I think there's a perception that there is a deep break point around the time of CRISIS. And there certainly was a break between 1985-1995, as the Original Universe was handed over to "popular" writer/artists that for the overwhelming most part just didn't know what they were doing.
There was an aesthetic break, certainly, and I don't think anyone will argue against there being a division between the Bronze and Modern Age (though I generally tend to put the break a significant time before CRISIS, when it seemed that obnoxious, Conway, was writing EVERYTHING). And as Nightwing has pointed out, there certainly is an absolute, definite break for Superman, and the colossal mess that is HAWKWORLD, as well as for Wonder Woman, Captain Atom, and later for Richard Dragon under I believe, Dixon.
The thing is, though, "hard" reboots like the kind Superman and Hawkman got are truly, truly abnormal and RARE. They were rare then, in proportion, and rare now. Except for characters like Superman and Wonder Woman, most titles had their history intact, with a few details changed, coming out of Crisis.
For example, Sonar made appearances immediately in the two years after Crisis in the incredible Steve Englehart GREEN LANTERN CORPS, which referenced the first Fox/Kane appearance of Sonar and Modora in 1960. The most amusing use of Silver Age DC in Englehart's GL was the story where freaky bathroom sponge headed alien GL Salakk - NOT Hal Jordan - was brought to the future to become Pol Manning!
And this was barely a year or more after Crisis! So I don't think it's accurate to say that even for the majority of DC concepts, Crisis was a catastrophic break with history. Hell, NEW TEEN TITANS and LEGION were still continuing plot threads before, during and after Crisis as if it wasn't going on! It was a severe break with aesthetics, certainly...Green Arrow was doing very ugly and violent nonsense in that Grell series, and with Giffen writing the Justice League everyone came off as slightly mentally retarded, but still, GA and the League were being badly and inappropriately written...but the Ollie Queen in LONGBOW HUNTERS was still very much the Ollie that Elliot Maggin and Dennis O'Neil wrote about.
(Incidentally, a friend of mine, and fellow Englehart fan, had a conversation about which was the best work Stainless did at DC. There was his big trifecta, JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, GREEN LANTERN CORPS, and DETECTIVE COMICS, to say nothing of his minor stuff like his brief stint on MISTER MIRACLE).
As I said, "hard" reboots are not the norm and never really have been. The majority of DC titles went out of Crisis with histories a bit garbled (I'm not even going to go into the B.S. Giffen nonsense about Black Canary being a League founder right this frickin' second), but mostly intact.
This actually came up during a conversation in my comics store recently where I argued that the Legion can't survive without a connection to Superboy: the fact is, they haven't: sans Superboy, the Legion has had four reimaginings: the Giffen Legion, the SW6 Legion, the Waid Legion, and the Peyer Legion. Two of these are "hard" reboots. One "hard" reboot is absurdly rare; two are absolutely, totally unprecedented in all of comics history; the only other person I can think of that's gotten two is Captain Marvel.
Why is it important if a character is not "hard" rebooted? If a character is not "hard" rebooted, it means that their past can be drawn on to create future stories. It means that character is a continuation, and something that has a past to draw on, even a brief one, is stronger than a character without this.
In other words, the contemporary Hal Jordan is the same Hal Jordan that was put on a sham trial by the Manhunters for destroying a planet (in Steve Englehart's 1977 JLA run), the same one that fought intelligent Gila Monsters in the 57th Century (in the Kane/Fox GL), the same one that teamed up with first Barry Allen (in BRAVE AND THE BOLD) and later Green Arrow (in the O'Neil book).
For some folks, digging up fossils is a bore and photographing wildlife is a thrill. For others, the fossils are the height of excitement and the last thing they'd ever want to do is be in the company of a smelly, dangerous animal. Count me among those who prefer the musty scent of old bones to the stench of fresh spoor.
I'm not saying AT ALL that new books are intrinsically superior to old ones by virtue of the fact they're new (far from it, in fact, considering all the crap on the spinner rack, and the depressing fact that Warren Ellis is writing comics instead of riveting girders at a steel mill in Dublin like he should be).
What I am saying is that there is a great deal of appeal in the idea that there's an answer to the question, "what's going on in the DC Universe RIGHT NOW?"
As I said with my pulp comparison, we just don't know what the Shadow and Tarzan and Doc Savage are doing right now, and there's no way anyone could give us an answer that would be anything more than speculation, because their stories are DONE. They could be alive and well, they could be dead, they could have children and their children are fighting evil...who knows?
At best, these perversions, adaptions, pastiches, and outright plagiarisms of themes, plots, entire stories and characters can elicit a knowing smile of a flash of recognition from older readers and younger archaeologists. At worst, they only make us sad, angry, and nostalgic for a vanished world.
I think you're right to be angry with creators for mischaracterizations that make a character feel like lookalike dopplegangers, and believe me, I sympathize. The spunky Black Canary that refused to go back to Earth-2 so she could be with the man she loves back in the Satellite years, would NOT have had happen to her what happened to her in Grell's LONGBOW HUNTERS.
Still, to paraphrase an American politician, I don't think there's anything wrong with DC continuity (there's that oxymoron again) that cannot be fixed with what is RIGHT with DC continuity. Dinah's still the tough bird she was in the Satellite Years and in that Alan Brennert 1986 SECRET ORIGINS issue...she's had some bad stories, but she's a superhero, she can handle it; she fought the Lord of Time with Elongated Man. She just needs a good writer to write her correctly, that's all (which she's gotten in the person of the incredible Gail Simone).
Anyway, despite not liking my examples, I hope you understood what I was saying.
I see what you're saying, and for the most part I think you're right...however, there's a difference between having a solid, plausible and altruistic personality type that can exist, and being fully three dimensional.
This by the way, is not meant as a slam to the "serve and protect" white male DC heroes of the 1950s to mid 1960s. The emphasis of the writers was on plot, not characterization and what they created was extraordinary.
I don't know the Kang/Grandmaster comic, but that's a clever story, and a tragedy.
Yeah, you can't go wrong with Roy the Boy. What a pro! His Superman and Legion stories are brief, almost fill-in arcs, but they were interesting. The Reflecto story in LEGION (which undid the Conway nonsense about Superboy never returning), the "Fortress of Fear" tale, that one where he time travels...
If you want to read it, boy, do you ever have options! Want it in black and white and cheap? It's reprinted in ESSENTIAL AVENGERS VOL. 4. If you want it in color, it's in the KANG: TIME AND TIME AGAIN trade, which has a great Lee/Kirby story featuring the Growing Man and the definitive Roger Stern Kang tale, too. It was reprinted in MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION too...
The idea that this story has been deservedly reprinted while Stainless Steve's JLA run has never been, however, strikes me as monstrously unfair.
I think they are definitely superheroes as we would define them today. How are they not? Costumed vigilantes with a more-or-less pro-social/moral mission (however erroneously applied or arrived at), special powers, abilities or tools. Of course, we come to realize that they are all very troubled people and that even with arguably the best of intentions many of them eventually transform themselves into what would be considered villains in a more traditional superhero melodrama. This is the story the book tells but it does not negate what they are, at least as we experience them initially.
The characterizations in WATCHMEN are meant to make the characters as deliberately unseemly as possible; they're superheroes in a very general sense. There's a definite vibe that even Moore himself didn't want us to like the characters. Night Owl looked like a shy, introverted hero type not unlike Wonder Man without major disfunctions, but then...BAM! There's that creepy, creepy scene where he can't have sex without wearing his superhero costume to bed.
Once you get past this, and understand it, is it possible to enjoy the series.