Examples of Flanderization in the DCU.
The DCU
- Batman:
- Bruce Wayne was originally depicted as merely comfortably well-off. Now, he's one of the two richest men in The DCU. Batman himself has become increasingly ultra-competent and infallible in the past few decades. One could argue the flanderization of Batman was necessary to keep him interesting in the context of the Justice League. He's one of the few characters without a true superpower, so the question of why they keep him around (aside from maybe his money) needs answering. Having him be the greatest strategist in existence gives him a purpose and even a reason for being one of the guys in charge.
- He's also portrayed as the "brooding loner" of the Justice League. This is despite the fact that the "Bat-family" has more members than Superman's friends and allies, two of the five Robins have led the Teen Titans, one of those two also led Young Justice, the other is considered the most trustworthy man in the hero community, and Barbara Gordon acts as the Mission Control. He is a close friend of a lot of superheroes as well, and he managed to be something of a father to a traumatized disabled girl as Cassandra Cain.
- Parodied in Lego DC Comics: Batman Be-leaguered, when he refuses Superman's invitation to join the nascent Justice League. When Alfred asks him about it, he responds with a dramatic rant about how he works alone, only to be interrupted by Robin, Nightwing, and Batgirl slurping the drinks Alfred made for them too loudly.
- In 1983, Batman quit the Justice League and created a new team called the Outsiders after Superman saying he would not lead the League in saving Lucius Fox from being a hostage in a faraway country for diplomatic reasons, and this lead to a dynamic within the DC Multiverse wherein Batman would be portrayed as a maverick and Superman a boy scout. While they patched things up later that year, 1986's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (which took place in a possible future) made Batman the ultimate outlaw anti-hero, and Superman a tool for the strawman ruler of every political cartoon of the '80s. In the revised DC Universe, DC ran with this dynamic of Superman and Batman being at odds for about a decade before it just kind of ran out of steam, though the Batman/Superman title and other New 52 material revisited it.
- Killer Croc was originally a somewhat intelligent gangster with a medical condition (a very severe medical condition), whose misanthropy was the result of being tormented by everyone (family included) for his freakish appearance. This was eventually downplayed, with Croc becoming more bestial and less intelligent as time went on (this was typically explained that his condition was worsening, further separating him from humanity). By the time of Hush, Croc could probably pass for a bulkier Alternate Company Equivalent of the Lizard (explained away by Hush infecting him with a virus that further increased his mutation).
- Stephanie Brown started off as a somewhat cynical and troubled girl with low self-esteem who was also fairly snarky and a little quirky, but through character development, she learned to let go of her troubles and focus on the positives, but was still constantly facing painful troubles. By the time she became the new Batgirl, though, she became known as 'the fun one' of the Bat family, being full of hope regardless of what the family faces.
- Tim Drake started off as a normal teenager who happened to also be a fairly gifted detective, and was naturally skilled in crime fighting despite being 14. As things went on, he became The Smart Guy of not just the Bat Family, but also the entirety of the teenaged population of the DCU, smart enough to research cloning technology that, while it didn't pan out, was said that he was only a year or so away from successfully cloning Superboy and Impulse according to the Titans Tomorrow story arc (and not just real life 'start as a baby' cloning, but actually recreate them, memories and all). He also became far more nerdy, to the point he's massively neurotic and over-analyses everything. And, while he started off as a realist, he was also rather idealistic, but slowly his life became so filled with hell that he broke down until he was as broody as Batman himself.
- In Batman (Grant Morrison), the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh is a failsafe in case Batman is under a psychic attack, a back-up personality containing the barest components to keep Batman going (A Batman minus Bruce Wayne). As such, he is a
Chaotic Good Berserker suffering hallucinations who goes head first into battle and seldom thinks of a plan. While he is much rougher, he is still Batman after all. When he returned in Batman (Chip Zdarsky), he is a Shadow Archetype perfectly ok with brainwashing and murdering, who uses massive violence and is now a split personality that Batman can barely keep under control. - The Joker has gone through this. Originally he was just a very wily criminal whose modus operandi was little more than "shits and giggles". Then came the Dark Age of comic books, and all of a sudden the Joker is the Yin to Batman's Yang, with just about every story over the last 20-plus years being about his feud with the Caped Crusader. You'd be hard-pressed to find a story involving the Joker committing a crime that wasn't meant to be an attack on Batman, the one exception being his corruption of Harley Quinn. In the New 52, the Joker's clown aspect has been dropped completely and his characterization can be summed up as "Batman's Arch Nemesis". This was ultimately explained by the revelation that there wasn't one Joker. There were three.
- Harley Quinn. While always a bit ditzy, over time she's become a Genki Girl who's nearly as insane as the Joker. Meanwhile, her attire has become increasingly Stripperiffic to match the Perverse Sexual Lust her fanbase has towards her. It's to the point that works like Gods and Monsters and Batman: White Knight will poke fun at how different the character is from what she started as. In addition to her progressively skimpier outfits sexuality, in general, began to consume her character more and more as time went on, initially having Single-Target Sexuality for The Joker, then developing a close friendship with Poison Ivy with some subtle sexual tension, then she began to have mild mostly one-sided tension with Batman until finally to coincide with her Stripperiffic appearance she became a bisexual nymphomaniac who's almost incapable of talking about anything other than sex.
- Killer Moth suffered because of this trope. When he first appeared, Killer Moth was more or less the Evil Counterpart of Batman, despite his bright, gaudy costume. An evil criminal mastermind that everyone turned to for help, he was quite the threat. Then Batgirl showed up. They needed someone to show that Batgirl was a worthy addition to the Bat-Family and chose Moth as the target. However, being beaten by an untrained beginner vigilante who only showed up because of sheer circumstance turned Moth into the laughingstock of the Bat-Rogues almost immediately. Suddenly, Killer Moth went from "Batman's equal" to "pathetic nobody". They tried to salvage his character in the 90s by trying to turn him into a From Nobody to Nightmare by transforming him into Charaxes during Underworld Unleashed, but it didn't stick, ultimately being killed by Superboy-Prime in Infinite Crisis. Even other adaptations such as The Batman and LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham wouldn't be kind to him.
- Jim Gordon when he became Batman. So y'know how 90% of the time Jim is okay with vigilantes who don't kill? How he's worked with Batman for years and is actually friendly with him, as well as the other Batfamily members? And how he only frowns on vigilantes who kill or go too far? Well when he's Batman, he hates all vigilantes in Gotham because he's a cop. Heck, "cop" is his defining trait, and actually the only noticeable one aside from the typical "I have to be Batman my own way" shtick that every Batman successor goes through. Though in Batgirl (2011), he purposefully short-circuited the suit briefly to talk to Batgirl (who he doesn't know is his daughter Barbara Gordon), and quietly says that he doesn't want to hunt vigilantes down, but it's his job, so it's best if she gets off the streets before he has to chase her down.
- While Jason Todd's pre-Flashpoint self-used guns as a means to an end, the New 52 and Rebirth version seems to be obsessed with them, flashing them out in every instance, whether he's looking to kill or not. This is usually accompanied by him either narrating that he's using rubber bullets or taking nonlethal shots or by loudly boasting about all the upgrades he's made to his guns. Furthermore, his grudge against Batman has devolved from opposition to his nonlethal philosophy on fighting crime, to desperately seeking out his approval. As of Rebirth, this attitude has extended towards Nightwing as well.
- Speaking of Richard "Dick" Grayson, his Chick Magnet and Mr. Fanservice status has been exaggerated more and more over the course of the years.
- Since the mid-00's, Cassandra Cain went from an outsider with a good deal of emotional issues, to a childish girl who's lonely and sad all of the time.
- Also in recent years, Bruce's tendency to mistreat other members of his family when under severe emotional stress. This goes as far back as Jason Todd's death back in the eighties, but it never got 'out of hand', so to speak. He never did anything that was completely unforgivable, and there were always plenty of heartwarming moments to set-off anything that seemed too cruel, proving that Bruce did care. These days, you get stuff like beating the hell out of Dick Grayson after he was exposed as Nightwing to essentially force him to go Faking the Dead (and not telling a single other member of the family) so he can do an undercover mission — and that was after Damian's death, someone that both Bruce and Dick were still heavily mourning at the time. Then there was the time he nearly beat Jason to death after Jason shot the Penguin; no matter what Jason did, it didn't warrant that kind of brutality, and became especially Harsher in Hindsight after it was revealed that Jason hadn't intended to kill Penguin at all. Why did he do that? Because Selina left him at the altar. Now he's gone from mere mistreatment to flat-out abuse, landing him solidly in Designated Hero territory and making many fans wonder why the rest of the Bat-Family sticks by him at all, especially when he never apologizes for anything he's done.
- Booster Gold started as a well-meaning hero whose love of money often got him in over his head. Over the course of the '80s and '90s, writers forgot about the "well-meaning" part and turned him into a money-grubbing jerk. Thankfully, over the course of Infinite Crisis and 52 in the mid-'00s, DC built Booster back up, and now he's a genuine hero again—though the lure of fame and fortune still occasionally tempt him. Even better, he now intentionally acts like that, so no-one except Batman and Superman realises that he's grown into a competent hero in his own right, whilst he roams the timestream protecting history from enemies who — if they ever saw past his foolish reputation and realized he was the one foiling their schemes — would not only kill him but do it in such a way that Booster Gold never existed. So now instead of promoting himself, Booster must do everything in his power to make people think he's an inept idiot, in order to carry out his mission to defend time itself. Even before 52, some writers had started pointing out that there was more to Booster Gold than met the eye. At one point one of the other heroes muses that, being from the future, Booster must have been aware that Doomsday was a monster that was fully capable of killing Superman. And he still stepped up and took the first actual punch Doomsday aimed at a hero on his personal forcefield, to protect another member of the League. Both this acknowledgement and the moment itself hint that some people never completely forgot that Booster was kind of badass.
- Green Lantern: The Guardians Of The Universe have always been distant and aloof, but were once wise and respected, having created an organization of star-patrolling peacekeepers that has survived for eons. With each passing year though, they become more incompetent, single-minded, and corrupt, lying to their members, holding their own mysterious agendas, and constantly having their mistakes blow up in the faces and inevitably needing to be saved by the Earth Lanterns (and then clearly resenting the aid). One comic even had a Guardian admit he didn't remember why they started the Corp in the first place. By this point, it's a genuine curiosity how they got an organization as advanced and well-functioning as the Green Lanterns working outside of dumb luck.
- Justice League of America:
- The Justice League in general occasionally suffers this problem. The heroes in their own books have multi-faceted personalities, while Justice League in the hands of sloppy writers reduces them to their most stereotypical natures, such as Batman being completely unfeeling and methodical, or Superman's "boy scout" persona. This is in part because each character was originally The Hero in their own titles. They weren't developed with a group dynamic in mind so some of their key character development has also come from them playing off of each other in the team books.
- Most mainstays of the Giffen-era Justice League International suffered heavy Flanderization; that was sort of the whole point of the books.
- A notable aversion occurs with, of all people, Guy Gardner. Giffen and DeMatteis were concerned with how much Flanderization had already occurred with the character, who initially was more intelligent than Hal Jordan, but by the time of joining the JLI was mostly famous as a Jerkass with severe brain damage. A punch from Batman sends Guy into an alternate, hyper-sensitive persona, eventually revealed to be a total con, as Guy enjoyed screwing with his teammates. His girlfriend, Ice, sees through it.
- In a surprising Take That, Me! moment, the original writing team actually addressed their Flanderization in the reunion mini-series Formerly Known as the Justice League. In one of the more memorable moments, Blue Beetle actually calls out Booster Gold by claiming that he used to be competent and heroic before joining the JLI, and accuses him of acting stupid and childish on purpose.
- Hey, has Dr. Light told you how much he likes rape lately
? "It's like it's his power now." It finally got to the point where other villains refused to work with him and The Spectre turned him into a candle and lit him on fire — as he was about to do some nasty things to hookers dressed as the Teen Titans.
- Starfire of Teen Titans fame was a sexually liberated and emotionally open alien who celebrated free will, expression of love, and monogamous relationships. In Red Hood and the Outlaws, she's a nymphomaniac with no memory or cognition, and is frequently used as titillation.
- Suicide Squad: Amanda Waller was introduced as a tough, no-nonsense woman whose standoffish demeanor hid a lot of trauma and guilt. While she did morally dubious things, she was also willing to put her career on the line for the Suicide Squad and defy the U.S. government when they went against her moral compass. Besides, behind her facade she griefed each death. These days she's depicted as a sociopath with a We Have Reserves mentality toward the Squad and a My Country, Right or Wrong attitude.
- That doubles to the Squad's Anyone Can Die fame. Originally, it was mostly reduced to one casualty every two to three missions. The one mission where only one member survived in the Doom Patrol/Suicide Squad: Special crossover was treated as a Despair Event Horizon for Rick Flag and even Amanda was sorry that it was such a failure. These days it's common for half the squad to die on the second they step on the battlefield.
- Superman:
- Originally, Superman was something of a tough guy tackling (literally) wife beaters, war profiteers and abusive orphanages. By the end of the forties, however, he was the leading citizen of Metropolis, battling larger-than-life villains.
- Also when he was first introduced, he was a real scrapper and not afraid to get in the face of authority figures. That changed around World War II along with Batman, however by the end of the fifties, he was flanderized into the ultimate boy scout and establishment figure. By the '70s, he'd become somewhat more morally ambiguous and a bit more cynical about people in power.
- Supergirl started off as a sweetheart with quite a temper if pushed and a snarky side. Then she got killed and writers and fans got into their heads the notion that she was a saccharine-sweet, ever-smiling girl who never, ever, talked against her cousin (which flies in the face of her character development throughout the Pre-Crisis period). In order to (over)compensate for this, subsequent reboots amped up her hotheadness and hotbloodedness to the point she was turned into a Red Lantern and became "Miss Rage Issues" to the fandom's eyes.
- Brainiac 5 from the Legion of Super-Heroes is an utterly brilliant genius with limited social skills. He might be impatient and rude, but he clearly cared for his teammates and people on the whole. Throughout several decades and reboots "may be an obnoxious jerkass sometimes" somehow devolved into "is an unbearable smug jerkass who can hardly stand his own teammates", and modern Legion writers appear to have a hard time remembering he's a hero.
- Originally Power Girl had a mischievous side, flirty side. Her New 52 version appeared in Worlds' Finest has little characterization other than "extremely lewd and man-hungry".
- Cat Grant was introduced as sort of a Good Bad Girl Broken Bird. Someone who had a bit of an immoral past that she was trying to move beyond, and was looking for a good man like Clark Kent to be her anchor. Nowadays she's portrayed as a Lovable Sex Maniac at best and just Really Gets Around at worst. It's been mentioned that this is a facade Cat is using because of the pain of losing her son so many years ago.
- During the earliest stories of his series, Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen, in spite of being somewhat naive and cocky, was a competent detective and Pintsized Powerhouse who might get a head start on beating up the bad guys before Superman got there and who, if captured, often found some way to alert Superman with or without his signal watch. As the stories progressed, he became more and more The Load.
- Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman's willingness to kill got this when the New 52 reboot happened. Before she was willing to kill, but only in extreme circumstances where she had literally no other choice. In the New 52, DC cranked this up to ridiculous degrees, with her casually killing villains she fights and actually gloating about doing so to Superman in Justice League (2011). This has had the effect of making it hard to believe that she would ever be made part of the Justice League, let alone allowed to continue operating; all of the other heroes retained their beliefs in no-killing or only killing when necessary.
- Wonder Woman (1942)
- Once Kanigher's main story and Wonder Woman was based on Earth-One he started exaggerating the Amazons' weaknesses on Earth-Two, meant to house the original Wondy. While in the original tales an Amazon having their bracelets welded together by a man drained their Amazon super strength they were still stronger than human with Diana having snapped such chains with her own strength on numerous occasions, just with a bit more effort, Kanigher has Diana becoming faint and not having the strength to even walk upright when her bracelets are welded by a man.
- Kanigher's Earth-Two Etta had all of her character stripped away so that she was just a plump lady who is constantly eating candy, rather than a tough prankster who loved a good fist fight who just so happened to be overweight and like sweets.
