When reading something, what ideas did you have based on established premises?
For example, when Pres. Luthor was still in office, there was a storyline about a 'false' Krypton, complete with population and Jor-El, created by Brainiac 13 in an elaborate revenge trap against the Man of Steel. After the storyline, this version of Krypton still existed.
This gave me an idea - Luthor could find this pocket dimension Krypton, and while sending teams to mine for ingredients for Kryptonite, kidnap some Kryptonians.
He would then have these people brainwashed and trained in a black-ops squad, each one with Superman-level powers.
That's one of mine. What ideas do/did you have?
Well, my initial and primary idea from Return to Krypton was that it was incredibly pathetic tripe, disguised as a "story".
There's no way I'm going to talk about any of my comic book ideas. Not only are alot of them bad, but, they have a nasty habit of actually showing up in comic books after I post them (i.e. Millar using Banner as a "bomb" in the last few issues of Ultimates)......
I came up with that same idea, Pro. Except it was for some X-Statix Lite I was coming up with a few years ago. My Hulk analogue was a greaser who was dropped onto military targets to destroy them.
Millar wasn't the first to use it, though. Brian Azzarello did it back in the heyday of New Marvel in the mini-series BANNER! with Richard Corben.
I have this great idea of having Sue Dibney raped and killed...and all the heros are worried their identities will be found out and who will be next to die!
You could call it "Crisis of Infinite Identities"
I've always wanted to do a "grim and gritty" six page version of all those damn Christmas stories from the past.
Christmas Eve. Batman on top of the snow covered rooftops of Gotham City. He sees a mugger grab a bag of presents from a wealthy dowager.
Batman gives chase over a silent, five page, sequence, through the streets and rooftops of Gotham. He finally corners the thug (a well dress, clean cut thirtyish white man in a carhart jacket), who pleads:
"You gotta let me go, man, I didn't want to mug all those peoples, but my kids got some unnamed disease and I needed presents for her...I just wanted to give her one good Christmas..."
The Batman replies "Christmas? I havent had a good Christmas in over thirty years...ever since my parents were mugged....by lousy criminal scum LIKE YOU"
WHAM! Bats takes him out with one punch and drags him down the snow covered street to the police station, why carolers sing "Silent Night" in the distance.
I wanna see Bats fuck Talia.
And Wonder Woman while he's at it.
A threesome would be good.
Hey Adrian. Write something like that.
Seriously though, the biggest source of ideas for stuff for me came from a singular thread in the DCMBs called "Pick One Leave One: The Batman Edition". Me, Spider, PenWing, Tequila, Anonymous, and even Uschi just kept adding good story ideas. A lot were jokes but some were REALLY good ideas just waiting to be written out.
I think it surfaced again. Just head over and have a look.
A while ago I had inspiration to write a Superman Elseworlds story. It involved Lara coming to Earth while pregnant.
I came up with a Daredevil storyline where a new crime syndicate is in town, and is looking to recruit a supervillain merc for their payroll. They contact ten candidates, and they have to kill each other. The last man standing gets the job and a $10 million paycheck.
However, the entire thing is a fraud. The "syndicate" is really the shattered remnant of The Scourge Of The Underworld organization (the guys who kill supervillains and make it look like it's athe work of one lone vigilante). Since they don't have the manpower to go after a bunch of villains, these guys are trying to get their targets to the dirty work for them.
Daredevil eventually figures it out and shuts down Scourge. He must then protect the Scourge agents from the survivors of the contest who are out for revenge at being manipulated.
Quote:
Jeremy said:
A while ago I had inspiration to write a Superman Elseworlds story. It involved Lara coming to Earth while pregnant.
I came up with the same idea for an "Ultimate Superman." Turns out that was John Byrne's original idea for Man of Steel.
Most of my ideas are from old concepts, and exclusively DC:
1. Lois gets knocked up. New Adventures of Superbaby. Except, of course, she has triplets.
2. Secret Society of Supervillains. Emphasis on the word "secret". Team book with Harbinger (who is now dead, damn it), Artemis, Atomic Knight, Looker, Firehawk, the old Green Arrow ally Onyx, the old Detective Comics Bat-ally Swashbuckler, and some new character concepts. They tell the JLA and the JSA that they are a new team, and their main purpose is to catch the newly reformed Secret Society of Supervillains. But everytime they bust a villain robbing a bank or holding hostages, the loot disappears, and the villains start complaining that they were set up. So who is the actual Secret Society? No one, not even Batman, believes a paranoid Captain Comet when he says that things are not what they seem.
3. Shuriken. Daughter of Katana, trained by Richard Dragon, better fighter than Lady Shiva, never misses with sword or arrow. Only thing is - she's got narcolepsy, and will fall asleep without notice. Manga art. Slightly humorous, slightly sad.
4. My one Marvel concept is "Days of Future Past" from X-men, detailiing just how exactly each of the Marvel Universe met their fate at the hands of the Sentinels, and the Sentinels' interaction with extraterrestrials. In this, Galactus finds himself harnessed as a Sentinel fuel source, and the Skrulls pay tribute to their robot masters. Silver Surfer narrates, because he's a whingy bitch. Dystopic grit.
5. Aquaman. Inspired by the fact that the current version of Aquaman sucks. Atlantis gets hit by an earthquake and drops miles deeper beneath the sea. The Atlanteans must (again) resort to genetic engineering to survive extra pressure and lack of light. Aquaman volunteers or is coerced to be the test subject. The experiments make him one big mother fucker, complete with gills, scales, the ability to regrow limbs, and the social etiquette of a pirahna.
Pissing in the wind. DC don't take submissions.
Hurm.....
I just got finished cleaning out most of my hard drive and I came upon an old story that I made years ago and only finished a matter of months ago.
It's a death of Batman story called "Into the Knight".
I'm having a change of heart about not posting it.
Yes, I know.
Well I won't take it and sell it to DC.
Trust me.
I'll get to it. Just gimme a while.
Another idea I had was to make Wonder Woman a team book. Christ knows its sales have been shithouse for decades, and Wonder Woman and the Outsiders would have been an interesting play on a Bat-theme. Of course, there is now a new Outsiders book, so that idea is redundant now, too.
"Wonder Woman and the Outsiders"? Hmm. That might work. I already see sort of a mythological theme in the 1980s Outsiders that fits in well with the Wonder Woman mythos. Metamorpho's origins are rooted in a fictional ancient Egyptian-like kingdom, Geo-Force has powers over the earth (one of the four elements) and is royalty, Halo is an angelic being, Looker's origins are derived from a lost underground civilization, and even latecomer the Atomic Knight has a nouveau-Arthurian gimmick going for him.
Wonder Woman would make a much better fit than Batman did, come to think of it. "Batman and the Outsiders" was a really odd matchup, and one that didn't make sense in the context of the DCU. It really only made sense for marketing reasons.
As do all of the Bat Family. A loner shouldn't have so many costumed groupies, except for the fact that it sells more books.
By putting WW in charge of the Outsiders, you get the Batfans who still want to follow the Outsiders, you get WW fans, and you get all of the kooks who like obscure characters like Metamorpho. Plus, you still get to publish WW, as required by the terms of her creators' will, or whatever it is, for DC to retain ownership. I wasn't so much looking at the mythological elements of the team (there are enough Greek demons and evil gods for them to fight without having to force the team into the mould), as sticking WW in a team book.
Heh. I like that idea. Although I'd change the execution a bit.
Quote:
Dave said:
I wasn't so much looking at the mythological elements of the team (there are enough Greek demons and evil gods for them to fight without having to force the team into the mould), as sticking WW in a team book.
I know you're looking more at the marketing side of it, but I disagree that the team would have to be "forced into the mould" -- the mythological elements are most definitely already present. Even moreso when you think of the enemies of the Outsiders: The New Olympians which fought them during the 1984 Olympics are a prime example, but the Masters of Disaster play upon the classical elements as well, and even the People's Heroes have "modern" mythic characters based on Western stereotypes of Russia.
Very true.
And the idea of an old WW villain like Circe suddenly realising that she is actually picking a fight with six heroes and not one has some humour mileage.
Another idea I liked was Suicide Squad. It seems to me that titles like Queen and Country owe a lot to Ostander's vision. A redux hardcore Squad, with explosive devices around their necks instead of their wrists, with mercenary characters like the Kird dePaul Manhunter and Deathstroke, would be an entertaining read. DC has picked up a lot of disposable villains since SS finished its run, and the old villains vs villains concept always had appeal to me.
I love the Shuriken and Suicide Squad ideas, Dave. Plus, the Sentinel World concept would be great as a mini. Good stuff.
The Shuriken would have to be co-written by Giffen, man. That's just too funny!
They've not all been at least vaguely interesting. Most of them consisted of cyborgs with claws. Too much Terminator meets Wolverine as a kid.