Reinvention Ideas For DC/Marvel Characters

2000 AD suggests some possibilities.

Judge Dredd is a mostly scifi universe where psychic powers exist and are well-studied; magic is also present, but is not well understood. It's been progressing in real time since it began in 1977; as a result, the fact that Dredd is too old for this shit arises organically from the narrative instead of awkwardly set up in an elseworld, and when an antagonist has a long-running plan (hello, Day of Chaos!), it has more weight behind it because there's a real sense of time.

It probably helps that Judge Dredd and most of its spinoffs are, when you get right down to it, police procedurals. Thus, if somebody spends several months telling a story that lasts one day, we can just assume that it was followed by a few months in which nothing especially interesting happened before the next story. Plus, crossovers aren't that common - Dredd, Anderson, Dirty Frank, Jack Point, and Galen DeMarco mostly stick to their own adventures, but can still drop by on each other if the situation warrants it. That means the writers and editors don't have to obsess overmuch about keeping things in sync, because there's an unspoken assumption that they don't all happen in tandem and there is downtime between arcs.

Another title, which started this year, is Kingmaker; this one is about a standard fantasy world about halfway between The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire which was recently conquered by aliens, who are seeking to harvest all its magic as a power source.

I mentioned recently how a procedural might be a good framework for bread-and-butter superhero stories altogether. It offers easy serialization, no need for major status quo shake-ups, and no dependence on deep personal issues that never get resolved. Considering how even the most pathologically masochistic dedicated superheroes like Batman, Superman and Spider-Man can easily function on a case-by-case basis with plenty of downtime in-between, keeping titles in sync becomes even easier.

I'd say the hurdle at hand is for writers to finally accept that they're doing genre fiction, and learn to work within its constraints. You can't serialize drama, not permanently anyway, it always ends up being a soap, because the consequences of any conflict never stick. Might as well focus on what serialized stories can offer - mystery, adventure, action, comedy, options galore.

I gotta disagree with all of that.

First off, I wouldn't want superhero comics to model themselves after police procedurals, because police procedurals are boring. They can be fun at first, but their Strictly Formula nature wears thin really fast. I do like a few procedural shows, but those tend to be ones where the procedural elements are more just one thing that goes on in the characters' lives, not necessarily the main focus.

Second, there's no reason why long-running serialized dramas can't change things and have them stay changed. You need to keep the core premise intact, which for superhero stories means keeping the hero alive and able to do superheroics (though given the existence of legacy characters and superhero teams with changing rosters, even that isn't strictly required), but everything else can and often does change. It's weird that you bring up soap operas, because that's a genre famous for constantly changing its cast of characters and their relationships to each other, to the point where, if you stop watching for several years and come back, you might not recognize anyone in the main cast.

And third, this whole thread is based on the premise of one of the companies doing a complete reboot of all their main universe titles. Such a reboot would effectively serve as the ending for all the stories the company had been telling up to that point. Meaning the newly relaunched characters and universe wouldn't have to keep going forever; they'd just have to last until the next company reboot in ten years or so.

And see, that's where I'd go contrary- I don't think a reboot will fix what ails Western comics. It certainly didn't the last... what, six times they tried it? (Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis, Nu 52, the Ultimate Universe and All New, All Different Marvel..?).

Just roll with what you've got, because it'll get retconned back in eventually anyway by some writer or another who liked this or that bit of the Golden, Silver, Bronze, etc. Age. Handwave the thirty-odd years of comicbook sliding time stupidity as a plot by Kang and/or the Time Trapper or something and then get on with things.

... please note that I'm not necessarily calling for comics to run in real time; just that they be allowed to move forwards, so that you don't have to quietly pretend that Iron Man was really in some vaguely Middle East Asian location during the War on Terror when he built his armour, not in not-quite-Vietnam ('Sin Cong') during the we're-not-going-to-say-it-but-we-all-know-it-is-Vietnam War, or keep coming up with new and sillier excuses as to why Magneto and Professor X both have the physiques and apparent health of bodybuilders in their early thirties, despite being children in the early Nineteen Forties.

Or, for that matter, how Dick Grayson can be in his early- to mid-twenties, despite having been adopted by an adult Bruce Wayne when he was between eight and twelve, depending on version, despite Batman being in his mid-thirties at the oldest in 'present day'. >.<

And for that matter, can the non-stop romance drama! Is there seriously no-one who wants to write comics who has the first clue as to how to write a stable relationship? We don't need a new love-interest every five minutes. We just don't.

Oh- one other thing. I'd dial the anti-authoritarianism back a few notches. Question authority? Awesome, no worries. Authority = evil, no question, no trial, no recourse, to the point where if a previously heroic, even saintly, character seems to be becoming an authority of some kind, they're retconned into somehow having always been evil? That might be taking it a little further than it really needs to go.

And remember, you should only question authority when it's in the framework of democratic institutions and free market economics. But hereditary plutocrats and paranormally empowered behemoths stomping on everyone's right of privacy, personal inviolability, and even homeland security - those are gods among us™, inherently beyond the reproach of mere mortals.

Procedurals may be formulaic, but given their popularity, it's a formula that works. And the reason it works is because, for the most part, it doesn't offer anything it can't deliver on. Say, is the next ultra-shocking Joker story the one where Batman finally breaks his one rule? No? Then don't pitch it in the first place. Will Rogue finally find a way to control her mutation, or at least wear one of the dozens of devices that suppress it? No? Then stop milking it for drama. This is called stretching an already thin premise 'till it breaks, and there are lots more examples where these came from. Meanwhile, focusing on the task at hand - finding the villain, stopping the crisis, actually preventing casualties rather than preaching to the survivors about how they shouldn't lynch the monster of the month - at least gives a consistent story that doesn't write checks it can't really cash.

The thing about soaps is indeed that the decent ones keep the characters and their relationships dynamic... which comics normally don't. The need for pre-defined heroes and villains means that at any given time, any character development can be snapped back to its default state, which again makes for a narrative that can't deliver on its promises. It usually doesn't even involve a reboot - you know you dun goofed when a literal deal with the Devil can be presented as a heroic choice.

edited 9th Apr '17 1:56:48 AM by indiana404

That's not really a product of serialized drama, though, but of the writers' unwillingness to move forward. You'll note that it's mostly only big name characters like Batman or Spider-Man, who have an "iconic" version of themselves stamped in readers' minds, that keep being brought back to status quo. B- and C-list heroes change drastically all the time.

And the reason reboots haven't worked in the past is two-fold. First, it's never been a clean reboot; there are always large chunks of the old continuity left unchanged, and much more left in a state of ambiguous canonicity. Second, these reboots always seem to be approached with the idea that the new continuity will be the permanent state of affairs going forward. If, the moment a reboot occurs, the writers are told that the plan is for this new continuity to last roughly x-number of years, then stories can be written and planned with that endgame in mind. That's how most TV series work: while early cancellation is always a threat, and a series can last much longer than initially planned, no one expects a show to stay on the air forever, or (at least in the modern television era) to leave it's status quo unchanged throughout its run.

I've honestly been waiting for the North American comics industry, as it stands now, to implode for about four or five years now; from what I know of it (which is, admittedly and obviously, limited and quite possibly ludicrously wrong), it simply can't keep going the way it is, pandering to an ever-shrinking fanbase that apparently demands a veneer of constant novelty over a core of unchanging sameness, while production costs climb and profit margins thin, despite ever-climbing prices for a pathetically tiny slice of entertainment. Seriously, three to five bucks for maybe ten minutes of reading is... not good value for money, put it that way.

Thinking about it, I'm not sure that reinventing the characters will really help much; Marvel and DC (or Disney and Time-Warner, I guess) need to re-evaluate their business practices entirely, and hopefully stop trying to bail out a sinking ship with a colander >.<

Right now, I can't shake the suspicion that the publishing/comic book branches are skating under the notice of the head offices, because they are, quite frankly, irrelevant, and probably have escaped closure only because keeping them going is the simplest way to maintain the IP for the movies, where the actual money is. Once the movies are either stable and running smoothly or have collapsed once the public's attention drifts, I rather suspect that there will be some shakeups amongst the editorial staff.

Granted, that's all just gloomy unfounded prognosticating, and as likely to come true as my dumb guesses regarding the economy, the weather, or whatever.

That being said, I still love comics, and wish I had the patience to make them; I just wish that their primary purveyors in this neck of the woods weren't quite so... how they are.

Well, some of that's the troubles and travails of print media in general, with comic books' higher production cost and lower market share making them more susceptible.

With digital technologies alleviating both production and distribution, I don't think that excuse is gonna fly much longer.

Cracked has put out an unusually decent article about comics, particularly regarding the issue of diversity. From what I can tell, the gist of it is that the current efforts in that regard are lazy and half-hearted, but it got me thinking along another line. Namely, that diversity of color, creed or chromosome content doesn't really result in diversity of character.

The reason Deadpool and Harley Quinn became such fan favorites was that they represented something different from the usual heroic archetype comics peddle. Ditto the Punisher getting his own series even though his arc in Daredevil was supposed to be about how his approach was wrong. Neither of them was designed to appeal to a particular demographic - quite the opposite, all of them were intended as villains. But they offered a different viewpoint, one which apparently resonates with far more people than even the most successful Affirmative-Action Legacy characters like Miles Morales and Kamala Khan.

One of the things I like about Marvel is precisely this idea of diverse archetypes and activities; people having different niches to fill and being able to appeal to broader tastes than DC's cookie-cutter costumed crime-fighters who all do the exact same thing but in different fictional cities. Even my usual preference for more lethal heroes pertains to the idea that different threats warrant a different response, and it being more violent doesn't make it any less valid.

All in all, maybe it's not lack of diversity that presents a problem, but simply lack of variety. Instead of always advertising the next big crisis crossover, it might be better to just focus on the different types of problems superheroes can get involved in, from fighting ordinary criminals to solving ancient mysteries in jungle temples or exploring alien worlds throughout the galaxy. Not even the sky's the limit.

edited 11th Apr '17 5:04:22 AM by indiana404

You get plenty of characters with different view points in DC too. Hell, Wonder Woman certainly approaches things differently than Superman or Batman. Her enemies also tend to be more mystical in nature and the G Ls for instance deal with space threats.

Also, if you look at Kamala you can see that in some ways, her race and religion does offer diversity of character, affecting how she interacts with the world around her. Ditto for John Stewart and Virgil Hawkins over at DC with their race or even Diana and Black Canary in regards to their gender. It doesn't define them, but it does play a part.

There's that, yeah. If anything, it makes it more than a little hypocritical when stories like What's so funny... and Under the Red Hood have Superman and Batman condemn lethal action... when the other member of the big three is a seasoned warrior often telling them in no uncertain terms where to stick their outrage.

I also agree that Kamala is more than just "Muslim Ms. Marvel", though I'd still prefer it if she didn't have to be a legacy character to begin with. As much as they started out as exploitation stereotypes, characters like Blade and Luke Cage are great precisely because they aren't playing catch-up to anyone, but do their own thing. The question is, what is today's thing? Social issues are important, but they lack the inherent action potential of the crime waves that allow new characters to shine. War is always good for business, but modern stories pertaining to it can be polarizing, which isn't.

One example I find both workable and welcoming to new faces is cybercrime. In that regard, I'd get Amadeus Cho out of the Hulk gimmick and back to being "just" a brilliant teenage inventor, and put him against some syndicate or other. Yes, it's a shameless stereotype, yes, it's gonna milk the precious little interest in the subject matter that wasn't destroyed by Gits... but I say it can work. It can offer a new type of threat for a new type of hero to fight, maybe even to the point that most of the big scuffles are inside some virtual world or other, so even the collateral damage is limited.

If anything, the main problem is that if successful, such a move would mean less focus on the industry staples, whose merchandising is what really keeps it afloat. There's a reason every new Robin is still a nondescript five-foot tall black-haired white kid. But that's not really a creative matter anyway, so in that regard, I'd rather let the industry sleep in the bed it's made for itself.

Eh... *hand waggle*

Dunno about the cybercrime thing- it'd be tough to maintain reasonable tension without invoking a bunch of Your Mind Makes It Real tropes, which have their own... special... problems. A good enough writer could prolly make it work, of course.

I'd actually tend to agree with Batman and Superman not killing- Batman because he's usually skating close enough to the edge as it is, and anything that loosens his already rather tenuous grip on reality is probably best avoided, and Superman because, well... do you really want Atomic Skull, Metallo, Parasite, Rampage, and so on and so forth fighting panicked? I know there's been a trend to make a lot of Superman's villains over into Complete Monster types, but there's still a difference between 'fighting to stay out of jail' and 'desperate to escape with their lives'.

That and, quite frankly, Superman doesn't need to kill people. He's got both the power and the skillset to put them down without needing to put them in the ground. Wonder Woman, for all her 'seasoned warrior' status, rarely fights anything the average human would recognize as 'people', at least nowadays. If she lops the head off of Medusa on national television, nobody really cares. Then she snaps Maxwell Lord's neck on national TV, and people get a bit worried (maybe the DC civilians realized that Max had been written into a character that didn't act anything like his original self?).

And honestly, using Under the Red Hood as an example of Batman's outrage about killing being misplaced isn't the strongest example you could use... Jason was acting as a mob boss himself, which isn't really something Bruce could or should condone. His outrage about Jean-Paul Valley 'killing' the villain Abbatoir by not saving him is decidedly more hypocritical, especially since (at least by my fuzzy recollections) he was all outraged at that before he found out that Azbats had let one of Abbatoir's hostages die as well.

Although like I said, Bruce Wayne killing just wouldn't go anyplace good- at best, you'd most likely end up with a mediocre remake of Dexter that happens to involve rather more spandex.

It also makes stuff like Batman firing Huntress from the Justice League for being tempted to kill Prometheus (but ultimately relenting) kind of frustrating as Diana would certainly have something to say about it and would be on Diana's side. Alas, not many JL writers care for Diana outside of her being arm candy or the blood knight.

Maybe Diana breaking off from the League and helping form her own organization of public superheroes would be better.

Well, in Kamala's case it helps that no one was using the Ms Marvel moniker at the time. And Marvel is not going to remove Carol from the Captain Marvel mantle any time soon, so I think Kamala is safe for now.

True. But it's also very rare for non-legacy female, minority or LGBTQ characters to catch on as they did. Luke was simply lucky to be written by a popular writer that liked him. Blade has two good films to his name, but these days he's lucky if he gets a guest spot on a crappy tv show like Ultimate Spider-Man. And it seems like execs don't have any interest in vampires unless for teen soap operas.

And because I'm such a nice guy, I'm going to leave you with the lovely image of a Blade movie or tv show in style of Twilight or Vampire Diaries.

The question is, what is today's thing? Social issues are important, but they lack the inherent action potential of the crime waves that allow new characters to shine.

On the other hand, if you want to emphasize that your characters are trying to solve problems with more than just hitting, that might not be an issue. Whether you can get a good story out of this is another thing altogether.

That could work. DC once had something similar going with Oracle. You could also make him a cyborg if you want more action focused adventures.

Which is honestly more of an argument for Bruce to stop fighting crime and leave the job to people with a better head on their shoulders like Dick Grayson, Kate Kane, Cass Cain or Renee Montoya.

This only really works if Supes is dealing with ordinary crooks not alien war lords or cosmic demi gods with equal or greater power.

Kinda says more about the DC civilians doesn't it? Not that I liked Max getting derailed like that.

I was using the examples and the respective comparison to Wonder Woman so as to point out not the capes' personal attitude about taking lives, but rather their habit of trying to enforce it on others, only to fizzle out when one of their own allies is powerful enough to stand up to them. That's the hypocrisy at hand here.

(I also wouldn't go press the argument about supervillains becoming more destructive when threatened - much like with real life terrorism, most of them already see giving quarter as a sign of weakness to be exploited, not a virtue to be appreciated.)

Not to rekindle an old flamewar, I'd just say the non-lethality policies have to be made more thorough - toning down the technicalities regarding what counts as killing, as well as the otherwise ultra-violent approach maintaining that leaving someone quadriplegic is oh-so-noble in comparison. There's nothing moral about burdening medics with caring for violent maniacs on par with their victims. Comics have long abandoned the actual basis for lethal vigilantism - that under corrupt courts, anything else is all but useless - but they can at least pay a bit more than lip-service to the now traditional alternative.

Can't. You have to tear it apart first

Man, how sad is it that Twilight gave us the most powerful and scary vamps we've ever seen on screen?

edited 12th Apr '17 5:53:40 AM by windleopard

Because they're Mary Sues.

I haven't seen the Twilight movies and I don't care to, but didn't Buffy and Blade both have more impressive vampires?

In regards to getting rid of the sliding timescale, quite some time back (about Nu 52) I came up with a reinvention for the DC multiverse called the Metallic Earths. On Earth-Gold, Superman first appeared in public in 1938 and was mostly the Golden Age version. On Earth-Silver, Superman first officially appeared as Superman in 1958 and was mostly the Silver Age version. On Earth-Bronze, Superman first appeared in public in 1978 and was mostly the Post-Crisis version, etc. On each earth, the characters then aged in roughly real time. I've got some timelines if anyone's interested.

Go on...

Grace Choi and Anissa Pierce open up a detective agency dealing with meta human crime.

Here's a partial history of Superman-Gold, just to give you a taste.

c1916: Kal-L is born on Krypton, home to a technologically advanced civilization. Joy at having a son partially distracts scientist Jor-L from studying a sudden worldwide increase in groundquakes.

c1917: Jor-L presents his findings to the Science Council, ruling body of Krypton. They reject his warning that Krypton is doomed to destroy itself in the near future, and his suggestion to build a fleet of space arks. Even Jor-L's brother Zor-L is unconvinced, and instead concentrates on building a quakeproof dome over Argo City, a much more popular idea.

c1918: Krypton explodes. Jor-L is able to use the one experimental rocketship he'd finished to launch Kal-L towards the planet Earth. Argo City's dome proves strong enough to hold the entire chunk of rock strata the city is built on intact, and there are more than one hundred survivors. c1918: Kal-L's rocket lands on Earth, near the town of Smallville. The infant is adopted by John and Mary Kent, an elderly and childless farm couple. They name him Clark Kent, and young Clark soon forgets his early memories of life on Krypton.

c1928: Kara Zor-L is born in Argo City, to much rejoicing. Increasing background radiation has lowered the live birth rate drastically, and Kara is in fact the last child born on Kryptonian soil.

1938: John and Mary Kent die of natural causes. Clark Kent moves to Metropolis, gets a job at the Daily Star under editor George Taylor, and meets Lois Lane. Superman appears in public for the first time, becoming the first "official" superhero of Earth-Gold. (Earth-Gold's Superman was never Superboy, though later time travel and parallel Earth shenanigans have confused the issue.) Superman's powers are far from the peak they will eventually reach.

1940: Superman battles Alexi "Lex" Luthor for the first time. A brilliant scientist and arms dealer, Luthor is known for his curly red hair.

1940: The Justice Society of America is formed. Superman becomes an honorary member, citing his busy schedule. He interacts with them very infrequently.

1941: Time travel shenanigans prevent Superman (and most other mystery men) from interfering with the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Thus the U.S. involvement in World War Two goes off as scheduled. President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the creation of the All-Star Squadron, drafting all known United States mystery men into government service. This includes Superman, but relatively rarely. Shortly thereafter, the Axis Powers erect a mystical field that prevents Superman from ending the war singlehandedly.

c1942: Zor-L realizes that he can no longer hold off the death of everyone in Argo City from radiation poisoning. He is, however, able to scrape together enough resources to create an improved version of Jor-L's rocketship and launch Kara towards Earth.

1949: Superman encounters Kryptonite for the first time, and at last discovers the truth about his extraterrestrial origins. While fascinated by the lost civilization of Krypton, he thinks of himself as an Earthling. A handful of Kryptonian survivors show up over the next few years, but all die shortly after reaching Earth. Also at this point, Superman's powers reach their peak.

1950: During a brief bout of amnesia and powerlessness, Clark Kent finally proposes to Lois Lane and they are married. Lois later admits to having figured out Superman's secret identity some time before. Clark also becomes city editor of the Daily Star, and later editor-in-chief.

1951: Lex Luthor begins shaving his head after suffering severe male pattern baldness. It suits him. Also, the Justice Society officially disbands rather than expose their secret identities to a hostile Congress. Only a handful of heroes including Superman remain active.

1954: Superman and Batman learn each other's secret identities while working on the same case. Remarkably, while the two had both attended some meetings of the Justice Society at the same time, and appeared together for charity fundraisers, this was their first ever actual "team-up." The two men become good friends.

1960: Lex Luthor invents a cure for male pattern baldness and grows back his hair. The formula makes him millions, and he largely retires from supervillainy, emerging only to take cracks at Superman for the sake of finally defeating him.

1961: Earth-Gold has its first visitor from Earth-Silver in the person of Barry Allen, Flash-Silver. He dubs Earth-Gold "Earth-Two."

1963: The Justice Society of America reforms, with Superman still an honorary member. He is somewhat more active with the group at this time. He meets with Superman-Silver, but the two men do not hit it off.

1972: Kara Zor-L's rocketship lands on Earth. Although she is chronologically only a decade younger than Superman, suspended animation has kept her physically in her teens. She is adopted by the Kents as Clark's long-lost cousin Karen Starr. Superman convinces Kara to keep her superpowers under wraps while he trains her and she acclimates to Earth culture. She becomes especially interested in feminism and computer science.

1976: Kara's relationship with her cousin hits a rough patch, and she decides to reveal herself to the world early. Anxious to show herself as her own person, she names herself Power Girl and joins the Justice Society. Superman decides he'd been overbearing, and approves the decision. He chooses to resign from the Society, citing a slow ebb in his powers.

1983: Power Girl joins Infinity, Inc., a group of younger heroes who she has more in common with than the now aging Justice Society.

1985: The Crisis on Infinite Earths happens. Alexi Luthor is killed by Brainiac. Kara chooses to rename herself Power Woman. Alexander Luthor of "Earth-3" moves to Earth-2 and poses as the son of Alexi Luthor (not entirely untrue), and uses his new fortune to begin a life of philanthropy and scientific exploration. The Clark Kent of "Earth-Prime", which was destroyed during the Crisis, also comes to Earth-Gold where he is adopted by the Kents.

1992: Superboy decides it's time to grow up, but doesn't want to be called "Superman II " or "Superman Jr." so adopted the name "Prime." He's harder-edged than the original Superman, but not enough to raise questions.

2004: Alexander Luthor, while investigating the properties of Koehaha, the Stream of Ruthlessness, becomes exposed to its effects. Luthor had become convinced that instead of settling into a new multiverse, the Crisis should have ended with all timelines being consolidated into one "True Earth." He enlists the aid of Prime by exposing him to Koehaha as well. Prime had for years had a hidden desire to remake history so that he was Earth's greatest and only hero.

2005: Infinite Crisis. Alexander Luthor and a vastly-powered up Prime launch a multi-faceted plan to reshape reality. Lois Lane dies of old age, and Superman heroically sacrifices himself to stop Prime's rampage. Freed of the influence of Koehaha, Prime feels great shame over his actions and exiles himself to the Phantom Zone. Alexander Luthor is slain by one of his father's multiversal counterparts. Power Woman is now the last Kryptonian.

Your thoughts and comments?

A very interesting and well thought out history, though if it were me I'd make a couple changes. First off, instead of reusing the idea of a mystical field keeping Superman and other heroes from interfering in WWII, I'd just establish that the Axis powers have their own superpowered champions who do battle with the Justice Society. Second, while I get the metaphor being gone for with the JSA resigning en masse rather than reveal their identities to a Mc Carthy analogue, I'd prefer a more gradual falling apart: due to their dangerous work, many mystery men have died (several of them in WWII), while others, due to injury or simply old age, just aren't in the physical prime they once were, and retire.

To the latter point, that's what happens to most of the All-Star Squadron characters.

What do you guys think of this idea? Instead of human granted Atlantean powers, Lorena Marquez, Aquagirl II, is a normal human raised in Sub Diego which is founded as a city for human and Atlantian culture to mix. Think Republic City from Legend of Korra. Lorena could serve as the franchise's version of Steel in that she uses technology rather than super powers.

Anyone got any ideas for Phantom Lady and Nightshade from DC?