While you do grow with your audience, ideally at the same time you also introduce new things for younger audiences to connect themselves to. That way, as time moves on, when the older audience begins to wane you have the new content with its audience to focus and expand upon. Like if this was done in comic books, while Bruce Wayne would be the original Batman there would then probably be a legacy of Robins who became Batman (and eventually get a Robin or two of their own who may pick up the mantel).
Which would be a better story (and in fact
is what happened, there's been 5 different Robins) as opposed to the stagnation the comics currently have
and before someone goes "hey I'm a big Batman fan" let me ask you, when is the last time you read a Batman comic? not a cartoon, not a movie,
a comic
back in the day comics where all ages and when forced to go kids only Marvel found a way to keep them all ages anyway, they used to sell a ton, comics where a huge part of pop culture
then the 80s happened and comics where "mature" and by the mid nineties the industry was
dying; comics and cartoons keep superheroes going but by and large comics are
dead
and that's for two reasons:
1 endless appeal to nostalgia (marketing to kids as if it was still the 50s
you killed you own franchises Harvey) and
2 "growing up with your audience"; Superman, Wonder Woman, the Fantastic Four among many others lost their supporting characters (which in cases like Superman even held their own series before), their story direction and of course their sales by ignoring children and trying to cater to adults
appealing to nostalgia kills franchises, you may think it "pays off" but that's only in the short term,
the very short term, just look at Mega Man
sure Mega Man 9 sold a lot but lets look at the franchise before that
ever since
1987 we had at least 1 yearly release, whether it be the classic series, the X series, the Zero series, Battle Network, you could always count on a Mega Man game every year, every other year if times where lean
then Mega Man 9 happened and it was a nostalgia fest and the mainstream press picked it up and the Capcom released Mega Man 10 and
no
one
bought
it
I mean yes the fans bought it but after Mega Man 10 (
another nostalgia fest for those who don't know) the whole franchise went abandoned for over 8 years
nostalgia kills
as for franchises that try to appeal to older audiences at the expense of kids just look at Bomberman Zero
The best thing you can do with a franchise is to appeal to all ages, but if you can't do that appeal to kids
never rely on nostalgia, never abandon the children demographic
children are the future
fuck the guy that says "I'm a 20 something year old now how does this franchise appeal to
me"
that guy?
fuck him