Earth's Mightiest Mortal

Power of Shazam!

It almost seems like DC Comics doesn't know what to do with Captain Marvel, but since there was a spot-on series by Jerry Ordway back in the mid-'90s, it can't be that elusive.  There've been a lot of changes in the Marvel Family since then, though.

Originally, 10-year-old Billy Batson was empowered by the wizard Shazam and became Captain Marvel upon saying his mentor's name.  Among the growing Marvel Family was Freddy Freeman, who would gain a portion of that power as Captain Marvel Jr. whenever he said the name of his mentor, Captain Marvel (making him one of the few super-heroes who can't say his own name without losing his powers).

Since then, Shazam was killed, Billy Batson took his spot using the name 'Marvel', and Freddy fleeted up to take Captain Marvel's role under the name 'Shazam.'

Guess what Freddy "Shazam" Freeman has to say now 

to turn on and off his powers.

Despite being written by Judd Winick, I hadn't heard anything bad about the Trials of Shazam mini-series which gave Freddy his new powers and identity, so I'm inclined to keep him as the main guy despite my preference for the boy-to-man shtick of Billy Batson.

However, since My52 isn't beholden to marketing concerns, I'm going to take advantage of the return of the wizard Shazam to at least fix that name business.  In the pages of JSA, Shazam (the wizard) was rescued from the Rock of Finality and was more than a little grumpy at the failures of his chosen champions.  He took back the powers he'd granted to Billy and was critical of that upstart Freeman who'd stolen his name.

Moving forward into My52, the wizard Shazam catches up with Freddy and hashes things out. Shazam reclaims his name, and Freddy takes on the identity of Captain Marvel.  Because Freddy is empowered directly from the gods, he's not a minion of Shazam as Billy was, but they've developed a partnership of sorts (although there's still room for some antagonism between the two of them for flavor.)

I'm not sure how old Freddy is, but he was at least a teenager when he started, and my +5 years to the sliding timeline puts him at least to college age and adulthood.  Unfortunately, I lose the adolescent wish fulfillment of the original concept, but Freddy's mortal identity does come with lame legs (courtesy of the villain Captain Nazi), so we do get to dabble with the lame-to-hero status formerly held by Don Blake.  Recent art has sadly moved away from tying Freddy to Elvis and instead shown him as some 90s-style hipster.  Because Elvis admitted Capt. Marvel Jr. was his favorite (and an inspiration for his glam years), recent artists returned the favor by giving Freddy a rockabilly appearance.  Under My52 guidance, that art direction will return.

Alex Ross knew what he was doing, 

although we might not go that far in My52.

Recent years have seen an effort to differentiate Captain Marvel from Superman. They did this by declaring that, since Captain Marvel's origin was mystical, he would only concern himself with mystical threats.  I may have hinted at this before, but I don't cater to anything that limits the story potential of a character.  It'd be like saying Superman can only fight aliens, or Batman can only face off against orphans.  Some of Marvel's more famous enemies include such science-based enemies as Mr. Mind, Dr. Sivanna, and Mr. Atom.

I do, however, agree with the need to differentiate between Supes and Marvel.  I'll do that here by playing Captain Marvel a bit more seriously (what with the wisdom of Solomon and all) while Superman regains his sense of humor.  On the other hand, Superman's adventures will be a bit more "mainstream," while Marvel will be doing more time travel or alien world or just generally gonzo style adventures.  Bottom line, readers will be getting two different kinds of stories from these nearly identically-powered characters.

Beware my power...

Green Lantern

It was his work on Green Lantern that made Geoff Johns a household name and got him promoted to chief creative director of DC Comics (or whatever).  He made sense of Hal Jordan's timeline enough to bring him back to life in a satisfying way, and turned a character who once had trouble keeping a solo series into the headliner of a number of world-shaping epic storylines.

Having said that, there's one trait Johns brought to his Green Lantern Corps which made it tough for me to read.  He played up the space police aspect and included a lot of inexplicably Earth-like procedures.

For the uninitiated, a Code 1011 is "deicide." 

By "Earth-like" procedures I, of course, mean Utah.

The end result was that, for a superhero with a magic ring, Green Lantern felt a little...mundane. I'd like to keep the epicness of the Green Lantern Corps while returning a sense individuality to the members, and I'll do it by depowering the spectrum corps entirely.

If you'll remember from waaaay back in the My52 Blackest Night rewrite, Hal Jordan revived the dying Entity of life by reabsorbing all the various emotional entities from their respective power batteries back into the White Entity.  They saved all life in the universe, but in the end depowered all the Lantern Corps.

Yellow, Orange, Violet and Blue Lanterns are depowered and taken off the galactic stage. Although I was never a fan of the Red Lanterns, I can totally see Atrocitus (and Dex-Starr just because) killing all his fellow Red Lanterns to claim enough burning energy to remain active.

He's gross-looking, but would provide a nice change 

from Sinestro as the go-to Green Lantern villain.

I'd also like to keep the Indigo Tribe going just to continue to play off their mysterious origins and goals.

Meanwhile, the Green Lanterns are also depowered, but unlike the other Corps, they have a body of high-powered Guardians guiding them.  With their police force rendered powerless and a strong feeling of guilt over their role in hiding the Blackest Night (and other extremes they've gone to recently in the War of Light), the Guardians make the ultimate sacrifice and enter the central battery, using their own power and life forces to relight it.  As powerful as the Guardians were, though, it's not enough to empower 3600 sectors worth of Lanterns, so the remaining Corps has to be selective in where they base themselves.  Each remaining Green Lantern must act in an increasing level of autonomy, with only occasional guidance and support from Oa.  Many of my favorite veteran Lanterns continue on, such as Rot Lop Fan, Iolande, Salaak, and Stel, while others are retired (some by choice, like Soranik Natu).  

Of our Earth-born Lanterns, I waffled a bit on which one to keep as the My52 Green Lantern, or even introducing a new character to take up the ring.  To be honest, Guy and Kyle were never in the running.  Guy was never more to me than a one-note character, and Kyle never hooked me in 20 years of trying.   Hal and John were both strong candidates, though, but despite John's success as a character in the Justice League animated series, I ultimately opted to keep Hal in the suit both because he brings the strongest supporting cast (non-costumed story aspects are just as important to me as their costumed antics), and also because I came up with other plans for John.

While Guy and Kyle quietly retire to obscurity, John retains the distinction of being the only mortal to be named a Guardian (I believe from his 'Mosaic' days, gaining the title "the Architect") and will remain on Oa with a still-ringed Salaak to help run the Corps.  

See?

On Earth, Hal keeps his position as an Air Force fighter pilot, and with it all the supporting cast that came with it, like Cowgirl and General Stone.  It's an interesting inversion that Hal's commanding officer is in on his alternate identity, rather than him having to keep coming up with excuses when he goes off-world for days at a time.  I'm not clear why Stone would keep his secret, but there it is.  Hal also has his brother's family living in Coast City, but they're not particularly danger-prone, so they'll be there to simply provide an air of the mundane in Hal's otherwise gonzo life (fighter pilot by day/space cop by night).

Fastest Man Alive

The Flash

After a couple titles where I basically said "keep doing what you're doing," The Flash is where I really start to deviate from post-Blackest Night canon.  If you read my BN#8 rewrite, then you already know one of the biggest turns I'm taking.

As much as I like Barry Allen as the Flash, I think his role in the Flash legacy is more important than seeing him in the tights again.  He made the ultimate sacrifice in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the decades since saw a lot of growth and development in his replacement, Wally West. Bringing Barry back isn't just a Silver Age Revival moment, it's almost like an undoing of 20+ years of Flash comics.

Okay, they didn't exactly undo it, as these seven Flash characters prove.

I guess "sidelined" is the more accurate word.

But while, per my My52 rules, I can't retcon away Barry's return, I can turn it into a momentary blip before getting back to continuing the Flash story. 

Y'see, 25 years after his sacrifice in CoIE, someone thought it'd be clever to book-end the DC Crisis events with Barry's return at the start of Final Crisis in 2008.  Unfortunately, as far as Blackest Night was concerned, this was just the latest hero resurrection which left the door to the afterlife wide open for Nekron to make his entry into the living world.  While the official mini-series saw a different solution to closing that door, my Blackest Night rewrite ended with Barry again making the ultimate sacrifice and returning to the afterlife in order to close that door. Apologies to anyone who read and enjoyed Flash: Rebirth earlier that year.  It didn't take.

Which leaves us with Wally back in the Flash suit.

The unique thing about Wally is that he's spent almost his entire life as a superhero, and readers got to watch him grow up as Kid Flash, take on his mentor's mantel, get married, and have kids.  Some might argue that maybe it's time to let Wally enjoy his success and retire to spend time with his family while the next generation Kid Flash fleets up, but they already tried that once.

It didn't end well for everyone involved.

Wally's weakness, though, as far as I'm concerned, is that I don't actually know what he does when he's not superheroing.  I guess maybe he's a stay-at-home dad?  Nothing wrong with that, but I do want to steal a bit from Barry and reintroduce the forensic detective aspect to the character.  I'm a bit of a fan of forensics and police procedural shows like CSI and wouldn't mind seeing that play a role in Flash's comics. Story-wise, I can say that Wally's (brief) experience with Barry during his (brief) return to the living could inspire him to pursue forensic sciences.

His wife, Linda, however, hews a little too close to Superman's Lois Lane, the *other* trouble-attracting news reporter who married a super-hero.  I'm hoping that my choice in Adventures of Superman to move Lois to a TV news anchor's desk will create enough difference between the two characters that they'll play out a bit differently from each other. The big retcon here, though, is saved for Flash’s kids.  I’m not sure why, but at some point one of Flash’s writers decided that his twin children should become different ages and get different superpowers.  (Maybe someone said "Eight superspeed characters?!?  That'd be rediculous!") If Wikipedia is to be believed, there was some imbalance because the twins had to share their connection to the Speed Force.  To which I say "two kids had to share a superpower?  That's awesome!"

So expect further imbalances to show up requiring the West's to once-and-for-all link the kids through the Speed Force even stronger, and coincidentally evening out their ages.  While I'm tempted to steal from Mas y Menos from the Teen Titans cartoon, I think it's enough to have superspeed kids who can gain extra boosts of speed but only by stealing it from his/her sibling and slowing them down.  There are so many "teaching your kids to share" parallels here to pass up for a father of two like myself.  This title will have to feature an occasional back-up story concerning the pre-teen adventures of these Tornado Twins.

Personality-wise, I want to be clear that Wally is not comic relief.  He got a bit of that reputation from his animated counterpart in the Justice League cartoon, but even going back to his earliest published days as Kid Flash he had a strong sense of responsibility and living up to the Flash legacy.  In fact, I'm prepared to argue that he's the hardest working hero in the DCU. Sure Superman can lift a battleship, and Batman knows 17 forms of karate, but when Flash runs 2,000 miles, he actually has to run 2,000 miles.  When he punches someone 20 times in a second, he still has to throw 20 punches.  Being superfast doesn't take any of the work away, it just makes it *look* easier.

Tired of being a wannabe gamer...

Tabletop, pen & paper roleplaying games have been part of my life since I was, like, 12, and I'm still pretty into them, even if my gaming in the past several years has been a bit sparse.  I like to say I'm between gaming groups, but that brings with it the illusion that some day I'll find a new gang to join.  I've been spoiled by a couple rock-solid groups in my life, both during my high school days in Ohio as well as the gang I adventured with up in Seattle.  The closest thing I've come to a gaming group here in San Diego recently moved away before we had a chance to do more than dabble.  (Ironically, they moved to Seattle...=wanh wanh=).

I've attempted some Organized Play events, like Living Forgotten Realms for D&D4e or Pathfinder Society for Pathfinder, but those experiences top out at mediocre and occasionally dipped into uncomfortable. 

Despite not having a regular gaming group, though, I've continued to pursue the hobby and keep up on current releases as much as my budget allows.  I've found that, without the baggage of actually having to play, you can get a lot done in imagining what it'd be like to play and prepping for campaigns that might happen someday.

So if I set the Maybe Machine for a look at my roleplaying ambitions, I see a lot of campaign notes and adventures piling up for that hypothetical someday when I'll have a reliable group again.

I've never really tried at homebrewing campaign settings or adventures and assume that I'd suck at it.   What I do have are a lot of pre-published games rules, settings and adventures which I've been assembling in my mind for future play.  Frankly, I have more potential gaming campaigns in mind than I'd ever have time to run, so now it comes down to imagining which game I'd run if I got the chance.

When I pick this thread up again, I'll try pitching some of my favorite ones.

Glamazon

Wonder Woman

We round out DC's Big Three (so named because they've been continuously published since their debut in the 30s and 40s) with the My52 Wonder Woman.

This is where my limited comic reading fails me, though, because I’m not 100% sure if this was still WW’s status as of Blackest Night.  However, my most recent awareness of Wonder Woman is her post-52/One Year Later status where she took on the mortal identity of Agent Diana Prince for the Department of Metahuman Affairs.  As an added quirk, Wonder Woman's enemy Circe curse/gifted her by causing her to lose her power when in her civilian identity as a way to help her experience life as a mortal.

She even does the old Lynda Carter spin to transform from one to the other.

Assuming this is still the status quo, I can't think of anything better to do than keep on keepin' on.  As an agent for DoMA, Diana travels the nation with her partner, Tom Tresser, encountering metahuman threats all across the U.S. like a superpowered X-Files.  Unlike some of her Justice League counterparts, WW never had a Gotham City or Metropolis to watch over, so being a travelling hero would be pretty easy to pull off.

The biggest challenge is deciding how Tresser, presumably sharp agent himself, would keep from realizing Diana was Wonder Woman when the Amazon shows up in yet another city at the same time they’re there and Diana is nowhere to be seen.  I believe there were a couple moments where he straight up hinted that he knew her identity, but at least one was waved off as being the result of a fever, and the other didn't come right out and say it, so I'm inclined to keep her ID safe for now.  My tool for this will be a subtle enchantment in her “curse” which keeps him from finishing the thought when he gets close to putting two and two together.  He'd be like "Hang on, Diana.  How come you always disappear right when Wonder Woman - ooh, ice cream!"  In any case, Tresser serves as a nice Steve Trevor replacement as the man who thinks he’s the action hero of his own story only to be regularly saved by Wonder Woman.

He's also, sort of, officially an Amazon too.

Current status of her Amazon sisters and Paradise Island is that Zeus created an island of male counterparts, the Olympians, and the two genders are learning to live in peace.  Diana, however, had renounced her Amazon status following her murder of Ares, which is just fine with me.  See, I've never been a fan of limiting a characters story options by focusing too much on one aspect of them, and I think Wonder Woman has been a little too Greek myth-centric lately. By distancing herself from Paradise Island for a while, and adding in her travels with DoMA, we get to see her tackling a more diverse range of threats.

I know it's a bit anti-climactic to post my versions of comic characters with just "keep doing what you're doing," but bear with me.  I've got some big changes in mind for my next few titles.

The Dynamic Duo

Batman and Robin

A year or so prior to Blackest Night, the Big Event for DC Comics was Final Crisis, a mind-bending epic where Darkseid took over the Earth.  It had its high-points and low-, but the finale had Batman zapped by Darkseid's omega beams and left a burnt corpse in Superman's arms.

But don't worry, he got the bastard who did this.

An epilogue showed Bruce Wayne had actually just been transported back to caveman times, but as far as his friends in the 21st century were concerned, he was dead.

Then came a mini-series called Battle for the Cowl, and when the dust settled from that, former-Robin Dick Grayson was the new Batman and Bruce Wayne's illegitimate son (and trained assassin) Damian Wayne was his Robin.  Evidence began mounting that Bruce Wayne hadn't been killed, which would eventually lead up to the Return of Bruce Wayne mini-series.

Unfortunately for Bruce, that mini-series came *after* my arbitrary April 2010 My52 launch date, and I happen to really enjoy the combination of Dick and Damian.  So Bruce gets to live out the rest of his life in prehistory, and a new Batman and Robin make the scene full-time.

It's hard for me to editorialize on these characters because they were pretty much pitch-perfect in Grant Morrison's post-Final Crisis run with them.  Dick Grayson brings all the bad-assery of Batman without all the grim attitude.  In other words, he has all of Bruce's skills, but without the need to constantly impress everyone with them.  Damian's Robin, meanwhile, drops the "acrobat sidekick" shtick and turns him into a skilled combatant with a mean streak as long as the Batcave.  Combine that with the petulant attitude of a spoiled child and you have one of the most enjoyable Robin in ages.  

My kids treat me this way, and they DON'T know 26 ways to kill a man.

Their surroundings got an invigorating coat of new paint as well, moving out of the Batcave and into the Bat-bunker beneath Wayne Tower, and travelling in a new, high-tech Batmobile. Morrison wasn't shy about introducing new villains either, and treated readers to characters like Professor Pyg and Johnny Karaoke and the Geisha Grrls.

In the free moments between fighting crime and reigning in Damian, Dick finds himself fighting in the board room where he faces off against business challengers to Wayne Enterprises.  He still has loyal friends like Lucius Fox and Alfred, but there are a lot of sharks in the water following Bruce's death.

So really the only thing I'd change about this series is the build-up to Bruce Wayne's return.  'Cause he won't.

It's a bird and/or plane...

I'll kick off the My52 library with one of the oldest names in the biz: 

The Adventures of Superman

April of 2010 saw Superman still hip-deep in his New Krypton epic, a storyline that wouldn’t conclude until June.  Once that wraps up, though, Supes returns to his place on Earth with a more focused attitude that can best be described as "comfortable." Having experienced his ethnic roots warts and all, Superman has grown more confident in his Earth-born code of morality and becomes an assertive man-of-action rather than a self-doubting man of indecision.  With this comfort also comes a great sense of humor, and his guilty pleasure is to just kind of mess with people both as Clark and as Superman, although probably not to the extent of his antics in the 60s.

Superdickery.com has more great examples like this, but imagine his victim as 
some un-prosecutable mob boss, and I think this illustrates how 

a more comfortable Superman can “defeat” opponents in ways other than just punching them a lot.

Lois and Clark are still married, of course, but I’m going to put some space between them by moving Lois from investigative newspaper reporter to broadcast news anchor.  Despite the existence of 24-hour news-as-business outlets, the Daily Planet remains at the top of the news game in the DCU due to a reputation of timely, in-depth and insightful news coverage.  GBS broadcasting wants that same level of legitimacy and woos Lois over to their news anchor desk.  For her part, Lois accepts the new job as an opportunity to influence a news channel. While this takes her off the streets (mostly), I see her change from “constantly needing rescue” to “powerful media icon” as an upgrade.  Plus I’m sure she’ll still find lots of trouble with her new, perhaps resentful cast of characters as well as the regular danger of just being Superman’s wife.

The vacated role of Endangered Normal will be filled by photojournalist Jimmy Olson.  No longer just a photographer for other people’s stories, Jimmy’s body of work has gotten him recognition as a legitimate reporter.  His penchant for disguises and amateur sleuthing don’t always work out, though, and he occasionally must rely on his Superman signal watch to get him out of a jam.

And while I have little intention of trying to change or “update” any of our classic costumes, I confess that I fell in love with the new S-Shield design for Supergirl in the New 52.  Similar to the 'S' Superman wore during his electric Superman Mint/Cinnamon Blue/Red phase, I think it looks pretty snazzy and reflects a more “get thing done” attitude.  Maybe I’d try to pass it off as an alternate family crest for the House of El based on his experiences on New Krypton.  I dunno.  He still gets to keep the red shorts, though.  

I entertained the idea of trying to draw it myself, but in the end I just 

Photoshopped it onto this drawing by Jerome K. Moore for Young Justice.  

Hopefully he doesn't mind me using his art here 

because I think he exactly captures the tone I'm looking for.