2. Kid Sidekicks
Originally, the sole target audience for comics was young children. What they read was adult heroes swinging in and stopping some kind of villain or crime. Well gosh, if the young reader could find a supporting character that they could identify with or even pretend to be, that would only boost comic sales! This has been done with varying success over the years. The sidekick seems to work best when they are there to bring out some humanity in gruffer characters like Batman with the many different Robin's, or Wolverine with characters like Shadowcat, Jubilee, Armor, and so on. Where this gets old is by having endless C-list heroes who are nothing more than younger versions of older heroes. And so often the names are unoriginal. How to you make a young Aquaman? Take the word "man" and make it something younger. Aqua Lad. Genius! How about the Flash? Not a lot of wordplay can be done there....just call him Kid Flash and be done with it. The worst ones are when the sidekick shares the same name as main hero. After his resurrection, Green Arrow's sidekick was...Green Arrow. And Hawkeye currently has a young sidekick called...Hawkeye. Not even trying there. New characters are necessary to continue any form of storytelling, especially one as long lasting as comics. How about instead of creating young versions of popular characters so they can have teen angst, why don't we just get some new original characters?