Brubaker's team:

Newsarama: So Ed, now with the image on display, can you tell all who your's and Billy Tan’s full line-up is when your run begins this summer?

Ed Brubaker: SPOILERS POSSIBLE Sort of, mostly. It'll be Nightcrawler, Marvel Girl, Havok, Warpath, Professor X, Polaris, and a character I can't mention yet or I'll spoil the end of Deadly Genesis.

Plotlines: SPOILERS POSSIBLEAs you can see from the preview image, we'll be dealing with the Shi'ar Empire and the Starjammers, and with Vulcan - the 3rd Summers brother and villain of Deadly Genesis.

 X-men (the other book)  lineup (an odd one certainly):  Rogue and Iceman, as well as former X-Force members Cable and Cannonball, and mutant villains Sabretooth and Mystique. Mystique's been bucking for membership for several issues now, but the addition of Sabretooth comes as an intentional surprise. In an interview with Newsarama, Carey promised not to try to tame Sabretooth or make him a s
tic character. According to Carey, Sabretooth is irredeemable and will stay that way.

Astonishing X-men lineup is the same :The team will still consist of Cyclops, Emma Frost, Wolverine, Beast, Shadowcat and Colossus.

Don't forget that Prof. Xavier got a perfect new body cloned with Shi'ar technology in Uncanny X-Men #167.

Aside from that, I’d say that the slow (no) aging of super heroes is something that a reader sort of has to accept at this point.

I just wish they'd let poor little Franklin Richards and those Power Pack kids grow up.....

They could keep coming up with new kids who grow into teen and then adult heroes, just like JB's Generations.

They could keep coming up with new kids who grow into teen and then adult heroes, just like JB's Generations.

Again, I used to think this way too.  "Just come up with a second or third generation hero to carry on the name.  Problem solved."

Not quite.  See, if a character is still iconic and influential enough that their successor has to largely be cut from the same cloth, why replace that character?  Wally West has the same costume and powers as Barry Allen (OK, Wally's powers were greatly reduced when he first transitioned from Kid Flash to the Flash, but in principle, their powers were the same, and with the passage of time, Wally's powers have matched and even exceeded Barry's).  As much as I've enjoyed the Spider-Girl stories I've read, there's really nothing about them that (topical references and genders aside) prevents them from being Stan Lee Spider-Man pastiches.  Perhaps Wally West and Mayday Parker aren't the exact same characters as Barry Allen and Peter Parker, but that's not what matters;  what matters is that the third Flash is virtually indistinguishable from the second Flash, and (breasts aside) Spider-Girl is virtually indistinguishable from Spider-Man.  If that's the case- and I believe it is- why replace Barry with Wally?  Why should the extended What If that is Spider-Girl ever become part of "real" Marvel continuity?  In short, if you have something that works, why change it, especially if you're not really changing all that much? 

So -- GENERATIONS worked because it's "imaginary". It has no impact on the "real" characters. Want to do stories that speculate about what it might be like if the characters age in something like real time? Fine. Go right ahead. Want the same thing to happen to the "real" characters? Then ask yourself about how much you'd be enjoying the adventures of a 59 year old Spider-Man. The original X-Men, all pushing 60 with both hands. How about a 96 year old Batman? Or would that be Batman IV by now? If the character was even being published, that is. Might have been "replaced" by a less likable guy somewhere along the line.

John Byrne wrote: "Might have been "replaced" by a less likable guy somewhere along the line.

Didn't that happen to Batman anyway? :-)

 Wally West has the same costume and powers as Barry Allen

*/***

At least in the early days of Wally as Flash, his personality was very different and really "spoke" to me.  I found him fascinating.