That is what businesses do. Lets step away from comics for a moment.
No.
This isn't about profit......
Well, not short term profit anyway. Mediocrity can only be so profitable.
You obviously have never heard of the auteur of mediocrity, Michael Bay.
Originality, on the other hand, is a long term investment. And a new character doesn't have to be like an older, already successful character, to sell well.
You're talking about originality with a character that was made to be the female Conan.
Two things that I'm aware of are notorious for breeding mediocrity. The first one's novelty, and the second one's repetition. Both might ensure a steady stream of profit for a relatively decent amount of time. But that won't maximize profits, nor will it promote quality.
Let me introduce you to this thing called 'comic books'.
You and Dave apparently skipped this:
Both might ensure a steady stream of profit for a relatively decent amount of time. But that won't maximize profits, nor will it promote quality.
Mediocrity is useful, but it's certainly not ideal. As such more profit could be made that simply isn't.
Well, that wipes out most pop culture. And as someone who deals in stolen ideas for a living, it strikes me that most commercial success is built on the back of a tried and true method. (Which is why when Gaiman did Sandman it was a crashing success - "crashing" as in the noise, because it was genuinely original and no one had really thought of doing a moody fantasy piece aimed at literati and, by accident, broadening the genre.)
William Gibson's Neuromancer is leaps to mind in this regard. Cyberpunk? Already well explored even by 1983. Bad girl with knives? Done since Hitchcock's Vertigo, and the aforementioned Red Sonja, if not before (gun molls in the 1930s?). AIs? Really well explored in the Golden Age of Science Fiction with Asimov. But Gibson used some snappy writing, fused some well explored concepts together, blatantly stole themes form his friend Bruce Sterling, and as a result won two big literary prizes, made millions of dollars, and fueled his career for the next 30 years with one of the most well-known science fiction novels ever. There's not much originality in it though.
I'm not totally sure what to call this argument, but it overstates my position. Most of these examples just refer to popular genres. Not necessarily recycled tropes that permeate media across the spectrum of film and literature classifications.
