Reinvention Ideas For DC/Marvel Characters

So, um, I looked up that name and all I got was a story about a German story about people ejaculating upon dying from hanging. Could you explain your choice for the name please?

Thought it had something to do with archery and Artemis was too cliche. Yeah, maybe not the best rename choice come to think of it. Maybe something like Retro Arrow would be good.

I was just wondering how they should reinvent Kate after her derailment of being involved with America.

Any ideas?

I can't think of anything other than her just being a fan of Clint's that he takes under his wing to train.

What happened to her in America?

Eh. I quite like Kate being Hawkeye and Clint being Hawkguy.

And why Retro Arrow?

edited 13th Feb '18 12:09:05 PM by Hodor2

Based on what I've seen of America she's been used as an Author Filibuster for Rivera and they're trying to push her as "maybe bisexual" which I don't get and honestly derails her character. That comic is so bad it'd be better if it was written as non-canon. After all these years, it might be time to advance the character to a new stage so to speak.

As for Retro Arrow, that came from the fact that she loves vintage.

I haven't read much of Young Avengers or Hawkeye, but the former has America make a comment about Kate being not that straight given the way she looks at her (America) and the latter has some Foe Yay between Kate and Madame Masque. So the idea of Kate being bisexual isn't really that out there/a new thing.

That was Young Avengers Vol. 2 under the writing of Kieron Gillen, not the original portrayal.

So a while ago my cousin and I were talking about how to do a Superman video game. This resulted in us coming up with a revamp for Lionel Luthor (Lex's dad for those who didn't waste as much time watching Smallville as I did).

In the comics, Lionel's usually been portrayed as a petty criminal and alcoholic, responsible for shaping Lex into the narcissistic monster we all know and love, but given little personality. The iconic Smallville incarnation, on the other hand, was an expy of Byrne-era Lex, being a billionaire mogul who had risen from a poor background (after killing his parents) to being one of the world's richest and most powerful men. The problem of course with this is that it pretty thoroughly stepped on Lex's toes, making him essentially a carbon copy of his dad.

For the purposes of the game idea we'd wanted Lionel to be the Starter Villain of a series of tutorial levels set in Smallville, where you'd first learn to use Clark's powers. With that in mind, we decided to split the difference between the incarnations of Lionel and make him a gangster, a high-ranking member of the Mannheim crime family just before its transition into being Intergang. This version of Lionel would come to Smallville with the intention of capturing meteor freaks for Intergang to study, using the newly built Luthor factory farm as cover to do so, and dragging his son, bookish and socially awkward Lex along in order to toughen him up. Playing as Superboy you'd investigate the disappearances of Clark's classmates, battle a few mind controlled meteor freaks and Lionel's mafia goons, before breaking into the factory farm for a boss fight with Lionel and Lex, the latter temporarily irradiated with Green K after a personal experiment (conducted without his father's knowledge) went wrong. Win the fight and Lionel dies when one of his bullets ricochet's off Superboy and strikes the unstable Green K Lex was working with, blowing up the "farm" and giving Lex his trademark baldness.

Flashforward to the main game, and Lex has gone and turned his dad's not-insignificant criminal fortune into the multi-billion dollar colossus that is LexCorp. He's also buried any public links between himself, his father, and the Metropolis mob—links which are one of the many things that you, as Clark, could then dig up.

Anyway, we thought this would be a good way to make Lionel into a legitimate threat to a young Clark, with influence that hangs over the narrative long after his own death, but without stealing Lex's thunder as corporate tycoon and Mad Scientist. Thoughts?

edited 14th Feb '18 5:31:04 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

That is a good idea, having Lionel as the Starter Villain while letting Lex keep his Self-Made Man status.

You're talking about making a Superman videogame, right? Which genre would be?

Not sure I can answer other questions about the game idea—especially since it's just an idea; not like we're going to actually make it—without going off topic but the idea was to do something in the vein of the Arkham games in terms of gameplay, with the obvious additional mechanics for utilizing Superman's powers and collecting evidence to publish stories as Clark. Throw in a mana bar to represent how charged he is on sunlight, and you've more or less got the idea.

Of the characters we'd discussed using for it, Lionel was probably the biggest revamp, since we wanted something that would evoke Smallville Lionel, but without intruding on Lex's position as the creator of LexCorp. Making him a mafia boss was the compromise solution that we hit on—picture John Glover with a red dye job and a pinstripe suit and you've more or less got the look. He wouldn't have the billions of dollars of the show version, but he'd still have millions to throw around in both his own money and "company funds" advanced to him by Boss Moxie, which in crushingly poor rural Smallville should be enough to buy anyone who needs to be bought.

Is certainly a good middle point between the Lionel of Smallvile and the Petty criminal that he is in the comics.

And what about the other villains, do you have any plan?

We had no plans to substantially revamp anyone else. Mostly we'd been talking about game mechanics, rather than characterization, as we tried to figure out whether a Superman game was even feasible.

The Lionel discussion grew out of our conclusion that a prologue/tutorial was needed, and since Lionel was the logical villain to use for it we had to decide how to do him. Obviously this would in turn have had an effect on Lex, who we were now positioning as the son of a mobster who is covering up his father's connections to the Mannheims/Intergang. It also meant that Lex's hatred of Superman stemmed from recognizing him as Superboy (though not as Clark Kent) and blaming him for not only his baldness (as silly as that Silver Age motivation was, it always made me smile) but for the death of his father.

Please note, this Lex didn't like his father at all, but still holds Superboy responsible, mostly as a way of displacing his own confused feelings of guilt and elation. He's also quite terrified that Superman might be able to out him as the son of a criminal and damage his public image; these fears extend to civilian reporter Clark Kent as well once he recognizes him as someone he briefly attended high school with. He does not want anyone in the world to know that his company was founded on the money his father made human trafficking and running cocaine—especially given his own, more recent criminal activity, and the possibilities of someone starting to pry.

edited 15th Feb '18 9:12:49 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

That's a interesting characterization of Lex, good job. The whole Lex blaming Superboy for Lionel' death as a way to deal with his Daddy Issues is gold material

Thanks. There's a line I heard once in a different context that I think nicely sums up the difference between Lex Luthor, and say, Doctor Doom—namely that Lex doesn't want to rule the world, he just wants to own it.

Superman and Clark, due to their ability to link him to his criminal father, represent a serious threat to his ability to legitimately buy up power and influence, and coupled with his inability to cope with his remaining issues with his dad, it causes him to go after them.

I gotta admit, the idea of a Superman videogame already has me on edge, given that pretty much all of them have by and large sucked.

But a Telltale style adventure game focusing on family issues? That might work.

It's one of the main things that contrasts Clark and Lex. Clark was raised by good people. Lex was raised by an asshole.

"I was glad to be rid of what I had for a father! But you! You got them! You're not human! You don't deserve to be Clark Kent! I’ll punish you with every ounce of pain and humiliation and regret from an entire human lifetime. Don’t you understand?! I’ll never stop! What will it take to break you?! WHY WON’T YOU BREAK?!"

edited 15th Feb '18 9:24:56 PM by M84

It's off-topic so I'll keep it brief, but the biggest problem a lot of those games have had is having no idea how to represent Superman's powers mechanically, and no idea what kind of enemies to throw at him.

Our notion was to give him a mana bar to represent his exposure to sunlight. The higher the mana bar, the stronger, faster, more invulnerable he is, the faster he regenerates his health bar, and the more powers he can use. Different abilities drain his solar reserve faster, as does exposure to things like red sunlight, Green K, and Gold K (with Green K also doing health damage).

Then you fill the game with people who can hurt him: LexCorp security with Kyrptonite bullets and red solar rifles, Intergang thugs with stolen high-tech weaponry, Brainiac drones, Phantom Zone escapees, and the like. You also make the Clark Kent idea integral to the story—it's all well and good to beat up the villains, but if you can't collect enough information as Clark to run a hit piece on Lex, you haven't accomplished all you need to.

And yeah, for all it's flaws, the very clear contrast that Smallville set up between Jonathan Kent and Lionel Luthor was one of its best aspects. It had been there in the comics since the 80s, but the enmity between the two fathers really brought it forward and helped to cement it in the comics and the public consciousness. It's one reason I'd want to have the prologue (aside from using it as a tutorial): once you've met Lionel you understand Lex.

edited 15th Feb '18 10:11:20 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

The best Superman game is the Lego DC games.

Those are good ideas, mixing Investigation with action to recreate how Clark must feel.

Phantom Lady could work as a spy in lieu of Black Widow. She's use a variety of tools with the her nega bands allowing her to turn invisible and intangible, a gun and tasers among others.

I got this idea from the Wonder Woman YA nover by Leigh Barudo called Warbringer. In that story, Amazons are women reborn on Themyscira as they call upon the name of the goddess they worship upon death. Donna would be a Filipino girl guided to Themyscira by Tala, the goddess of stars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tala_(goddess)

Donna would use a staff made by Io that generates energy pulses and the Star of Tala.

Linda Danvers would basically an angel with no connection to Superman or Supergirl.

Couple of thoughts:

I kind of think that DC Comics could use to introduce the "White Knight" Joker to the main verse or some other, less evil take on the character, because it's kind of too bad that the Joker has been envisioned as this character running on The Power of Hate, who isn't really funny anymore, even in a sick way.

In terms of Marvel, I think with the Janice!Beetle, Nick Spencer had a good idea both in terms of framing her as sort of an evil Plucky Girl as well as with the idea of her as an Amoral Attorney representing criminals, but unfortunately he didn't give those as much focus as her being a Straw Feminist jerk and/or dating Ant-Man. From reading Doctor Aphra, I think it can really work well to have a book about a morally sketchy but likable heroine who you are torn between rooting for and rooting against. And alternatively, with the laywer thing, she could be an opponent of She-Hulk.

Lastly, something that Spencer himself seemed to be softly retconning in Ant-Man was the fact that he identified her in Superior Foes with the unnamed (and different looking) person in the costume who in one of Brubaker's Captain America comics was aiding Zemo in a plan to frame Bucky for terrorism (it's basically kind of like the plan on the Civil War movie, but done for way worse reasons and with blowing up SHIELD instead of killing T'Chaka). Not only does this make it hard to justify Janice not rotting in a black site, but I think that it creates some problems in having a sympathetic character when their first appearance is aiding one of the premier Nazi supervillains in committing terrorism.

Speaking of Nazis and Captain America, partly because I like how various characters take on and discard identities, I'd like to see the Captain Hydra version of Steve take on Zemo's old Citizen V costume and identity. Probably in a comic about him attempting to be a hero but failing do to his warped ideology. I'd probably end it with him having Death Equals Redemption and making a Heroic Sacrifice. And then we'd never have to talk about Secret Empire again.

Finally, again with characters used by Spencer, I think there could be a great double act of Raz/ Giant Man a gay computer programmer and Machinesmith, a gay AI/cyborg.

Anyone got any ideas for how to do Koryak, Aquaman's half-Inuit son?

Looking him up and wow, that's a rather bad use of his character to always be at odds with his father and unwittingly causing horrible things to happen.

I don't really have an informed suggestion, since unfortunately I've never really had an opportunity to follow DC Comics (or really Marvel comics either for that matter), but my opinion regarding the "ruler superhero characters" (i.e. Aquaman, Black Panther, Thor, and Black Bolt) is that it might be better to do stories where they have a court of allies, even including characters who they were at odds with in the past, rather than plots about them meeting with opposition.

Because as seems to be the case with Koryak, there's a lot of built in The Complainer Is Always Wrong, even when the intent is to present a character sympathetically. Because it's somewhat the premise of the characters/their books that they are the rightful ruler.

Edit- So in this case, Koriyak and Aquaman would reconcile and have a positive, if sometimes uneasy relationship (think of how some of the Robins tend to interact with Batman) and he'd be an ally when Aquaman is doing ruler stuff and/or when he's superheroing.

edited 17th Mar '18 12:02:58 PM by Hodor2

Well to be fair, their relationship had gotten better much later on. Before DC killed off Koryak and then brought him back wrong because this was DC in the 2000s.

You know, even though he never took a code name, I think Koryak fills the same role in the Aquaman books that Jason Todd did in the Batman books. Both are darker and edgier replacements to more idealized predecessors, both die and return as villains and both are replaced by lighter heroes (Kaldur and Tim Drake respectively).

edited 17th Mar '18 12:48:28 PM by windleopard

Well, glad that the relationship was repaired before the untimely death. And yeah, I can definitely see that comparison between characters too. Come to think of it, isn't Jason Todd a good guy now?

Thinking about it, it's an interesting pattern across publishers. It's not quite the same thing, because he was a clone and there was also a good clone, Ben Reilly, but it kind of reminds me of how Kaine was introduced as an evil/murderous vigilante version of Spider-Man, but was then re-imagined as a gritty, but not insane and/or evil character.

And since the comics version of him is to some extent the Alternate Company Equivalent of Jason Todd, I'm also thinking of Bucky Barnes in Marvel comics and how (comparably to Tim Drake) Sam Wilson has become the more prominent "successor" character. And kind of reminds me of my understanding of Jason Todd's arc in terms of being framed as a deconstruction of a Kid Sidekick, returning from the dead as a villain, and then ending up as a gruff good guy.

edited 17th Mar '18 1:02:13 PM by Hodor2

Sigrid Nansen - Icemaiden. Sigrid is a demi goddess, a descendant of the Jotun Winter Goddess, Skadi. She possess superhuman physical powers and is armed with arrows that freeze and skis that boost her speed.