>johns' recent stargirl mini reintroduces old golden age sidekicks, and creates a bunch of new ones that had been "forgotten"
>slott introduced spider-boy, a "forgotten" spider-man sidekick, and now marvel is doing a bunc of variants featuring "forgotten" sidekicks that some will likely be brought into the comics
Why is there a sudden push at the Big 2 for sidekicks?
Diversity without needing to replace white male character.
fpbp. They finally took the decades old complaint of "just make a new character" to heart
The funny thing is that I can't think of many girl sidekicks. Like in the Golden Age there's pretty much none except for Starlet for Moon Girl and Butch for The Clock and admittedly, Butch is fricking awesome and the best part of the Clock's stories once she's introduced. Batgirl, Wonder Girl (both of them), Mia Dearden, Kitty (pre-Excalibur) and Jubilee (pre-Generation X) are basically it as far as notable female sidekicks.
Basically all of these:
>Diversity without needing to replace white male character.
>royalties
companies want to bring in new diverse characters and the recent push to just replace classic heroes with said diverse characters failed miserably
>You forgot that Geoff Johns was planning on shoe-horning them into the Stargirl live action TV show which got canceled.
The other part is if these sidekicks gain a consistent following they could try replacing the main hero way farther down the line; part of the reason most of the attempt to replace heroes failed, was because they didn't do the work necessary to endear characters to the readership.
Another part is that DC has characters that are either already public domain (Miss America, Human Bomb, and Red Bee's 1940s comics from Quality Comics are all PD) or may eventually be PD (if things don't change, many of the original JSA characters will go PD in the mid-2030s) so adding new characters to the backstory makes DC's versions legally distinct from other people's takes on the characters
I think DC should put Old Man Red Bee from the Peacemaker mini into main canon.
royalties
Couple reasons
>comic companies want to bring in new diverse characters and the recent push to just replace classic heroes with said diverse characters failed miserably
>kids identify more with kid characters so it might help bring in more kid readers
>Super Sons, Adams Flash Run and Stargirl: The Lost Children showed that there’s still quite an audience that enjoy fun adventure comics
>comic companies want to bring in new diverse characters
why do they hate straight white men?
>kids identify more with kid characters
this is the exact same mindset that led to a million sidekicks being pumped out in the silver age. how many of them stuck around? not many because no kid cares about sidekicks, they care about superman and batman.
>this is the exact same mindset that led to a million sidekicks being pumped out in the silver age
ANOTHER moron CASUAL conflating the Golden and Silver Ages
Just browse Cinemaphile. You'll fit in better there.
You forgot that Geoff Johns was planning on shoe-horning them into the Stargirl live action TV show which got canceled.
You can barely do anything with the established characters, there's a status quo they always must go back to. So you need new characters that will give you freedom to write 'em as you please, but no one gives a frick about new characters so if you want to see some sales you need to keep them close to one of the popular big names and make your character a sidekick.
are straight white men the only type of character that are capable of creating franchises themselves and do not need to steal the accomplishments of others to succeed?
Look at Spawn, Black Lightning, Blade, Black Panther and Luke Cage.
All black men.
But that doesn’t stop female spin offs like She-Spawn, Thunder & Lightning, Bloodline, Shuri, and Jessica Jones.
Static Shock
It's probably partially a result of the success of Into the Spiderverse and Across the Spiderverse
Everyone online loves creating their own Spidersonas and seeing themselves as their favorite hero, creating new costumes and designs for them
So combine that with companies wanting to appear woke but not actually stop focusing the characters who actually sell and make them money, creating a bunch of new designs for sidekicks and seeing which of them are best received by audiences as a test run seems like a no brainer
Uncreative shit-eater diarrhea. Same with 52/OYL Titans. Where are all they now?
Zatara Jr was never really used sadly even though there was a hook of him being Zatanna's sidekick they could have gone with. Ms Martian was a huge hit, but editorial seemed to actively despise how popular she was and buried her every time she showed up in comics, having her lose or get beaten up or humiliated. Aquagirl 2 never did much outside the Abnett/Lanning Aquaman comic, and Bombshell got a redemption arc even though, like Terra, she was created to be an unrepentant traitor.
Where the actual frick is my homie Genius Jones
comic book limbo like every other non used comic character
It's much easier to introduce a new character as a legacy character than a new original character on their own.
which one do you think will be made real?
Probably; Moon Knight, Black Cat's sidekick, and the Radiant Black Ghost Rider
I can see doctor strange, Thor, and cap working it would be nice to put them in mentor roles. Star lord's work in theory but it isn't that good of a design and I'm kinda attached to the GotG game's spin on a younger Guardian member. Fem Magneto and Fat Black cat are interesting as villain sidekicks.
Thor HAD a sidekick but nobody seems to want to bring back Tarene.
who knows Ewing might bring her up agein in his run
Ewing sucks though
well he's on Thor for four years so better not be reading Thor during that timeframe
I won't be
I love the idea of absolute psychopaths like Magneto, Venom, Moon Knight, Hulk, etc. recruiting children that they didn't sire and aren't clones of themselves to fight for their cause.
I especially find the idea of Roller Go Go Yabari joining Ghost Rider in hell to fight the Marvel pantheon of demons especially amusing.
Sucks she's not kickin' it with Robbie.
More than a couple of these weirdly overwrite existing characters like Kamala, Laura, Mania, etc...
Moon Knight already had a SideKick in 90s which ended with his sidekick becoming a sidekick and going evil
Didn't Spider Gwen just start out as a cover and people really liked the costume so they then turned it into an actual character? None of these costume stand out as much as that one did.
I kinda like Ghost Rider Miku.
>You're thinking of Gwenpool. Spider-Gwen was created for Spider-Verse, then Gwenpool was part of a wave of Gwen-themed variant covers inspired by her populartity.
PLEASE give Magneto a little girl sidekick.
wonder what all their names are.
Hopefully none of them because they're all exceedingly awful.
Rollerskates Ghost Rider. The Captain America one feels more like she should be connected Wasp, but I guess the intent was bird wings.
Ghost rider, magneto, strange, thor, marvel, and cap america
I'm actually pretty surprised at just how bad these sidekick designs are. The Miles Morales one is particularly laughable (it's just his costume with dreadlocks sticking out). Marvel Boy's costume has a good upper design, but it's ruined by the stretch pants, sash belt and tinted glasses (just put him in a domino mask). Of all of them, Rollerskates Ghost Rider and Magneto Girl are the best of a lousy bunch.
Deviantart designs for spider-self inserts are better
>Why is there a sudden push at the Big 2 for sidekicks?
Why aren't you pushing a sidekick with 2 Big'uns?
Clearly Cinemaphile is the finger on the throbbing pulse of the comic industry.
Back to basics. I hope they push for characters to have consistent rogues galleries
Give us more sidekicks you cowards!
Personally, I'm surprised that Ray Connor/Kid Daredevil, complete with the classic yellow suit, has never made it into 616 (he became a vampire and was killed off in Ultimate).
Soule did give Daredevil a sidekick in his run
Right. Blindspot.
But he quickly got his eyes gouged out and that was the end of him, right?
he showed up last issue in zdarsky daredevil run his. eyes were still. gouged out
introduced spider-boy, a "forgotten" spider-man sidekick, and now marvel is doing a bunch of variants featuring "forgotten" sidekicks that some will likely be brought into the comics.
The sidekick designs on those covers are uniformly pretty awful.