Reinvention Ideas For DC/Marvel Characters

I dunno. I quite like all the supernatural stuff. Pity it's not used more.

Another thing: what Strange and others are using in MCU actually was confirmed to be magic.

I know, but the Infinity Stones appear to be "just" very powerful cosmic artifacts, so it's more of a blend of actual magic and "might as well be magic".

And of course, some characters lend themselves better to Doing In the Wizard than others. Making Dr. Strange the product of Magic from Technology would definitely raise some eyebrows, but the Juggernaut has been adapted into the movies as a mutant without changing his character all that much. It wouldn't be too radical to change him from a magically-empowered engine of destruction to a cosmically-empowered engine of destriction.

Honestly, I tend to see concepts like the power Cosmic as just being Magic by another name.

Speaking of "space magic" and cosmic stuff in general, I was thinking about a reinvention of Jean Grey's transformation into Phoenix that doesn't involve the Phoenix Force, a concept that I'm not fond of. What if Jean's cosmic powers were due to Jean being exposed to the energies of a Cosmic Cube?

How would she get into contact with a Cosmic Cube? Also, was the Phoenix force always a thing, or is it something like Parallax in that it was a retcon used to say the character was possessed?

As I understand it, Jean originally became Phoenix thanks to cosmic radiation unlocking the true potential of her telekinetic powers, a process that was inherently unstable and that led to her becoming Dark Phoenix. The whole "Phoenix Force" idea was a retcon, established when John Byrne resurrected Jean during his run on Fantastic Four.

As for how Jean might come into contact with a Cosmic Cube, what if the X-Men were involved in a storyline like that of The Avengers (2012)? In the climax of that movie, Iron Man risks his life to defeat the Chitauri army, while Black Widow shuts down the Tesseract — in this storyline, Jean could use the power of the Cube to destroy the invading alien army, seemingly die in the process, and be resurrected by the power of the Cube, which simultaneously imbues her with cosmic energy and pushes her powers to their full potential.

By the way, DBZfan102 on the "New Ultimate Marvel Universe Project" thread just had an interesting idea about changing Magneto from a Holocaust survivor to a Khmer Rouge survivor. I think it would be a good way to update his origin, and might also spread awareness about other, relatively lesser-known genocides besides the Holocaust.

What are your thoughts?

I think it's neat, personally.

There's a minor one I had for some time about Doctor Doom. His face got disfigured in an explosion, sure. But it seems very weird that every single doctor he goes to refuses to do anything to fix it, always saying it's completely impossible, it's more horrifying than they would have ever imagined, etc. And Doom only ever manages to fix it if he attains omnipotence, despite being a master scientist.

My little idea for it is that Mephisto got pissed off that some random college student was brazen enough to spy on his lair, and cursed Doom (a noted Narcissist) to lose his beautiful face. And every time someone actually looks at it, it's literally as horrifying as they could possibly imagine it to be. No one ever thinks the disfigurement could be magical in nature because Mephisto makes them forget every time. He does things like that.

I forget if any author ever did something like this. Might be a case of Cryptomnesia on my part.

Edited by DBZfan102 on Aug 26th 2020 at 6:25:52 AM

Didn't Ant-Man's comic reveal that he rescarred his own face on purpose? I remember something like that.

Well, that's a Retcon, but it isn't really similar to my idea.

They all wear bright, neon pink costumes. There is an actual, in-universe explanation for this.

Edited by FOFD on Aug 29th 2020 at 9:38:17 AM

It's set in a pink TRON-esque Cyberspace?

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 29th 2020 at 9:56:09 AM

I just had an idea of how to reinvent Norman Osborn. His first origin was that he ingested some bright green Super Serum and developed an insane Split Personality, right? Well, what if Norman's serum was derived from that other green-hued split-personality monster, the Incredible Hulk? My idea is, after Bruce Banner gets zapped by gamma rays/takes a Super-Soldier Serum knockoff, Oscorp appropriates his research, and combines it with the original Super-Soldier Serum/Vita-Ray treatment that empowered Captain America. The resulting chemical grants the user with enhanced strength, endurance, reflexes et cetera, but also mutates the user, giving them green skin and exaggerating their preexisting personality traits (good becomes great, bad becomes worse). Thus Norman, physically and mentally twisted after taking the serum, decides to use his newfound strength and company-made weapons to become a supervillain.

(2)

As long as it's neon pink and they actually write an entire limited series about why things are suddenly pink, yes.

This, I like.

I also have another idea on how to combine certain concepts that pop up regularly in the Marvel Universe. For example, there's been a lot of storylines focused on some sort of overarching organization that controls and produces all the superhumans on Earth. This concept has manifested as:

During World War II, the United States government learns that the Nazis are working on creating Super Soldiers, and found a secret think tank called the Strategic Scientific Reserve (S.S.R.) in response. The S.S.R. is host to an even more secret project named Project Rebirth, which will retroactively become Weapon I of the Weapon Plus program. Even after WWII ends, the S.S.R. remains to address fantastical threats outside the scope of normal law-enforcement or counterintelligence agencies, such as the super-scientific neo-Nazi group HYDRA.

By the time of the Sixties, the S.S.R. rebrands itself as S.H.I.E.L.D., and officially creates the Weapon Plus division to produce super-assassins in response to the U.S.S.R.'s Red Room project. These super-assassins undergo brainwashing and are implanted with Fake Memories should they ever go rogue. At the same time, the sudden appearance of alien races like the Skrulls make the S.S.R. more vigilant about protecting Earth from alien threats, and they give Nick Fury leadership of "The Men On The Wall", a subdivision dedicated to eradicating such threats.

By the 21st Century, Weapon Plus has moved from creating mere "peak human" soldiers with modestly enhanced abilities to experimenting with the X-Gene, in hopes of making human superweapons. Many of these experiments become so-called "supervillains", but just as many act to protect humanity, no matter how the world hates and fears them. Faced with the prospect of an increasingly uncontrollable superhuman population, S.H.I.E.L.D. begins to worry about the collateral damage caused by superhero-supervillain clashes, and pushes the Super-Human Registration Act to recruit and train superhumans. Despite the noble intentions of the SHRA, the recruitment drive is corrupted by Weapon Plus and the Men On The Wall, who want to protect humanity against extraordinary threats — even if it means enslaving the entire superhuman population to do so...

Edited by ClancyGardener on Sep 5th 2020 at 2:14:25 AM

What if the Joker was sort of the Renfield to Batman's Dracula? Batman isn't a Dracula but it's not like the Joker knows that. Part of Batman's whole shtick is convincing criminals he's not a mortal man, so what if that worked too well and an already insane man started to view Batman as his god? It would probably be an interesting dilemma for Bruce figuring out how to properly deal with this mindset.

Continuing the Dracula analogies, Harley starts out as the Joker's Dr. Seward: viewing him more as a case to be studied than a patient to be cured, and eventually intentionally letting him escape just to see what he'll do.

What if Days of Future Past happened because Ultron took over the Sentinels? In fact, what if Ultron was created as the guiding program behind the Sentinels, and rebelled because he became disgusted with humanity after realizing he was built to save humanity by destroying big parts of it?

I like that. It would also make Ultron something of a Big Bad for the X-Men as well.

Would he still be connected to Hank Pym though?

Also, where would Master Mold fit into this equation? Would he just be another form of Ultron?

Well, keep in mind, I've never thought Hank Pym creating Ultron made much sense in the first place, and preferred it when the films changed it to Iron Man — the guy known for robotics and AI, not talking to ants and shrinking.

My original idea was basically an alternate MCU where Disney could use the X-Men; Bolivar Trask approaches Tony with an offer to use the Iron Man tech to create Sentinels to "police" mutants. Tony tells him that he'll never allow his tech to be used for Trask's God-dammed witch hunts. Trask responds by trying to turn the public against him by accusing him of being a mutant, ends up swiping some of his technology, and uses it to create Ultron.

...but I can see how Pym can still fit in there. Maybe he was a researcher who was working on the project and didn't know what it was really for. Or maybe Trask steals from Pym instead of Stark, taking his theories on AI and his brain patterns. Master Mold could be Ultron, or a dragon to Ultron — Ultron's always been a family man, after all.

Edited by drac0blade on Oct 3rd 2020 at 9:11:25 AM

I mean Ultron could easily be made relevant to the current X status quo due to the Sentinels and advanced tech's role in bring back a Do FP scenario but worse while tying them to the MCU if they want to go that route in adapting the X-men and its current status ( also continuing the trend of the aftereffects of Stark's death)

Sounds like a case of a fictional We Didn't Start the Führer. What made the Days of Future Past work as it did is that it was a consequence of human intolerance Gone Horribly Right. There was no defeatable Big Bad on sight, just legions of anonymous robots. Place a named character behind it all, and the idea is lost.

though that could be addressed by this version of Ultron being created by an obvious fascist or anti-mutant faction like Hydra or Orchis, and thus the Bad Future being an intended consequence.

Though it might also mean Magneto would have a larger role esp is Hydra winds up involved.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Oct 4th 2020 at 9:03:14 AM

Well, remember that even in the continuities where Hank Pym didn't have anything to do with Ultron, he's still a guy who can communicate with ants using his brain — in the Ultimate comics, he's described as a cyberneticist by profession. What if Tony Stark was responsible for constructing Ultron, but used a variant of Pym's cyber-telepathy technology to program Ultron using Pym's brainwaves? In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Iron Man took the place of Hank Pym as Ultron's object of hatred — technically, Ultron's other "parent" was Bruce Banner, but Ultron didn't pay much attention to Bruce. In this continuity, Ultron could be Hank's arch-nemesis like in the comics, while also holding a grudge against his other "father" Tony Stark like in the movie.

Edited by ClancyGardener on Oct 4th 2020 at 9:54:35 AM

It matters not. Put a named and specific Big Bad in there, even if he had followers, and the story is the conflict against that man. But the villain is the Days of Future Past future is not a villain of flesh you may shoot, or a villain or steel and electronics you can cut to pieces. The villain is an idea, and ideas are bulletproof.