Meddling Kids?

Any post that starts off with some variation on "In the old days..." should probably be treated with some suspicion, but I'll try to make this worth your while.

In the old days, when DC Comics organized its characters by placing them in various parallel universes, for the most part it only had to deal with two generations per Earth. The older generation was composed of major heroes (Earth-1's Justice League, Earth-2's Justice Society) and the younger included mostly those heroes' sidekicks and/or offspring (Earth-1's Teen Titans, Earth-2's Infinity, Inc.).

On both Earths the timeline remained fairly stable. The Justice Society heroes all came to prominence in the late '30s and early '40s, and retired in the '50s. During retirement they produced children (the second generation) who would be in their 20s or early 30s by the early 1980s. Because Earth-2 was no longer the mainstream, its history could be more concrete, and specific dates in characters' histories could be established (for example, in this Batman timeline).

Conversely, the first appearances of the Earth-1 heroes were assigned not to specific dates, but to floating points such as "10 years ago." (This eventually resulted in more discrepancies, leading fans like Mark Gruenwald to postulate the existence of "Earth-E.") Still, time marched on, mostly measured by the (slow) aging of the second generation. Wally West was a teenager at his introduction in 1960, and apparently still one at his high school graduation in 1978. Dick Grayson left for college in 1969 and dropped out in 1980. By 1985, and the start of Crisis on Infinite Earths, Earth-1's only major third-generation hero was Jason "Robin II" Todd.

Of course, not every character on Earths 1 or 2 fell within two generations. The Dick Grayson of Earth-2 belonged to a very small group of sidekicks and other young people who were teenagers during World War II. Earth-1's younger heroes like Firestorm and Zatanna were also between generations, although they were more identified with the older folks.

When Crisis unified DC's timeline, the Justice Society was still the first generation, but the Justice League became the second, and the Titans/Infinity, Inc. generation the third. Zero Hour (1994) then tried, with mixed results, to "retire" the JSA and reduce the number of active major generations to two.

However, the problem hasn't come out of the JSA's generation. With Robin III in 1989, the post-Crisis Superboy in 1993, and Impulse/Kid Flash II and Damage in 1994, DC had already begun cultivating its fourth major generation. Other teenaged heroes soon followed, such as Wonder Girl II in 1996 and Jakeem Thunder and the new Star-Spangled Kid/Stargirl in 1999. The latest bunch includes the new Aquagirl, Speedy, and Hawk. (Apparently no name goes unused forever.)

While DC has used this "generational" approach to good effect in books like Flash, Starman, and JSA, defining the fourth generation as a group of high-school-aged superheroes necessarily pegs them to a certain period. Tim Drake and his peers will graduate at some point, and today's readers might not wait two decades for him to do it. The generations which preceded this latest one are either too old to worry about (e.g., Alan Scott may be pushing 100, but the ring keeps him healthy) or of an indeterminate enough age (20s-40s for the third and second generations) -- but this current crop of Teen Titans will have to choose, probably sooner than later, whether to continue as "boys," "girls," and "kids."

When that time comes, what will have happened to the older folks? Will DC push normal-aging second-generation stalwarts like Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen, and Ray Palmer into their 50s or even 60s? Will a fifth generation take over the names the fourth one may have abandoned? If some characters get squeezed out, which generation will feel the biggest pinch?

Alternatively, is this fourth generation in fact the last for DC's current crop of characters? I tend to think it should be. Despite its share of bloodthirsty events, DC is too devoted to its own history to make the wholesale changes that a generational shift would require. If DC wants to make its books more reader-friendly, it should maintain a fairly consistent status quo, with familiar faces behind most of its masks. A fifth generation would upset that balance by pushing the second and third generations outside of their traditional roles. Arguably, the fourth generation has already put too much stress on DC's timeline.

DC should let its first-generation heroes retire gracefully while its youngest find their own paths. Whether this means supplanting an older hero, establishing a new identity, or retiring early, should be an individual choice -- but DC shouldn't have a fifth generation waiting in the wings.

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