Sun Girl is a legacy character, depending on how you interpret that term. Just from a very obscure legacy.

I suspect characters are being created, but not in a way that really gives them a spotlight or the chance to become breakout characters. Part of that has to do with the incredibly fragmented market at the moment, with the big two pumping out, what, over 100 titles a month or something? Unless there's a major promotional push, with the characters featured prominently in an event or on the covers of major books, it's very easy for new characters to just fall through the cracks.

Plus, a lot of the new characters suffer from design issues. Most of the iconic superheroes have great iconic designs. A lot of new characters seem to me to be intentionally designed to be smaller, to fill smaller, specific story needs. They don't have iconic costumes, powers, or names. They're just designed to be third tier supporting characters.

For instance, look at Avengers Academy. There's a whole team of new characters, including female and minority heroes. And they have fine names, fine powers, fine costumes, all of which work in context. But do any of them seem like they have the potential to break out as major mainstream characters? Not to me, they don't.

It's possible some of those kind of characters could grow into something bigger, but over the years, Marvel and DC have both seemed to ghettoize their characters, for lack of a better word. Look at the New Mutants, for instance. When I was a kid and the series was first coming out, I thought they would eventually grow to become the next generation of major superheroes. And now? They're still appearing in New Mutants! Cannonball made it up to the big team for awhile, but really, that was about it. Or the teen Titans - okay, in the Nu52, Cyborg finally made it to the big time with the JLA. And it only took 31 years! It's like they slot these characters in at a certain level and then leave them there forever rather than trying to develop them into something more.

Take Nico from The Runaways. She struck me as a character that had bigger potential. But a decade later, there she still is. What if instead they had done something like make her Dr. Strange's apprentice? Something that developed her into a bigger player in the MU? It could have worked, but Marvel and DC don't seem to be that interested in broadening their horizons in that way. They'd rather stick with the known quantity. And until they want to change things, things won't change.

I was aware that there was another Sun Girl from the same company but I think it can be argued that Selah Burke wasn't really inspired by the Mary Mitchell version of the character the same way Kamala Khan was inspired by Carol Danvers to become Ms. Marvel. So I think it's at least debatable in that respect.


Jaime Reyes I would argue is a legacy character and part of the Blue Beetle mythos.

Kamala Khan is an example of the right way to introduce a new character that isn't your typical white male superhero. The creators obviously are familiar with her culture and they integrate it into the story respectfully and organically, and not in a manner that smacks of tokenism. At the same time they don't fetishize it either by constantly harping on it and making a point of it every story. I also think part of the reason why she works is because people can still relate to her even if they aren't exactly like her. As a minority/immigrant myself, even though I am neither Muslim nor Pakistani, I found a lot of familiarity in her experiences.

Jaime Reyes they kept as Blue Beetle for New 52, I'm pretty sure..> Ted Kord just returned to the DCU as a teenaged nerd.. they used him to prove Lex is really not so bad.

Spike?   Wasn't he just in the cartoons?

Spyke was created for the X-Men Evolution cartoon. They introduced a similar character named Spike in X-Static.