Marvel Comics did the legacy characters 10x better than DC Comics

[John Venus]

Hal was brought back with the promise that all GL's would still get equal focus. In the beginning they did, Guy and Kyle even became co-leads in GLC. The main problem was that as each event passed, it became more and more of a Hal Jordan show. To the point where all the legacies were basically sidelined to keep Hal as the 'main' GL guy. There was a clearly hierarchy now.

You can't blame COIE or Emerald Twilight for that since as you yourself admitted, the Post COIE world did have a period where all the legacies could co-exist in harmony and the people who wrote those aforementioned stories were no longer in the drivers seat.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

If DC had handled things the same way they did with Wally with the others, things might have been different (though probably not with the original replacement for Barry DC was thinking about). But the disrespectful way they handled Hal after 35 years as a superhero for the company is a different story. The blowback that came their way was well-deserved and can't be hand-waved away. John Stewart fans have to scratch their heads over why their favorite was bypassed for Kyle, too.

Oh yeah, I agree about how they handled Hal. But as John Venus pointed out, they rectified that aspect almost 20 years ago at this point. And the GL mythos is one that's built in a way that it can handle many different characters becoming a Green Lantern. That's one of the selling points of the franchise that makes it so powerful: that anyone (even you) could be chosen to join the Corps. You don't have to have innate powers like Superman or be rich enough to afford building fancy gadgets like Batman.

So, having many different heroes take up the GL mantle, is part of the draw of the franchise.

And the reason they bypassed John and Guy for Kyle was that Kyle was very much THE stereotypical 90s hero, in a way that John and Guy were not. This video does a better job of explaining it than I ever could:



But, essentially, he had all of the tropes and trappings that were popular for heroes in the 90s and DC specifically created him to tap into that: he has a "cool" job, a devil-may-care attitude, was irresponsible but in a likable way, and was genuinely inexperienced and skeptical of the superhero experience. Meanwhile, John Stewart was too serious and Guy Gardener was too much of a jerk, so they couldn't really fit into that mold without drastic changes to their characters.

[Jim Kelly]

DC had to do something regarding POC characters and their prominence within the universe, so changes had to be made. Probably the best way to have handled that after COIE would have been to change some of the ethnic makeups and genders of the characters instead of going the legacy route. Yeah, there would still be some bickering, but you wouldn't have these fan divisions like we have today.

The thing is, for a long time, they didn't actually create a lot of new spin-off characters that were representational.

If the writers had an organic understanding of the world--which they should have by the mid-1980s--then that representation would have been reflected in the full cast. It wouldn't be a case of forcing one super-hero to be the token--because the writers would be thinking about the world in a more open way and their stories would drive those changes.

When they got rid of Hal Jordan, they just replaced him with yet another straight, white guy in the U.S. I always thought it would be cool if they got back to the Aladdin concept which was the germ of the idea and had the next G.L. reflect that by being a follower of Islam. They did eventually make Kyle Rayner partly hispanic--but that just exposes how little thought they gave to the character when they first created him.

There was one female Robin in a possible future, but all the others were white males in the U.S. Even Damian comes across as that, where he should be a Muslim from an Arab nation. Mark Waid, to his credit, already had Ibn al Xu'ffasch, the prototype for Damian.

If it's the case that the Publisher had to make it happen then the writers seem pretty ineffectual and lacking. As if the writers didn't have it within themselves to create representation in their work and they needed an order from the Big Boss.

The way I see it, if creatives are thinking about putting the characters into an environment that reflects real life, with character driven story-telling--then they shouldn't need a memo from upstairs telling them to show the diversity of the world. That should have already been there by that time in our collective history. Maybe the explanation is they weren't hiring enough writers that came from diverse backgrounds--or giving those writers enough support to tell personal stories when they were hired.

[Agent Z]

Oh yeah, I agree about how they handled Hal. But as John Venus pointed out, they rectified that aspect almost 20 years ago at this point. And the GL mythos is one that's built in a way that it can handle many different characters becoming a Green Lantern. That's one of the selling points of the franchise that makes it so powerful: that anyone (even you) could be chosen to join the Corps. You don't have to have innate powers like Superman or be rich enough to afford building fancy gadgets like Batman.

So, having many different heroes take up the GL mantle, is part of the draw of the franchise.

And the reason they bypassed John and Guy for Kyle was that Kyle was very much THE stereotypical 90s hero, in a way that John and Guy were not. This video does a better job of explaining it than I ever could:



But, essentially, he had all of the tropes and trappings that were popular for heroes in the 90s and DC specifically created him to tap into that: he has a "cool" job, a devil-may-care attitude, was irresponsible but in a likable way, and was genuinely inexperienced and skeptical of the superhero experience. Meanwhile, John Stewart was too serious and Guy Gardener was too much of a jerk, so they couldn't really fit into that mold without drastic changes to their characters.

Then again, they still gave Guy his own series during that time. I'd say he was much more of a typical 90s hero than Kyle was.

[The Darknight Detective]

Hal was brought back with the promise that all GL's would still get equal focus. In the beginning they did, Guy and Kyle even became co-leads in GLC. The main problem was that as each event passed, it became more and more of a Hal Jordan show. To the point where all the legacies were basically sidelined to keep Hal as the 'main' GL guy. There was a clearly hierarchy now.

You can't blame COIE or Emerald Twilight for that since as you yourself admitted, the Post COIE world did have a period where all the legacies could co-exist in harmony and the people who wrote those aforementioned stories were no longer in the drivers seat.

Without COIE, what would the odds have been that both Barry and Hal being replaced by two white guys (one who at the time was basically a red-headed clone of Barry)? Would Emerald Knight have been created without the success of the mini from 1985? IMO, Hal and Barry might have still been replaced, but they would have taken over only by POC or female characters instead. So COIE did have its effect, regardless of whether or not it was intended initially.

[The Darknight Detective]

The thing is, for a long time, they didn't actually create a lot of new spin-off characters that were representational.

If the writers had an organic understanding of the world--which they should have by the mid-1980s--then that representation would have been reflected in the full cast. It wouldn't be a case of forcing one super-hero to be the token--because the writers would be thinking about the world in a more open way and their stories would drive those changes.

When they got rid of Hal Jordan, they just replaced him with yet another straight, white guy in the U.S. I always thought it would be cool if they got back to the Aladdin concept which was the germ of the idea and had the next G.L. reflect that by being a follower of Islam. They did eventually make Kyle Rayner partly hispanic--but that just exposes how little thought they gave to the character when they first created him.

There was one female Robin in a possible future, but all the others were white males in the U.S. Even Damian comes across as that, where he should be a Muslim from an Arab nation. Mark Waid, to his credit, already had Ibn al Xu'ffasch, the prototype for Damian.

If it's the case that the Publisher had to make it happen then the writers seem pretty ineffectual and lacking. As if the writers didn't have it within themselves to create representation in their work and they needed an order from the Big Boss.

The way I see it, if creatives are thinking about putting the characters into an environment that reflects real life, with character driven story-telling--then they shouldn't need a memo from upstairs telling them to show the diversity of the world. That should have already been there by that time in our collective history. Maybe the explanation is they weren't hiring enough writers that came from diverse backgrounds--or giving those writers enough support to tell personal stories when they were hired.

I agree, Jim. If you're going to replace a character, then make him/her fill in a spot missing ethnically, culturally, or gender-wise.

[Nomads1]

In the 90's, early 2000's DC was giving a masters class ln how to handle legacy characters. Wally West, Tim Drake, Kyle Rayner, Cassie Sandmarks, Conner Hawke, Micheal Holt, Pieter Cross, Courtney Whitmore, etc... The list is endless. Bold changes, done with solid backstories that made the character different from the originals, while still respecting the legacy. Then, DC had a silver age relapse, ruined basically all of them, and, with very few exceptions, never quite got to handle legacy characters with the respect and quality that they deserved. Marvel, IMHO, with few exceptions, most of them minor characters, never was very good at handling legacy characters. IMHO, gender, race, or sexuality swaping in itself, as seems to be the trend nowadays, is hardly enough to make a charactrer interesting. Without a well-built backstory and something else to make the character stand out, in the end, they'll always pale when compared to the original, and his/her decades old well-developed story.

Peace

[The Darknight Detective]

In the 90's, early 2000's DC was giving a masters class ln how to handle legacy characters. Wally West, Tim Drake, Kyle Rayner, Cassie Sandmarks, Conner Hawke, Micheal Holt, Pieter Cross, Courtney Whitmore, etc... The list is endless. Bold changes, done with solid backstories that made the character different from the originals, while still respecting the legacy. Then, DC had a silver age relapse, ruined basically all of them, and, with very few exceptions, never quite got to handle legacy characters with the respect and quality that they deserved. Marvel, IMHO, with few exceptions, most of them minor characters, never was very good at handling legacy characters. IMHO, gender, race, or sexuality swaping in itself, as seems to be the trend nowadays, is hardly enough to make a charactrer interesting. Without a well-built backstory and something else to make the character stand out, in the end, they'll always pale when compared to the original, and his/her decades old well-developed story.

Peace

If DC had decided to replace Wally, Kyle, etc. with brand-new characters instead of the earlier ones, I'm pretty sure the hue and cry would have been just as loud from their fans. IMO, it's less to do with the Silver Age or legacy but having your favorite characters dumped for others.

[The Kid]

If DC had decided to replace Wally, Kyle, etc. with brand-new characters instead of the earlier ones, I'm pretty sure the hue and cry would have been just as loud from their fans. IMO, it's less to do with the Silver Age or legacy but having your favorite characters dumped for others.

They could have brought back old characters without unceremoniously dumping the characters they had spent years building up. As a comparison, check out what Marvel did when they brought back their OG heroes after introducing a bunch of new legacy characters. DC had created a bunch of new, great, popular characters and tried unceremoniously dumping them

[Nomads1]

If DC had decided to replace Wally, Kyle, etc. with brand-new characters instead of the earlier ones, I'm pretty sure the hue and cry would have been just as loud from their fans. IMO, it's less to do with the Silver Age or legacy but having your favorite characters dumped for others.

For me, it had more to do with HOW they handled the transition to the other characters. I've been reading comics since the mid-70's. Barry Allen, Hal Jordan, Ollie, etc... were the heroes I grew up with. Nobody can say I didn't have an emotional attachment to them. I never cared that much for Hal (though I LOVED the Green Lantern mythos), but Barry was one of my favorite DC characters, yet, with time, and development, Wally actually became the Flash for me, proving to be, perhaps, a better character (though I do feel that Barry's CSI side could have been greatly explored, with potentially fantastic results). On the other hand, Conner was interesting, but I think Ollie was always a better character in his imperfection. Doesn't mean I wasn't intrested in reading Conner, nor was I offended by Ollie's death. I could go on. Certainly, the absence of the instantaneous backlash of the internet worked in favor of those characters, but I do think DC invested a great deal more on them then it has ever done since then in legacy characters (with the possible exception of Damien Wayne, whom I personally can't stand).

Peace

PS. Maybe I wasn't very clear, however, the way I see it, the biog companies nowadays have replaced character development for empty hype. While, before, we had a sequence of story arcs to get the character where you wanted them (it took Wally almost 80 issues to actually give us a hint that he was capable of filling Barry's shoes), making you bond with and relate to the character, nowadays you have some headlines to do that (most of these, having to do with something related to identity politics and not crucial turning points in the life of characters, such as, the death of a loved one, or an act that changes his whole perspective, just to give a couple of exemples).

[The Darknight Detective]

They could have brought back old characters without unceremoniously dumping the characters they had spent years building up.

If the old characters come back, they're not going to be greeters at Wal-Mart or security guards at Target. They're either going to share the spotlight or take it over. But let me ask you this: if those characters were taken over by new characters as the next level of legacy, how would you feel about that?

[The Kid]

If the old characters come back, they're not going to be greeters at Wal-Mart or security guards at Target. They're either going to share the spotlight or take it over. But let me ask you this: if those characters were taken over by new characters as the next level of legacy, how would you feel about that?

Depending on how the transition was done, I would have either liked it or not. As I said before, it all comes down to execution. But writing characters off, humiliating them in petty ways, and straight up deleting them was not it. I'm not even a huge fan of either era, I got into comics around 2014 and have back read here and there since then.

Funny enough. right now we have writers who were fans in the 90s writing and putting a lot of those characters back into the frontline roles in the DCU (Cass, Steph, Tim, Wally) but they are actually making sure to try and not thrash/disrespect anyone else and put everyone in something which is an approach I actually respect

[The Darknight Detective]

Depending on how the transition was done, I would have either liked it or not. As I said before, it all comes down to execution. But writing characters off, humiliating them in petty ways, and straight up deleting them was not it. I'm not even a huge fan of either era, I got into comics around 2014 and have back read here and there since then.

Funny enough. right now we have writers who were fans in the 90s writing and putting a lot of those characters back into the frontline roles in the DCU (Cass, Steph, Tim, Wally) but they are actually making sure to try and not thrash/disrespect anyone else and put everyone in something which is an approach I actually respect

I agree no character should be disrespected (unless specifically written for that mission). That should be an universal truth. But being replaced by another character shouldn't be viewed by itself as disrespect, IMO (though it might be unwise if sales drop significantly).

[Jim Kelly]

I don't get the argument for dumping any characters. I guess it can get overpopulated--but that's why there's a multiverse. From a business perspective, it doesn't make sense to get rid of perfectly good product. As long as there's a market for an item, keep producing it. It's not like they have to order in parts from Germany and they don't have enough coal-fired steel to manufacture more on the assembly line.

Even if the demand goes away for this item or that one--they don't need to write it off and send it to the compactor. They can just store this product in the cloud, until such time as the demand rises again.

Maybe the new generation is nihilistic and wants to see lots of blood and death. But I don't need to see good characters being killed off.

It always strikes me as extremely over-confident when they decide to retire a character, even though that character is still doing well in sales and has a large following. It's like they think they are so good at manufacturing new characters, they can afford to get rid of all these redundant items, because they will do such an astounding job with the new product line that they will have people lined up around the block to get the shiny new thing and no one is going to care that this other item they loved has been set adrift on a flaming barge.

[The Darknight Detective]

I don't get the argument for dumping any characters. I guess it can get overpopulated--but that's why there's a multiverse. From a business perspective, it doesn't make sense to get rid of perfectly good product. As long as there's a market for an item, keep producing it. It's not like they have to order in parts from Germany and they don't have enough coal-fired steel to manufacture more on the assembly line.

The problem for some people is if two or more competing characters are around, then they stand as obstacles for your own favorite to succeed. Obviously, we grew up in a time where more the merrier ruled.