Let the Sidekicks become Adults

[Restingvoice]

Thats a CURRENT DC PROBLEM..
BEFORE Nightwing,Wally,Garth....became older and became as powerful or in Wallys Case more powerful than his mentor...

How do you know that?
I remind at the Supergirl Story where she was ONE DAY in High School and she quit, because of being bullied..

Well, we're in the Current, not in the Before.

The Supergirl and Batgirl age was in 70s comic.

[The Darknight Detective]

How do you know that?
I remind at the Supergirl Story where she was ONE DAY in High School and she quit, because of being bullied..

As Restingvoice recently pointed out, the approximate ages of both Batgirl and Supergirl were known to Bronze-Age readers like myself. Clark and Bruce, FWIW, were in their late twenties.

[Shamrock Holmes]

He was said to be 17 in Red Robin.

If you really want the ages to match the time that passes in universe, Tim would have (when I calculated correctly) turned 20 during OYL, and would proably have been 22 or 23 around flashpoint (which would make Dick roughly 30).

That sounds about right, I was lowballing on the post you replied to. I'm not exactly what the disadvantage of Tim being that sort of age would be, as you can do a lot of the same plot beats with a college student as you can a highschooler and Tim - being a thinker - is exactly the sort of person who would stand on past 22-23 and get a Masters or even a PhD/DSc.

[Masterff]

That sounds about right, I was lowballing on the post you replied to. I'm not exactly what the disadvantage of Tim being that sort of age would be, as you can do a lot of the same plot beats with a college student as you can a highschooler and Tim - being a thinker - is exactly the sort of person who would stand on past 22-23 and get a Masters or even a PhD/DSc.

Thats a HUGE DISADVANTAGE!!!
Otherwise you could just display BRUCE IN HIGHSCHOOL...

You cant let him marry, you cant let him have kids, you cant let have him run his own company, you cant let him become independent....

I was always in favor of the Tim,Cassie,Conner,Bart.....Generation becoming adults and leave their hometowns and become independent...

Like Bart becoming Speed King or so and he becomes Las Vegas Protector or so....

Let’s go back to the Golden Age and start with Superbaby and Battot, and then age in real time! /s

In all seriousness, this is a touch question, and one that I doubt has a simple, catch all solution.

Solution is pretty easy:

Freeze the mentors age and just let age the proteges until they get in the right ages and then freeze also them:

JL (Age 35-38) Bruce,Diana,Clark,Barry.............
Titans (Age 28-32) Dick,Donna,Wally......
YJ (Age 22-25) Tim,Cassie,Conner,Bart.........
TT (Age 13-18) Crush,Wallace,Damian....

VERY EASY....

And you would also have one team for every age class...

[Aahz]

That sounds about right, I was lowballing on the post you replied to. I'm not exactly what the disadvantage of Tim being that sort of age would be, as you can do a lot of the same plot beats with a college student as you can a highschooler and Tim - being a thinker - is exactly the sort of person who would stand on past 22-23 and get a Masters or even a PhD/DSc.

I think one problem if they had done it that way is, that Tim had aged to fast form them to keep up with the stories and the world building.
And they would have had to introduce a new teen characters much earlier, if they had aged him in "in Universe time".

The timeline between A lonely Place of Dying and OYL is for the most part pretty straight forward, the only thing that is imo kind dubios is if Contagination/Legacy happend in the same year as Knightfall or in the year after Knightfall.

If you go with the second option, Tim would have turned 18 during during the new Gotham era, and all the Young Justice members would have been in their 2nd year in collage by the Time of Graduation Day.

[Lee]

Thats a HUGE DISADVANTAGE!!!
Otherwise you could just display BRUCE IN HIGHSCHOOL...

You cant let him marry, you cant let him have kids, you cant let have him run his own company, you cant let him become independent....

I was always in favor of the Tim,Cassie,Conner,Bart.....Generation becoming adults and leave their hometowns and become independent...

Like Bart becoming Speed King or so and he becomes Las Vegas Protector or so....



Solution is pretty easy:

Freeze the mentors age and just let age the proteges until they get in the right ages and then freeze also them:

JL (Age 35-38) Bruce,Diana,Clark,Barry.............
Titans (Age 28-32) Dick,Donna,Wally......
YJ (Age 22-25) Tim,Cassie,Conner,Bart.........
TT (Age 13-18) Crush,Wallace,Damian....

VERY EASY....

And you would also have one team for every age class...

Then people would be hell-bent on aging up Damian and Wallace, and we'd end up with a new Robin, a new Kid Flash. This can't keep happening indefinitely.

The core heroes are fine, there's a place for them. The teenage sidekicks are fine, there's a place for them. It's the former sidekicks that are the problem, because they don't fill a specific niche. Nightwing caught on and Wally worked when he was re-positioned as a core hero, but the rest floundered when they were aged up and replaced.

Why should DC go out of their way to repeat this mistake?

And what is there to be gained? What is the point of an adult Impulse? What would make Cassie Sandsmark more compelling as an adult? What is the appeal of an adult Kon-El? How do you distinguish a team of characters in their early-mid 20s from a team of characters in their mid-late 20s?

[Shamrock Holmes]

Then people would be hell-bent on aging up Damian and Wallace, and we'd end up with a new Robin, a new Kid Flash. This can't keep happening indefinitely.

Given that DC established that teen superheroes still exist a thousand years in the future, I disagree with this basic premise.

However I agree that part of the problem with the parade of new characters is that they can feel flat, two-dimensional and pointless, but I would argue that this is because of the insistence on keeping the new characters static and not allowing the same potential to find their own "niche" as the established characters that have had their stories told and retold half-a-dozen times before.

[Lee]

Given that DC established that teen superheroes still exist a thousand years in the future, I disagree with this basic premise.

In what way? What does one have to do with the other?

[Kon93]

Adult as in 19 to 22 years old could work quite easily Imo.

They are very different from their older namesakes, and they can be shown to do and go in very different directions than the way the older classic guys do.

Kon for instance doesn't need to be a hero in the classic hero way, he could be a agent for Cadmus or the whole damn YJ team could be more secret or covert

[qwertyuiop1998]

Because essentially the DC is selling characters, So is logic to let sidekicks keeping they age.

[godisawesome]

Then people would be hell-bent on aging up Damian and Wallace, and we'd end up with a new Robin, a new Kid Flash. This can't keep happening indefinitely.

The core heroes are fine, there's a place for them. The teenage sidekicks are fine, there's a place for them. It's the former sidekicks that are the problem, because they don't fill a specific niche. Nightwing caught on and Wally worked when he was re-positioned as a core hero, but the rest floundered when they were aged up and replaced.

Why should DC go out of their way to repeat this mistake?

And what is there to be gained? What is the point of an adult Impulse? What would make Cassie Sandsmark more compelling as an adult? What is the appeal of an adult Kon-El? How do you distinguish a team of characters in their early-mid 20s from a team of characters in their mid-late 20s?

I’d say the thing to be gained is, in theory, a repeat of the success of Wally West as the Flash of you get the correct writer.

Moving a character beyond their initial archetype and striking towards new ground comes with intrinsic benefits if the quality of writing is good. Depth and complexity comes with allowing characters to age and grow, no matter what generation they are: Veteran Campaigner Batman is, in some ways, more interesting than Rookie Batman.

The trick comes with being willing to take a risk based more in ambitious writing than artwork and editorial fiat. Even though DC can observe the benefits and success of stuff like Wally as Flash and Dick as Batman, and arguably the benefits of having Barry and Hal replace Jay and Alan, your still asking someone to embrace evolution and change for an IP that they probably feel is safely exploited with a static status quo and a refusal to recognize even the passage of “comic book time.”

So a compromise would probably be to have two sets of books: one that proceeds at a very slow but still progressive and chronological pace where authors can be ambitious and risk taking with major changes, and one where the ambition is more centered on older character in a floating timeline.

[Lee]

I’d say the thing to be gained is, in theory, a repeat of the success of Wally West as the Flash of you get the correct writer.

When Wally became The Flash, it really was a new idea. But it was a bumpy road at first - for a couple of years he only appeared in Titans, and it took a year or two for his solo series to really click into place. It could only really happen in the first place because they killed off Barry Allen and wrote Jay Garrick out of the series. (I think people forget that Jay was gone for 6 years. That's 1 year longer than Wally was gone from New 52 to Rebirth.)

With today's smaller audience, it would be more of a risk, and the idea wouldn't be as fresh. Today's comic audience has seen the replacement hero idea play out numerous times, and they know that 95% of the time it doesn't stick.

In the end, the predecessors almost always get brought back. Now we have 2 Blue Beetles existing at the same time, 7 human Green Lanterns, 4 characters called The Flash. It becomes unwieldy, because there's simply not enough space to give them all their time to shine on a monthly basis.

Moving a character beyond their initial archetype and striking towards new ground comes with intrinsic benefits if the quality of writing is good. Depth and complexity comes with allowing characters to age and grow, no matter what generation they are: Veteran Campaigner Batman is, in some ways, more interesting than Rookie Batman.

I disagree. Characters can grow without aging. I just watched a film set over the course of 3 days, and all the lead characters were in different places at the end of the film than they were at the beginning. And I don't think character growth, as you're describing it, is even necessary for a character to have depth or complexity. The entire cast of Charles Schulz's Peanuts is more complex than most DC characters, and none of them overcame their foibles.

A character like Impulse is compelling as is. Would turning him into an adult make Impulse more interesting? Does a character with a short attention span and low impulse control make more sense as a teenager or an adult? Would he even still be the same character if he overcame those foibles? What would be left?

The trick comes with being willing to take a risk based more in ambitious writing than artwork and editorial fiat. Even though DC can observe the benefits and success of stuff like Wally as Flash and Dick as Batman, and arguably the benefits of having Barry and Hal replace Jay and Alan, your still asking someone to embrace evolution and change for an IP that they probably feel is safely exploited with a static status quo and a refusal to recognize even the passage of “comic book time.”

I don't think ambitious or risky writing requires turning a kid character into an adult character, an adult character into an an elderly character, or for a young character to start wearing an older character's clothes.

So a compromise would probably be to have two sets of books: one that proceeds at a very slow but still progressive and chronological pace where authors can be ambitious and risk taking with major changes, and one where the ambition is more centered on older character in a floating timeline.

I don't think "10 years from now, Robin will be 1 year older" is a strong enough selling point for a line of comics. If DC were going to do this, then the separate line going by in real-time would be a better selling point. But the approach to writing would have to change, there could no longer be 6 issue arcs that take place over a single week. But what would the starting point be? Superman's first day? The formation of the Justice League? Where we are now, with Damian Wayne as Robin?

[Shamrock Holmes]

When Wally became The Flash, it really was a new idea. But it was a bumpy road at first - for a couple of years he only appeared in Titans, and it took a year or two for his solo series to really click into place. It could only really happen in the first place because they killed off Barry Allen and wrote Jay Garrick out of the series. (I think people forget that Jay was gone for 6 years. That's 1 year longer than Wally was gone from New 52 to Rebirth.)

With today's smaller audience, it would be more of a risk, and the idea wouldn't be as fresh. Today's comic audience has seen the replacement hero idea play out numerous times, and they know that 95% of the time it doesn't stick.

In the end, the predecessors almost always get brought back. Now we have 2 Blue Beetles existing at the same time, 7 human Green Lanterns, 4 characters called The Flash. It becomes unwieldy, because there's simply not enough space to give them all their time to shine on a monthly basis.

And that last part illustrates what pro-development fans see as the real problem with "failed" follow up attempts, not the concept of creating new versions of characters, but the knowledge that the new versions will never be given their due, their time in the limelight because the "old guard" will always be brought back and push them out.

Wally West worked as the new Flash because DC gave him years, decades, as the primary focus of that sub-franchise (even when Jay returned, he was mainly cast as "the mentor", so he didn't undermine Wally as "the hero"), Kyle Rayner became a fan favourite because the writers acknowledged the up-hill battle he had, actually wrote it into stories, showed him overcoming that). Even Steel and Superboy had enough work put into them to make them into fully-fledged additions to the Super-Family within a year or two of their debuts.

Probably the best example of legacy working when good writers actually write characters without the intent to "reverse it" down the line is Batman Beyond, that started as a Hail Mary attempt at technicially doing what the PTB wanted ("Batman in high school") but went it's own way from the outset, and forged one of the most successful and enduring sub-franchises in comics*.

* Yes, I know that it did so as part of the DCAU, but the main DCAU is a far more "mainstream" effort over all despite it's high quality.

[Shamrock Holmes]

In what way? What does one have to do with the other?

Your premise AFAICT is that there's an upper limit to how many (generations of) teen heroes, including sidekicks/partner that there can be. IMO, the existence of the LoSH pretty much requires that there is a long, broad tradition of teen heroes in the present, because if it was just a "flash in the pan" brief thing that only happened for maybe a decade then it would have been forgotten long ago.

[Lee]

Probably the best example of legacy working when good writers actually write characters without the intent to "reverse it" down the line is Batman Beyond, that started as a Hail Mary attempt at technicially doing what the PTB wanted ("Batman in high school") but went it's own way from the outset, and forged one of the most successful and enduring sub-franchises in comics*.

* Yes, I know that it did so as part of the DCAU, but the main DCAU is a far more "mainstream" effort over all despite it's high quality.

The premise of Batman Beyond was that it was a spin-off set in the future. DC/Warner Bros didn't age up and replace Bruce Wayne in their entire product line, it was just a self-contained show in its own bubble.

Your premise AFAICT is that there's an upper limit to how many (generations of) teen heroes, including sidekicks/partner that there can be. IMO, the existence of the LoSH pretty much requires that there is a long, broad tradition of teen heroes in the present, because if it was just a "flash in the pan" brief thing that only happened for maybe a decade then it would have been forgotten long ago.

Legion of Super-Heroes is set in the future. The core DC Universe line of comics will never catch up to that time frame. It's a completely different scenario from having Bruce Wayne cycle through a dozen Robins in the core, present day DC Universe.