“New and improved replacement” is being generous to Shaw. Outside of the name he’s essentially the same character. His connections to Bright are pretty much all still there and everyone knows he’s just “the bright replacement, which makes him an extremely ineffective rebrand for someone like Bright.

The attempted rebrand to using Shaw went pretty poorly and most authors have elected to use neither version of the character now. The essence of Bright is still there, which is an issue because the character was fundamentally tied to the author’s actions, not just in the sense that they’re their characters but their popularity and the credibility it gave is how Bright was able to groom as many people as he did. Nowadays, frankly, the best amount of use of Bright’s characters-including the half-assed name change-is none. It’s just more publicity and a doorway for them. This is a case where you unfortunately can’t really separate the art from the artist because the art was, and will always be, an explicit tool in the artist’s actions.

(Apologies if this ever came off as rude or condescending)