Streamline the DCU

[Zero Hunter]

Agree or disagree the current DCU is jammed packed with too many heroes filling the same roles. From the Flash family to the Bat family there are just so many characters that none of them really get a chance to stand out. Without just a wholesale slaughter what would be the best way in your mind to take some characters off the board at least for a while?

Robin 3 - Time Drake - Tim decides to hang up the costume once and for all and goes off to college
Spoiler - Stephine Brown - She decides to follow Tims lead and retires to go to college too

Flash - All of them besides Wally West - Flash (Wally) is forced to suck all the Speed Force into himself leaving the rest powerless.

Superman - Jon Kent - De-aged back to an 11 year old kid. Conner would take on more a big brother role for him.


What would be your ideas to thin things out a little?

[MajorHoy]

Is "start everything over from scratch" an option?

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

Is "start everything over from scratch" an option?

Wouldn't that just be another reboot?

[phonogram12]

While I used to think a streamlined DCU was a good idea, I just wouldn't anymore. Every character is someone's favorite, so I wouldn't want to do that to anyone else. For example, I would sooner put Damian out to pasture than Tim. And I feel Impulse is just too fun of a character to relegate to a civilian.

[MajorHoy]

Wouldn't that just be another reboot?

But you could treat it sort of like in the Silver Age, where it wound up being a new Earth, and all the previous stories still happened but on a different Earth.

That way, you don't just throw out the older stories. They just won't have happened on the newer Earth.

And if you want to call that a reboot, you can (I guess).

[Zorkel567]

Yeah, I'd hate that. As a big fan of the Bat-family, the idea of characters being retired or written off sounds really frustrating and disappointing. I love how big the Bat-family has gotten, and think there's room for all of them to have a role.

[ducklord]

Agree or disagree the current DCU is jammed packed with too many heroes filling the same roles. From the Flash family to the Bat family there are just so many characters that none of them really get a chance to stand out. Without just a wholesale slaughter what would be the best way in your mind to take some characters off the board at least for a while?

Robin 3 - Time Drake - Tim decides to hang up the costume once and for all and goes off to college
Spoiler - Stephine Brown - She decides to follow Tims lead and retires to go to college too

Flash - All of them besides Wally West - Flash (Wally) is forced to suck all the Speed Force into himself leaving the rest powerless.

Superman - Jon Kent - De-aged back to an 11 year old kid. Conner would take on more a big brother role for him.


What would be your ideas to thin things out a little?

As others have noted, I'm not sure that "thinning things out" is the way to go, generally speaking. Once characters are created they have a tendency to become *somebody's* favorite, so nuking/killing/egregiously modifying them can often be a slap in the face.

The trick, I think, is to come up with a dramatically interesting *place* for all the various characters of a given franchise. There is no way in heck that DC's going to kill off/eliminate Barry or Wally at this point, but they're essentially the same guys, with almost identical costumes, living in cities right next to each other, AND they're the fastest guys alive! They should be teaming up constantly. How do you set up their status quo in such a way that doesn't tick off their respective (and noisy) fans?

A lot of people would be more than happy to see Jon Kent de-aged, as that was a colossally bad idea that leap-frogged Conner's place in the super-family, made Superman feel older than he is, and generally repeated the same mistakes that were made with Bart Allen a decade or so ago. But now that he's headlining a comic and is DC's most famous bisexual super-hero, what are the odds of *that* ever happening?

The Green Lanterns currently have 7 human members of the Green Lantern Corps, and that's not even counting "Teen Lantern." How do you square that particular circle without giving rise to another H.E.A.T.?

I have no answers, mind you - I'm just laying out the difficulty of the task

[Factor]

I'd honestly be way more interested in giving each of the legacy heroes there own distinct roles and niches.
Like Signal being Gotham's daylight vigilante, Tim being a P.I., the Batgirls acting as the Batfamily's intel gatherers or Batwoman focusing on supernatural threats.

For Wonder Woman:
- Diana as Themyscira's champion and ambassador
- Nubia as queen of the united Amazonian nation
- Donna: as the regular human who became a legend among legends, she'd be seen as the people's connection to the world of WW.
- Cassie as Fury: the Olympian Amazon, Themyscira's liaison to her disfunctional family. Feels like she has to protect the world from their schemes.
- Yara as WG, based in Brazil and acting as champion of the Esquecida tribe.
- Artemis, champion of the Bana-Mighdal

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

The DCU is a big place so I'd just spread them out geographically.

[superduperman]

No one wants to hear this but I kind of think they need a hard reboot. I would probably take the DCU back to something that looks a lot like the first season of Young Justice.

Everyone gets a hard reboot origin called Genesis. It basically covers their origins and why they started their careers. So you would have:

Superman Genesis.

Batman Genesis.

Wonder Woman Genesis.

Flash Genesis.

Green Lantern Genesis.

etc. And the main books would take place about ten years after that. The origin of the Teen Titans would probably be a combination of Young Justice and the Titans TV show. A scientist at Cadmus lets Superboy out and the sidekicks all get together to sort of stop him and the team is formed. It consists of Dick, Wally, Donna, Roy, Conner, Aqualad and as the series goes on it picks up Kory, Raven, Gar, and Cyborg.

Clark and Lois are engaged but not married yet.

Bruce is engaged to Julie Madson but the relationship is strained because she doesn't know he's Batman.

Barry and Iris are married but she doesn't like that Wally is Kid Flash.

The Earth Lanterns are Hal and John. The others exist but they haven't been chosen yet.

GA and BC are together but they aren't married.

All the legacy characters will eventually show up but they won't be the heroes you know right away.

The JSA existed but they all retired about 30-40 years ago.

[krazijoe]

Why not? There is only 1 stretchy guy now and he is rarely seen even though he may be the most powerful hero around.

[ducklord]

I'd honestly be way more interested in giving each of the legacy heroes there own distinct roles and niches.
Like Signal being Gotham's daylight vigilante, Tim being a P.I., the Batgirls acting as the Batfamily's intel gatherers or Batwoman focusing on supernatural threats.

For Wonder Woman:
- Diana as Themyscira's champion and ambassador
- Nubia as queen of the united Amazonian nation
- Donna: as the regular human who became a legend among legends, she'd be seen as the people's connection to the world of WW.
- Cassie as Fury: the Olympian Amazon, Themyscira's liaison to her disfunctional family. Feels like she has to protect the world from their schemes.
- Yara as WG, based in Brazil and acting as champion of the Esquecida tribe.
- Artemis, champion of the Bana-Mighdal

Now that's constructive.

Let me try one.

For the Green Lantern Corps, I'd suggest something pretty simple: Instead of 3600, or 7200 Green Lanterns covering 3600 sectors, there are now 36,000 Green Lanterns covering 3600 sectors. That's ten per sector, allowing all seven of the human GL's into sector 2814, as well as a few more aliens. Won't that get crowded? Well, since each sector covers millions of galaxies (conservatively), They can spread out as much as they need to for plotting purposes. For my money I'd sort 'em out this way:
Hal - Constantly wandering, doing cool sci-fi stuff. Only stops on Earth for family holidays, dates with Carol. Available for crossovers.
John - Resident Justice League member. Most likely to be contacted by Guardians, on account of his ascended state.
Guy - Training Teen Lantern. Think "Cobra Kai," but with the universe's most powerful tool/weapon.
Kyle - Back together with Jade, dealing with unfinished business in the Vega system.
Jessica & Simon - Space mystery solvers. Think "Hart to Hart" crossed with "The X-Files"... but in space.
Jo - Patrols the sector like the cop she is.
Alan - Senior member of the JSA, now training its 4th generation of legacy heroes.

As for the Corps itself, I'd set up its status quo thusly:
1) The Guardians have let it be known that, after a flurry of activity over the last few years, they're withdrawing from the ephemeral political affairs of the universe.
2) As such, they've torn down almost all of the buildings on Oa, and told everyone to stay away.
3) The Green Lanterns have been told to return to patrolling their sectors, and not return to Oa unless summoned (which they won't be).
4) The Green Lanterns have been further told not to go traipsing will-nilly into other sectors unless given permission by the Guardians (which they typically won't). No more of this "20 Green Lanterns ganging up on someone just because it makes a nice splash page" business.

So that's another franchise down. What about the Flash?

[king81992]

Intriguing premise, I'll bite:

Titans- Nightwing, Donna Troy, Arsenal (does double duty with the Outlaws), Raven, Beast Boy, Cyborg, Tempest, Jericho(does double duty with the Team Titans)

Young Justice- Robin(Tim Drake), Wonder Girl(Cassie), Impulse, Superboy(Kon), Aqualad, Ms. Martian

Team Titans- Terra(Tara, occasionally fills in for Geo Force in Outsiders), Lightning(occaisionally fills in for her dad in Outsiders), Zachary Zatara, Liar Liar, Vibe

Outsiders- Black Lightning, Katana, Metamorpho, Geo Force, Thunder, Signal, Batgirl/Orphan/ Black Bat(Cassandra Cain)

Outlaws- Red Hood, Artemis, Bizarro, Rose Wilson

A lot of characters were introduced into the Titans franchise, so the ones I didn't mention could be spread out to a variety of teams. I feel like Kara and Jon should have a roster spot somewhere, especially Kara who's sort of disconnected from the Super fam and teams in general.

[skyvolt2000]

No one wants to hear this but I kind of think they need a hard reboot. I would probably take the DCU back to something that looks a lot like the first season of Young Justice.

All the legacy characters will eventually show up but they won't be the heroes you know right away.

One MAJOR issue with this is how long do you WAIT for the others to show up?

Hard reboots open up to getting rid of WHOEVER is in charge doesn't like.

Now aside from fan wars galore-how much money would you lose? Along with even more ill will because lets face it certain demographics would get screwed over in a hard reboot.

No one is going to wait for Jessica or Jo to show up after Guy, Kyle and whoever else is before them.

Same with the Robins.

[Primal Slayer]

Wonder Woman fam:
Diana - Champion of the Amazons
Nubia - A more blackops of the Amazons
Hippolyta - Queen of the Amazons
Donna - Younger magical sister of Diana.
Cassie - Zeus's daughter, fangirl of WW. WG.
Artemis - Bana-Amazon
Yara - new girl on the block. Spends a good chunk of her time as the champion of the Gods

Green Lantern....
Hal - more on big galactic missions in space
John - Earth based
Kyle - works more with the Guardians and missions they send him on
Guy - Trains new GLs
Jessica - She has a E3 GL ring so she's on Earth w/John helping her discover the differences in her powers
Jo/Simon - detectives for the Guardians
Alan - the OG of the OGs. He isn't like the other GLs, doesnt operate by Guardian code. is Earth bound.