Legacy Members and Sidekicks

[Masterff]

Hello,
What do you think makes Legacy Members and Sidekicks successful?

The past has shown that they are successful if they are different from their mentors..

Like
Nightwing and Batman
Barry Allen and Wally West
Clark and Conner

[Proto Man]

The fans have to organically accept the characters, and that typically only happens with time and quality stories and art. In writing, one of the most basic lessons is that it's often better to show instead of tell. Where some modern legacy characters go wrong is that the stories, solicits, or creators tell us how great the characters are but the stories just aren't there to back it up, or they're bad or forced. I think that often has the opposite effect of what was intended, and fans can come to resent certain characters partially because of that.

I think legacy characters have a better shot at success when there isn't a lot of oversaturation and competition for whatever slot they're trying to fill. Unfortunately, we see a lot of that these days. When there are too many Robins, some may find they have little place anymore and struggle with their identity (no pun intended) as new ones appear. When there are SO MANY Green Lanterns, there just isn't enough panel space to do them justice and some of them (and their fans) will be left out in the cold. This also causes the fans to go at each other's throats.

[caj]

They have to have some genuine connection to their mentors.

Donna Troy was accepted as Wonder Girl because she was raised on Paradise Island with the Amazons. She thought of Hippolyta as her mother and Diana as her sister.

Once that was removed, we still loved Donna, but DC Comics did everything they could to end that with their constant re-telling of her origin (which got to be more and more ridiculous each time).

[D.Z]

Just make one thread about legacy.

[Captain Nostalgia]

I think being different from their mentors is the key phrase, when dealing with a legacy hero, whose mentor has notable fan popularity.

Wally West supplanting Barry Allen (The established character) is a rare occurrence, and even when the legacy hero is successful, often the original will return and supplant the legacy hero again
(Hal/Kyle, Barbara/Cassandra & the back and forth pivoting between Barry & Wally)

If you look at Nightwing and Connor, they have both set out on paths other than being trying to be Batman or Superman. If Dick Grayson just became a legacy Batman hero running around with the same name and costume I doubt he would be popular today. Most likely he would be buried in obscurity.

It is harder for heroes with the same superpowers to become extremely popular, unless they supplant the established hero, but heroes like Donna Troy have carved out their own niche popularity. Despite mirroring Wonder Woman in powers, no one expects her to become Wonder Woman.

She is now her own hero with a distinctly different costume and origin, and has developed a strong popular following of fans as a result.

[sifighter]

I think they are successful when they expand on the history of the dc universe and are their own version of the character instead of just a younger cutout of the older characters.

For instance I’ve been talking about him a lot since he’s joined the JSA but I like Khalid Nassour. I find him interesting because he can build on the history of Dr. Fate by being related to him, not to mention having good family moments with Kent in Justice League Dark, and he’s different because he’s young and not as experienced with magic as Kent but not wholly incompetent.