if given the job of EIC, what would YOU do?

[anarky]

Wait until I go to the other site and dig up my story idea from 1996 about Professor X's previously unknown sister destroying Genosha, supposedly killing Magneto, who then pretends to be a professor at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters; he keeps the secret by saying he can't take off this helmet he wears or it will kill everyone.

[Rollo Tomassi]

As I went back and read the other posts on the first couple pages, its getting very creepy.

Anarky mentioned Superman dealing with "real world" problems like guys who smack their kids around. And he mentioned the world forgetting Wonder Woman entirely. Both of those are pretty much what JMS started in Superman and Wonder Woman a few months ago.

And Diabolical mentioned a PunisherMAX story with toned down more realistic Kingpin and Bullseye. Well guess what story line is happening in PunisherMAX for the past five issues?

So now we know Grant Morrison, J Michael Straczynski, and Jason Aaron troll our boards stealing ideas.

PS. And Chux also mentioned the Punisher using other heroes' powers to fight villains. Which is something Remender did early in his Punisher run, before the stupid fucking FrankenCastle shit. ( ) AND Bendis is doing something similar with Moon Knight in his revamp this summer. So Morrison told JMS, who told Bendis, who told Aaron and Remender. My god, its spreading like a sewing circle.

I've been throwing ideas out in that 'secret' area, but now I kinda just want to start tossing ideas back out here just to see what writers are coming here and nibbling.

[anarky]

In fairness to the more famous people stealing our ideas, they fucked up on Superman.

I'd want to tell a story where Superman deals with real world problems, but gets himself in trouble doing it because it's not his arena. There was an episode of the Justice League cartoon that summed up Superman nicely: every single thing he does, he has to severely hold himself back. What if he sees something that makes him lose that control?

[Rollo Tomassi]

Here's an idea for a book.

Savage Land
Ka-Zar can't carry his own book. At least for any length of time. But if you throw enough contrary ideas into one locale (such as the titular title of the book) it opens up story possibilities. So here's the idea.

The Nexus of All Realities (which is currently somewhere in the Florida Everglades accorind to the Man-Thing books) shifts its position to Savage Land, thus enabling all manner of alternate reality characters like The Exiles, Squadron Supreme, perhaps Ultimates, etc etc to guest star in the book. And you can have Man-Thing running around as well.

Discovering this new Nexus as a potential research point, Project PEGASUS (whose previous headquarters in upstate New York was destroyed in the Nova series during the Skrull Invasion) moves to the Savage Land.

At the same time, through nefarious backdoor dealings, the Roxxon Corporation is awarded the exclusive mining rights to Antarctic Vibranium (now that all the Wakandan Vibranium was destroyed by T'Challa during the DoomWar miniseries). So Roxxon moves into Magento's old lair and sets it up as their new base of operations.

And lastly, you have the indiginous population, both Ka-Zar's people, and the Savage Land Mutates, who have a uneasy truce being suspicious by these two new groups moving in (Pegasus and Roxxon).

And of course you always have dinosaurs, which are always good for mixing it up with some healthy drama.

Now of course, Roxxon is forever up to no good, and their reasons for being in the Savage Land are probably nefarious. They have ties to Hydra, and AIM, and other criminal enterprises like Ultimatum. And they're looking to exploit the Nexus somehow, in addition to the vibranium. So there's always this underlying theme of corparate espionage, politics of morality and ethics between Pegasus and Roxxon, with KaZar's people caught in the middle, possible duplicity by certain Mutates backing Roxxon and the threat of inter-dimensional invasion always on everyone's minds.

And one of the supporting players would be a certain feral adolescent (probably in his early tween/teens), who is NEVER directly acknowledged as the child of a certain mutant posterboy, but for whomever is studied in Marvel Continuity minutiea, its pretty clear who the kid is.

I'd just toss all the ingredients into the pot and watch the fireworks. If anyone at Marvel is reading. Next I'll come up with a DC idea.

[Rollo Tomassi]

The next time there's a big funeral scene with a bunch of heroes mourning the loss of the death dujour, have some hero be noticeably absent. And then later on, have somebody confront them about not being there, and have the absent person be all 'pfft. That guy'll be back in six months. My time was better spent getting Buffalo Wings down at Hooters and watching hockey.'

[Rollo Tomassi]

I had another crazy idea. I seem to remember that Toyfare Magazine had offered an exclusive figure of an Iron Man villain named Aegis or something like that. He was supposed to be some big cosmic baddie that was gonna be part of a crossover that never materialized. And since that book never happened, the figure was never produced. I'm trying to find a pic of the prototype. Anyway. My story idea is this.

This big non-existent uber villain from the 90s shows up and he's totally pissed and attacking the Avengers and specifically Iron Man vowing revenge. And nobody knows who the fuck this guy is or where he came from. Turns out he HAD attacked them back in the 90s, but that story (and the character) got retconned out of existence by timetravel or some reason. So nobody remembered him. And now he's back (through some equally contrived deux ex machina) and he's a new A-list Super villain along the lines of Thanos or Apocalypse. Then, Marvel releases a mini series, thats done in the style of the 90s excess with foil hologram covers of what happened before. It'd be like a kitschy retro "Event" homage/spoof. I just thought it'd be clever and metatextual to reference an event that never happened, by retroactively making it happen.

EDIT His name was Dark Aegis. I guess he only showed up in the 90's Iron Man Cartoon and did have a barely produced figure in that line's fifth and final wave.

[anarky]

He was retconned out of existence as a result of One More Day.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Here's an Elsworlds type story I just thought up (its off the top of my head). What if Batman had managed to prevent the Red Hood from falling into the vat of chemicals? In more than one of the Joker's "origins" (and I realize that he multiple versions since he's crazy and any or none of them could be valid) he was just a regular guy in a bind who was made to wear the Red Hood identity to get out of debt or protect his family or whatever. So if Batman had "saved" him as it were, and then the Red Hood (whom we'll call Jack for the purposes of this topic) had in turn told him what the deal behind the Red Hood was and Batman in turn saved Jack's family, he'd probably be pretty greatful. And Jack, as it turns out, is a genius. I mean, the Joker for all his twistedness, is an uber genius. So know Batman has this greatful genius in his corner, potentially his greatest ally in the war on crime. I think that would be an interesting starting point for an alternate reality tale. You could go in a lot of different directions from there. Batman dies and Jack takes over. Events unfold slightly different where Dick Grayson becomes a villain called Nightwing. His parents are murdered the same as before, but Bruce isn't there in the same capacity and Dick's vengeance festers into something dark. Jason Todd becomes the first Robin. Jack, being less altruistic than Bruce would have been is better equipped to deal with and redirect Jason's fury and outrage. Tim Drake becomes an evil Robin to Dick Grayson's Nightwing, owing to the fact he idolized Grayson as a child. So the finale is a showdown between the ironic team of Jack and Jason as Batman and Robin, against Dick and Tim. I just don't have a compelling ending. Maybe Dick mortally wounds Jack, and before he dies he explains how the original Batman came to be, because of the death of his parents, which mirrors Dick's own tragedy, and he in turn takes up the mantle from Jack. I dunno. Some suggestions.

[anarky]

Holy shit, Rollo, you've had some good ideas, but that one may be the greatest. No shit.

The trick would be to not fuck around with too much. Too many DC Elseworlds try to change up everything. You'd have to assume most of Year One went down like Frank Miller wrote it, which I believe is still the canon. The only difference is that, at some point (later in the year, maybe around month seven or eight, since the story originally ends with a plot by "some guy calling himself the Joker," IIRC, and we've got to assume he had a few months to recover physically from falling in the acid), Jack Napier doesn't become the Joker. Anything else that happens in the first year has to go down exactly the same, or be different as a direct result of Jack being involved in Batman's life.

I'd alter Two-Face. I don't recall when he became Two-Face, but it wasn't in Year One. I think Year Two. His story could've gone down differently due to Jack's involvement, and he doesn't become Two-Face. I only mention changing him because Two-Face is sort of an all-purpose Robin villain, particularly for Dick and Jason.

Maybe, somehow, Harvey Dent takes Dick Grayson under his wing, which results in Dick becoming the evil Nightwing. And the crazy side of his personality comes out as a result, without him ever being scarred.

Catwoman and Hugo Strange, obviously, were established in Year One (and spinoffs that took place concurrent to Year One). The Graysons are killed near the beginning of Year Three. Joe Chill appears (and dies?) in Year Two. I only bring him up because somehow I'm thinking he could be important, as he murdered the Waynes. I could see, without his insanity, Jack as a somewhat harsher Batman wouldn't take shit from guys like Mad Hatter and the Ventriloquist.

My real suggestion for the ending: earlier, Bruce Wayne is killed by a villain. A cool one, or maybe some street punk who would eventually become a cool villain in the DCU and becomes that villain earlier as a result of killing Bruce. As he's dying, Jack confesses that he withheld some vital info from Bruce, and, as a result, Bruce died. So we get a panel of him, bathed in white and green light, saying, "I confess! I killed the Batman!" Okay, that's not the ending itself.

You sure you're comfortable discussing this here? Grant might be trolling for more ideas.

[Diabolical]

It does sound like a great story.

If you went with the desperate Jack donning the Red Hood to help his family (and Batman later saving them) you'd need to include them throughout the story somehow, by either writing them out of the story or balancing Jack with his family and his work with Batman.

I think there would need to be some hint of the Joker in Jack's persona. Nothing twisted or devious, just enough for us to recognize that Jack is the same guy that would have been Joker. A sense of humor, playing cards, wearing something purple, etc.

I'd also like to a ripple effect of things that never happened because Joker wasn't around.
For example, Harley's life would have been drastically different with out Joker. All that would be needed would be a panel of her working Arkham.

[anarky]

I thought the same about Harley, but didn't bring it up. I was trying to think of other "ripple effects." Barbara Gordon would never be crippled. Anarky would never exist (if he's important enough to be in the story anyway--I'm not going to pretend he would be). Mr. Freeze would never die, though that's much later and doesn't matter since I don't think he stayed dead even for a full year.

Maybe, since it sounds like the story'd go more or less by the Killing Joke origin, Jack cracks jokes. Maybe he actually briefly becomes a vigilante of sorts, wearing the Joker outfit.

[anarky]

BTW, if I remember my Killing Joke properly, Jack is a scientist who quits to become a comedian, then his wife gets pregnant and he gets roped into breaking into the plant where he once worked. He's supposed to be in disguise (though I got the impression the folks behind the burglary were making him into an obvious scapegoat by putting him in a costume), and finds out immediately beforehand that his wife and unborn child have died, but he can't get out of doing the heist.

So the family would actually be a non-issue. Jack could even blame the mobsters for killing his wife and kid.

[Rollo Tomassi]

Riffing on jj's idea. They find out Susie is a Skrull when the Hulk KILLS her in retaliation for the Illuminati killing his wife (eye for an eye mentality).


I think the X-Crap trimming down to one or two books is a good idea, but how about this. Since there are only a few hundred mutants left, have two teams, but with different sets of ideals and goals. Since Professor X has pretty much become a douche in the past few years, you could tweak that and ramp it up very slightly while at the same time toning down Magneto's megalomania. Still make him the hard ass, and Xavier the softie but since they are on the edge of extinction, Magneto's ideals are looking better to a lot of mutants. And if a bunch of the X-men defect, they would temper Magneto even more.

So you have two teams who aren't entirely right or wrong, but with differing viewpoints at odds with one another. It would mix up the teams ( good guys and bad guys working together now) and have a lot of conflict between long standing teammates who came down on different sides ( much like the New and Mighty Avengers/Civil War). And conflict is always good for story.

Seriously, Marvel. Seriously. Quit cribbing my shit.

Replace Xavier and Magneto with Scott and Logan, and you have Marvel's post Schism X-Books.

Seriously. Look you assholes, I'm unemployed right now. All I'm asking is that you login and send me a PM and offer me a job as an assistant Editor.

[Rollo Tomassi]

CSBG over at CBR had a cool topic this morning. Playing their version of whatMarvel's 52 Titles would be. I thought it would be fun to do something similar here. There were also some cool and clever ideas bandied about by the guys in the CSBG replies. Like somebody came up with the name The Mysterious X-Men which I absolutely love. (Some cat named Ritchard had a couple of clever ideas....)

[anarky]

You'd think that fellow was reading some of our shit, wouldn't you?

I noticed quite a bit of love for ROM. If Marvel had any sense, they'd look into buying the property outright. It was only ever popular as a comic book, and it's still so beloved thirty years later that they work the character into current series by never mentioning his name.