Cool Comics of the Same Theme

[Rebis]

I just finished off The End League. A good comic series that is in the same thread as Planetary and The Eaters of the Dead.

The End League is much more apocalyptic.

I have a question:

Do you like the comics that make a bit of a stab at the big established heroes and the themes of them.

In Planetary, Warren Ellis turns the Fantastic Four into total pricks that destroy many other heroes and control the world. Plus he puts forward the idea of the Century Babies, retelling the legends of many pulp heroes like the Shadow and Doc Savage.

In The Eaters of the Dead, David Brin pushes the idea of Thor versus Captain America along with the impact of World War II. Very cool and well painted.

The End League, Rick Remender puts forward the last days as the few shattered heroes who are oddly familiar to the big names of both the Justice League and the Avengers face overwhelming odds as the large number of superpowered beings are selfish and not altruistic. A supergenius similar to Lex Luthor plans the apocalypse and the few vestments of heroes cannot stop them.

Badass series.

[Rev. Tseng]

Do The Boys, Herogasm and The Pro count? <3

Yeah, I loved Planetary for poking fun at the F4, as well as for other things. I haven't read the others you mentioned, I may have to keep an eye out. The recent Supreme Power(JMS, I think?) stuff from Marvel was pretty fun, it wasn't particularly deep but it wasn't as over the top as Ennis' parodies. Might be worth looking into sometime if you run out of other stuff to read.

It's funny you should post about this, just the other day I was framing a few ideas for a gritty, realistic look at superheroes and how god awfully brutal it'd be if people could actually throw cars at one another and shoot lightning bolts out their asses. Think Band of Brothers meets The Initiative with stabs, jabs, and metacommentary peppered in for good measure. I imagine big-name Avenger types as plastic surgery obsessed narcissists and street level Spider-Mans and Daredevils as an impulsive lunatics whose heroism stems from debilitating guilt and compulsions rather than imaginary inherent good. Kind of like Batman, but a little more...pessimistic, I suppose? I'd love to get the chance to tear Batman and Spider-Man apart for never having taken out the Joker and Green Goblin, their ridiculous codes of honor carry the price of countless lives.

The tanks would be severely wracked with survivor's guilt. Think about it, you're bulletproof and can survive having buildings being dropped on you, but your friends? Atomized by mad science before they even see the enemy's costume. Punisher-style vigilantes are never given the respect they deserve, either. They're always portrayed as gun toting hicks and revenge obsessed morons, the Big Two never write them as sympathetic, desperate people whose lives have been torn asunder by synthetic Gods playing games in densely populated areas. Then there's my devout hatred of deus ex machina and the unchecked ways that magic and science work.

I've always wanted to have Kitty Pryde phase into her intangible state and then kind of just fly off the planet at 32,000 miles per hour before asphyxiating...

All of this stuff was probably already done to death, honestly. I don't read nearly as much of the good stuff as I should.

[Rebis]

It seems that only Ennis is doing this. He is a bit over the top.

It would be fun to write something brutal, nasty, and the reality.

A new popular comic series is Kick Ass, but it is about unpowered vigilantes.

The End League is based on the idea that if the people of Earth got superpowers, very few would actually be altruistic. Most would be selfish and elitist. And unlike Ennis, it would be no conspiracy and cover-ups. The gov't would not be able to stop them.

The Psycho is a good comic series for the early '90's that showed a Cold War not from nukes but from superpowered individuals. So there were gov't stooges, but most were FCO (Freelance Costume Operatives), dangerous mercenaries and the story starts about a CIA operative observing why a small Eastern European country was amassing a large group of FCOs.

But how would the gov't keep these bastards in check. Nastry brutal death. "I am a God"....blammo an assassin that can make bullets intangible then tangible inside your body. Can't pierce the invulnerable skin, so it bounces and bounces.

As for the Punisher type guys, it was the '90's antihero clenched teeth movement that fucked them over. They still can't get over that hiccup. These guys should be remodeled as something different. Men willing to become evil monsters to present the pain that they experienced.

That isn't explored. We see the righteous beacons and champions of altruism. But what about the men who become the monsters to save humanity from themselves.

[Rev. Tseng]

Well there's Lex Luthor, when written well he's more or less a monster-champion of humanity whose greatest ambition is to save us from the supes, but then he's still bound by conventions that DC isn't willing to break, conventions most fans probably don't even want them to break.

Another little thing that bugs me that I'd like to take on? Characters never seem to learn or grow, sometimes even in the context of a single creative team's run. Street level thugs I can kind of understand, but mastermind criminals capable of building time machines don't learn from there mistakes? Or heroes who never become desensitized to death, or at least let it really get to them.

I think I would be most inclined to model my altruistic characters after desensitized, disgusted police officers who have to respond to the same trailer park domestic abuse call every night and want to help but can't because Darleen keeps taking her boyfriend(s) back, or EMS dealing with fatal DUI related crashes. They might get to be shocked, surprised and abhorred by the visceral nature of the game the first couple of times they're out, but after that they should become just as frazzled and exhausted as the guy at work who just told me about having to deal with a woman who let her 3 y/o daughter drink bleach.

Which leads me to another point. I can suspend disbelief long enough to accept a walking man made of mud or a primordial planet eater, but not that someone with so much power wouldn't eventually snap and just start killing their villains. Batman sometimes makes sense, he can't bring himself to kill because of his childhood trauma, it's actually a symptom of mental illness. Which makes crazy Batman, to me, better than wholesome Holy Rusted Metal, Batman! You could even say that Spider-Man is a self-loathing guilt addict who wants to be punished for what happened to Uncle Ben and Stacy which is why he keeps letting murderers return to jail so they can escape to kill again in order for him to maintain his cycle of guilt and pain. The other ones that are more sane and pull this shit? Not so awesome.

See, this is why I would be a terrible writer; people don't even like watching the news because it's too depressing, let alone the shit I want to write about for entertainment purposes.

[Rebis]

Burnout is never mentioned. Batman is always horrified and passionate. I think he would be insane by the constant bombardment. He would almost be as insane as the villains he fights. Due to constantly seeing the horror of the murders, he would be cold and distant about it. Then I think he would beat criminals to near death more often, not just to the knock out. I am surprised there isn't a story where he causes a heart attack or miscalculates and kills a man.

A good story could be called Burnout, and it is not about an emerging altruistic hero. But a veteran who is going through problems.

[Rev. Tseng]

The sad thing is that I would act on my fantasies if only I could draw. I'm a control freak and a snob, I don't think I could work with a non-pro, even if it's just to get started.

I'm also not sure if any of these ideas I have should actually be comics, and which should be video games.

I'm apparently far, far nerdier than I let on.

[Rebis]

I have other ideas for an online comic. But I draw like someone with epilepsy at a strobe light convention.

The hardest part is comic book company submission is that they do not want writers, they want artists more than writers. So to get a foothold is to pair up with an artist that complements your style.

And now Shedub is awesome, but she would shy away from the brutality and bleakness we would write. And we may be stuck in the grimacing '90's. The decade that killed comics.

[Rev. Tseng]

I dunno about that one, the 2000s were probably the darkest eras for the big two. Batman and Captain America died, the heroes were at war with each other, Darkseid won, Green Goblin and Loki won. Indie comics are gaining a lot of popularity and MAX Punisher was one of the best mainstream comics of the last ten years. I'd say now's as good a time as any to jump on the angst bandwagon.

[Rebis]

Okay, the stories of the 2000's were pretty downtrodden. Planet Hulk was the shining beacon for the big two. DC and Marvel are mired in their own rules and stipulations, they cannot really change too much. But they know they have to. But what can they do? They are letting the villains win, something needed. But it still isn't fresh or great. DC bought many of the comic companies from Image to expand and be "edgy". Indies can create some great stuff because they are not tied to marketers, they write great stories and not too worried about how to market their stuff to the masses. Since the big two are owned by corporations their directions are more linked to profit/loss reports than telling great stories.

What could be done is experiment with interesting media fronts and stories on a select group and loyal that is very critical and outspoken. See if the idea works and then release it to the public, instead of trying to release an idea to the public then focus it on the group of comic readers.

The indie comic scene will rise and fall, and then rise again. My fears is that a large corporation will buy out Dark Horse, and then it will be the big three, not the big two.

But I don't know where to put Dark Horse. They promote writing and ideas over conventional ideas, but they lost their core of writing and expanding the universe of great and not so great movies. Their acquisition of great indi comics and creators. The failed Bravura line gave us Hellboy, Matt Wagner's Grendel gave us the Grendel Tales (stories by someone other than Matt Wagner), and the Goon.