What Makes Replacement Characters Work...

So Newsarama's interview with Mike Carlin about the New Atom sounds pretty interesting. I loved Ray but I try not to dismiss replacement characters out of hand. After all, many of my favorite characters are not the originals.

And Ray's not actually dead, so he could be back to make things complicated for his successor too, and that's always cool.

My one potential problem is that aside from the Chinese aspect (I'm presuming Ryan is either from Hong Kong or "Ryan" isn't his actual given name, as American names aren't terribly common in mainland China, not that it really matters yet, I suppose), Ryan Choi doesn't seem terribly different from Ray Palmer.

And that could be very bad marketing.

Wherein I Exercise Some Amateur Market Analysis via Jason Todd
See, it occurs to me that the most successful replacement/successor characters are markedly different from their predecessors, allowing for much different stories. Tim Drake and Cassandra Cain could never be placed in exactly the same situations as Dick Grayson or Barbara Gordon. Wally West is nothing like Barry Allen or Jay Garrick. And heck, the Green Lanterns are all different enough that they can now be all members of the Corps together.

When they're exactly the same though, it tends not to work.

Let's look at Jason Todd. I think I know exactly why Jason Todd didn't really take off as a Robin. I mean, fans voted to kill him. That's pretty extreme, even for a disliked character. And of those that voted to keep him, most indicated it was more because "Robin shouldn't die" than love of the character. (Though Red Hood/evil-Jason now is admittedly fun).

But I actually think that Jason Todd was just a casualty of severe, *severe* mismanaging from his pre-Crisis conception that if done differently, would not have resulted as it did. This is, admittedly, just my theory.

Okay, so the year's 1983. Dick Grayson's officially Nightwing, but it's decided, for whatever reason, that Batman needs a Robin. Which I don't disagree with, I've always found the Robins more interesting than Batman himself, so I'm happy to see them...(it should be noted that this is a hypothetical, as I was busy being born in 1983, and being a squalling, red-faced colicky mess of a creature and not up for comic books).

So they make a Robin. Problem is, they've essentially got a place-holder Robin. Circus star, parents killed by criminal, same basic cheerful, happy, acrobatic personality as Dick Grayson. The character is not without charm, and the newbies' look into the Bat universe is reasonably fun to read even today. But the problem was that the similarities to Dick vastly outweighed the differences.

See, basically, with regards to any character, you've got three groups: 1. Fans that love the character. 2. Fans that hate the character. and 3. Fans that have never heard of the character/never formed an opinion about the character. Now Robin's such a household name by this point that we can assume no comic reader actually fits into group 3.

Pre-Crisis Jason Todd wasn't exactly the same character as Dick Grayson and was charming enough in personality to possibly have been used elsewhere in the DCU, but he was damn close. Strikingly similar backstory, similar enough personality...

Now here's where you have the problem. Whenever you have a replacement of a popular character, of any character really, the fans of the original are going to get upset. No one likes their character being replaced. Now we know that Dick Grayson's going to be reasonably successful as Nightwing, enough that he's still going strong 23 years later, but at the time, it must have seemed like a dreadfully risky move. If it didn't work, would they kill him/write him out completely?

So the fans of the character are not going to be happy about the replacement. Big deal, right? Look at Kyle Rayner. Many Hal fans *hated* the character, or at least took a very long time to warm to him, and he's still going strong. More than a decade later, the newbie's still having adventures, and even has his own series.

But the trick is that, where Kyle might have took a long time to reach Hal's actual fans, he was different enough to attract folks from groups two and three. Some of those who found Hal off-putting, or were generally uninterested in the comic concept found themselves intrigued by the different aspects of the new guy. He's uncertain where Hal was confident, he's green where Hal was experienced. He's sensitive and growing and constantly changing and adapting in a much more visible way than Hal, he makes amusing constructs instead of Hal's utilitarian style.

All of this adds up to a character with the potential to attract a brand new fanbase, even if the Hal fans all up and leave. Which pretty much happened.

But pre-Crisis Jason Todd...well, aside from newbie-dom, he didn't bring anything new to the table. Some Dick fans were willing to give him a shot, but a lot resented the replacement of the character they loved and reacted accordingly. And as he was so similar to Dick in many ways, there was nothing to attract the fans that disliked Dick/Robin. And again, given the mainstream-ness of the Robin name, there really wasn't anyone *in* group 3.

So you have a considerable loss in the original fanbase and nothing to bring in new fans.

Now, to compound the issue, you have the post-Crisis revamp of Jason Todd into an angry, resentful, fight-happy street kid. The ironic thing about this is that if *this* version of Jason Todd had been introduced in 1983, he might have actually done well.

Sure he's not Dick, hell, he's *drastically* not Dick, so he'd probably lose even more of the original Dick fans. But he's different enough that he might have attracted many who hated the Dick Grayson version. For example, I've heard folks complain that Robin was too bright/silly to fit conceptually with Batman, (even apparently before DKR or the Burton movies turned Batman into the much darker figure), but perhaps the angrier/darker persona would appeal to them. There might have been other reasons to dislike the Dick/Robin character that wouldn't have applied to this version of Jason either. He might have actually built a brand new fanbase himself. Heck, lots of folks reading back issues now actually like him. He's fun! So he might of had a shot.

But we'll never know. Because the post-Crisis revamp was a fuck-up. Because now you had a Jason Todd who had his own (admittedly smaller group 1) and his group 2 (which encompasses both Dick fans who dislike Jason, and folks that dislike the Robin concept in general). Again, there really isn't a group 3).

Now by revamping Jason Todd, your group 1 becomes very upset. This Jason is not the Jason that they like. This isn't even a replacement, where the character they like is either still around or has the possibility of resurrection. The character they liked is *gone*. So new Jason Todd's group 1 shrunk *even more*.

But he's not Dick. So he's probably not going to attract back the Dick fans that didn't like pre-Crisis Jason. And his name is *still* Jason Todd, so the people who weren't interested in pre-Crisis Jason won't really be interested in giving him another shot now. They've *seen* Jason Todd before. They didn't like him. Why try now?

So yeah. You have a mess here and it's not because of any innate flaw in the character. It's just a huge marketing fuck-up of gigantic proportions.

Now with Tim Drake, the marketing machine figured out their mistakes. First, there was his origin story which got a nod from Dick to take over the Robin role. This went a long way to appease Dick fans, some of whom were upset that Dick's legacy had passed onto Jason without seemingly any input from him. And by now Nightwing's been active for 6 years, surviving the Crisis intact, so, well, the Dick fans are less defensive and more willing to give Tim a shot. And he's markedly different from Dick AND either Jason. He's cerebral, restrained, controlled instead of either cheerfully exuberant or angry and violent. He was created to be a different sort of partner to Batman.

So while he might not appeal to all of the old fans (some folks are never happy unless their favorites are back where they belong), he gets his own fanbase and is successful.

So what the hell does this have to do with Ryan Choi?

Well, like I said, I like replacement characters in general. I like new characters in general. I prefer not to lose my favorites, but I know they can come back either through resurrection or flashback or vision quest or whatever. (Wesley Dodds for example is a character I love but would very much prefer he remain resting in peace).

I personally tend to prefer characters with ties to the original. Direct legacy is good. But even just taking the job and having the predecessor as a looming spectre to live up to, like in the case of Green Lantern, Firestorm, or as it seems the Atom, tends to work to work for me

But I'm worried too. Because direct copy-characters don't do well. And if there's any hope of seeing the character *I* like again, it'd be in some special issue of the new series. And besides, I *like* new characters and want them to do well. They add more depth and dimension to the DCU.

I'm hoping Ryan will be markedly different from Ray in personality and outlook, because just being Chinese won't be enough of a difference. I've always enjoyed Ms. Simone's work and she's never struck me as a lazy enough writer to just rely on something like nationality as a sole difference.

But I'll be uneasy anyway, because I am a very geeky person who likes being worried about comics anyway.