10 Unpopular Comic Book Character Reboots (That Were Actually Perfect)

Though it's difficult to think of nowadays, given how self-serious and lucrative comic book movies are, there was a very long period where the appeal of superheroes was that they were, for lack of a better term, comic. Everything was stilted, silly, or outright stupid. And because the writers were in on the joke, for the most part, they celebrated that innate goofiness.

There was perhaps no greater example of this than the Justice League of America. Even during the eighties 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' period and the early-nineties "X-treme Everything" phase, the team and the comics could never fully shake the 'Superfriends' vibe that the original comic run and all its subsequent media was built on.

It didn't help that the team kept disbanding and reforming every few years with completely different rosters.

But then Grant Morrison came along. The prolific DC writer marshaled together the original old guard of the Justice League and re-branded them as the JLA in a comic line of the same name in 1996. JLA was to the superfriends what the Arrowverse was to the DCAU. It took popular and beloved characters and gave them a darker, more serious edge.

While it was initially divisive because of how different it was to any previous incarnation of the team, JLA went on to have a decade-long run where it introduced new, iconic characters and gave the Justice League some of their best stories.