Hey, everyone. I have a question in regards to something I noticed but never gave much thought to. In the 90s, Kyle Rayner became the Green Lantern, Conor Hawke became Green Arrow , Super boy was introduced, Wally West was Flash ( granted he took over after Barry’s death in the 80s), but Bart Allen debuted. So, my question is what was the thought process or reasons that DC “pushed” these younger characters?
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DC was trying to introduce the next generation of heroes in the 90s. Wally had been successful as the new Flash at that point, and some of the Silver Age heroes like Green Lantern and Green Arrow were starting to show their age. In addition to the legacy heroes you mentioned, we also got Jack Knight as the new Starman and Linda Danvers as the new Supergirl around that time and probably some others I’m forgetting.
Then in the early 2000s you started seeing characters like Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan and Kara Zor-El brought back, replacing their replacements. Kyle and Connor were still around, just in supporting roles, and Wally remained the Flash until 2009. But with the New 52 and Rebirth, a lot of the legacy heroes of the 90s went away.
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There had never been another Superboy other than Clark. He was an entirely different character. Had a successful solo series.
Bart was intended to be the new Kid Flash. He was for the most part and had a successful solo series.
Oliver wasn’t selling well, so they did the thing with Connor. Turns out Arrow just doesn’t sell well. I don’t know why they ditch Hal, but it bothered me zero. I dislike the character and prefer Kyle, John, and Jessica.
The characters were designed to sell to younger readers. They did.
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With Crisis, continuity was supposed to be a top concern. And continuity means, time passes. And if time passes, people age.
So it was natural for all these younger heroes to appear about the same time.
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Ditto to what was said previously.
In addition to all that, 90’s were trying to ride the speculator boom, and trying to change things up to create a new normal was one of the ways they tried to get new readers. Killing off some old characters and bringing in new replacements was one of the ways they did this. In general, every introduction of a new character was hyped up for a while because it might be the new big thing that would be a valuable comic in a decade.
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