But couldn't Wally's personality just as easily been in another brand new character with his own series? 

Lately I understand people's attachment to their characters a bit more as I have lost some of mine (which were replacements, funny enough.)  I never really read DC before Zero Hour.  I was a Marvel guy since about 1980.  Zero Hour introduced me to the Legion of Super Heros (now gone) Kyle as Green Lantern (don't know how to judge this one) and Wally as Flash (could be gone).   The fact that "my" LSH of a decade has been rebooted has left me without an interest in them.  I have heard rave reviews of the new series, but I no longer want to invest myself emotionally in being reintroduced to something I enjoyed so much before. 

Maybe if they had been created as a new series, leaving the previous LSH intact, my LSH would still be going on. 

Of course, if that had happened, they also may have been cancelled in the first year since I think name recognition helped that LSH go as long as it did. 

But couldn't Wally's personality just as easily been in another brand new character with his own series?

****

Doubt it would have lasted 20 years though. The Flash is a brand name, for better or worse.

and doubt i would have picked it up, if it wasn't the Flash, since he would unlikely have been a character in the Justice League, had that cool costume, and a guy who got a tv show, which are two of the reasons I was such a Flash fan back in the day

John Bryne said: "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?"

Perhaps "just like JB's Generations" wasn't exactly the right way to say it since that's the extreme example of bringing real-world aging and mortality into a universe where that doesn't really work.  As much as I loved both the concept and the execution of the Generations comics, I’m perfectly ok with the notion that characters in the universe of comics don’t age in real time.

Comic companies certainly can’t afford to alienate their entrenched fans by aging these iconic characters and ultimately letting them die.  That would just be a bad business risk for them.  Based on the fact that the vast majority of traditional comic (i.e., non-Manga) revenue comes from characters that were created in the 1950s and 1960s, despite literally thousands of new characters being created since then, it doesn’t seem like the fans would want their icons to age and die either.

My point really is this:  Kitty Pryde clearly isn't 14 any more and Peter Parker isn't in high school and Dick Grayson isn't a 10-year old kid.  There seems to be latitude in the creative universe of comics to let some kids grow up from childhood to adolescence to adulthood without aging their adult contemporaries at the same rate.  If Franklin Richards and the Power Pack kids had grown up they might be interesting teenage or adult heroes in their own right today.

Candidly, I'm not sure if I care enough about those particular characters to be making this point, but I do think that the comic companies could capitalize on some of their younger characters to grow new heroes that have an established fan base and name recognition.  There has to be a higher and better use of Franklin Richards than the Calvin & Hobbes rip-off that they’re doing with Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius.

Speaking of a 96 year-old Batman, I made the mistake of picking up Batman Year 100 at the comic store this week.  Suffice it to say that I want my $5.99 back.  And no, it's not bad because he's an old man.  It's just bad because it's bad.

My point really is this:  Kitty Pryde clearly isn't 14 any more and Peter Parker isn't in high school and Dick Grayson isn't a 10-year old kid. 

And that's a pity.

Robin's another fairly good example of why replacements for characters that "still work" is a bad idea:  again, you can say that Tim Drake is a different sort of character than Dick Grayson, and maybe he has a slightly different costume, but what essential differences are there between the two Robins?

Tim Drake is different than Dick and that makes his RObin different. He is more independent than Dick's Robin, and more likelyto question Batman.  He also doesn't have the father/son relationshoip they have.

A character is more than a name and a costume

I agree, Rob. Referring back to the topic of this thread (just to digress for a moment), would everyone be okay with it if Cyclops were killed off, then replaced by some guy named Bob, who shoots green power beams from his eyes, but is still referred to as Cyclops because he wears the same visor and costume?

Thought not. I wouldn't be okay with it, that's for sure.

So, yeah, let's do more of that...

Because some are just that stupid.

Oscar Wilde summed up fandom and comics industry failry well: "Each man kills the thing he loves." These fans and fans turned pro loved the characters too much to "let the go" or accept them for what they were (or perhaps didn't love them enough).

I'm not sure why Marvel suffered the most from this -- maybe because a big hook of the characters was the youth (Spider-Man, X-Men) which is now gone. Of course, even the Hulk is barely recognizable.

I LOVE the JSA but always wanted them to remain eternally young as they were in the 1940's. When they were re-introduced in the Justice League in the 60's they were sort of parallel to the JLA and that was cool but when they did more and more stories about the JSA they started aging.. .I hated it! I hated it as a kid and still do to this day. I want eternally young superheroes and characters who do not age. It seems that they ruin the character everytime they are aged... I don't want to read about geriatric Superman or Prostrate cancer Batman.... These characters are icons ...symbols and should remain eternally young and vitale! I don't mind each generation molding the image of the character a little bit but aging.... I hate it! It seems completely lame and lazy.... I never cared that there were 2 Supermen or Batmen from different time periods ... Hell I want Superman and Batman in the JSA ... I don't care if it conflicts with the JLA... Superman and Batman belong in the JSA and the stories of those 1940's characters all together are AWESOME!

Maybe if DC did make Superman and Batman co-exist in the JSA and JLA as young as they are ...effectively the same characters (which I would not mind) we could get rid of once and for all all of the fanboys who can't stand cross continuity like that.... I saw get rid the shit fanbase that demands that type of aging and seperation.... The Superman and the Batman from the 1940s are great characters... I don't care that they transend time... I don't lay awake at night struggling to cope with the idea that they can have adventures in the '40s and in the 00's..... and be the same age then and now....

Be done with it all and if the fanbase diminshes from the dorks who want every minutia of time documented and allocated... so be it.. .the industry and these characters will be better off without these people fucking things up

I recall feeling that the whole Crisis On Infinite Earths fiasco was totally bewildering - more so, in fact, than the concept of Earth-2 which it was specifically designed to expunge. I was 15, and I could see that it was uneccessary then, and the older I get, the more I resent all of the 'developments' that are constantly taking place.

The thread about 'Wacky' Silver-Age comic covers got me thinking about this - were those covers really so silly? I could honestly say that each one made me dearly wish I had that comic in my hands, so I could find out what the hell was happening in it, and I am not ashamed to admit it. I love that whole era of comics. I think it boils down to the fact that the current bunch of creators are ashamed of the artform itself, and are so terrified of being seen as 'unkewl', that they'll do anything rather than leave well enough alone.

Why is Logan now called 'James Howlett'? I mean, what the hell was wrong with his past remaining mysterious? Even if he could recall everything - it didn't have to be revealed to the readers: There could've just been a story where we learned that his past was no longer a mystery to him, and left it at that (If they really had to do such a thing. I don't think they did).

Well I'm not sure how true it is, but the current rumors are......(Possible Spoiler)

 that at the conclusion of Infinite Crisis Earth-2 may be back. For my money I hope it's true.

How great would it be to see JB do an Earth-2 Superman or JSA book set during World War II?