These days we DC fans are awash in legacies. The new Justice Society is built around them, so much so that its headquarters is apparently designed to let them in whether they know it or not. Before too long they’ll get their own tax breaks, deducting the first $10,000.00 spent on overhead (costume, equipment, headquarters) and setting up business entities as liability shields.

But I digress. Today, as we contemplate the newest Starman, Steel, Wildcat, et al., let’s look at the DC characters who helped define the successor superhero.

The discussion has to start, of course, with the Silver Age reinventions of Golden Age heroes.  With varying degrees of similarity to the original characters, they set the collective precedent for DC’s current generational model.  However, I am reluctant to talk about them too much in this essay, because their second-generation status is a retcon, and wasn’t really part of their introduction.  Barry Allen might have been the new Flash, but in 1956 he was also supposed to be the only Flash.  Even in the post-multiversal timeline, a significant (and ever-expanding) interregnal period separates Jay Garrick’s retirement and Barry’s introduction.

That said, I don’t consider the introduction of Dinah Laurel Lance (Black Canary II) to be the same kind of thing.  Her legacy status was a retcon guided by (who else?) Roy Thomas in a lesser-known JLA/JSA crossover from 1983.  When Dinah Drake Lance migrated from Earth-2 to Earth-1 in 1969, she was apparently young enough to be a contemporary of the Earth-1 heroes, despite her 1947 costumed debut.  However, by the 1980s, that would have put her in her late 50s, and I suppose DC didn’t want perpetual-thirtysomething Ollie Queen dating someone old enough to be his mother. 

Anyway, the retcon revealed that Dinah Drake Lance never made it to Earth-1, but was replaced by her adult daughter Dinah Laurel, secretly kept in suspended animation between dimensions.  After the loss of the multiverse made this little tapdance unnecessary, both Black Canaries were treated very well in 1990′s Secret Origins #50, which also filled in some details about the history of the post-Crisis Earth and the connections between the Golden and Silver Ages. More importantly, though, before the retcon Black Canary had been defined (at least in the Silver Age) by her relationships with men — first with her late husband Larry, whose death spurred her move to Earth-1; and then with her longtime lover Ollie. The retcon (and, arguably, the Secret Origins story) helped separate Dinah from those associations and helped establish her as an independent heroine, inspired more by her mother than by those men.

Around the same time that Dinah Drake discovered she was really Dinah Laurel, DC was preparing Robin’s transition from Dick Grayson to Jason Todd.  This was clearly a higher-profile maneuver involving one of DC’s most recognizable characters, and at the time it was unusual in its audacity.  (Other status-quo shakeups in the early ’80s included the replacement of Hal Jordan with John Stewart, and the reorganization of the Justice League in Detroit, but if memory serves Jason came first.)  Jason/Robin II is therefore a pretty important figure in DC history, because he facilitated Dick’s transition out of the teenage-sidekick mold.  This allowed Dick to settle more comfortably into the Teen Titans, and gave the Batman offices complete control over Robin.  Furthermore, because Jason was a completely new character (albeit one with an origin remarkably similar to Dick’s), DC ran the risk that readers would consider him too much of a Mary Sue.  Although Jason lasted roughly five years, about halfway through his career he ran into The Dark Knight, and the attendant efforts to darken Batman incorporated the self-fulfilling prophecy of Robin II’s ignominious death. 

Before we get to Jason’s own successor, we need to mention the next major legacy event, the installation of Wally West as the third Flash.  Like Dick Grayson, Wally was a sidekick moved up to the adults’ table; and like Jason, he took over a role that had been vacated.  Additionally, though, Wally succeeded his mentor, something which neither Dick nor Jason (nor, really, Dinah Laurel) had done.  Because Wally’s relationship with his late uncle’s example was the backbone for the first several years of his series, both he and the readers had time to come to terms with the implications of Wally’s new role.  I do remember a few “Wally is unworthy” letters to fanzines back in the day, but by the time of the seminal “Return Of Barry Allen” storyline, everyone seemed to have worked through their issues.

And that reminds me — sorry, Tim, I’m getting there – of another major legacy-heir, Jack “Starman” Knight.  At first glance Jack looks like his fellow Zero Hour spinoff, Jared “Fate” Stevens:  a punkish guy with a more serious-looking version of the old equipment.  Jack also came to the role unexpectedly, following the death of his more enthusiastic brother David.  However, unlike Wally, Jack could deal directly with the Starman legacy, since his father was still alive.  Also unlike Wally, Jack could more readily accept his post-superhero life, having come into it a lot later.  Jack was Starman on his own terms, and stopped being Starman on his own terms.  It helped that Starman wasn’t as prominent a DC name as Robin or the Flash, so Jack was a lot more free to define those terms.

Now I think we’re ready for Tim Drake, possibly the most Mary Sue-ish of these successors.  Tim not only saved Batman and Nightwing from a Two-Face trap, he had already figured out their secret identities largely by watching the evening news.  This simultaneously makes Tim’s origin charming and ridiculous, because a) wouldn’t you watch more local news if the Dynamic Duo were on it?; and b) surely someone other than a grade-school kid saw both the last Flying Graysons performance and that evening’s broadcast.  Tim also got saddled with the meaningful speech that convinced Batman of his need for a happy surrogate childhood. 

Making up for this, however, were a couple of intervening factors.  First, Tim had to go through several months of out-of-costume (not like that!) training, during which he continued to live in his own house, with his own parents; and second, when it was over, Tim got a less humiliating costume.  Finally, although it took him a few years (and Bruce’s broken back) to get him his own book, Tim’s solo adventures started right after he got that costume.  This made him a lot less ubiquitous in the main Bat-books than either of his predecessors had been at their beginnings.  “Robin” might not have been the most popular concept among Frank Miller fans and emulators, but he wasn’t exactly shoved down folks’ throats either.

That’s not the best segue into the tale of Kyle Rayner, but it’s a good stopping place for now.  Next time — probably in two weeks, because I think I’ll be going over DC’s new solicitations in this space next week — we’ll talk about the Green Lanterns, the Infinitors, some other Justice Socialites like Michael “Mr. Terrific” Holt, and unrelated (or are they?) legacies like Kate “Manhunter” Spencer.  Oh, and Connor “Green Arrow” Hawke, too, unless Part 2 gets bloated like this one was threatening to.  Anyway, sorry to be so abrupt, but there’s the bell, gotta go.

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