If you could take over any Big 2 Character and write a huge, sprawling epic with no restrictions, who would you choose? You know, Morrison Batman/Calremont X-Men style. How would you structure the story, what characters would you use (supporting, allies, enemies, End Antagonist), how would you end it, etc. You can set it in an AU with no history, or just pick and choose your canon. So you can come up with reinventions and whatnot; make it an Elseworlds. You can give it a definitive ending too. There are no restrictions really, if you wanna go for 10 years, go at it.
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I've got a couple of my own, but I'm keeping them for bumps, since these threads always need a bit to get started. Anyway, I figure such a topic could be fun.
Pick a Character/Team, write an Epic
Hunter Parker
William Cooper
This is a weird place for you to go after quitting Facebook, L
Cameron Williams
...Who's L?
Caleb Scott
My friend who asks this question all the time.
Ethan Allen
Fascinating user...
Jackson Brown
>make it and elseworlds
Those don't exist anymore, casual.
Camden Bennett
>thread about spitballing shit and fanfics to pass the time
>ACHTKUALHY
Christ...
Jeremiah Morris
Gotham High.
Set it up as a shitty, absolute morass of a Gotham City that makes Hub City look like a classy joint. The main character is 15-year old Barbara Gordon, gymnastics champ and unreliable flighty bookworm starting her sophomore year at Gotham High. But on her way to school she by chance meets 20 year old Bruce Wayne, having just returned from decade-plus globetrotting trip with his butler after having lost his parents. She is at once fascinated with the dead, cold eyes he has that nobody else seems to notice and becomes something of a stalker of his, made easier by her world-weary but loving father Jim welcoming Bruce back to Gotham like he was part of the family.
This is a Bruce that became impatient and returned to Gotham early to begin his work as Batman, meaning the circumstances are somewhat altered. He's less effective because he didn't complete his training, and he's very brash and reckless. And while he's very kind and affable to Jim and the Gordon family he keeps Barbara at arms' length because he's suspicious that she's onto his secret as she stalks and becomes obsessed with both Bruce and Batman alike.
A lot of Batman's rogues are in different points in their life as well, some of them people Barbara knows. Waylon Jones is still a high school quarterback and beloved darling, desperately trying to keep his growing skin condition a secret. Arnold Wesker is Barbara's weird little friend who uses puppets in private to voice his insecurities, and is slowly driven to insanity by one dummy in particular that seems to be a little too real.
The thrust of the story would be Barbara's descent into madness and she's immersed in Batman's world, and the question of whether she can rise above it. It would take place over the course of three years, from the start of sophomore year to her graduation day, and introduce some variant of many of Batman's heroes and allies. There would be three broad arcs spanning each year:
Samuel Anderson
Hm, I like it user. Not exactly what I was talking about, but... sure. How would you tackel the rest of the villains?
Camden Lee
I'm too lazy to type out the whole thing but I had the intent of splitting the story into three major year-long arcs with different primary villains.
>Sophomore
Court of Owls. Their Talon would be Jericho, Deathstroke's son, which would also draw him to Gotham to fight both them and Batman. They'd also influence a lot of supervillains into getting in Batman's way in his crusade to tear them down, including Scarecrow (who'd kill the Flying Graysons in his first "experiment" and create Robin), the Royal Flush Gang, and Deadshot, who Batgirl would kill by accident to create tension with Bruce. There'd also be independent villains like Black Mask (whose "son" is really Martian Manhunter in disguise) and the Penguin as crime boss types, and Firefly as the enforcer of the corrupt Chief of Police.
The Court would be led by Cyrus Gold, aka Solomon Grundy, who would be seemingly immortal and fuck Batman up their first few meetings until Batman meets the ghost of Jonah Hex and learns the secret to taking him down.
>Junior
A lot more focused on Barbara as her classmates and acquaintances start going bonkers. Weylon's condition goes haywire, Arnold shoots up the school, and a seemingly harmless theater kid goes cuckoo, and Barbara herself starts feeling a little nuts. Hugo Strange would be the initial villain, overseeing the mental "treatment" of these kids and turning them into broken evil freaks. This backfires when he taps on the theater kid's obsession with Batman - mirroring Barbara's - to create the Joker, who becomes the biggest threat in Gotham through the remainder of the year, culminating in the death of Jason Todd and Batman breaking Joker's spine. There'd also be a side plot of Batman battling Green Arrow, who would be a younger Oliver Queen and his cousins Roy and Connor as a trio of vigilantes out to kill Lex Luthor for setting up the incident that got their family slaughtered.
Angel Brooks
>Senior
Reveal Joker didn't kill Jason, R'as al Ghul did. Bruce ended his training early because he refused to commit to the League of Assassin's violent ideals and R'as comes to Gotham to demonstrate his plans to save the Earth. Red Hood is the brainwashed slave of R'as, and Batman battled a relentless onslaught of mentors he's learned from who were in turn trained by R'as - Bronze Tiger, the Nobody, and such. At the same time, Bane would pop up as a threat to Batman and R'as alike as the three duke it out over Gotham. Would also start introducing more heroes at this point to form the foundation of the Justice League - Ted Grant, Bruce's one good hearted mentor and his sidekick Dinah Lance, Superman, a fresh-off-the-island Wonder Woman, Tim Drake and so on, culminating in a final battle between the Justice League and League of Assassins.
Also an epilogue set fifty years later with Terry McGinnis as Batman with Damian Wayne as his Robin.
Anthony Morgan
I want to tell the story of the end of the modern DCU Trinity, or rather the pre-New 52 DCU.
>Bruce becomes Batman of the world with Tim Drake as his Robin. The two focus on Batman Inc operations and Justice League level threats
>Dick and Damian operate as the Batman and Robin of Gotham
>Superman raises Chris and eventually Jon Kent
>Diana tries to bridge the gap between Themyscira and Man's world
>Bruce dies in one final battle with Joker
>Tim takes down Ra's and becomes the final Demon's Head
>Dick and Jason die after a Crisis like event
>Jason is remembered as a hero and his past is forgiven by the batfamily
>Dick dies but saves the world in his final action
>Damian becomes Batman and eventually trains Terry
>Terry becomes Batman
>Diana eventually ascends to godhood after making peace between Themyscira and Man's World, the two benefit each other and leads to a new age for mankind
>Clark goes the All Star route and fixes the sun after a universe level threat damages it
>Chris takes the people of Kandor and goes to create a peaceful utopia in Krypton 2
>Jon takes over the mantle of Superman
>Flashforward to DC 1 Million
>The final threat to existence has emerged in the Gentry
>Superman 1 Million has returned and confronts the Gentry
>The Gentry attempt to make Superman angry and corrupt the world around him
>Superman refuses to give in and instead protects the world from corruption
>The Gentry attempts to spread throughout the multiverse on a conceptual level
>Superman does the same thing and spreads the idea of good throughout a baby universe
>The final page is the same as All Star's baby universe
>Superman's rocket lands in the pages of a comic book
>The idea who will never let us down stands for truth, justice, and the American way
>Superman and the idea of the hero spread through the multiverse
Bentley Sanchez
It sounds pretty nice, although I keep imagining it all set in High School Hallways instead of Gotham. What would you title it?
Ah, so a Trinity Book. It sounds pretty cool.
Justin Campbell
>huge sprawling epic
The obsession with this is what's choking the big two to death. I would much rather have well plotted episodic adventures. Runs should consist of however many sets of 12 regular issues, each a complete story in themselves, possibly with an overarching plotline woven in. And then a standalone annual.
Comics don't need more EPIC™ poured all over them, what they need is structure.
Levi Hall
Probably just Gotham High, since it first started kicking in my head ages ago as a writing experiment to try and make a readable story out of the failed cartoon pitch.
Adam Gray
Eh, not everything fits the same character. You can have your sprawling epic and still have one and done stories. And besides, "epic" doesn't have to mean the end of the world or the universe. The Illiad is just a war and the Odyssey is about a guy trying to get home.
Again, I hear the title and I think of all that stuff you said taking place in High School Hallways. I guess what I'm saying is that you'd need two books, one focused on the Batman stuff and the other focused on Barbara, with the Batman stuff on background, otherwise it becomes muddled. Just my 0.02$.
Jonathan Smith
OP here. Might as well share mine. I'd write an Iron Man run, but it'd be an AU, different from the ground up. I'd have it be a sort of modern day Knight's tale, since that's always forgotten in his stories.
Basically I'd give him a bit of Morgan's backstory. His dad's a failed engineer who works a menial job, and his mom's stay at home from some old but completely discraced and backrunpt family that nobody even remembers. Without the money and the private schools that 616 Tony had, this one never really breaks out of his shell. By the time he goes to college and leaves home, he becomes isolated, frightened and starts hitting the bottle, tanking everything. I want him to have a problem from the beginning, instead of just bringing out of the blue or having it be Howard's fault. I want to show how Tony's a fundementaly "weak" person in certain areas, but manages to pick himself up and forge a better version everytime. A constant journey of upgrading oneself.
Anyway, he reaches a point where his classmates are leaving Uni, he's behind some semesters, and is puking on the carpet. So he makes the decision to pick himself up and start working. We flash forward a bit in time, and now he's /fit/ again, a ruthless opportunist and CEO of an up and coming tech firm whose products are way ahead of their time (he's that much of a genius, whatever). So now he's technically back to square one, being an irresponsible fuckwit, but instead of wasting time binging shows, he's whoring around. The accident happens (I'm going with an early version of AIM), and he again gets a wakeup call. He goes a bit crazy, realizing that he wasted his second chance, and this is his last shot to make things right.
So he relatively sobers up again, stops the whoring, and gets to work. He doesn't get out of the gun business, since that's a Post-90s/Post-2010s thing I never quite liked. I'll go over the basic story structure next.
Juan Rogers
That I'd call Act 0. It's sort of the prologue. Now, onto the actual story.
>Act 1
That'd be the foundation. It'd concern only low-level sci-fi stories, with corporate meddling and espionage. So basically here you have the Hammers, SHIELD being set-up, Black Widow being introduced, Ghost and the like. It'd have to do with Stark trying to turn his company into a top player, and confroting his demons. No real twists and turns, just proper set-ups.
>Act 2
This one would be a mixed genre. With Stark Industries having destroyed most of the competition, and now having proper connections with Washington and the like, he takes over SHIELD after it's gotten compromised at the end of Arc 1. He starts letting loose a bit again, and Tiberius Stone,with the help of Roxxon, the only Conglomerate big enough to take him down, go all Armor Wars on him. Meanwhile, Doom's launching his Conquest. So Stark goes through a mix of Armor Wars, Demon In A Bottle, Most Wanted and sort-of Doomquest. He starts getting hit on all fronts, loses the company, and then has to use whatever little faith there is left in him to oppose Doom. At the end the company is gone, SHIELD is disbanded, Doom's killed and the world is left fucked up.
>Act 3
The final Act goes all Sci-Fi. Stark, having finally exorcised all his demons, and feeling "whole", starts a new company. Henry Gyrich takes over the new World Police Organization set up by the United Nations; HAMMER. This Arc is about rebuilding, and Mandarin being the Final Villain. Not like Doom by using connections and treaties, but by burning shit to the ground and using a corrupted version of Extremis to transform the fallen into Zombies, Resident Evil style. It's basically Stark suiting up as an honorable Knight and going against the evil Overlord, his Dragon and his Zombies. Stark sets up SWORD at the aftermath.
>Epilogue
It's set at 2222, with Arno Stark, in a Captain Kirk-like position, leaving some far-off colony to explore the stars.
Jordan Reyes
I call them Acts, but each one would take about 50 issues, 30 at least. It'd be a pretty Claremontian sort of book in its scope.
Dominic Ward
Bumperoo.
Ayden Gonzalez
Bumping.
Thomas Wright
Eh, don't bother user. Yea Forums's days of spitballing are over. It's all outrage and rehashing the same 4 threads.
Joshua Ortiz
Not a big epic run but I've always wanted to write the story What If OMD never happened. After May dies Peter goes and straight up kills the Kingpin. Peter runs off into hiding with MJ and eventually have a kid (Mayday). Because of the sudden death of the Kingpin, all of the other big crime bosses like Silvermane or the Owl. Now the street level heroes have to deal with these crime bosses really gunning at each other in public spaces around New York. Going back to Peter, eventually Stormin' Norman finds him in Florida lying low under the Ben Reilly name and kidnaps baby May and tells him exactly where he is holding her: Oscorp Tower, located in New York City, and he makes damn sure all of the people that Spider-Man roughed up over the years know that he is coming, and that he's pissed. Spider-Man, wearing the black suit (not the symbiote) tears shit through anyone in his way while going through the gang wars going on in the streets. Peter finally gets to Norman, who is wearing the Green Goblin outfit and is holding baby May. Enraged, Peter fucking bullets into Norman and grabs the baby, a fight scene ensues where Peter has to defeat Norman while keeping May away from him. After a gruesome showdown where SHIELD, the Avengers, and all the unregistered heroes stumble upon a battered Peter who is about to be put into arrest but Tony realizes that all of this shit has been his fault, he pressured Peter into revealing his identity and ruined his life. He decides to do the OMIT shit where he gets Doctor Strange, Mr. Fantastic together to wipe everyones minds that Peter and Spider-Man are the same and they petition the government to drop the super hero registration act or loosen up on the rule against secret identities.
Noah Harris
Swamp thing
Donny Cates
Kelley Jones
Nolan Davis
I always had plans for Aquaman.
>Arthur was the son of a family who lived who lived on a lighthouse. He always had a special affinity to the sea and had a special love for sealife since he survived being drowned and staying underwater for over a day. His father knew the circumstances of his discovery, and knew his son was not from here. One day he decided to run away and join the crew of a ship.
>Arthur meets a prisoner imprisoned on the ship. The prisoner, who would be a mix of Corto Maltese/Constantine, would tell Arthur that he would let him on the secret of why he is so different. Arthur helps the prisoner escape and they both embark on their journey by sailing on a small boat. The first phase of the story would be a maritime adventure of Arthur and the unnamed prisoner trying to escape Patrol boats, navies, pirates and warring factions.
Leo Carter
I wanna see Peter Parker in his 30’s recruit Riri or Miles or Hiro from Big Hero Six for the Avengers to fight some big threat or fight in a civil war or just mentor them on his own time. Peter can show up at Hiros store and hell be a famous stark lab scientist so Aunt Cassy will crush on him. It will be just like the civil war movie scene where tony recruits peter only now its peter’s turn to recruit. Gogo and Honey Lemon will also crush on grey haired 31 year old Peter and fight over him because I have an unhealthy obsession with them
Samuel Morgan
So what happens next? That issues 1-3 max.