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Sounds great! I particularly like the connection between Bolivar Trask and Weapon X — I think it's a good way to combine two of the most notable anti-mutant conspiracies of the X-Men.
On that note, I was thinking of ways to connect the Sentinels to other events in Marvel Comics. I was thinking that the Sentinels would be produced by Tony Stark during Civil War, which would also include the mutants in this universe. Tony is unaware of any anti-mutant conspiracies in the government, instead believing that the Sentinels will serve as "a suit of armor around the world", and (with the help of Dr. Henry Pym) develops an A.I. that will control the Sentinels — Ultron. However, Weapon X secretly programs Ultron with anti-superhuman protocols under Tony's nose, and Ultron and the Sentinels go rogue due to a combination of contradictory programming (they have to protect humans from superhumans, but superhumans are also human, so they have to protect humanity from itself) and being based on Tony and Henry Pym's minds (as both are notoriously unstable individuals).
Well, what do you think?
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.
Disciple of Woolsey
I actually would prefer if Ultron came about post-the formation of the Avengers. Not sure how I would remake his origin, though. It's kind of goofy? He's your archetypal A.I. Is a Crapshoot B-Movie monster.
But on that note, since Tony does have a past creating weapons of war, we could tie the sentinels to his backstory. The government approaches Tony after Trask's death, and asks him to build the Sentinels, neglecting to tell him they plan to use them to hunt mutants. Tony is happy about it, thinking they'll be a great advertisement for Stark Industries and also reduce casualties in wars by being so much more effective than everything else. The goverment subcontracts the programming of the sentinels to someone else to add the mutant-sensing capabilities in, except of course, that person (whoever they are, TBA. Obadiah Stane?) is not nearly as smart as Stark. So, when Tony goes to Foreign Country That Has A Beef With The States At This Moment In Time (Also TBA) to showcase their capabilities, the sentinels begin detecting all the people present as mutants and killing them. Tony sends a kill-signal to all the sentinels in time to prevent them from just slaughtering everyone, and stays around the place so he can check their programming for what went wrong. Of course, the populace there is none too pleased with the fact the United States is sending murder machines to their country and the fact that their inventor is right there, acting like he did nothing wrong. Then, some of them get the bright idea that this same inventor could be useful to make weapons of war against the states... of course, this leads to the inevitable: Tony gets ambushed by terrorists (getting shot in the heart in the process), is forced to work for them, meets Yin Sen (whose name will probably have to be adapted depending on where Foreign Country is), and they come up with the plan to create the first Iron Man armor in a cave, from... you know.
You know what, actually, let's make the Foreign Country Latveria instead. The middle east thing is getting really old, and it'd be a good way to make the 'Verse more cohesive.
Edited by DBZfan102 on Sep 1st 2020 at 4:56:54 PM
"I think if you're capable of entertaining people, then you are doing a good thing. - Stan Lee
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
It's a little different, but I once had the idea of connecting the X-men to the Spider Slayers.
The idea is that the slayers were actually created as prototypes to the Sentinels, with their ability to track him then being re-purposed for Mutants.
You could still do the Stark and Pym tie ins as well.
One Strip! One Strip!
Disciple of Woolsey
That could work. The Spider-Slayers' ability to sense Spider-People is very similar to what the sentinels have. And it's been established that they can tell the difference between mutants and mutates.
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
This actually gets me thinking about an old idea I had:
The X-gene is in everyone, but it doesn't always trigger so to speak.
So we have mutates, who got their powers through random accidents or experiments or whatever.
What if all these mutates are simply people who artificially turned on their X-gene through these random accidents? It would explain a lot about how people get powers in the marvel universe.
One Strip! One Strip!
Disciple of Woolsey
Man, now you're making me nostalgic about Earth X.
Ever since then, that's been my headcanon for how superpowers work in the Marvel Universe. It was a brilliant little masterstroke.
Edited by DBZfan102 on Sep 1st 2020 at 5:14:09 AM
"I think if you're capable of entertaining people, then you are doing a good thing. - Stan Lee It certainly explains the more far-fetched origin stories with radiation as a source — after all, Bruce Banner, Matt Murdock and Peter Parker could all have had their latent X-Genes activated with the radiation being the catalyst. In fact, before the Immortal Hulk retconned Bruce's powers to be mystical, I believe that the in-universe explanation was in fact that he had some unknown genetic factor that allowed him to survive.
Although, I think that this explanation wouldn't work for the characters in the MU whose powers were deliberately engineered, not random mutation — Captain America, for example. Nonetheless, I think it would be nice for superheroes like Hulk or Daredevil to allay with the X-Men due to their shared mutant-dom.
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.Actually, on that note, should we decide whether to give characters like Hulk and Spider-Man their original "radioactive" origin stories and say the radiation was a catalyst for their mutant/Inhuman genes? Or should we go the Ultimate Marvel route and make their powers deliberately engineered, with Bruce Banner trying to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum (Ultimate Comics, Hulk, The Incredible Hulk) and Peter Parker being bitten by a modified super-spider (Ultimate Comics, Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Spectacular Spider-Man)?
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.
Also, I think "their mutant genes got activated by an outside force" was the canon explanation for Cloak and Dagger for a while, so it could definitely work for other characters.
Disciple of Woolsey
I think it'd actually be a good idea to try new things with these characters, since the Ultimate Universe already did the "Super-Soldier Serum meta-origin" thing and the 616 Universe is the main universe, so if we gave them the same origin stories, it'd be a little redundant. But I don't know how to remake them in a way that is novel without breaking what people like about the character. The Hulk in particular.
What if it was "Immortal Hulk: Day One"? Like if we took the early Hulk stories but actually used that retcon. That'd be a fresh take on the character, if the Hulk was magical in nature from the start. He wouldn't even have had to be born in a gamma bomb explosion in this version.
Edited by DBZfan102 on Sep 1st 2020 at 7:31:06 AM
"I think if you're capable of entertaining people, then you are doing a good thing. - Stan LeeHow about combining Hulk's origin with that of Man-Thing? Bruce Banner is a researcher at a military base trying to develop a serum that would allow human beings to survive radiological/biological/chemical warfare, basing his research off of the Vita-Ray/Super-Soldier Serum treatment that Steve Rogers went through. However, A.I.M. agents steal a sample of the serum, and activate the base's nuclear self-destruct mechanism.
With no way to escape the base in time, the base personnel have to shut down the self-destruct, but the mechanism is emitting lethal levels of gamma radiation, making it a suicide mission for anyone to disarm it. Bruce realizes that the serum he made might protect against the radiation, but the serum is still untested — thus, in order not to risk anyone else's life, Bruce injects himself with the serum, and disarms the mechanism. However, unbeknown to Bruce, the combination of the radiation and the serum has made him a ticking time bomb, set to go off the next time he gets angry...
Also, maybe put something in about Bruce's dad experimenting on him and giving him an X-Gene. You know, if you want.
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
For Peter you could mix and match the Genetically altered Spider with the Radioactive Spider.
Or you could create a new energy source to explain why the radiation not only didn't kill the spider, but gave Peter powers instead.
One Strip! One Strip! Oooh, idea! What if after Bruce Banner becomes the Hulk, Oscorp appropriates his research and tries to improve the serum, using spiders as the test subjects? One of these spiders, injected with the serum and irradiated with gamma radiation, escapes and bites Peter Parker, who (thanks to the bite transmitting the serum to him in a diluted form) develops superhuman abilities. Meanwhile, Oscorp head Norman Osborn injects himself with the improved serum, which gives him green skin, superhuman strength and agility, and a split personality to boot...
Actually, speaking of Neogenics, what if this universe uses the term to refer to any means of giving humans superpowers — radiation, chemistry, mutation, genegineering et cetera? Basically like the science of superpowers.
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.
Disciple of Woolsey
I vaguely recall reading somewhere people discussing retroviruses, and how their ability to alter the genome of the infectee could be used to explain how the spider-bite could have given spider-powers and abilities to Peter. After all, radiation and super-serums really shouldn't make an organism's biological traits infectious. What if Oscorp was developing one as a bioweapon, a virus able to adapt the genome of its host into itself and then pass those traits on to another host?
I mean, that would definitely still kill you in real life due to damaging your chromosomes and stuff, but hey.
"I think if you're capable of entertaining people, then you are doing a good thing. - Stan Lee Well, I never really thought that the spider that bit Peter 'infected' him with its spider genes/biology. To me, it doesn't seem that Spider-Man possesses "the proportionate strength as a spider", as he puts it — his powers (super-strength, super-reflexes, super-endurance, and a precognitive sense) seem pretty unrelated to anything possessed by spiders (except in the Spider-Man Trilogy where he has organic webbing).
That's why I prefer the explanation that the spider's bite gave Peter a watered-down Super-Soldier Serum derivative, because I don't really think of Spidey as a human-animal hybrid like the Lizard is.
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.
Disciple of Woolsey
But there are elements of his powerset that are very much tied to spiders, such as the Spider-Sense as well as the ability to cling to walls like a spider.
The story tells us he got those abilities from the spider-bite because the spider was radioactive/otherwise altered and we're supposed to believe... what? Passing through an animal medium altered the composition of the Phlebotinum somehow? Why wouldn't it just give him a watered-down version of what happened to Norman Osborn (for the Oz formula) or radiation poisoning/hulkification (for the radiation)? Why did it behave in this weirdly specific manner this one time? I'm just saying.
I guess it makes more sense if you go by the "it just influenced his latent mutant gene" explanation, but that sort of means the other origins really don't matter. And the "spider-sense" is usually explicitly stated as an ability the spider itself had, even in the comics.
Obviously, none of the above explanations make any real scientific sense, but only one of them actually explains why he got the spider's powers instead of just what was coursing through the spider. (aside from "He was actually chosen by the spider-god)".
Edited by DBZfan102 on Sep 2nd 2020 at 2:29:27 PM
"I think if you're capable of entertaining people, then you are doing a good thing. - Stan Lee Yeah, but Spidey and the Green Goblin already have basically the same power set — enhanced strength, agility etc. Really, the only differences they have are Spidey's wall-crawling and spider-sense (which, depending on the adaptation, could just be enhanced senses), and the Goblin's enhanced intelligence that allows him to construct super-gadgets (which doesn't really need to be adapted, considering Oscorp is usually a weapons manufacturer anyway).
However, you did mention the possibility of the radioactive spider unlocking Peter's mutant potential — what if there was no spider, and Peter was actually a mutant? After all, he gets his powers as a teenager, just like the X-Men do.
Actually, on that note — Daredevil. I don't really like the "truck full of radioactive chemicals" explanation normally given, but what if the teenaged Matt's super senses were developing before he got hit by the truck, which did nothing but caused him an injury that blinded him? What if Matt Murdock was actually a mutant?
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.
Disciple of Woolsey
Well, Daredevil and Spider-Man are pretty much near-copycats of each other already. I think it'd work better if only one of them was a mutant, rather than both. Probably Daredevil, because his origin doesn't really matter to the rest of his story.
And if he was, in what ways would that affect his story and characters? I don't see him joining any superteams, and his powers are a little limited if he ever had to deal with a Sentinel. But you could change his powerset to add some more stuff if he was a mutant. Maybe it makes him more overtly "devilish" or gives him some thematically-appropriate powers. This is an Ultimate Universe after all.
Or you could do what a lot of writers do with him and gloss over the toxic waste and say his heightened senses are due to his time being trained by Stick.
Edited by DBZfan102 on Sep 2nd 2020 at 3:34:30 PM
"I think if you're capable of entertaining people, then you are doing a good thing. - Stan Lee Yeah, I think it's best to give Spider-Man the traditional "radioactive/genetically engineered spider bite" origin and make Daredevil a mutant. I don't think that DD should be particularly connected with the X-Men — I just think that it'd be nice to have a mutant superhero who isn't affiliated with that group for a change. There've been mutant supervillains (like the Avengers villain Whirlwind) who aren't connected to the Brotherhood, but I can't think of any superheroes.
While we're talking about Daredevil, what I really don't like about a lot of his comics is their overwhelmingly dark tone. Yes, I liked the Frank Miller DD comics, but I'd like a Daredevil adaptation that can successfully balance the dark, noir-ish feel of Miller's Daredevil (the "devil" part) with a more light-hearted, fantastical Silver Age/Mark Waid tone (the "dare" part). Maybe The Kingpin could still battle DD, but with the laser cane that he had in his first Spider-Man appearances, or maybe DD could go up against the Purple Man (who, as both Alias and Jessica Jones (2015) show, can be a really scary antagonist).
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.
Disciple of Woolsey
I like the sound of that. I don't really think the grimdarkness of Frank's later oeuvre benefits Daredevil any more than it did Batman.
Have you ever read Daredevil: Season One? I felt it did a good job of balancing the dark tone with the more lighthearted one from his early days. Granted, that's not difficult when his supporting cast is still alive and not falling off the wagon with drugs/being killed by Bullseye.
"I think if you're capable of entertaining people, then you are doing a good thing. - Stan Lee I haven't even heard of the Season One comics before now, but they sound interesting. Sort of reminds me of other attempts at streamlining the MU and retelling classic stories, from Ultimate Marvel to Heroes Reborn to Spider-Man: Chapter One to X-Men: Grand Design to Daredevil: Yellow to...
Actually, now that I think about it, there's a lot of inspirations to draw from for this new Ultimate Universe. And I didn't even mention media adaptations like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the X-Men Film Series. I think it might be good to analyze the flaws of less-liked Ultimate Universe attempts like Spider-Man: Chapter One and Heroes Reborn, in order to avoid those missteps.
Edited by ClancyGardener on Sep 6th 2020 at 1:10:28 AM
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.A little while before, Handsome Rob had the idea of connecting the Sentinels to the Spider-Slayers. Well, I just remembered that in the beginning of Wolverine and the X-Men, there were prototype Sentinels called Prowlers that had a great deal of resemblance to the Spider-Slayers, so much so that Wikipedia's article on Spider-Slayers has them listed under the "In other media" heading.
So, here's my idea. You know how in many adaptations (The Spectacular Spider-Man, The Amazing Spider-Man Series) have Oscorp secretly making super-villains? Well, my idea was, Oscorp has been contracted by Weapon X to develop super-soldiers, and one of their projects creates Spider-Man. So after Norman Osborn realizes this, he gets Weapon X to send him some prototype Sentinels, which he modifies to detect Spider-Man rather than mutants.
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.This thread has been dead for a while, so I'm resurrecting it. Sorry if it seemed that I was dominating the conversation.
Edited by ClancyGardener on Sep 23rd 2020 at 7:15:03 AM
Trimming the hedges, one trope at a time.
Okay, so I fleshed out the origin story for my reimagined version of Magneto (I like to call him "New Mag-Neto". Heh.)
It got REALLY long, so I split it into folders. And because Magneto is a villain I wound up having to make calls about other characters in the X-Men. Hope it doesn't step on anyone's toes.
His parents were the first to die. Then his extended family. Then his family's friends. Then they started going after the children. The young boy was barely able to process what was happening, nor could he understand the reasons why. But just as the hatchetmen lifted up their pickaxe to behead him, his desperate desire to survive caused the activation of his mutant gene. According to Magneto: "the very next moment, all the evil men around me were dead and dying, some bleeding to death from gaping wounds in their necks, others barely clinging to life with their weapons lodged in their chests. Only much later in life did I understand what had caused this miracle - or rather, who."
Magneto was forced to make the rest of the trek alone. After he arrived in Vietnam, he spent two years in a orphanage, until he was adopted by a wealthy german couple, Erik and Edith Eisenhardt. The two adopted him mostly so they could look charitable and kind to their neighbours, but nonetheless made sure to give him the best education possible. As his family name was Mạc, they gave him the Naturalized Name of Max.
One day, his old friend Charles Xavier came to him with a proposition. He showed him a device he had created to amplify his psychic abilities, named Cerebro. He intended to use it to find other individuals like themselves, human beings with eXtraordinary capabilities, and unite them with the common goal of protecting mutants as well as other minorities from oppression. Magneto agreed to join him, and served as the leader of this first group of "X-Men" alongside Charles for five years. It was during this time that he received his iconic helmet, designed by Xavier to protect against telepathic invasion.
As it turned out, writing about prejudice and seeing it with his own eyes were two different things. There were many occasions where the team had to deal with heinous criminals exploiting others for their own gain. Magneto saw child soldiers and slave labor and many other crimes against humanity that could not help but remind him of his own childhood. Far too often he wondered if this evil could really be solved by locking the perpetrators in a jail cell. He saw it happen again, and again, and with that experience came the realization that humanity was inherently flawed. What had happened to him and his family was not a special occurrence. It had happened before, and it would happen again in a neverending cycle. But at least there was the consolation that there was a new species on the horizon, a better one. One with power enough to not be subject to anyone's petty rules, power enough to decide its own destiny. But he kept these thoughts to himself.
Xavier and the rest intercepted him in time to see him face to face with the head of the project, Bolivar Trask, but not in time to prevent him from murdering the man. Magneto locked Trask inside a metal coffin and crushed his windpipe inside it. There was nothing Charles could do but order the X-Men to detain their former ally. But Magneto managed to distract them by causing the walls of the building to fly apart. The building descended into complete bedlam, and in the process many of the captive mutants fled, including a certain shaggy man who had just been imbued with a metallic skeleton.
Magneto fled using the chaos as a distraction, and the other X-Men decided it was more important to save the mutants who were still too wounded to flee than chase after him. The following years were difficult for the X-Men - Trask's death was reported to the public, but the project he was involved in was still classified. The story the public heard was that the well-known philanthropist and humanitarian was murdered in cold blood by someone of incredible power, who was otherwise indistinguisable from a normal human. Nations all over the world fell into anti-mutant hysteria. In the United States, it was decided to revive Trask's proposed "Sentinel Project" in his honor, to quell the fears of the populace and hunt down rogue mutants. Many members of the X-Men quit the team, deciding they couldn't bring themselves to protect a world that feared and hated them so much.
Xavier worked overtime to recruit new members, focusing primarily on young teens whose mentality was still idealistic enough to believe in his cause. He never did manage to discover the whereabouts of his former comrade-in-arms. Unbeknownst to him, however, Magneto had not been idle either. He had been traveling the world discovering mutants who had become disillusioned with living among humanity, and offered them a chance to part of something greater. An organization that would ensure mutantkind achieved its destiny of replacing the flawed, despicable humans who came before them. An alliance of mutants, for mutants.
A brotherhood.
I left how long Magneto and the others spent in the killing fields after being captured deliberately vague, as well as the causes, since if I wrote those I'd basically end up writing a script for an entire comic by itself, and it usually depended a lot on an individual's specific "offenses". But if there's one thing I would do if I did write it, it's have his parents get killed immediately after being found out, just to set the tone for what's to come.
The Khmer Rouge hated lots of things. Intellectualism, foreigners, people involved with the previous goverment, people with other religions, people of different races, people who didn't know how to farm... It was a lot. I made Mag's family be Vietnamese as well as Christian to highlight the scope of that prejudice somewhat. A good amount of the Vietnamese who emigrated to Cambodia in 1970 were catholics.
Magneto's other family - Erik and Edith Eisenhardt, had their canon names changed from Jakob and Edie Eisenhardt. Erik is of course a Mythology Gag, but I changed Edie's name simply because I thought it sounded better.
Xavier is American in the comics, but I made him British. This is both to give him and Magneto some common ground when they meet (both students in a foreign land) and to homage Sir Patrick Stewart's time in the role (though that had already long become Comic-Book Fantasy Casting by that point).
Bolivar Trask is here to serve as an unwitting martyr, his death causing the threat mutants pose to become known by the whole world. He's the head of the Weapon X project, instead of Professor Thorton. He still created the concept of sentinels, but didn't live to see the project completed.
Yes, Wolverine was there, just as in canon. Magneto inadvertently saved him from a terrible fate as a mindless government superweapon, and one day he'll drive him to unamaginable agony by ripping out his skeleton.
Magda's name was not changed, nor was her Romani ancestry, though I didn't mention it in the story. What happened to her after Magneto left is ambiguous. Perhaps she's hiding now, not wanting what Magneto did to affect her and her family (including her two children? Maybe?) Again, I left it ambiguous.
Also ambiguous - the roster of the original X-Men. I'll leave that for other people to decide, this was just for Magneto.
With special thanks to the following creators who all contributed to the germination of this idea: Etsu Tamari and Kenichiro Yoshimura for creating the Magneto Expy known as Monsoon, Gene Luen Yang for making New Super-Man and making me think about asian versions of superheroes, and Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld for accidentally making Magneto and several other characters look asian already in various covers and panels through sheer art fail.