Affirmative Action Legacy / The DCU

The DCU

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Comic Books

Comic Books

• In the pages of Grant Morrison's Animal Man Bwana Beast (a Mighty Whitey) was replaced by a black man from Africa who renamed the hero Freedom Beast.
  • The final issue of Justice League of America vol. 2 had one of the heroes returning to Africa to find a successor for the Freedom Beast mantle much later in the time line.
  • "The Last Days of Animal Man", a mini-series set 20 Minutes into the Future, depicts an unnamed African-American as the new Flash.
• Greg Weisman created a new, black Aqualad named Kaldur'ahm for his Young Justice (2010) animated series, and the character was brought over into the comics as well (where he is Black Manta's estranged son). However, unlike most characters who exemplify this trope, Kaldur's predecessor had not gone by "Aqualad" in well over a decade. It's also worth noting that in the show's continuity Garth was never Aqualad, presumably making Kaldur the first.
  • When Kaldur was reintroduced post-Flashpoint in DC Rebirth, he was also established as being gay.
• The Atom:
  • Ray Palmer (white male) replaced by Ryan Choi (Asian male). Choi's run in The All-New Atom ended in a thudding tonal shift around the time Ray Palmer returned from a self-imposed extradimensional exile.
  • And then un-replaced with the return of Palmer and the death of Choi until he was later restored to life in Convergence.
  • And then there's Rhonda Pineda, a Latina college student and another Atom. Just kidding! She's the evil Atomica from Earth 3, and a mole for the Crime Syndicate of America.
  • DC Rebirth sees Choi reintroduced to DC's main continuity, several years younger, taking up the Atom identity to find Ray Palmer in the Microverse.
• The first Azrael (best known for temporarily becoming the new Batman during Knightfall) was a blonde named Jean-Paul Valley, while his successor was a black guy named Michael Lane. Like a few others on the list, this got reset in the New 52, with Jean-Paul back as Azrael.
• Batman:
  • Batgirl: Bette Kane (White and Jewish) replaced by Barbara Gordon (white) who was replaced with Cassandra Cain (half-Chinese half-white) who was succeeded by Stephanie Brown (white, lower-class), replaced with Barbara Gordon (formerly disabled).
    • The final issue of Stephanie's run had her dream an ideal future where she's a female Nightwing training Nell, a black Recurring Extra, to be Batgirl.
  • The New 52: Futures End introduced a future team known as the League of Batgirls. In addition to the aforementioned Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown, the team's third Batgirl was a 12-year old African-American Tiffany Fox, the daughter of Lucius Fox.
  • The Batman Beyond comic set in the DC Animated Universe has Barbara's mantle be eventually taken up by the brown skinned Nissa.
  • In the New 52, Cassandra has never been Batgirl, but becomes the new Orphan (the identity her Caucasian father had) after the original performs a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • A retcon story established that prior to becoming Batman, Bruce Wayne operated as part of a team of Chinese superheroes under the name Darknight. Years later, a new, Chinese Darknight appeared as a member of the JSA.
  • Katherine "Kate" Kane, the current Batwoman, is a Jewish lesbian. Interestingly, she is not a legacy within the comics themselves, as her predecessor (the original Batwoman) was retconned out of existence in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and she is a reimagining of the same character instead of an inheritor of the title. That Batwoman was a straight gentile woman.
    • Retcon! Batman Incorporated has established that Kathy Kane was the first Batwoman, for about a year early in Batman's career. Their relationship is that Kathy is Kate's aunt.
    • In addition, Kate Kane passed on the Batwoman mantle to the above-mentioned Bette Kane in the alternate future Titans Tomorrow....Today! storyline. And then Titans Tomorrow Batwoman was retconned to be Cassandra Cain.
  • Another rare villain example can be found in the Batman foe Tally Man. The first was a white guy, while the second one introduced during the One Year Later event was a black guy. What happened to the original is never stated, though the No Man's Land novelization mentions that he was killed by Two-Face.
  • Also from Batman comics: The original Ventriloquist, Arnold Wesker (male) was killed off in One Year Later and replaced by Peyton Riley (female). The New 52 introduced yet another Ventriloquist (also female).
  • Holly Robinson, who briefly replaced Selina Kyle as Catwoman, is a lesbian.
  • The new Catwoman in Batman Beyond is a dark-skinned woman of mostly-unrevealed lineage.
  • Genevieve Valentine's run on Catwoman introduces Eiko Hasigawa, a Japanese Yakuza Princess who temporarily becomes the new Catwoman after Selina retires to run the Calabrese crime family. It's also suggested that she may be a lesbian or bisexual.
  • The original Ranger from the Batmen of All Nations was a white Australian. After his death, the mantle was passed onto Johnny Riley, an Aboriginal teen who joined Batman Incorporated under the moniker of "Dark Ranger".
  • Robin (1993) provides an in-universe villainous version when Tim faces off against an assassin code-named the Rising Sun Archer and research shows him that his current foe is the granddaughter of a WWII era male assassin who used the same name.
  • The Robin legacy has zig-zagged this. Traditionally the role has been filled by white males, but at least two of those have retcons implying or explicitly stating they have other heritage:
    • Dick Grayson (retconned Romani heritage) -> Jason Peter Todd (European and Asian ancestry ^note Lady Shiva is one of the potential birth mothers he and Bats track down) -> Tim Drake (white male ^note possible Jewish heritage via Word of God) -> Stephanie Brown (white woman ^note is no longer tied to the Robin legacy post-Flashpoint) -> Damian Wayne (Chinese, European and Arab ancestry). Damian-as-Batman has also featured in a couple of Grant Morrison possible future tales - in one story he's the Retired Badass "Mr Wayne" who trains Terry McGinnis.
    • Jason (prior to Flashpoint, anyway) was indicated to be mixed race, since when he and Batman were trying to find his biological mother the unmistakably Asian Lady Shiva was one of the candidates. Dick had not yet been retconned to have Romani heritage so he inherited the role from a white guy. On the other hand Jason's first incarnation where he and his family were circus performers was unquestionably white given his red hair. Amusingly when writers keep both Jason's Asian and Dick's Romani heritage on the table this means Tim was the only non-POC male to be Robin.
    • In Future's End, the new Robin is a black teenager named Duke Thomas.
    • Duke Thomas also appears in the main continuity as part of the We Are Robin movement, a group of diverse teens who step up to help defend Gotham during a period when Bruce is dead and Damian is off Walking the Earth. Following the Waynes' respective returns, Duke is invited to become a part of the Batfamily proper by Batman, but explicitly not as a Robin; Bruce wants to try something new with his training, and so he instead becomes The Signal.
  • In Earth-2, where superheroes aged normally, African-American lawyer Charles "Charley" Bullock took on the identity of Blackwing, donning a costume deliberately reminiscent of the now-retired Batman. He might also be said to be taking up Wildcat's legacy as well, since he coincidentally met Grant as a teenager, and ended up being mentored by the older hero.
  • Of the Batmen of Many Nations/Batman Incorporated heroes, Cyril Sheldrake (white male) was replaced as first the Squire and then the Knight by Beryl Hutchinson (white female), whose own Squire is a Black British woman. And the (Dark) Ranger of Australia (white male) was replaced by Johnny Riley, an Aboriginal.
  • Tim Drake: Robin: Tim allies with a bleached blonde lady former We Are Robin affiliate who takes up the superhero name Sparrow, a name used by a white male Batman ally in a previous continuity.
• Blue Beetle: Ted Kord (white male) replaced by Jaime Reyes (Latino male). Before the New 52, Jaime took up the mantle after Ted's death, while in DC Rebirth, Ted stepped down from active superheroics, Jaime discovered the Blue Beetle scarab independently, and the two of them eventually joined forces.
  • Ryan, Jason, and Jaime also appear in Batman: The Brave and the Bold. All of their predecessors have also appeared in some capacity as well.
• Lee Walter Travis, the white male Crimson Avenger, was followed by Jill Carlyle, a black female Crimson Avenger.
• Happens at least three times over to Doctor Fate in the New 52. The Earth-20 version is still Kent Nelson, but now he's black, the Earth 2 version is a young Egyptian man called Khalid Ben-Hassin, and the main DCU version is a young Egyptian-American man called Khalid Nassour (fitting in these last two cases, since Doctor Fate's mythology is strongly tied to Egypt). Much like the original, they're doctors (well, Ben-Hassin is. Nassour is a medical student since he's younger.). Also, there were two female Doctor Fates who succeeded the original Kent Nelson when he apparently died, one of them being his widow Inza.
• Doctor Mid-Nite was originally Charles McNider, a white man. He was replaced by Beth Chapel, a black woman, who was later replaced by Pieter Cross, another white man. As of Doomsday Clock, Beth is back.
• The original Element Girl was Caucasian, while her successor Element Woman is Korean American.
• The Flash:
  • In the mainstream DC Comics continuity, Irey West (who as mentioned above, is half white and half Korean) became the new Impulse. Bart Allen, the original Impulse, was a white male. However, Irey is the daughter of Wally West, another holder of The Flash mantle.
  • In the New 52 continuity, Wally went back to being a teenager, but was Race Lifted to being half African-American. DC Rebirth retcons it so that New 52 Wally is actually the cousin of the original Wally, who'd been removed from time for a few years before making a return, and sees New 52 Wally take up his cousin's Kid Flash mantle. The Future's End tie-in to the series has a possible future where New 52 Wally has replaced Barry as the Flash as well.
  • The first Reverse-Flash, is the Caucasian Eobard Thawne. His successor is the formerly disabled Hunter Zolomon.
  • Johnny Quick, a white male hero, was replaced by Jesse Chambers, his daughter. She now fights crime while using his costume and the slightly modified moniker of Jesse Quick. She eventually changed her costumed identity to Liberty Belle, originally her mother's.
  • Before plans changed, the New 52 would've introduced Maxine Mercury, either a gender-bent version of Max Mercury or his daughter.
  • The Flash in Justice League Beyond is a black woman named Danica Williams.
  • A villainous example for DC: The replacement Rogues featured an African-American Captain Cold. The original white one took back the identity pretty quickly though.
• Firestorm (DC Comics): Ronnie Raymond (white) replaced with Jason Rusch (black). Ronnie was eventually resurrected, and now they both share control over the composite Firestorm entity.
• Final Crisis does this briefly. Readers are shown a number of alternate universes, one of which features black versions of Superman and Wonder Woman. The black Wonder Woman is revealed to be Nubia, Wonder Woman's largely-forgotten sister from the 1970s. Meanwhile, the black Superman is the president of the United States. (The Multiversity reveals that their Earth is one where most of the major heroes are black, with Batman as the exception.)
• Green Arrow:
  • Green Arrow II Connor Hawke is the son of the White Green Arrow Oliver Queen and a half Black, half Korean woman. For a while his skin seemed to go back and forth from issue to issue.
  • It looks like he's gotten more white over time, and that he was darker at birth, canonically. A lot of colorists have messed it up over the years, though. It definitely does not help that his hair is dyed blonde. His coloring was fixed in Convergence.
  • In The New 52: Futures End, the new Green Arrow is Emiko Queen, Oliver's half-Japanese younger sister.
  • In the mainstream continuity, Emiko becomes the new Red Arrow after DC Rebirth.
  • Speedy: Green Arrow's white male sidekick Roy Harper ^note Roy was raised by Native Americans and lived on reserve changed his code name to Arsenal and later Red Arrow, and Mia Dearden, an HIV-positive, female, former teen prostitute became the new Speedy.
• Green Lantern: In the Golden Age, Alan Scott (white male). Scott's powers were similar to, but had a different source from, the Silver Age Green Lanterns, so he was not so much "replaced" as Covered Up by Hal Jordan, who got replaced (sort of) by Guy Gardner (white) replaced with John Stewart (black) and later Kyle Rayner (originally white, later retconned to be half-Hispanic), followed by Simon Baz (Arab-American) and Jessica Cruz (neuroatypical Latina). However, the fact that the Green Lanterns are a police organization with 7200 members makes this more believable. Currently all serve as equal members of the Corps (despite at least one of them having been dead for a while, see "Spectre" below). The 2020 series Far Sector introduces Sojourner "Jo" Mullein, a black woman, as Earth's newest Green Lantern. That said, Hal Jordan was retconned to be Jewish in 2015 and the below-mentioned change to Alan's sexuality from Earth 2 was Ret-Canon back to the main DC Universe after Alan came back in Doomsday Clock, where he was a Closet Gay man until a Late Coming Out in DC Infinite Frontier.
  • Green Lantern: Legacy centers around Tai Pham, a young Vietnamese-American boy who becomes a Green Lantern.
  • The Green Lantern Corps members also include squirrels, a robot, a planet, alien smallpox, a living math equation, and are (or were) led by blue space midgets. Having a black guy and a white guy is downright boring by comparison (a point which a black man even uses to call Jordan out on his racism back in the 70s).
  • The Ame-Comi Girls universe has a Chinese girl named Jade Yifei as the Green Lantern of Earth. She's a Race Lift of Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, Alan Scott's daughter in the main universe.
  • The New 52 reboot did something similar to Alan Scott, the Alternate Universe Green Lantern. The original Golden Age version was your average white dude; in the New 52 he's still white but now a gay man. Notably, this trope wasn't the main purpose of the change; he had a gay son who was Retgone'd in the reboot, so they made him gay instead.
  • As mentioned above, the New 52 has since introduced a fifth Earth Lantern. The new Green Lantern is an Arab American man named Simon Baz, who became a member of the most recent iteration of the Justice League of America.
    • Geoff Johns' final GL issue showed a possible future where Simon acts as a mentor to Jessica Cruz, a female, Latina Green Lantern. She appeared in the aftermath of Forever Evil (2013), where it turns out she's not a Green Lantern, but the new host to the Power Ring of Earth-3, so she's an affirmative action legacy villain. However, she does end up becoming a Lantern at the end of Darkseid War.
  • In the world of Batman Beyond (canonised in the comic multiverse as Earth-12), the new Green Lantern is a boy from Tibet, Kai-Ro. The comic book adaptation confirms his Tibetan background and living in a monastery with his older sister. Said sister grew up to be Curare, the League of Assassins' best killer; the end of the story detailing this has her undergo the ritual that gave her the blue skin. It's not known if Kai-Ro is canon in Earth-0, the main DC comics universe, though given that Terry now more or less is, it's possible.
• In the 1970s the Teen Titans member Mal Duncan/Herald (African-American) took the identity of the Guardian, a white Golden Age hero. Even when a clone of the original character was introduced in Jimmy Olsen as security for Project Cadmus, he called himself the Golden Guardian, letting Mal keep the original name. (Post-Crisis, none of this happened, and the clone was simply the Guardian.) In Seven Soldiers, Jake Jordan (also African-American) is given the title Manhattan Guardian by a newspaper which bought the rights to the name and costume from Cadmus.
• The half-white, half-Latina Kendra Saunders was introduced as the new Hawkgirl in the 90s, but like many of the others on this list was eventually killed off to make way for the return of her white predecessor. It seems she has gotten the last laugh though, as she is now the Hawkgirl in the New 52.
  • Hawkman's Arch-Enemy Shadow Thief was briefly replaced by a black man. The replacement quickly ended up in Comic-Book Limbo, and the original returned to using the identity.
• Hitman (1993) had the original Dogwelder of Section 8 being a white man, when a black successor was featured years later in All-Star Section 8 and Sixpack and Dogwelder: Hard Travelin' Heroz.
• Johnny Thunder's successor, Jakeem, is black. Though this may owe more to the fact that DC seems to have a thing about black guys with electric powers.
• Judomaster: Rip Jagger (white man) replaced with Sonia Sato (Asian woman). There was a previous Asian Judomaster in the 90s. He appeared in one issue and was never seen again.
• Justice League and Justice League Unlimited were criticized by some fans for using John Stewart (black) rather than Kyle Rayner (white), the current GL at the time, and the one already established in the DC Animated Universe. Other fans were pleased to see John finally get some recognition, though. John's military background in the show was also carried over to the comic, where he was previously an architect.
  • Kyle Rayner did eventually appear as a background Lantern, having previously been featured in Superman: The Animated Series. Hal Jordan was relegated to a Shout-Out - his name painted on a fighter jet at an airbase - and a five minute cameo when some Time Travel shenanigans caused him to spontaneously take Stewart's place. Alan and several other Golden Age characters were used as the basis for an alternate world in one storyline.
  • The usual seventh, Aquaman, was recovering from a laughable legacy, so they needed a seventh and decided to add a second woman. Furthermore, they chose the more Hispanic-seeming (and voiced by Maria Canals Barrera) Hawkgirl^note In fact, all Thanagarians that appeared in the DC Animated Universe were voiced by Hispanic actors, making them some sort of Fantasy Counterpart Culture, as opposed to the more traditional, and white, Black Canary or Zatanna. Zatanna, Black Canary and Hawkman were introduced later, and the early introduction of Hawkgirl was used to set up and clear up the Hawk-Snarl.
• Several examples pop up in Judd Winick's Justice League: Generation Lost series. The future iteration of the Justice League features Damian Wayne (Bruce Wayne's mixed Chinese/European/Arab son) as the new Batman, an unnamed African-American woman as the new Black Canary, and a Middle-Eastern woman named Sahar Shaheen as the new Shazam!. Shazam would count as a Twofer, since the original was a white male named Billy Batson.
• The trend was parodied in the JLA Presents: Plastic Man one-shot, where two children claim that Plastic Man is lame because he was never replaced by a minority like many of the popular heroes of the 90s were.
• The alternate future depicted in the final issue of Manhunter had two major examples. Jade, a white^note Well, ethnically white; her actual skin color was green female superhero from the current timeline had been replaced by her brother Todd's adopted Asian daughter, while Kate Spencer's gay son Ramsey had succeeded her as the new Manhunter. As a woman, Kate herself qualifies since each of the previous bearers of the Manhunter mantle were white males.
• Two examples in the Milestone Forever series. Curtis Metcalf passed on the Hardware identity to the female Tiffany Evans, and it was implied that Raquel Erving (Rocket) had succeeded Augustus Freeman as the new Icon.
• Mister Miracle, Scott Free of the New Gods is a Human Alien resembling a white male and his protege Shilo Norman is a black male teen. As a bonus, Shilo Norman is Ambiguously Jewish.
• Mister Terrific: Terry Sloane (white male) replaced by Michael Holt (black male). Though Terry had been gone for a long time when Michael came along, which probably helped produce the especially positive response Holt has gotten from readers. He got his own series in 2011's New 52 launch, something his predecessor never managed, though it didn't last long.
• The Question: Vic Sage (white man) replaced with Renee Montoya (Hispanic gay woman, a Threefer), a Canon Immigrant from Batman: The Animated Series who had previously starred in Gotham Central. She assumed the title in 52 upon Vic's death from lung cancer. The New 52 version is back to being a white male - though thanks to having a radical new origin involving being UnPersoned, we don't know if it's Vic in some form or a new guy altogether.
• The first three holders of The Ray identity, Langford Terrill, Ray Terrill, and Stan Silver were white, while the New 52 Ray, Lucien Gates, is Korean American. When Ray Terrill was reintroduced in DC Rebirth, he was changed from being straight to gay.
  • The sexuality change was probably due to the Series/Arrow having the Ray be gay to match up with his actor
• Artemis, who is usually drawn looking very white but sometime is more Ambiguously Brown despite her iconic red hair, passed down the title of Shim'Tar to Akila, who has unquestionable Arabic ancestry and significantly darker skin. In the New 52 Akila is of Sub-Saharan ancestry, but she doesn't live nearly as long nor remain heroic.
• The original Son of Vulcan from Charlton Comics was a white guy. He showed up in a 2005 DC mini-series just long enough to die and pass the mantle to a Latino kid named Miguel.
• The Spectre: Jim Corrigan (white male) was replaced (eventually) by Hal Jordan (another white male) who was replaced by Crispus Allen (black male). Crispus was killed (this being the Spectre, that's not the end of his career, it's his origin story) by a white male who was also coincidentally named Jim Corrigan (to avoid any confusion, Hal Jordan is not a naming coincidence; the Hal who had been a Green Lantern became the Spectre after he died). The New 52 reset this so the original Jim Corrigan became the Spectre again.
• Starman: Ted Knight (white male) replaced by Mikaal Thomas (bisexual blue alien). To an extent... Mikaal wasn't bisexual in the seventies stories where he was the Starman; that was a later retcon by James Robinson. And while Robinson later wrote Mikaal as a Justice League member, the Starman name belonged to Thom Kallor (straight white male alien) at first, so he was simply referred to as Mikaal. Once Thom left to return to the future, Mikaal began to be referred to as Starman again.
• Stargirl: Female legacy of both Star-Spangled Kid and Starman.
• Superman:
  • The criminal Toyman, Winslow Schott, and the heroic Japanese Toyman, Hiro Okamura, who was later revealed to be a robot constructed by Winslow. As of the New 52, Hiro was back to being the sole Toyman and an actual person again.
  • John Henry Irons, one of the four would-be Supermen in Reign of the Supermen before adopting the code name "Steel". He was probably an invocation of this trope as much as the other Supermen invoked other trends in superheroics^note Anti-Hero Substitute for the Eradicator and the Cyborg, for instance. at the time.
  • Steel's niece, Natasha, also took over the mantle for a short time and uses it in the Ame-Comi Girls series.
  • Superman often regards Supergirl as his successor, and in some continuities she takes over after her cousin gets killed or retires. In the New 52 timeline Superman asks Supergirl to protect Earth after he's gone in at least two separate instances.
  • In DC Rebirth, Lois Lane (New 52 version) gets Superman's powers and becomes Superwoman, Lana Lang gets Superman's Energy Being powers and becomes another Superwoman, and Kenan Kong, a Chinese guy from Shanghai, gets Superman's powers and becomes the China-based New Super-Man.
  • Earth 2 introduces a black Kryptonian named Val-Zod as the second Superman of that universe.
  • New Super-Man, along with introducing a Chinese Super-Man, also introduces a Chinese Bat-Man and Wonder-Woman, and a Chinese-American female Flash.
  • Inverted big time with Bloodsport. The original was an African-American man, whereas the second was a white supremacist.
• Tarantula is a dark example of this. The original was the heroic John Law (white man) and he was succeeded by Catalina Flores (Latino woman) who thought she was a hero, but her acting more for the thrill than for saving people, murdering criminals, feeding systematic corruption with bribes and raping Nightwing made it clear she is not.
• Mark Richards was the third villain to call himself Tattooed Man, and was the first African-American to hold the mantle (the original two were white guys).
• Wildcat: Ted Grant (white man) was replaced for a while by Yolanda Montez (Latina woman.) Ted returned to the role after Yolanda died but was later removed from history by the New 52 reboot. However, as of Doomsday Clock, both Ted and Yolanda are back.
• In Young Justice (2019), Jinny Hex is the teen lesbian great-granddaughter of Jonah Hex.
• Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl had future versions of Black Canary and Shazam!, both of whom were black.
• Happened by necessity in the Elseworlds comic JLA: Created Equal, where a Gendercide kills off every male on the planet. Barbara Gordon (the aforementioned Batgirl) becomes the new Green Lantern, and a black grad student named Jill Atherton becomes the new Atom after recreating Ray Palmer's size-changing technology from the notes he left behind.
• In the alternate future depicted in JLA: Rock of Ages, the white male Aztek had been killed off by Darkseid, and his costume and codename had been passed on to a black woman known as Azteka.
• Kingdom Come is chock full of this, as it takes place in a future where many classic white male superheroes are either dead or retired. Lian Harper (who has a white father and Asian mother) has become the new Red Hood (the original was a white male), the new Star Spangled Kid and Stripes are both black, Johnny Thunder's genie has been passed on to a black male, the new Judomaster is an Asian woman, Cyborg (a black male) has become the new Robotman, and Iris "Irey" West II (who has a white father and Asian mother, though with her blue eyes and light hair, apparently takes after her father) has become the new Kid Flash.
  • Too bad Alex Ross failed to do his research and drew both Kid Flash and Red Hood as ginger white kids.
  • Red Hood's mantle has since been taken by Jason Todd (White Male) though funny sidenote, with the New 52 reboot, he's now working alongside (as well as becoming good friends with) Roy Harper in a world where Lian doesn't exist...yet.
  • It should be mentioned that a lot of the Kingdom Come legacy characters became Canon Immigrants.
• Wonder Woman has been temporarily replaced by the aforementioned occasionally Ambiguously Brown Artemis and in some other universes it's Diana's "twin" sister Nubia, who has Sub-Saharan features, who became Wonder Woman instead.
  • Wonder Girl (Infinite Frontier): Yara Flor is a brown-skinned Brazilian immigrant who succeeds both the Caucasian Cassie Sandsmark and Donna Troy as the third Wonder Girl.
• The new Reggie Long/Rorschach II introduced in Doomsday Clock is black as opposed to the original white Rorschach in Watchmen. This is justified by having him be the son of the black therapist Rorschach met in prison and inspired to follow in their The Anti-Nihilist footsteps.
• The DC Future State event is similar to the Marvel NOW! event from Marvel, with a bunch of longtime character mantles now taken over by a new, more diverse crop of characters:
  • The new Batman is Timothy "Jace" Fox, Luke Fox's brother (African-American).
  • The new Wonder Woman is a young Amazon from South America woman named Yara Flor.
  • The new Aquaman is Jackson Hyde/Kaldur'ahm (black and gay).
  • The new Flash is Jess Chambers from Earth-11 (black and genderfluid)

Films

Films

• In Catwoman (2004), African-American Patience Philips is established as the latest successor to the Catwoman name.
• One of the main characters in The Suicide Squad is Ratcatcher 2, the female successor of the original male Ratcatcher.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• Arrowverse
  • Arrow
    • The mantle of Green Arrow gets passed around a lot: Oliver Queen (white man) → John Diggle (black man) → Emiko Queen (Japanese woman) → Mia Queen (white girl)
      • Applies to Earth-16 that appears in Legends of Tomorrow and Crisis on Infinite Earths (2019): Oliver Queen (white man) → Connor Hawke (black man)
    • The mantle of the (Black) Canary gets passed around as well: Sara Lance (Bisexual white woman) → Laurel Lance (White woman) → Dinah Drake (Dominican woman) → Zoe Ramirez (Puerto Rican woman)
    • The title of Ra's Al Ghul, previously held by a man of unknown Asian ethinicty, is succeeded by Malcolm Merlyn (a white man) before being passed on to Nyssa Raatko (Asian woman)
  • The Flash (2014)
    • After Ronnie Raymond's Heroic Sacrifice, both the potential successors to his role as Firestorm are black. Jefferson Jackson goes on to serve more time as Firestorm than Raymond ever did, appearing in Legends of Tomorrow.
    • Season 9's first arc, "Rogue War", gives us the new Murmur who replaces Michael Amar (white man) with Michelle Amar (mute, black woman)
  • In season two of Batwoman, Ryan Wilder (black gay woman) replaces Kate Kane (white gay woman) in the title role.
    • On the villains' side in season 3, the new Poison Ivy is Mary Hamilton, an Asian woman, while the new Joker, Marquis Jet, is an African-American man.
• Stargirl (2020) revolves around the title character forming a new Justice Society of America after the originals are killed off by their archenemies. In addition to Stargirl herself (a teenage girl who uses the costume and staff of the deceased Starman), so far we have:
  • Yolanda Montez, a Latina girl who takes over the Wildcat identity from Ted Grant, a white male.
  • Beth Chapel, an African-American girl who takes over the Doctor Mid-Nite identity from Charles McNider, another white male.
  • On the villains' side, the new Fiddler is Anaya Bowin, a woman of Indian descent who is married to the original white male Fiddler.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• The Justice League featured in Batman Beyond has several examples of this. The new Green Lantern is a Tibetan teenager named Kai-ro and The Atom's successor is a black man known as Micron.
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold tends to use minority legacy heroes in favor of their predecessors, despite the show being primarily influenced by the Silver Age. The Jaime Reyes version of Blue Beetle, the Ryan Choi version of the Atom, and the Jason Rusch version of Firestorm are all used in major roles on the show. The only white legacy hero on the show is Dinah Lance, the second Black Canary (the first being her mother, whom she's named after), the two exceptions being the Vic Sage version of the Question rather than Renee Montoya, and B'wana Beast instead of Freedom Beast. Brave and the Bold is essentially Modern Age comics with a Silver Age flair. Note that the originals sometimes appear as well. For example, two entire Flashback episodes dealt specifically with Ted Kord (Blue Beetle II).
• The Batman had an entirely new character as the first Clayface; a black police officer named Ethan Bennett. Something of an inverse as well since the show established Basil Karlo (who was the first Clayface in the comics) as Bennett's successor.
• Young Justice (2010) has a meta example with Kaldur'ahm/Aqualad; however, in this continuity Garth never became Aqualad, instead going straight to his Tempest identity. The series also has Mal Duncan take on the Guardian identity after the original abandoned it, like his original comic book incarnation (see above). In this version, Mal was never Herald. We also have Jaime as the Blue Beetle, with his Caucasian forebears, Ted Kord and Dan Garrett, both mentioned.
  • In Outsiders, Kaldur becomes the second Aquaman succeding Arthur Curry.

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