it's not superheroes but you might enjoy HP et Guiseppe Bergman in which Milo Manara gives a stirling defense of bande dessine from its critics. obviously being manara it's racy so it's not to everyone's taste but it's a very rock and roll argument for the glory of adventure and comic books

My knowledge of the Phantom is limited, but I always thought it was a brilliant concept that the character effectively has the "legacy" concept built into his framework. Would anyone have actually wanted Batman to have retired in the early 60's, never to be seen again and not passing on the mantle? Obviously, it's impossible to envision a corporation allowing a successful property to be shelved simply for storytelling purposes. That sort of thing is only possible in creator owned works. (Even Watchmen wasn't safe...)

Generally that's true, but I don't think that means that there shouldn't be any ageless characters. The problem is that most fans have long since forgotten that superheroes have as much in common with Disney and Loony Tunes characters as they do other adventure characters.

What I'd like to see is a line of Marvel and DC comics similar to John Byrne's Generation's concept where the characters age in real time. That being said, I'm not sure many creator's would be down with that; it would all but mandate that you'd have to create new characters on a regular basis and that's, understandably, something many creators are loath to do nowadays.

I am entering the discussion a bit late and have skimmed through most of it, so forgive me if I address something already spoken of.

The thing is though that certain characters enter the public consciousness or cultural consciousness and despite their origins transcend that to have stories told about them generation after generation, century after century, and these are most often heroic characters (usually fictional though some were real but have become fictionalized. If Arthur's stories had ended with Geoffrey of Monmouth, we would never had had Mallory, or T.H. White or even Marion Zimmer Bradley, etc. (and Mallory did not invalidate Monmouth, and neither did Bradley invalidate Mallory even though the takes and tellings were vastly different. Further, Homer did not create Achilles or Odysseus, should we have been denied his stories about them because of that (if Homer is a real single person and not an accretions of traditions, given), Robin Hood, Hercules, Tristan and Isolte, Samson, Moses, and on and on and on. If stories of these characters had ended with their creators...

I think most of the iconic super-heroes have achieved that. Superman, Batman, Spider-Man have become part and parcel of that cultural tapestry and have transcended the works of Siegel and Shuster, Ditko & Lee, Finger and Kane et. al. Good or bad, those characters are here to stay, and I think there are still interesting stories left to tell and new takes on the characters that are worth the telling. Holmes and Doyle, Dracula and Stoker, etc. etc. all the same deal.

Where I think the problem lies is not in continuing the characters, but in trying to maintain that every story, every version of it is part of the same work. Very few imagine that every Hercules story told is the same Hercules or that you can string all those stories together to tell one singular narrative. Why should Superman or Wonder Woman have to work that way. The dilemma for publishers is that it is those types of threads of connectivity (or continuity) that keeps the current customer base buying the books, but also keeps a broader audience out. The success of these characters in different media now, shows their viability and validity as part of the cultural core, but that success hasn't translated to the native medium of the characters because of the repressive need for some to have it be all one story. Those Golden Age stories that created these legendary characters were mostly free of that connective tissue and sold much better. As sales and audience shrunk the thing that kept the "regular" customer coming back was the very thing that strangled the long term viability of the product to a larger audience.

WE are seeing Disney address this now with Star Wars--the wider audience likes Star Wars stories, they want new Star Wars stories they could care less if they meshed with all those other myriad Star Wars stories in the expanded universe told over the last 35-40 years. Only a small batch of insulted consumers cared about that. Rather than sustain that small insulated audience, Disney said we are going to forget that, keep what was interesting about it and used as needed to tell more new Star Wars stories. Not that the old stories were bad, or worthless, but they stand in the way of telling new stories that will sustain the cultural position of Star Wars and its status as a mythic tradition in that culture. Personally if it succeeds I am wondering if Disney will do that with the Marvel properties they own next. DC had a chance to do that with the new52, but instead focused on all those things that kept the insular audience and not the wider audience when they rebooted, but alienated part of that insular audience in the process.

So I partially agree with dupont, in that stories should end and new stories be told, but the problem is not in continuing the characters-that is something we have done with heroic characters for centuries-but with trying to weave all the stories of these characters into a single narrative-it's untenable and counterproductive. And I say this as a fan of the shared universes and a longtime reader of them. But I think the need to become less insular, to grow the audience, to tell new stories, outweighs the desire and preferences of the insular audience with a limited lifespan.

I don't think superheroes need defending in and of themselves, how they are used and perpetuated may need defending, but in the end I think it may be indefensible.

-M

What percentage of daytime network programming has been set in the same few shared universes since the 1950's, yet people kept tuning in until very recently. 

-M

edit to add, you' be surprised how much a creature of habit most consumers are. 

All of the CBS soaps were the same "world" and occasionally had characters move from one to the other, they just changed "address" in the fictional universe moving form one location to the other. ABC did the same and even NBC did it to a lesser extent between soaps.

-M