Why new villains often don't work out

[yenaled]

The powers aren't even the same really - just the end product of his powers. Zoloman doesn't work because he is a taking up an old name and costume he works completly on his own merits - he is a new villain.

The basic brief of a character is not the be all or end all of that character - he mentions Hood in that post who actually was a very interesting character until Bendis got his hands on him - and who could be a very good villain with someone else writing him.

"Ghost of the Past" is another achitype he mentions, well the best example of that is Johnny Sorrow at DC who was retroactivly put into continuity (he was mentioned by name in Robinsons Starman series then later on Johns and Robinson came up with the character and put him into the JSA comic) he's (re)introduced as an old Villain who is very important to Sand, the JSA and the Spectre. Giving the story real punch. Now the way they go about writing it works really well and unless you are a DC geek you wouldn't know that this guy actually didn't exist till the late 90s. These character type can work really well under good writers or situations.

 

[The Overlord]

The only ties he had to Thawne were the costume, name, and similar powers. He was a completely different character.

New character, not exactly new concept.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

How many new concepts do we really see in comics (or any fiction) anyway?

 

[Spike_x1]

He was just a crappy Post-Crisis Master Jailer.

How so? Don't get me wrong; Braverman was a 100% crappy character, but he never really had anything in common with pre-COIE Carl Draper, except for the idea of being childhood rivals with Clark Kent.

If anything, Conduit was just an uber-lame attempt to update the concept of the Kryptonite Man, trying to make him into a badass with personal ties to Superman (I can definitely see how that plan could be appealing on paper, but the execution was horrid).

 

[The Question]

How so? Don't get me wrong; Braverman was a 100% crappy character, but he never really had anything in common with pre-COIE Carl Draper, except for the idea of being childhood rivals with Clark Kent.

If anything, Conduit was just an uber-lame attempt to update the concept of the Kryptonite Man, trying to make him into a badass with personal ties to Superman (I can definitely see how that plan could be appealing on paper, but the execution was horrid).

The high school rival who turns into a homicidal stalker as an adult angle was what I was talking about. I don't know, I've been thinking a lot about fictional archetypes lately, and in both pre-COIE Master Jailer and Conduit are the themes of obsession, jealousy, an inability to find self worth through personal efforts, and ultimately self destruction (albeit, executed fairly crappily), so that's where I saw the connection.