DC Is Sleeping on the One Series that Would Make Fans Go Feral, & Marvel Knows It

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There’s a lot for fans of DC Comics to be excited about lately: DC’s Absolute line of comics is flying off the shelves, series such as Creature Commandos have become smash animated hits, and James Gunn’s Superman is barreling toward theaters faster than a speeding bullet. Yet despite this slew of recent successes, there’s one field that DC hasn’t been able to crack, and which rival Marvel has locked down.

DC boasts a wide variety of heroes across all generations. While the old guard led by the “Trinity” of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman is still at the forefront of DC titles with their Justice League, younger heroes are cropping up faster than ever thanks to the aftereffects of the Absolute Power arc. However, DC hasn’t fully taken advantage of these young heroes.

Despite having arguably wider access to a young hero roster than ever before, DC’s titles focus almost exclusively on their adult generations while leaving Marvel to dominate and define the young hero experience.

Marvel Has Claimed the Young Hero Space That DC Struggles to Maintain

DC’s Legacy Heroes Leave Little Room for the Next Generation

The longevity of DC’s characters is both a blessing and a curse: while it leads to longstanding success, it also makes it difficult for new, young characters to break the mold. DC’s premier team of youngsters, the Teen Titans, have long since become the adult Titans with families and children of their own; similarly, the team of Young Justice​​​​​​hasn’t had a roster since 2021. While the Titans attempted to bring in younger heroes in Titans Academy (2021), the series lasted for only a little more than a year before concluding in 2022.

By comparison, Marvel has dominated the young hero space, showing far less reticence than DC when it comes to publishing new heroes. The publisher also boasts a host of schools and teams that provide a natural home for its younger roster. Historically, the “young outsider” experience has been the purview of the X-Men, but contemporary Marvel has pushed that to four separate X-Men teams to explore. Then there’s the cast of Strange Academy, who continue to strengthen their bonds through harrowing magic. Meanwhile, the not-so-young Champions now have a fresh wave of New Championsready to contend for the title of Marvel’s newest upstarts.

DC’s Young Heroes Are Poised for a Comeback

After Years of Silence, DC Finally Hints at Filling Its Youth-Sized Gap

While DC has been overshadowed by its original hero roster for decades, there are promising signs of change. During WonderCon, author Mark Waid teased a comeback for the Legion of Superheroes, the expansive organization that guards DC’s utopian future. Looking to the past, Geoff Johns and Todd Nauck’s Stargirl: The Lost Children (2023) released a slew of “missing” golden-age young sidekicks back into DC’s universe, many of whose stories have yet to be explored. With these two groups, DC has ample room to dig in and tap into the young hero genre that Marvel has dominated so far without contest.

Marvel and DC have very different tenors to their comics, and there’s something precious and unique about the way DC readers have bonded with the same cast of characters across generations. However, DC’s younger generation has long since grown up, leaving a critical gap in the stories being told by the publisher. DC has slept for a long time on the kind of young hero fare that Marvel has made their bread-and-butter, but hopefully, the publisher is ready to wake up and put out the young hero series for which fans have long been clamoring.

“}]] DC needs to take a page from Marvel’s book.  Read More