

Basically came back to say what Michael said. These characters are clearly legacy characters. Details between the originals and their silver age legacies are different, as are the costumes, but the same could be said of every incarnation of Green Lantern, Flash, Batgirl, Robin, etc. They weren't "inspired", they were new versions of the same characters updated for the audience of the time.

Why this bothers fans of theirs so much I don't know. I suspect it has something to do with wanting to delegitimize other legacy characters who came after their favorites, and perhaps a bit with wanting to consider Hal and Barry as being on the same level as Batman and Superman (other than Wonder Woman, nobody is) and seeing their knock-off status as making them somehow less. It's foolish, they're legacies but they've had a longer run than the originals. Embrace and accept it, or keep on denying it (and providing me with amusement).

Not really it's just the cut off. In the universe Hal and Barry exist in, Jay and Alan never existed. Switching from Hal to Kyle is a lot more like switching from Bruce to Dick and Batman than it is from taling a defunct concept and completely re tooling it and altering it into something more successful that has become globally recognizable. I mean you can call them legacies but your using the term in a way that comic fans haven't really ever used it for years.

There's a difference between rebooting a concept, and largely completely changing HUGE aspects of it, and having a concept that works and letting a new character carry the torch.

[The_Greatest_Username]

Guy, Wally, and Dick are my favorites, but I voted for Guy since I knew the other two would be leading. Kate Bishop is pretty cool, too.

[CSTowle]

Not really it's just the cut off. In the universe Hal and Barry exist in, Jay and Alan never existed. Switching from Hal to Kyle is a lot more like switching from Bruce to Dick and Batman than it is from taling a defunct concept and completely re tooling it and altering it into something more successful that has become globally recognizable. I mean you can call them legacies but your using the term in a way that comic fans haven't really ever used it for years.

There's a difference between rebooting a concept, and largely completely changing HUGE aspects of it, and having a concept that works and letting a new character carry the torch.

Different core concept on GL maybe (but not really, guy uses magic ring to fight bad guys), but you really have to be willfully ignorant (and this is perhaps as clear a textbook case of it as I can think of) to look at a guy named "Flash" and a guy named "Green Lantern" with the same basic powers doing the same basic things with similar costumes/colors published by the same company in the same genre coming a dozen or so years after the originals and say, "Nuh uh, my guys are the originals. And anyone who comes after is a knock-off. Anyone who came before, prototypes." Prototypes, like they were the one-off Hulk-like characters in one issue of Tales to Astonish never to appear again instead of having years of comic adventures and being members of the Justice Society of America. Again, it's amusing to see fan logic at work.

[lancerman]

Different core concept on GL maybe (but not really, guy uses magic ring to fight bad guys), but you really have to be willfully ignorant (and this is perhaps as clear a textbook case of it as I can think of) to look at a guy named "Flash" and a guy named "Green Lantern" with the same basic powers doing the same basic things with similar costumes/colors published by the same company in the same genre coming a dozen or so years after the originals and say, "Nuh uh, my guys are the originals. And anyone who comes after is a knock-off. Anyone who came before, prototypes." Prototypes, like they were the one-off Hulk-like characters in one issue of Tales to Astonish never to appear again instead of having years of comic adventures and being members of the Justice Society of America. Again, it's amusing to see fan logic at work.

Several thing. Those characters (Alan and Jay) stopped being published. When the silver age characters took over they were portrayed as the first in their universe and weren't descended from the golden age characters.

Since that happened, those characters lineages were followed through to the modern day. Wally wasn't Jay's second replacement. Wally did not descend from Jay's stories. Jay and Alan's stories were not the basis for the modern Green Lantern and Flash.

When people say replacement they literally mean replacement. As in one character is filling for another. Not a rebooted version of a character. Barry's creation was basically saying that the old Flash thing didn't work out it's over, let's reboot it with someone new and retool the concept to get it right. It's not a replacement it's a do over. It's like saying that by proxy Joseph Gordon Levitt's character was going to become a replacement for Michael Keaton's Batman. That's the point. That's why Hal and Barru aren't getting mentioned.

[CSTowle]

I'm not talking about what's "canon" in the comic book universe (which changes as soon as one writer gets an idea to), I'm talking about what was. DC published comics starring "the Flash" and "Green Lantern" for years. Then, much later, they published the characters you're talking about. With the same names, same powers, same basic concept, but in a market that was ready for superheroes again. If your contention is that Barry & Hal are better characters or more marketable than Jay & Alan then that's up for discussion. Who the original versions of the characters are and who are the newer versions of those originals really isn't.