Young and Just Us: Thoughts on Fan Generational Issues in the DCU
There is a thing that I do not understand.
In this Newsarama article, an interview with Dan Didio, I am excited by very many things: the idea of multiple Wonder Woman titles, the integration with Milestone (though I am anxious about that, as well as excited about the re-emergence of the characters), and the return to a nonlinear continuity.
What I do not and find I cannot understand is this:
We’re going to see more of what that story was about shortly - it was always the plan for Bart. He was going to be the Flash of the moment as we made our way back to Barry.
. . .
But at the end of the day, there’s a certain expectation of what a Flash story is, and what you want to see in a Flash comic book. While we expanded the Flash family, people really wanted to see the Flash. But the goal for me, always, was to get back to Barry in the same way the goal was to get back to Hal in Green Lantern.
Do they not realize that Barry Allen died twenty three years ago? Twenty-three! Twenty-three years ago, I was reading Claremont’s Uncanny X-Men and Elfquest and didn’t give a damn what was going on with DC’s crazy Crisis! I got into the DCU in the nineties! Hal-bloody-Jordan isn’t my Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner is! Wally is my Flash! The first DCU title I ever read was Young Justice, so my heart and soul belongs to the Gen 4 heroes, to those heroes who were introduced and thrived after Crisis on Infinite Earths. Steel. Linda Danvers’s Supergirl. Young Justice. Birds of Prey. Green Arrow v3.
I do not care about Barry Allen.
I care about Bart Allen. I care about Jaime Reyes. I care about Kon-El, and Cassie Sandsmark, and Anita Fite, and Kyle Rayner, Cassandra Cain, Mia Dearden, Connor Hawke, Anissa Pierce, Stephanie Brown, Linda Danvers, Indigo, Tim Drake, Grace Choi, Rose Wilson--
The list goes on.
See, the thing is, because I jumped ship on Marvel and headed over to DC when I did, I’m one of a newer generation of readers. I did not grow up reading about Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Kara Zor-El, Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Donna Troy--I entered the DCU with Cassie Sandsmark, Tim Drake, Linda Danvers, Wally West and Kyle Rayner. These are my characters. This is my DCU.
At least when they finished tearing the universe apart with Crisis on Infinite Earths, what they gave us was very little in the way of character death and a lot of new characters to choose from. I will miss Ted Kord forever and ever, though I still think he should be running around in time with Booster, but at least his death gave us Jaime Reyes. The Blue Beetle legacy is just that, a legacy. Jaime is holding up Ted’s name, and Dan Garret’s before him. This is evolution, movement forward.
I do not understand the urge to kill the next generation in order to make way for the last generation!
Barry Allen and Hal Jordan may have been some of the most beloved characters in the DCU. They must have been, if this drive to resurrect them more than two decades later is any indication. I do not know. They are not mine.
But to destroy the future of the DCU in order to make way for the past makes no sense!
It’s not even as if they have to choose! Characters with the same name exist all the time in DC! Connor and Ollie manage it without blinking an eye. There are more Green Lanterns than you can shake a stick at. And it’s not as though someone couldn’t have changed a name. Wally, Jay, Jessie Quick, Max Mercury and Impulse all existed at the same time without confusion.
Legacies are supposed to be just that: legacies. Someone else is supposed to step up to the title and the duties. I’m aware this can never happen with characters like Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, for reasons related to profitability and brand recognition, but Wally West was Flash for twenty years. In fact, to the generation of kids who watched Justice League Unlimited and Static Shock on TV, he is the Flash. Barry Allen’s not even a blip on their radar. So why the urge to kill the youngest members in order to replace them with characters long in retirement? Why torment Tim Drake with Jason Todd? Why send Kyle to the outer reaches of the galaxy and beyond, and put Hal Jordan on the League? Why disappear Wally and murder Bart to make way for Barry Allen?
The push at DC in the past several years seems to be a return to the "good old days." They’ve reduced the Gotham cast from its 90s height of Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Huntress, Spoiler, Nightwing, Azrael, Orpehus, Onyx, Catwoman, Oracle, Leslie, Rene Montoya, Crispus Allen and Jim Gordon, back to just Batman, Robin, and maybe Batwoman, Nightwing and Catwoman. From fifteen to five. More than half of those exiled are women, as well as all the nonwhite characters. And that’s just one example.
The Flash cast of characters used to include Wally, Linda, Piper, Max Mercury, Jessie Quick, Impulse, Jay and Iris. It now consists of Wally’s nuclear family (let’s not even go into the travesty of the insta!Twins) and Barry Allen.
Those characters who populated Young Justice--Tim Drake, Kon-El, Bart Allen, Cassie Sandsmark, Cissie King-Jones, Anita Fite, Secret, Slobo, Snapper Carr, Ray--were reduced to the first four, and now all that remain within working continuity are Tim and Cassie, twisted beyond reason from the characters I knew and loved.
I understand the desire for the return of beloved characters. I do! I desperately want my beloved characters back, Kon and Bart and Linda. But the answer is not to kill the new in order to replace them with the old.
The answer, in fact, should be twofold: 1) if you must resurrect, do so without killing the new characters, and 2) STOP KILLING CHARACTERS IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I know I’ve written about this already, and I know that death is sometimes an integral part of a story and I won’t deny that. What I can and will and do deny is that a universe as necessarily large and long as DC can afford to callously murder its characters for shock value and momentary sales.
If a character must die, then it should be absolutely integral to the storyline. There should be shouting matches over it for months in the editorial office. No story should ever be written wherein the sentence "Okay, who should we kill?" is uttered in the planning stages. Death should not be so cheapened.
I still spend money on DC titles--titles that are getting expensive in this economy. Two of them are being cancelled--Didio promises that Birds is getting cancelled for character-related reasons, and this makes me a little less angry, but I am desperately mad that Jaime Reyes will no longer have his own title. Jaime did the legacy thing right. I am desperately angry that Bart Allen not only no longer has his own title, but was reduced to secondary character on the Titans title, and when he returned as Flash, the entire purpose of his story arc was to kill him. Bart Allen might have been the greatest Flash that ever lived, but we’ll never know because he never got the chance.
Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo created Impulse. His first appearance was in Flash in 1994. He thrived in his own title and in Young Justice. His name was Bart Allen, and nobody but Max Mercury and his peers ever took him seriously or believed in him. He was born a speedster, with capabilities beyond even those of his namesake. Bart Allen was an innocent and a hero, with an innate sense of good. He was the first speedster ever to remember what he read at superspeed. His potential to do good and wonderful things was cut short not because of the Speed Force or a group of murderous Rogues, but because an editorial team decided to take him, use him and discard him in favor of those Flashes who had gone before. Bart Allen--Impulse, Kid Flash, Flash--died in 2007, a mere thirteen years after his debut.
Kyle Rayner became a Lantern in a dark hour, and with little experience and much courage, rose to honor in the League. Connor Hawke inherited his title from a man sunk so low he chose to blow himself up to save others--and when that man returned, with a new light and direction, Connor did not die or vanish but stayed by his side, his partner, with an equal claim to their title. Mia Dearden took up a partner’s legacy under a changed mentor and blossomed. Linda Danvers brought into the world a new concept of Supergirl and what it means to save the world. Tim Drake deliberately became an entirely new kind of Robin. Cass Cain honored Barbara’s legacy and brought Batgirl’s reputation from second-rate to beating Shiva. Jaime Reyes brought a new outlook and hope to Blue Beetle.
Barry Allen had his day, and his legacy. He was Flash for decades before giving his life to save the multiverse, and in so doing, left a legacy that inspired his protégé and his family throughout known DC history. He was a hero who inspired other heroes.
He is not my Flash.
I want my generation back. I want to forge ahead. I want new stories, new characters, new directions, not a return to what has gone before. I want decades with the characters who brought me in and showed me around DC. It is not fair that I must put up with the return of characters I don’t care about to replace characters I don’t think should have died in the first place.
This is a symptom of a larger problem that exists within both of the major superhero-producing companies: that of decades upon decades of continuity history that is a challenge, at the very least, for newbies to get into. Reactions to this acknowledged problem have varied. Marvel’s Ultimate ‘Verse started out all right and then slowly evolved into the same continuity-laden mess their current 616 universe is. Whatever Infinite Crisis did, it didn’t help, because I was in-universe at the time and I couldn’t tell you what changed except that a bunch of characters I like died.
That DC’s apparent solution is to make more money by appealing to its older audience is not heartening. Sure, sales will go up for years while those people who did grow up reading Barry Allen and Hal Jordan happily read about their old favorites. But there was a decade wherein new readers learned to love their replacements. Anyone who started reading DC comics in the nineties explored the DCU through very different eyes, eyes that are being shut or dismissed or relegated to the cutting room floor because of a desire to appeal to their "good old days" audience.
This is a mistake. Appealing to the old without nurturing the new means that the new will wither and die, leaving no one behind to buy DC comics once the "good old days" generation dies. If DC isn’t careful, they’ll lose the audience--the market--that matters in the long run.
Maybe my pronouncement of doom is premature. Maybe Final Crisis will give me back those characters I learned to love. Maybe, one day, Jaime’s title will be revived true to its original vision.
I doubt it. I hope, I cannot do anything but hope, while doubt gnaws at me and reminds me of just how many characters I’ve lost. I got thirteen years with Bart Allen. Seven years with Linda Danvers. A bare two and half years with Jaime Reyes.
How little time will DC give me with the next new character I fall in love with?
.