DC's NEW WAVE Imprint

Langsta

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DC's NEW WAVE Imprint
New Wave is an imprint of DC Comics not unlike Marvel's Ultimate imprint. To be updated later.

Guardians of Oa
- An ancient sect of red-robed beings who strive to maintain order in the universe. They are responsible for the creation of the Green Lantern and Darkstar Corps.
Manhunters - A prototype version of the Lantern Corps consisting mostly of androids and Oans.
Green Lantern Corps - An intergalactic myriad of peacekeepers established by the Guardians to protect the universe. Those who are considered worthy of joining the Corps have their lantern surgically implanted into their chest by the Guardians.
Darkstar Corps - A more "extreme" version of the Green Lantern Corps. Most members were killed by the god Uxas and his offspring Castor and Pollux. Notable members included Ferrin Colos and Chaser Bron.

Justice Society of America
The Flash (Jay Garrick) - First chairman and co-founder of the Society; he was a USAF pilot and his plane was nicknamed "Hermes"
Green Lantern (Alan Scott) - Co-founder of the Society; powered by the Starheart
Mighty Adam (Hassan Bari) - Co-founder of the Society with the powers of Teth-Adam; former archaeologist
Johnny Thunder - Controls electricity
Hawkman (Carter Hall) - Archaeologist who uses Thanagarian Nth metal to fly
Fate (Kent Nelson) - Sorceror who possesses the helmet of Nabu
Sandman (Wesley Dodds) - Police detective with prophetic dreams; haunted by Morpheus of the Dreaming
Mid-Nite (Charles McNider) - Hemeralopiac detective with a bird motif
Starman (Ted Knight) - Astrophysicist who uses a powerful gem carved from meteorite rock to convert starlight into cosmic energy
Mister Miracle (Thaddeus Brown) - Master escape artist helped by his sidekick Oberon
Mister Terrific (Terry Sloane) - Super-strong soldier who claims to be the smartest man alive

Justice Society of America (II)
Jackson King - Founder and government liaison to the Society
Captain Marvel (Billy Batson) - Possesses the powers of SHAZAM
Black Sambo - Speedster
Jakeem Thunder - Successor to Johnny Thunder with similar powers
Nuke (Albert Rothstein) - Controls his mass
Sanderson Hawkins - Former sidekick to Wesley Dodds
Black Condor (Ryan Kendall) - Crimefighter with bird motif
Mister Terrific (Michael Holt) - Smartest man on Earth; invents T-spheres
Tornado - Shaman who manipulates weather; has painted red skin
Wildcat (Ted Grant) - Boxer who fights crime in a cat costume
Eidolon (Jim Corrigan) - Ghost police officer

Justice League of America
King Faraday - Founder and government liaison to the League
Superman (Kal-El/Clark Kent) - The Man of Tomorrow; born on Krypton and sent via a shuttle pod to Earth shortly his planet's destruction; raised by the Kents in Smallville, Kansas; Kryptonian physiology gives him solar-based superhuman strength, speed, agility, and durability, flight, heat vision, and a vulnerability to K-radiation
Batman (Bruce Wayne) - The Dark Knight; world's greatest detective and martial artist; parents killed when he was a child; heir to Wayne Industries
Wonder Woman (Princess Diana of Themyscira) - The Princess of Themyscira; sent to infiltrate Man's World
Animal Man (Buddy Baker) - Animal rights activist who gains the proportionate abilities of any animal that exists or has existed on a planet via access to "the Red," a morphogenic energy field shared by all living things
The Flash (Barry Allen) - CSI who gains superhuman speed after exposure to heavy water vapors at Cadmus Labs crime scene
Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) - Test pilot for the US government's Aerospace Development Program; chosen by Abin Sur to protect Sector-2814 (Earth) at the dawn of the 21st Century, when the Centre arrives on Earth
J'onn J'onzz - Last Malacandran; comes to Earth to warn the human race of the Centre, a godlike extraterrestrial being who subjugates planets
Carol Ferris - Head of Security at the Aerospace Development Center in Nevada
Iris West - Keystone City reporter
Col. Rick Flagg - Pilot at the Aerospace Development Center; killed when he self-destructs his own ship
Adam Strange
Challengers of the Unknown
The Losers
Ray Palmer - Ivy League professor who studies matter reduction and helps defeat the Centre by developing the technology to reduce its mass

The Legion
Lex Luthor - Genius inventor, loan shark, and CEO of LuthorCo.; funds the Cadmus Division of the US government; subjects himself to his "Ultra-humanite Enhancile Program" and injects himself with liquid synthetic K-radiation; son of arms dealer Lionel Luthor and socialite Letitia Lerner
Machine Mother - Self-aware central intelligence of Krypton, designed by Dax-Ur; neglects to warn Krypton's other scientists of the planet's iminent destruction, keeping all of the planet's information to himself, as in his programming
Syndhamar Ubilaz - Renegade Lantern who was stripped of his rank and title and vivisected by the Guardians of Oa in an attempt to extract his lantern and nullify his powers through the use of yellow-hued light; banished to Qward, a sea of dark matter at the ends of the universe; later escapes and acquires a yellow light of avarice
Black Adam (Hassan Bari) - Former Justice Society member who harnesses the power of Khem-Adam
Coldcast (Joar Mahkent) - Sort of an amalgam of mainstream Captain Cold and Icicle
Rama Khan - Powerful sorceror who managed to break Wonder Woman's golden lariat
The Joker - Psychopathic, sociopathic, anarchist, clown prince of crime with a perpetual grin; enjoys peeling off his eyelids and shoving pins into his urethra; has green hair and chalk-white skin; wears a Union flag jacket and heavy bright-red lipstick and blush
Painted Doll - The Joker's assistant
Catwoman (Selina Kyle) - Mercenary stripper/prostitute who specializes in catsuit fetishes
Gunsmith (Jack Nimball) - Genius inventor who supplies LuthorCo. with a handfull of state-of-the-art weapons technology
Bizarro - Photosynthetic giants created by Lex Luthor; duplicates of Superman with diminutive intelligence

Justice League Elite
Manchester Black - Manager of Elite
Vera Black - Manchester Black's sister
Naif al-Sheikh - Expert espionage agent
Green Arrow (Oliver Queen) - Expert marksman
Black Canary (Dinah Lance) - Irish martial artist with steel-shattering scream
Coldcast (Nathan Jones) - Black man
Rampotaek - Mystical dude

Justice League International
Maxwell Lord - Founder and manager of International
Oberon - Assistant manager of International; sidekick to Miracleman
Elongated Man (Ralph Dibny) - Government scientist who develops a Golgi extract that renders him super-elastic
Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) - Genius inventor with a beetle motif
Booster Gold (Michael Jon Carter) - Government scientist who develops a superhuman exo-suit that gives him enhanced strength and flight
Captain Atom (Nathaniel Adam) - Government scientist and "human H-bomb" as a result of various nuclear tests
Miracleman (Scott Free) - abducted and surgically modified by the extraterrestrial "New Gods" as a child; possesses an exo-suit imbedded with Motherbox technology that shape-shifts to give him the appropriate tools and weaponry to escape virtually any situation
Green Lantern (Guy Gardner) - Successor to Hal Jordan; overshadowed by Jordan's success, which leads him to join the New Wave version of the Crime Syndicate as Power Ring
Comanche - Native American giant; based on Apache Chief
Supervolt (Jefferson Pierce) - Black man
Sunburst (Takeo Sato) - Japanese guy
Zatanna Zatara - Magic woman
Lamprey (Arthur Curry) - Marine biologist who discovers a dying, washed-up icthyoid creature on the Atlantic Coast, who basically transfers its remaining power/energy via a psionic link to Curry, giving him a telepathic rapport with marine life and the power to swim really fast....his enemy is a creature called Charybdis
Firestorm (Jason Rusch) - Guy who converts oxygen molecules into flame

Teen Titans
Queen Bee - Founder of the Titans; secret leader of HIVE
Robin (Dick Grayson)
Cyborg (Vic Stone)
Beast Boy (Gar Logan)
Kid Flash (Wally West) - later known as Black Flash
Wonder Girl (Donna Troy)
Red Arrow (Roy Harper) - Expert marksman; left arm is six inches longer than right, allowing for a quicker draw of the arrow
Raven

The Legion of Superheroes
Brainchild - created by Brainiac
Black Zero (Kon-El) - Superman of the 31st Century; Daxamite physiology gives him superhuman strength and speed, flight, heat vision, and a vulnerability to lead
Gala (Rokk Krinn)
Starchild (Thom Kallor)
Triad (Luornu Durgo)
Kid Quantum (Jazmin Cullen)
Mighty Adam (Esarhaddon Bari)
Iapetus (Imra Ardeen)
Karate Kid (Val Armorr)
Invisible Kid (Lyle Norg)
Livewire (Garth Ranzz)
Shrinking Violet (Salu Digby)
XS (Jenni Ognats)
 
So this would be your idea of what an Ultimate DC would look like. Some of them make sense but I think there might be a few too many 'Justice' teams for a new universe. So is this kind of a what would you see as an Ultimate DC for the forum or is this just something you're doing on your own.
 
So this would be your idea of what an Ultimate DC would look like. Some of them make sense but I think there might be a few too many 'Justice' teams for a new universe. So is this kind of a what would you see as an Ultimate DC for the forum or is this just something you're doing on your own.

This is what I would like to see as an Ultimate DC universe. The first JSA is like, in the '40s, the second is probably in the '80s, and the rest of the Justice teams are 21st century and beyond.
 
I like it for the most part, but some seem like they where written by Frank miller.
 
Hm.... The problem is, we have a bunch of names and brief descriptions, but it's vague enough that I don't really see how it differentiates itself from the mainstream DCU.

Also, Black Sambo? I think it would be cool to have the superhero personas reflect the racism of the time, but the 80's? There's a guy running around in the 1980's called Black Sambo?

I think one of the problems is we don't know how all these different things fit together.
 
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Supervolt and Coldcast are probably going t obe my favorites. Apparently they have the power to be black. I wonder if that's a shared ability.
 
NEWWAVE.jpg
 
So, if it were to be done, this would be the way to do it. You kick off the imprint with a Batman book and a Superman book. I feel these characters have more flexibility with aging than, say, Spider-Man, because they aren't fettered to this high school identity, and I think the scale of their stories need a little more room to breathe. So you launch the titles off with both characters aged 19, and you build in year-long arcs, maybe split into volumes like Ultimates, or maybe not, with a year's worth of publication equaling a year's worth of time in the series, basically play it like the model of TV seasons, with each year signaling a natural jumping on point. So they'd be finite series, say ten years. It would add some urgency to the writing, because there'd be, for instance, 60 issues to tell the first five years of Batman's career. Once you get 3-5 years into the imprint, with the two flagship characters comfortably settled, you introduce summer event stories and the Justice League. Put the two title books on hiatus for the height of the summer to tell universe stories that flesh out the background and future of the universe and also feed from and back into the flagships. In tandem with those, throw out one shots that feature the other Justice Leaguers and test the waters for ongoings or minis. Secondary characters and teams introduced in the JLA event books open the door for prestige style books and graphic novels. The background for Batman and Superman leaves the door open to tell prequel stories - I.e. Batman traveling the world and Superboy in Smallville - without impeding on the main story.

As for the history of the universe, you parse it down to the bare essentials - three major points in history. The first two, you have the 40's (and part of the 50's) with the Justice Society, and the late 80's and early 90's with Reagan's brainchild - the New Guardians. Then you've got the more ambiguous Second World in the past and Fourth World in the future. The general premise being that there's a natural succession of ages, and each reaches it zenith only to be destroyed and recreated anew. The current characters are at the height of the Third World, with Darkseid looking ominously back at them from the Fourth World, and with hero origins steeped in the Second World to lend them a mythic quality.

Superman
At age 19, Clark Kent is really traveling the world and immersing himself in global cultures for the first time in his life and he's repeatedly facing social injustice. The first year is him coming to grips with his powers and trying genuinely to stop global inequity, and frequently finds himself having to confront the closed fist of Lexcorp, and ends with Superman's arrival in Metropolis. Superman's a humanist foremost, and over the course of the series his ideology evolves into a complex understanding that he must aid in disasters and against threats extra natural, but that he cannot interrupt their cycles of government or their private rights.
Kal-El's ship was actually a relic of the Second World, left hurtling through barren space for aeons and aeons before crash landing on Earth. Baby Kal-El slept peacefully while the complex navigation system, Brainiac was left only with time to think, and go mad. Superman squares off against modern takes on classic sci-fi archetype villains, typically in the mold of extraterrestrial conquerors, and highlights themes on the natural rights of people.

Batman
At 19, Bruce Wayne's just returned to Gotham and in the process of constructing the Batman persona. His parents were killed at a young age and he was shipped off for schooling in England, under the custody of family friend Alfred Pennysworth. He studies around the world, on a quest of self discovery, and comes back to Gotham pissed off. The first year is him trying to wipe out the organized crime grip on Gotham City. And he's angry. Young Batman beats the **** out of some dudes. He briefly experiments with a mean billy club and considers packing heat. The first year plants the seed for costumed psychos with foreshadowing of the psychos at the end of year one. As the costumes really start to come in and he sees just how sick in the head the are, he has to slowly reconsider his motivation for his work, to reflect on his adversaries as reflections of his fractured psyche given form out of his violent action, and to let compassion take a stronger hold in his work. Throughout, you keep him a sort of urban legend, never working in the shadows, only rumored in the news, but speculated rampantly in public.

The Justice League
It's more of a dispatch station than a super team (at first, at least). An advanced but abandoned satellite from the Reagan administration called Brother Eye serves as global surveillance for disasters. It's not a headquarters really, because most of the characters don't have access to a satellite up in space, but more like an emergency radio system used semi-regularly by the heroes.

Superman above

Batman who founds the premise after getting financially backing from the ludicrously rich John Jones. Batman doesn't like superheroes and he sees the escalation going on between him and his villains, and then he sees these guys working on cosmic levels, and fears the devastation that's going to happen because their threats will escalate too. But he recognizes that they're genuinely trying to do a good thing, and recognizes the bad guys aren't going to go away if they just disappear. So he wants to formulate a means for them to communicate in preparation for the worst case scenario, and as a means to get tactical information on them. He's not hopping around in tights punching Gorilla Grodd. He stays in the background as strategist and tactician.

Wonder Woman
Princess from Paradise Island, a trans-dimensional land exclusively comprised of women that shifts through temporal and dimensional space, dictated by complex astrologies. The island's another relic from the Second Age. Diana herself was raised in the model of Alexander the Great, and trained from her birth to be the emissary to the Man's World at a critical juncture of the Third World. The island doesn't travel linearly through time and space, and the culture is centralized on this idea of raising diplomats of the high classical ideals, all of it prescribed by strict and mathematic prophecy. It's a haven for women throughout space and time. Incidentally, it's where Amelia Earheart's ship crashed.

The Flash
Wally West, a young and decorated Keystone City cop and recent newlywed is chosen as the candidate to test an experimental drug being developed by his friend, police scientist Barry Allen, who in turn was continuing the work of his mentor, Jay Garrick, who had achieved some notoriety as The Flash during WWII, due to an unreplicable laboratory accident. The injection in question is supposed to provide short term growth in reflexive speed, accelerated metabolism, and increased energy with no side effects, for use by emergency personnel in highly dangerous situations. Aaaaaaaaaand…. Wally West becomes the Flash. And tangles with blue collar criminals with gimmicks. While being a cop.

Green Lantern
Hal Jordan's a fighter pilot providing relief supplies over a war-torn stretch of Asia when his plane's shot down. Trekking out, he finds Abin Sur, a dying Buddhist monk outside a devastated local village. The monk gives him a ring that gives him fantastic powers, and eventually leads him to another ring. This one's being worn by a guy who calls himself Sinestro and has built himself a private kingdom of worshippers in the heart of the Amazon. Things will come to a head and Hal Jordan will have to strip Sinestro of his ring. And then the ring will have to find a young architect and former marine named John Stewart. And when Coast City is destroyed (and it will be destroyed), John Stewart will reconstruct the devastated town with his ring. And he'll have to constantly stay around the city to keep its integrity intact, but it will be the first American city that fully functions on self-sustaining and non-polluting energy.
The idea behind the rings themselves is that they've got an origin in the Second World. Coincidentally, they had nine planets too, and that's where we see all the sci-fi planets like Krypton and Rann and Thanagar. Everything stays in-galaxy, to keep it sorta grounded. There were two rings for each planet, each set of rings a different color to correlate with the nature of the planet, and when the Third World was born, the green rings gravitated towards Earth. One might assume that the other rings are just sitting around the other barren systems in the galaxy. Or maybe someone's wearing them.
And maybe out there somewhere, in Anti-Matter Space, the sentient planet Mogo, which housed the Lighthouse of the Lanterns known as Oa is still circling around the treacherous sentient sun Solaris, who doomed the Second World, with only each other to keep themselves company.

Aquaman
Arthur Curry, rich scion to a wealthy family, with a tightly held parental secret. Mommy wasn't faithful to Daddy, and so Arthur's heir to Atlantis. They're all dead now, though, presumably. Arthur's bought himself an island, and it serves as a refuge for vegans and activists of all rights, and peace loving people of all types. And some extremists too. Arthur calls it Atlantis and he calls himself it's prince, tongue-in-cheek, and every week there's celebrities coming by. He's also an activist, and some might say a terrorist, with an outspoken radical leftist agenda.

Martian Manhunter
He's from Mars, and he's been monkeying with Earth politics since the early twentieth century. He slips in and out of disguises like a snake, and tends to juggle a dozen at a time, moving international politics like multiple synchronized games of chess. A number of his personalities are worth billions, but the only one he's kept for all these years is John Jones, pensioned Gotham police detective. No one on the team knows that John Jones is also Maxwell Lord, the billionaire cowboy who helped build Reagan's Brother Eye project for the first time in the early 90's, and who funded the renovations for the Justice League, and now serves as their liaison with world governments.

The JLA events would allow you to pull the focus back a little and give a perspective on the characters who don't have their own books, and on characters from DC's historical tapestry without oversaturating the characters. You have the Justice Society which numbered in the hundreds when it formed during WWII, and served as a united front of masked men on American soil, and was actually a society. There was a President, and a VP, and a Treasurer, and a Secretary, and a Sergeant-at-Arms, and they had cool badges to flash - an actual society of heroes, sort of a union for masked men, and a liaison between them and the people, and their headquarters was based out of Philly, but they were eventually decommissioned in the fifties after certain prominent figures, who'd assumed that when the soldiers came home, they would revert back to civilian life. Maybe they were worried about the heroes taking over. Anyway, all these guys are well into their eighties now and with no voodoo juju to keep them looking young, and maybe people are going around killing them off. Then you have the New Guardians who were part of a Reagan initiative in the late eighties. Along with Brother Eye (sort of a super-souped Star Wars), they were intended to be a versatile front against the War on Drugs and whatever slew of Cold War emergencies faced the US at the time. The roster's changed but the team's still a proxy of the government. Captain Atom is All-American hero Nathaniel Adams. Impulse is Bart Allen, impetuous grandson of Barry Allen who injected the Flash formula. Captain Marvel is Mary Batson, progressive minded and idealistic college student who can channel the power of the gods. The only problem is, the Old World gods are chauvinistic pricks, and the champion's body they give her is something out of Frank Miller's wet dream. Naturally, she has issues with that. Her proxy with the gods is the Wizard Shazam, her younger brother Billy, who's bound by duty to spend all his time locked up in the Rock of Eternity. The Sandman is Wesley Dodds, a really terrifying former CIA spook with a mastery of hallucinogens and hyper-psychology. Finally, Mr. Terrific, is the brilliant tactician and counterpoint to Batman. He's self-made from a poor family, with a mind like a computer and a highly trained body. He's also intensely arrogant and self-absorbed. I mean, who the **** names themselves "Mr. Terrific", right? Way up in the future you have the Legion of the Thirty-First Century, hundreds strong, where they look back on the seven heroes of the Justice League like we view the classical Greek gods (although more reverently) and use them as the basis for seven "families" of organization within the Legion.

Anyway, finally... The characters are at the height of the Third World, and you have Darkseid looking back at them from the Fourth World, where the shattered remnants of Earth have become the highly structured Hell-planet Apokalips and humans are bound to rigid hive work order. The technology is all an advanced extrapolation of Brainiac, the AI aboard baby Kal-El's ship. Darkseid can't physically reach back into the Third World, but he can use Boom Tubes to send smaller items and personalities back, to infect the world with apathy and hatred and banality, to usher in His age. Intergang is his baby.

BAM!
 
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Wow. I have to give you props just for dedicating yourself to getting all of that down! :D

I really think that's a great Ultimate-esque take on the DCU. You've stripped it down to its roots and shaken things up with some really thought-through reimaginings. The integration of the Second, Third, and Fourth Worlds is really cool.
 
So, if it were to be done, this would be the way to do it. You kick off the imprint with a Batman book and a Superman book. I feel these characters have more flexibility with aging than, say, Spider-Man, because they aren't fettered to this high school identity, and I think the scale of their stories need a little more room to breathe. So you launch the titles off with both characters aged 19, and you build in year-long arcs, maybe split into volumes like Ultimates, or maybe not, with a year's worth of publication equaling a year's worth of time in the series, basically play it like the model of TV seasons, with each year signaling a natural jumping on point. So they'd be finite series, say ten years. It would add some urgency to the writing, because there'd be, for instance, 60 issues to tell the first five years of Batman's career. Once you get 3-5 years into the imprint, with the two flagship characters comfortably settled, you introduce summer event stories and the Justice League. Put the two title books on hiatus for the height of the summer to tell universe stories that flesh out the background and future of the universe and also feed from and back into the flagships. In tandem with those, throw out one shots that feature the other Justice Leaguers and test the waters for ongoings or minis. Secondary characters and teams introduced in the JLA event books open the door for prestige style books and graphic novels. The background for Batman and Superman leaves the door open to tell prequel stories - I.e. Batman traveling the world and Superboy in Smallville - without impeding on the main story.

As for the history of the universe, you parse it down to the bare essentials - three major points in history. The first two, you have the 40's (and part of the 50's) with the Justice Society, and the late 80's and early 90's with Reagan's brainchild - the New Guardians. Then you've got the more ambiguous Second World in the past and Fourth World in the future. The general premise being that there's a natural succession of ages, and each reaches it zenith only to be destroyed and recreated anew. The current characters are at the height of the Third World, with Darkseid looking ominously back at them from the Fourth World, and with hero origins steeped in the Second World to lend them a mythic quality.

Superman
At age 19, Clark Kent is really traveling the world and immersing himself in global cultures for the first time in his life and he's repeatedly facing social injustice. The first year is him coming to grips with his powers and trying genuinely to stop global inequity, and frequently finds himself having to confront the closed fist of Lexcorp, and ends with Superman's arrival in Metropolis. Superman's a humanist foremost, and over the course of the series his ideology evolves into a complex understanding that he must aid in disasters and against threats extra natural, but that he cannot interrupt their cycles of government or their private rights.
Kal-El's ship was actually a relic of the Second World, left hurtling through barren space for aeons and aeons before crash landing on Earth. Baby Kal-El slept peacefully while the complex navigation system, Brainiac was left only with time to think, and go mad. Superman squares off against modern takes on classic sci-fi archetype villains, typically in the mold of extraterrestrial conquerors, and highlights themes on the natural rights of people.

Batman
At 19, Bruce Wayne's just returned to Gotham and in the process of constructing the Batman persona. His parents were killed at a young age and he was shipped off for schooling in England, under the custody of family friend Alfred Pennysworth. He studies around the world, on a quest of self discovery, and comes back to Gotham pissed off. The first year is him trying to wipe out the organized crime grip on Gotham City. And he's angry. Young Batman beats the **** out of some dudes. He briefly experiments with a mean billy club and considers packing heat. The first year plants the seed for costumed psychos with foreshadowing of the psychos at the end of year one. As the costumes really start to come in and he sees just how sick in the head the are, he has to slowly reconsider his motivation for his work, to reflect on his adversaries as reflections of his fractured psyche given form out of his violent action, and to let compassion take a stronger hold in his work. Throughout, you keep him a sort of urban legend, never working in the shadows, only rumored in the news, but speculated rampantly in public.

The Justice League
It's more of a dispatch station than a super team (at first, at least). An advanced but abandoned satellite from the Reagan administration called Brother Eye serves as global surveillance for disasters. It's not a headquarters really, because most of the characters don't have access to a satellite up in space, but more like an emergency radio system used semi-regularly by the heroes.

Superman above

Batman who founds the premise after getting financially backing from the ludicrously rich John Jones. Batman doesn't like superheroes and he sees the escalation going on between him and his villains, and then he sees these guys working on cosmic levels, and fears the devastation that's going to happen because their threats will escalate too. But he recognizes that they're genuinely trying to do a good thing, and recognizes the bad guys aren't going to go away if they just disappear. So he wants to formulate a means for them to communicate in preparation for the worst case scenario, and as a means to get tactical information on them. He's not hopping around in tights punching Gorilla Grodd. He stays in the background as strategist and tactician.

Wonder Woman
Princess from Paradise Island, a trans-dimensional land exclusively comprised of women that shifts through temporal and dimensional space, dictated by complex astrologies. The island's another relic from the Second Age. Diana herself was raised in the model of Alexander the Great, and trained from her birth to be the emissary to the Man's World at a critical juncture of the Third World. The island doesn't travel linearly through time and space, and the culture is centralized on this idea of raising diplomats of the high classical ideals, all of it prescribed by strict and mathematic prophecy. It's a haven for women throughout space and time. Incidentally, it's where Amelia Earheart's ship crashed.

The Flash
Wally West, a young and decorated Keystone City cop and recent newlywed is chosen as the candidate to test an experimental drug being developed by his friend, police scientist Barry Allen, who in turn was continuing the work of his mentor, Jay Garrick, who had achieved some notoriety as The Flash during WWII, due to an unreplicable laboratory accident. The injection in question is supposed to provide short term growth in reflexive speed, accelerated metabolism, and increased energy with no side effects, for use by emergency personnel in highly dangerous situations. Aaaaaaaaaand…. Wally West becomes the Flash. And tangles with blue collar criminals with gimmicks. While being a cop.

Green Lantern
Hal Jordan's a fighter pilot providing relief supplies over a war-torn stretch of Asia when his plane's shot down. Trekking out, he finds Abin Sur, a dying Buddhist monk outside a devastated local village. The monk gives him a ring that gives him fantastic powers, and eventually leads him to another ring. This one's being worn by a guy who calls himself Sinestro and has built himself a private kingdom of worshippers in the heart of the Amazon. Things will come to a head and Hal Jordan will have to strip Sinestro of his ring. And then the ring will have to find a young architect and former marine named John Stewart. And when Coast City is destroyed (and it will be destroyed), John Stewart will reconstruct the devastated town with his ring. And he'll have to constantly stay around the city to keep its integrity intact, but it will be the first American city that fully functions on self-sustaining and non-polluting energy.
The idea behind the rings themselves is that they've got an origin in the Second World. Coincidentally, they had nine planets too, and that's where we see all the sci-fi planets like Krypton and Rann and Thanagar. Everything stays in-galaxy, to keep it sorta grounded. There were two rings for each planet, each set of rings a different color to correlate with the nature of the planet, and when the Third World was born, the green rings gravitated towards Earth. One might assume that the other rings are just sitting around the other barren systems in the galaxy. Or maybe someone's wearing them.
And maybe out there somewhere, in Anti-Matter Space, the sentient planet Mogo, which housed the Lighthouse of the Lanterns known as Oa is still circling around the treacherous sentient sun Solaris, who doomed the Second World, with only each other to keep themselves company.

Aquaman
Arthur Curry, rich scion to a wealthy family, with a tightly held parental secret. Mommy wasn't faithful to Daddy, and so Arthur's heir to Atlantis. They're all dead now, though, presumably. Arthur's bought himself an island, and it serves as a refuge for vegans and activists of all rights, and peace loving people of all types. And some extremists too. Arthur calls it Atlantis and he calls himself it's prince, tongue-in-cheek, and every week there's celebrities coming by. He's also an activist, and some might say a terrorist, with an outspoken radical leftist agenda.

Martian Manhunter
He's from Mars, and he's been monkeying with Earth politics since the early twentieth century. He slips in and out of disguises like a snake, and tends to juggle a dozen at a time, moving international politics like multiple synchronized games of chess. A number of his personalities are worth billions, but the only one he's kept for all these years is John Jones, pensioned Gotham police detective. No one on the team knows that John Jones is also Maxwell Lord, the billionaire cowboy who helped build Reagan's Brother Eye project for the first time in the early 90's, and who funded the renovations for the Justice League, and now serves as their liaison with world governments.

The JLA events would allow you to pull the focus back a little and give a perspective on the characters who don't have their own books, and on characters from DC's historical tapestry without oversaturating the characters. You have the Justice Society which numbered in the hundreds when it formed during WWII, and served as a united front of masked men on American soil, and was actually a society. There was a President, and a VP, and a Treasurer, and a Secretary, and a Sergeant-at-Arms, and they had cool badges to flash - an actual society of heroes, sort of a union for masked men, and a liaison between them and the people, and their headquarters was based out of Philly, but they were eventually decommissioned in the fifties after certain prominent figures, who'd assumed that when the soldiers came home, they would revert back to civilian life. Maybe they were worried about the heroes taking over. Anyway, all these guys are well into their eighties now and with no voodoo juju to keep them looking young, and maybe people are going around killing them off. Then you have the New Guardians who were part of a Reagan initiative in the late eighties. Along with Brother Eye (sort of a super-souped Star Wars), they were intended to be a versatile front against the War on Drugs and whatever slew of Cold War emergencies faced the US at the time. The roster's changed but the team's still a proxy of the government. Captain Atom is All-American hero Nathaniel Adams. Impulse is Bart Allen, impetuous grandson of Barry Allen who injected the Flash formula. Captain Marvel is Mary Batson, progressive minded and idealistic college student who can channel the power of the gods. The only problem is, the Old World gods are chauvinistic pricks, and the champion's body they give her is something out of Frank Miller's wet dream. Naturally, she has issues with that. Her proxy with the gods is the Wizard Shazam, her younger brother Billy, who's bound by duty to spend all his time locked up in the Rock of Eternity. The Sandman is Wesley Dodds, a really terrifying former CIA spook with a mastery of hallucinogens and hyper-psychology. Finally, Mr. Terrific, is the brilliant tactician and counterpoint to Batman. He's self-made from a poor family, with a mind like a computer and a highly trained body. Way up in the future you have the Legion of the Thirty-First Century, hundreds strong, where they look back on the seven heroes of the Justice League like we view the classical Greek gods (although more reverently) and use them as the basis for seven "families" of organization within the Legion.

Anyway, finally... The characters are at the height of the Third World, and you have Darkseid looking back at them from the Fourth World, where the shattered remnants of Earth have become the highly structured Hell-planet Apokalips and humans are bound to rigid hive work order. The technology is all an advanced extrapolation of Brainiac, the AI aboard baby Kal-El's ship. Darkseid can't physically reach back into the Third World, but he can use Boom Tubes to send smaller items and personalities back, to infect the world with apathy and hatred and banality, to usher in His age. Intergang is his baby.

BAM!


Um, woah.:shock:
 
yeah? that so?

I like how you kind of melded the Hal Jordan Green Lantern story with some mythical elements instead of "outer space" elements, because the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was created with Aladdin in mind, obviously with the lamp, and they were actually originally going to call him "Alan Din" or something.

You fleshed out the characters very nicely. I think all the different "Worlds" is a little too complicated though. And I've always thought that Barry was the Flash.

But really, I love how you've taken the characters of Superman and Batman and like, deconstructed them, and having them focus on establishing their own ideals. You seem to have a good grasp on the characters - like, Batman has faced tragedy, and so he deals with crime in a more extreme way than say, Superman, who's like, searching for a way to fight injustice without infringing on basic human rights. I agree that the "Ultimate" DC imprint should start out by focusing on the characters establishing their....like, mode of operations. I guess?
 
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J. Agamemnon said:
Very cool. I liked it. All of it.

Thanks!

Why, if you were a girl....

I like how you kind of melded the Hal Jordan Green Lantern story with some mythical elements instead of "outer space" elements,

Well, at its core, it's still an outer space thing. The rings are relics of a long-dead galactic space police force, but that's more of a backdrop and a set-up for the stories than anything else. So the Green Lantern(s) has to work without a safety net of a corps, and as a guardian of Earth specifically, to allow for space adventures but still keep the center grounded on Earth.

Langsta said:
because the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, was created with Aladdin in mind, obviously with the lamp, and they were actually originally going to call him "Alan Din" or something.

I never knew that, but it's very interesting. I don't know exactly what I'd do with Alan Scott. Naturally he'd have to be in the Justice Society, but since he'd be in his eighties, his origin probably wouldn't even come up. I suppose, if you play around the idea of each planet having a "color" and therefore an emotional predisposition, then that could build into the idea of planets as being life forms that are in the process of evolving to sentience (i.e. Mogo) and Alan Scott could maybe, I don't know, channel the inherent willpower of the Earth?

Langsta said:
You fleshed out the characters very nicely.

Why thank you. Most were seat-of-the-pants though, so, they may not be as fleshed as they look.

Langsta said:
I think all the different "Worlds" is a little too complicated though.

If that's the case, I think it must have been a problem in my explaining it. It would be rather subdued and implied, but ultimately it would serve as a framing device for the main story. There's the Second World which is a mythic place that resembles the most epic space-science stories of the DCU. It's all these different DCU intergalactic planets like Rann and Mogo and Krypton all around Solaris, and then it's fractured and you only have a few things that survive: Superman's ship being one of them. So he's not just the Last Son of Krypton, he's the Last Son of the Second World. And as a device to explain why all these human villains can keep posing a threat to Superman - you have Lex Luthor with his hands on the last science-relic of the Second Age, Kal-El's ship. So the wealth of human threats to Superman are LexCorp employees, former LexCorp employees, corporate saboteurs and terrorists, former test subjects and rival corporations using weapons retrofitted from the Silver-Age designs of Second World technologies. So on one hand, you have all these modern day heroes harnessing the powers of the gods that came before them.

And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the 31st Century, where the heroes have themselves become deified and their teamwork has formed the basis for the branches that make up the Legion (and maybe those branches are keyed to the color spectrum too). And then you have that 31st Century climax giving way to destruction and the Fourth World.

And finally you have Darkseid. The Great Factory God. If the characters in the League represent the color spectrum, then Darkseid is the absence of all color. production for the sake of production and consumption for the sake of consumption. And he's at the point in his rule where he's realizing his time's shortly going to come to an end, because this world that's driven by order without emotion, is running out of energy and can't possibly sustain itself. So he's reaching back into the last 1000 years of the Third World to farm despair and horror so he can continue to power his world with labor. So, it's the last god of the Second World versus the last god of the Fourth World.

Langsta said:
And I've always thought that Barry was the Flash.

Yeah. Well, you've got to break a few eggs. I like the Flashes as being this sort of city cop family, where the Wests and Allens are really close. Barry Allen would definitely have to try his hand at Flashiness at some point.

Langsta said:
I agree that the "Ultimate" DC imprint should start out by focusing on the characters establishing their....like, mode of operations. I guess?

I think that's right. It's about the character arc. Batman, when you get to his roots, is this really sadistic mother****er in the pulp style who loves scaring and beating the **** out of criminals. And if you're going to be fighting crime like he does, you've got to be a mean sonuva*****. Because criminals aren't a coward and superstitious lot. They're used to dealing with mean, psychotic bastards. It's in their job description. So, Batman scowling and looking mean and lifting them in the air isn't going to mean too much to a truly hardened criminal. So it becomes about how this character goes from being that to being the Batman we all know and love, who recognizes that it's a war with no black and white, and that needs to be fought on multiple fronts with varying levels of aggression. And you can use the big pivotal events in the mainstream continuity as sort of anchor points, and make them work together and tie more tightly than you can in the sort of mosaic, editor-led storytelling of mainstream ongoings.
 
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I think the consensus is that the line would start out with Superman and Batman individual series. I would also like a series showcasing Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman and the Flash to establish them as flagship characters. Each title would go on for about five years before a crossover between them would blow up into a Justice League series.

Superman, the Last: This would be essentially the exact same Earth origin that he had in the original comics but with a twist, Clark Kent would have no idea where he came from. Kent would grow up in Kansas, son of the farmers the Kents, all of that blah, blah, blah until he discovers that he has the ability to fly and has super strength. I would like that Clark would only have the ability to fly with mild super strength before he gets any of his other powers such as speed, heat, x-ray vision, etc. Kent would move to Metropolis hoping to become a reporter until he saves several people from a plane crash and reveal himself to the public. Ace reporter Lois Lane would dub him Superman and then Clark would have to struggle with keeping a secret identity. He would find that he keeps having to save others and would adopt the identity of Superman as a hero. He would meet Metropolis business mogul Lex Luthor and begin a friendship with him as Clark Kent but they would each face each other in their roles of super hero and super villain without the other knowing. Superman would face several enemies in the employ of Luthor with extra normal abilities. Parasite would be a thug of Luthor who was accidentally given the ability to absorb nutrients and energy from an experimental photosynthesis treatment. John Corben would be a mercenary whose body would be laced with a cybernetic compound and indestructible metal alloy. Bizarro would be a smattering of Superman's DNA and some of the most advanced weapon systems in the world that would act as Luthor's personal body guard. Superman's past would gradually be revealed to him by alien soldier Dru Zod, who has abilities extremely similar to Superman, and BRAINIAC, an artificial intelligence who refers to Superman as "Kal-El." Other seeds of doubt would be planted by Mikhail Potolik, the leader of Intergang, who may or may not have super natural abilities.


The Batman, the Knight: Tells the story of Bruce Wayne, who witnessed his parents' murders as a child. After years training abroad and being tutored by Wayne family friend Alfred Pennyworth, he returns to crime riddled Gotham City, and becomes the Batman. This Batman would act as more of a force of nature than a vigilante in tights. He would wear the highest caliber Kevlar armor, gloves enabled with tazers in order to produce an electric shock, glider wings to enable short ranged flight and a voice modifier that gives him a more bestial sounding voice. The first year would deal with Batman brutally taking down the criminals in his city. It would be mostly low-level villains such as Mr. Zsasz and Deadshot and mob bosses such as Oswald Cobblepot and Edward Nygma. After months of earning a reputation as a force taking down criminals Commissioner Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent offer him a choice of working with him personally or having the entire force of the GCPD come down on him. Soon the freaks would infiltrate Gotham and Batman would have to face threats such as Scarecrow, a psychotherapist who uses fear toxins to drive his victims insane. There is also Poison Ivy, an eco-terrorist who has psychic control of plant-life and a poisonous kiss. There is Clayface, who was an employee of Bruce Wayne who used Poison Ivy's experimental soil extract to gain shape-shifting abilities. Killer Croc is a thug for hire with green, pasty, rough skin and filed teeth and nails. Posing a huge threat to Batman is the super strong and super intelligent Bane, a tactician of unparalleled ability with detective skills almost greater than that of Batman. And of course Batman would come up against the Joker, a sadistic spree-killer that has worked behind the scenes for years killing hundreds of people without anyone knowing until the appearance of Batman. After the appearance of a force for complete order in Gotham City, the Joker's twisted logic decides that he needs to become a force of complete chaos in the city. As such he paints his scarred, pale face to look like a clown and begins using perverted items of destruction. I could see him becoming too reliant on Gordon with the abundance of super-freaks in the city and even reveals his identity to him.

Flash, the Fastest: The Flash would center around Central City policeman Barry Allen. Allen married to local TV reporter Iris West and is a surrogate father to her son Wally West. Barry would be mostly a simple man who only wants to help people until he begins investigating a crime involving an experimental drug known as Velocity 9, which increases muscle movement and reaction time. While investigating this Allen stumbles upon the secret of the drug but is caught and injected with a substantial amount in the hopes to cause him to overdose. Instead the drug gives Allen the ability to move at superhuman speeds. Allen can now run faster than the speed of sound and decides to use his abilities to become the Flash. Allen would use his new abilities to give him corporate sponsorship as the first celebrity superhero. He would use his abilities to track down those responsible for Velocity 9 and run afoul of Zoom, an assassin who steals the formula to turn himself into a super fast killer. Allen would continue searching for clues to the drug and its creator, going up against Victor Fries, a scientist whose body generates intense cold after exposure to experimental items and uses the alias of Icicle. Evan McCulloch is a Scottish mercenary who uses experimental technology to teleport through a mirror universe. He also is being watched from afar by Digger Harkness, an Australian assassin working for the mysterious company that produced Velocity 9.

Green Lantern, the Guardian: Green Lantern would be about the rise to power of Hal Jordan, a former USAF pilot who was discharged from the air force due to an incident in Iraq. Jordan would be suicidal over the deaths he accidentally caused and attempts to drive his car off of a ravine only to be caught by a green glow. The ring would tell him that he is the recipient of Earth sector 2814's Green Lantern ring. As he is transported to Oa, the home planet of the Guardians, where the green will-power of the Lanterns is stored Jordan would learn his destiny as the protector of Earth and meet several Lanterns such as Sin Est Ro and fellow Earthman Alan Scott. Green Lantern would be a story of Jordan in training as a hero in the year-long period before he would return to Earth as the Green Lantern. In the story Jordan would learn that each sector is home to the Guardians of the Spectrum, which includes, Green (willpower), Violet (love), Blue (hope), Red (rage), Orange (greed), Indigo (compassion) and Yellow (fear.) Jordan would spend his year training under Sin Est Ro and Alan Scott learning the tools of the trade and becoming a great hero. This would all culminate in Jordan being chosen as the Lantern of sector 2814 where he would make his way there and learn that someone is disrupting the emotional spectrum and planning on enticing a war between the seven Corps in the universe.

Wonder Woman, the Amazing: Wonder Woman would be very different of a story than the rest of the universe in the fact that it has nothing to do with her trying to save the world. Diana would be the princess of Themiscyra, an island nation in the universal plane known as the Multiworld. The Multiworld acts as the modern representation of the pantheon of Greek Mythology once worshiped on Earth. A unique vibrational tuning between Earth and the Multiworld allowed ancient humans to perceive this world and to see it as a place of Gods and wonder. The rate at which the world ages, however, at a fraction of the rate that Earth ages, so that the inhabitants seem immortal. During a diplomatic meeting between the higher deities of the realm the War God Ares rebels against the other gods and crosses into the Earthly realm, hoping to harness the Metahuman potential in humanity and build an unstoppable army against Multiworld. As such, the Olympians choose Diana, their greatest warrior to go and stop Ares before he can subvert mankind to his will. Diana is a skilled warrior trained by all of the gods, including Ares himself, in the art of war, diplomacy and other aspects. The series would detail both Ares and Diana's arrival in America and the culture shock that both experience from their new environment. Diana would realize that she would need be a symbol for the people of Earth like her Olympian namesakes were. After a cataclysm cause by Ares Diana would reveal herself as Wonder Woman, using her indestructible silver bracelets, golden lasso of truth and a sword that can sheath through atoms. She soon becomes a media darling after a large battle with Ares over New York City in which she saves the city. Diana would soon find that neither she nor Ares can return to the Multiworld and she must remain on Earth until she finds a way home. She continues in her role as Wonder Woman after Ares escapes and continues to manipulate events in the background.

Aquaman, the King: Deep down, underneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle exists the Kingdom of Atlantis, an undersea utopia with technology hundreds of years more advanced than that of the surface world. For a generation Atlantis has been without rule as the last of the royal blood line had seemingly been eradicated in a catastrophe. The closest to the blood-line, Orm took control and lead Atlantis under a strict authoritarian rule. As such Vulko, the royal advisor to the original king, found that the last remaining heir to the throne was residing on Earth under a mortal guise. Vulko would find Arthur Curry, a beach bum living in Hawaii who's basically Jack Johnson on steroids. Curry would be presented with the knowledge of Atlantis' history and is told that only he may rightfully take possession of the crown from Orm. Arthur trains and harnesses the telepathic ability to command sea life and mentally manipulate water. Along with his childhood friends Garth and Lori, Arthur begins a rebellion against the throne of Orm in order to take back control of Atlantis. The series would be about Arthur becoming a freedom fighter battling Orm's deadliest assassins, Scylla and Charybdis. It would culminate in Arthur defeating Orm and taking the throne of Atlantis for himself. He now settles into his role as the king of Atlantis and struggles with the weight of being a world leader. He would soon come into conflict with villains such as the pirate Manta, and a mercenary known as the Fisherman. Arthur would also bristle at the thought of being dubbed by the tabloids as "Aquaman."

I don't want to reveal why the Justice League would be formed because it involves conspiracy theories in all of the titles and I actually want to save this idea for future uses incase. But just take it as The League gets together and becomes the world's peacekeeping force for good stationed above the earth in orbit.

Superman: He would struggle to grow into his role as the inspiration that everyone wants him to be. Superman would have trouble facing the bureaucracy that members such as Batman and Wonder Woman would be able to sift through the complicated matters. Superman would grow in his role as the world's greatest hero.

Batman: He would feel uncomfortable in the Justice League because most of his fellow heroes are out of his league. This would be a younger Batman than what we see in the regular universe and he would be less psychotic than regular Batman.

Wonder Woman: She would be on the League not for the well-being of mankind but for the thrill of battle; and the fact that some of these people might find a way to get her back home would be a plus for her.

Flash: Barry would join the League thinking it a new opportunity for him to spread his name as an A-List superhero. Flash is pretty much in this whole deal for numero uno, but he'll mature and grow alongside his more noble teammates.

Green Lantern: Against the wishes of the Guardians, Green Lantern would join the League as he feels it would better help him protect the earth. Lantern's selflessness and unwillingness to obey orders would clash against a member such as the Flash, who's an ideology that's a polar opposite of Lantern's.

Aquaman: Being the least likely to join a corporate formation such as the Justice League, Arthur would revert back to his lackadaisical methods. He would barely show up for meetings and go into battle with the team plastered half the time. His time with the older members such as J'onn J'onnz would mature him to the point of almost being ready to be a big-time superhero.

J'onn J'onnz: As the last of his Martian race, J'onn would be quiet and repressed from his teammates while they would be interacting on the Watchtower. J'onn would spend all of his time on the Watchtower and would only show his true emotions while leading the team onto the battlefield where he would release all of his repressed rage and frustration onto their enemies, proving that he is more powerful than any of the League.

The Atom: An addition to the team after their formation, Ray Palmer is a nerdy employee of Wayne Enterprises who develops a way to shrink down to microscopic levels and infiltrate any computer or piece of matter thinkable. He would act mostly as the spy for the League along with Batman, whom he would develop a friendship with.

Manitou Raven: A mysterious new member of the team chosen by J'onn J'onnz in order to combat the rising mystical forces such as Mxyzptlk, he is the last of a secret mystical set of the Apache tribe with several abilities over his form and spirit. He harbors resentment for the eradication of his people centuries earlier and joins the League in order to restore glory to his family and himself. Raven's abilities would perplex the League and seemingly appear at the right place, at the right time. Plus, my Native American brothers need representation on the League.

Animal Man: The final addition to the team, Buddy Baker joins the team as an environmental activist who can "speak" to animals. In fact he can harness their abilities and copy any move of theirs and multiply it by a hundred. He uses this ability to promote his green peace goals and goes against the more conservative members of the League such as Superman and Batman. He also helps Aquaman to achieve better control over his animalistic abilities.

I'll stop right there for now but I've got crazy ideas for Task Force X, The Justice Society, The Outsiders, The Legion of Superheroe and the Legion of Doom. If anyone wants me to post those just say so.
 

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