As I've found with all the WEB Griffin series that have new writers trying to continue the series need help. They start off making the characters completely different then in the previous books and tend to leave out some main characters as if they never existed.
For those who want to continue these series, you have to treat them as a brand new series not a continuation of WEB Griffins master pieces. Honestly it seems laziness on the other writers, like they couldn't even take the time to read the original series.