Why does this have to be a story? Why not just have a press release that says: "This continuity shit is fucked, we're done," and just have your restart right away without inflicting another goddamn crossover event, quite possibly the worst crossover event ever, on your audience?

I assume you refer to Jaime Reyes, and therefore also that you are everything that is wrong with comics.

I mean, let's leave aside your flawed assumption that Jaime cannot possibly live at the same time as Ted, and go with this:

In this corner, we have Ted Kord, a character first introduced in 1966, who survived the death of his originating publisher. His story has, for better or for worse, been told over the course of thirty nine years! Aaand in this corner, we have Jaime Reyes, the new guy, who has existed for less than two years. One can live, one must die! And clearly, Ted is the one who's got more juice left in him, 'cos he's a fresh character and Jaime's had all the story squeezed out of him OH WAIT.

I mean, if Jaime had turned out to be some kind of awful racist caricature of Mexicans instead of being totally awesome like he is, I would see the need to sweep him under the rug. But as it is I don't see any reason to follow your advice except "Blue Beetle should be the way he was in the Good Ol' Days."

No, I just like my James Beetle idea...I guess we don't have to kill Jamie. He can, uh...he can stay.

EDIT: Actually yeah, you're right. I just really wanted the old Ted back and I didn't really think about freshness of character. Fair cop.

EDIT 2: But can we all agree that All-New Atom is bad?

I think were I ever to do a full-scale universe reboot I think instead of yet another depressing story about evil winning I would pretty much do the opposite of Mac's thing. Just do like a year of non-stop happy endings, reconciliation, tying up loose plot threads, villains being defeated once and for all, redeemable villains being redeemed, all that kind of thing. Tie the whole thing off with a "Hey, thanks for reading, guys!" and start the whole universe over from there.

Every comics fan thinks that every other comics fan is what's wrong with comics. Indeed, some people might argue that people cheering a long-time popular character getting shot in the head, subsequently getting replaced by Random Teenager Who Has Nothing To Do With Anything - in maybe the ten millionth example of that plot-device being used - are Everything That's Wrong With Comics. Heck if the Blue Beetle is in fact so beaten to death as a concept, would it kill them to just, like, create an actually new character? Jamie Whasisface walks into his backyard and finds a glowing cricket and so becomes the Green Grasshopper; that would have been so hard? It's not like every significant element of the character hasn't been replaced with generic Invasion of the Body Snatchers evil-aliens shennanigans, there's nothing there that required one of the last few honest to goodness Science Superheroes to get shot in the head so the ten millionth teenager could walk into his backyard or into the woods or into the alley behind a bar and go "i can haz superpowe rs! ololol"

Character Rehab

Captain America
OK, he's dead. And Bucky, who was dead, is now the new Captain America. Let's leave Rogers dead this time. Bucky can go do the Captain America thing on the Avengers. But for a Captain America monthly title, let's go back in time. As a community outreach project, Captain Bucky has storytime with urban youths at a local library. There, he tells the kids stories about how Captain America, the other one, once punched Hitler in the face. Or stories about Cap's stint as Nomad, Man Without A Country, and how Nomad slammed his shoe on Khrushchev's head.. Stories that inspire the ideals that Captain America stood for. The book shouldn't rehash past stories exactly, and using Bucky as a narrator gives you the license to ignore continuity if you have to sometimes.

Superman
OK, it's easy to deconstruct Superman. I'd like to see a reconstruction project like the story I've been tossing around my head. You know the conflict isn't whether Superman can beat the Toyman. The conflict is how much Supes agrees with the Toyman's motive, if not his methods. You don't defeat Lex with an uppercut; you need to somehow stop his plans.

The Justice League
My ex-roommate always had an idea of doing the Fall of the Justice League like the fall of Arthur's Knights, with Superman as Arthur, Lois as Guinevere, and Batman as Lancelot. I just think the JLA needs to be scaled back. Bats isn't a team player. This alliance should be an epic event, maybe the yearly Crisis. Not a monthly issue.

Multiverses
As I said before, I'd license the 52 and the 616 out to various head writers and fuck continuity. They can deal with the continuity they want to deal with, and if Frank Millar wants to make Wonder Woman a whore while Batman calls people retarded, he can totally do that in his own corner of the 52.

fifth, the big problem I have with your superman idea is that nothing about that says "SUPERMAN!!" it's a cool potential idea for a new superhero, but not necessarily a superman thing,. so, heeeeere we go!

Superman: I love the DCAU, so he needs to borrow from that, kill all the "God" noise(the wank) he's super strong, like throw tanks strong, but not crazy, cant move a planet(There's you're "Humanizing element", he's got freaking limits) he's just this really nice guy who geniuinely wants to help people, real deal Big blue boyscout. Primarily I want him saving people, because he's a "superhero" not a "vigilante" he is always concerned with saving the world less with fighting evil, his beef with Lex Luthor is He's always putting people in danger, less cause he's a jerk.

Batman: I always pictured him as more a vigilante than superhero, he saves people because he can't stand to see innocents die,due to his personal issues, he wants to catch the badguy more, but saving the hostage tied to the bomb is his choice because it would give him flashbacks of his own trauma, or because it would give the villian pleasure if batman does something "evil" and batman WILL NOT let the badguy win.He does'nt kill because he won't be like them, he probably supports the death penalty, but he won't kill someone himself, he hates criminals and villians that much.
"Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot" are not the words of a guy who wants to help people for the sake of helping people. He's smart, a detective, and a psuedo ninja rolled in one, but he simply can't do the impossible, he can't outfight someone who is stronger than him, so he outsmarts them, but at the same time, since he can't think faster then the Flash moves, he can't use his wits against insanely insurmountable odds, I'm sick of all that " thirty minutes of preptime" fanwank mess.
and that's why robin's there,

Robin is once again, the contrast to Batman, Batman is focused on getting the badguy, because the badguy who killed his parents got away, whether or not he get's caught in bat's life time is up for grabs. Robin's parent's murderer on the other hand was captured by batman, robin is more struck by the loss of his parents, he wanted to save them, he wants to save everyone. He wants to save people more than beat up criminals, maybe because he lived a harder life than bruce, met some shoplifters in his travels as a circus kid, understands that not all criminals are evil, whereas, bats was always a rich kid who saw criminals as pure badguys. Bruce has him along because it's impossible for him to do everything, and being a genius, he realizes this. plus the whole protege, lost family, "just like me when I was your age "schtick

Wolverine: keep the claws, because wolverine without his claws is like Cap withought his sheild, spidey withought his web-shooters, or supes without his cape, it's his primary power and major visual fetish.
But make it obvious that an unbreakable knife is not nearly as cool as people seem to think it is. In other words if his hands are tied away from each other, he's farking screwed, tone down the healing factor, keep him restricted to the X-men and their world. He's a member of their team, he needs to stay there, he works as the unstable guy on the x-men. Make him less an ultimate strategist and fighter and more a crazy-ass dude who will try to rush the hulk, then get his ass handed to him. Wolverine sometimes gets played as batman currently is, able to take on anyone, because he's "the best at what I do" No wolverine, you don't have connections everywhere, you can't beat anyone at chess, you can't stealthily track anyone with super advanced surveilance tech or super-human senses, or pretty much anyone skilled at anti-tracking maneuvers, and it's possible for people to sneak up on you.

Spider-man: I like spidey's old way, where most of his parker drama came from keeping his secret, and less from aunt may or mary-jane being in threat of space-rape or some nonsense. The majority of Spider-man's Peter Parker issues should come from the results of him not taking part in the normal world, because he's dealing with spider-man stuff. Make him outsmart his villians, not in an L sorta way, but in the trickster archetype way he used to do, figuring out the flaws in his opponents as he fights them, I.e.
you've got electric powers? here's a convieniently placed water hose for me to spray you with. You can fly on a mechanical glider, throw explosives, and have super strength on par with mine? okay, web-up your gliders exhaust, you can't fly any more, jump around over head while your waste your bombs throwing them in the air, then jump down and get in a dodge happy fight with you, because you don't have a spider-sense. No more of that Van-damme, "get my ass handed to me, then get my second wind and just beat you up" stuff. Make the spider-sense more of an actual power, because one third of the time we get "I dodged that bullet thanks to my spider-sense, and plot necessitated villian death" and two thirds of the time we get "oh, my spider sense is-OW! CRAP GET OFF ME!" mechanical web-shooters, yeah, i know young, single Peter parker who's just outta high school is "classic" but it's been too long, he's a grown man now. He's in his mid to late twenties, living with mary jane, his aunt may and mary jane both know he's spidey, ut the world does'nt, so he has to deal with that. Works at the bugle, taking pictures of spider-man, and all that jazz.

Isn't this pretty much what they do now? Goddamn Batman isn't in mainline continuity or anything, and past that it doesn't really matter whether it's somewhere in DC's multiverse or just its own standalone (utterly shittacular) thing.

I find this funny as the core of my idea is "rip-off the fuck out of Action Comics #1."

I mean I acknowledge that my idea won't say "Superman" to anyone who's read Superman as he's been written for the last, say, fifty years. I just think that this is because Superman has been completely miswritten for basically the entirety of the last fifty years.

I think this actually gets at my main interest in getting rid of them. Cut the superficial visual crap out of the character, and it might actually force somebody to actually poke at whatever actual substance there is to him, past all the SNIKT BUB SNIKT BUB SNIKT crap. I mean hell he is a samurai and a special-ops dude and all that crap right? Wouldn't cool to make him actually use some of that for a change, instead of going up to every group of random thugs and being like "HAY U IS LAMERZ CUZ I ARE SPECIAL OPS SAMURAI DOOD, SNIKT BUB SNIKT BUB SNIKT BUB SNIKT SNIKT SNIKT."

I dunno, possibly I'm just sick of the "Wolverine has claws, therefore he can totally fight the Hulk" that you get in his comics these days, and the claws seem to be the major centerpiece of that attitude. So toss 'em, says I.

It's the X-Men! Visual crap isn't superficial.

My mind is boggled that in that roughly appropriate picture, you'd zero in on the iconic 'SNIKT' and not on the flotsam, trendy bullshit like 'samurai d00d.'

The claws aren't that much of a crutch if they had to throw in so much over the years to avoid going deeper.

I always though ditching Wolverines calws and making his hands claw like would be kinda neat.

That would be Lady Deathstroke.

Or Sabertooth as they both had them, just her's extended.

Really what gets me about the claws in general is they seem to be sharp enough to seamlessly cleave through just about anything. While I have no issue with Adamantine being the end-all of crazy super metals, I dislike how it gets to also cut through everything like butter. Let's at least the laws of friction and such affect Wolverine's claws would go a long way to making them more "down to earth" as it were. Plus I never saw him in my mind as being physically strong enough to drive metal claws through a lower grade solid steel door or a Sentinel. It just seemed kinda silly.