Many of the comic book world’s biggest heroes have been brought back from the dead in recent years. This was done to appease resentful fanboys, who wanted to “change things back to the way they were” many years ago. (In most fanboys’ minds, change of any kind is very bad.) While resurrection is nothing new in comics, an aggravating turn these recent events have taken is that the resurrected characters are replacing the people that had succeeded them, and the rich stories and histories that their successors had developed is being swept away. It’s not only insulting to fans of the previous stories, but also to the creators of those stories.

Two prominent examples are Hal Jordan (Green Lantern) and Barry Allen (the Flash). Both characters had “died” a long time ago (1986 for Barry, 1996 for Hal), and were succeeded in their roles as Green Lantern and the Flash by Kyle Rayner and Wally West, respectively. Prior to the Green Lantern: Rebirth and The Flash: Rebirth miniseries, both Kyle and Wally were shown to have become considerably more skilled and powerful than their predecessors. This makes perfect sense, since they had to deal with new, colossal threats and think up solutions themselves, rather than fall back on their forerunners for advice.

With the return of their predecessors, Kyle and Wally have been demoted, and seem to have “forgotten” most of their former skills. That makes no sense whatsoever! Kyle was Ion for a while, giving him godlike powers…but that didn’t last. Now he’s just another generic Green Lantern among thousands.

Creators now rarely, if ever, have Kyle using any of the former skill and creativity that he had when he was the only Green Lantern. In fact, you don’t see any of the current Green Lanterns using their rings as creatively or effectively as Kyle used to! In addition, Kyle is now a member of the Green Lantern Corps’ Honor Guard; he actually outranks Hal within the Corps’ leadership! How often do you see him giving Hal orders, however? I can understand Kyle appreciating and respecting Hal’s past experience, but Kyle’s no rookie: he’s faced trials and tribulations that Hal never has. His unique approach to dealing with these situations has made him incredibly powerful and given him skills that exceed those of his predecessor, but most of this has conveniently been forgotten in recent stories.

Barry Allen has recently returned to the land of the living (though it was retconned a while back that he never actually “died,” just merged with the Speed Force). This presents an even bigger problem than with Green Lantern. There’s been thousands of Green Lanterns in the past, but only one primary Flash at a time. Jay Garrick (the original Flash from the 1930s and 1940s) is stilled called “the Flash,” but let’s be fair, he’s not the Flash. For over twenty years, the bright red costume and starring role has belonged to Wally West, and like Kyle Rayner, Wally has become a uniquely skilled hero. But now that Barry has returned, Wally’s no longer needed, and he’s not using many of the incredible abilities he discovered. Jay Garrick isn’t going anywhere, so it comes down to Barry or Wally taking the title of the Flash for the current era. Guess who it’s going to be? Wally will probably just get dumped into the third-stringer class with the rest of the Titans.

I suppose it could be worse. Look what happened to Connor Hawke, who took over as Green Arrow when his father, Oliver Queen, had died. After Ollie predictably came back, Connor was severely injured in a later story, and he lost many of his memories as well as his archery skills. Harsh.

As you may have gathered, this whole demotion issue is primarily a DC Comics problem. Marvel Comics has traditionally been more focused on the character wearing the suit, not the suit or symbol itself (e.g., Peter Parker is more compelling than his alter ego of Spider-Man). If someone does replaces a character in their role as a well-known hero, we’re well aware that it’s generally going to be a short-term promotion.

A good example of this would be what happened during the resurrection of Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man. In an early 1990s story, Stark contracted a virus that destroyed his nervous system, eventually killing him. His role as Iron Man was passed on to his longtime friend Jim Rhodes, who had been given the highly advanced War Machine armor. Of course, we the readers knew that Stark didn’t actually die; he was placed into cryogenic stasis while his nervous system was being rebuilt. Rhodes kept the armor he’d been given, and fought his own battles as War Machine, but Tony returned to his rightful place as Iron Man. War Machine simply complimented Iron Man, rather than just fading into the background as another generic hero or losing the role altogether.

Not only is this demotion problem a thorn in my side now…can you imagine what’ll happen in another ten to twenty years, when a new generation of fanboys want things changed all over again? It’s not hard to respect continuity and pass the torch to new iterations of our favorite heroes. Publishers just need to stick to their guns, instead of these recent lapses into fanboy fundamentalism.