Comic's riskiest acronym

The All-Star Squadron

Don't expect to see a JSA revival in My52.  I think it's time to retire some of these WWII legacy characters either because of unreasonable age (Wildcat), duplication of characters (Flash and Green Lantern), or nonsensical "legacy" characters (damn near everyone else).  Even the concept of a Justice Society is too much a duplicate of the Justice League and feels unnecessary in my more streamlined DCU, where each title has to provide a distinct feel to justify itself.

So why am I even entertaining this concept even with a name change?  Because honestly many of the characters introduced early on in the series' life are worth keeping active and frankly I don't hate the idea of legacy team members as much as I dislike the rampant idiocy of it toward the end.

Pictured: The Legion of Supe- what?

Presumably having collapsed under their own weight, the JSA will disband, with only a core element of characters remaining who really want to make a difference.  While the JLA mandate is to gather together to face threats to big for them individually, the A-SS are your "full-time" heroes, maintaining an accessible headquarters and making themselves available for people to come to with their problems.

Membership will consist mostly of the more proven 2nd generation JSA characters, those who remain after Wildcat, Flash and  Green Lantern retire, and after the tidal flood of legacy characters is sent back home.

The All-Stars are:

Mr. Terrific

The clear break-out star from the legacy theme of JSA who got in early and proved himself as a viable character many times over.  The writer has to be careful, though, 'cause he can easily tip into Marty Sue territory where he's the best at everything and everything he does is perfect.  In skilled hands, though, Mr. Terrific's intelligence, skills, and technical savvy focus on a brains over brawn approach to crime fighting.

Hourman

Rick Tyler has two superpowers with great storytelling potential: one, he can activate the drug Miraclo to give himself super strength for one hour, and two, he has an hourglass with tachyons in it which grant him visions of one hour into the future.  Nothing but great things from those.  I'm so glad they finally ditched the Miraclo addiction sub-plot to his powers, but I do like that this addiction is part of his history.  It sets himself up as someone who can provide motivational speeches to the downtrodden, and the lives he's saved through positive influence could equal those he's saved through super-powered conflict.  As an added bonus, many of the people he's saved this way around the world have formed a community of "Minutemen" who keep their eyes out for potential trouble and alert Rick if warranted.  Between his Minutemen and his tachyon hourglass, Rick is the best early-warning system the team could ask for.

Liberty Belle

Jesse Chambers has flip-flopped a bit on whether she's Johnny Quick's legacy or Liberty Belle's, with costume and powers changing to suit.  Truth is, I love her in her 40s-inspired Liberty Belle costume, but think she's better with her superspeed powers.  So I'm going to shuffle the deck a bit and combine the two concepts.  While her father activated his superspeed using a complex mathematical formula (which Jesse also used), her mother activated her great strength through the ringing of the actual Liberty Bell.  Jesse has taken a page from both their books and stabilized her powers thusly: Wearing a belt buckle made from the same metal as the Liberty Bell (just as her mother did), Jesse is able to "ring" the bell with a tap of her buckle, activating her superspeed in the same way her dad's formula did.  I can't think of a logical reason why this would be *better* for her, but it works for me.

Stargirl

The first legitimate JSA legacy, Stargirl has dovetailed the legacies of both the Star-Spangled Kid and Starman to become a true success story of the JSA.  Although she started out as a self-interested troublemaker, she's been taught by some of the best and has become a hero that other neophytes can look up to.

Sandman

I'm not trying to backpedal here, but I think Sand's silicone powers got way too much play during his time with the JSA, amping up to the point where he could cause earthquakes.  Fortunately for me, I've decided that his body is starting to heal a bit from his transformation.  He still has silicone-based powers, but now they're only capable of allowing him to transform himself into sand and pass through stone and crystalline surfaces.

For the most part, he's going back to the commando-mode of his early JSA days with his gas mask and sleep gas (his powers sort of make the wire-poon gun unnecessary).  Between his sleep gas and his ability to penetrate nearly any building, he really is the mortal embodiment of the Sandman.  Somewhere along the line he's also going to earn peace when he sleeps.  His prophetic dreams are too similar to the otherwise more interesting future visions of Hourman.

Dr. Mid-Nite

One of my personal favorites from the Society, I like the way he uses medicine as a tool to fight crime.  He's like the exact opposite of the Crime Doctor.  There's a bit of overlap with Mr. Terrific, what with his intelligence, skills and pet owl (akin to the T-Spheres), but I think that just makes them closer friends than competitors.  There are some notable philosophical differences between them, of course, which just makes for a more interesting environment when they work together.

Plastic Man

It's been established that his plastic body has kept him alive for all these years and confirms that he was a member of the Squadron back in WWII as the liaison with the FBI.  Although a lot of attention has been paid to his criminal background in recent years, I think it's time to revisit his FBI potential and not only make him the longest arm of the law, but also get him back into the saddle with the All-Star Squadron.  His gangster background plus his work with the FBI makes Plas the perfect crime-buster.

TNT and Dinah-Might

This is where, after mocking the flood of poorly-thought-out legacy characters, I introduce my OWN legacy character(s) to join the Squadron.  For no other reason than a personal fondness for the characters of TNT and Dan the Dyna-mite (dating to one of the first Superfriends comics I read as a kid), I'll have a new duo discover the science between the explosive-packed rings. In this case, a college professor struggling for tenure finds inspiration in the work of one of his graduate students and the two manage to recreate (more or less) the experiment that lead to the original crime fighters.  In addition to enhanced strength, the two gain explosive punches and rocket-propelled flight.

Something I really have to address when working with these Golden Age legacy characters is how the DCU sliding timeline has grown ever-farther from the anchor point of World War II.  While many of the original JSA-ers had an "excuse" for their slowed aging, many of these new descendants don't.  I was able to put together a solution for Black Canary in my post on her title, and Stargirl's step-father, Pat Dugan, has the convenient time-skip of the time he was lost in time with the Seven Soldiers of Victory.  I can also see a way to time-skip the members of Infinity, Inc. if that becomes necessary.

But in this group, the troublemakers are Liberty Belle and Hourman.  Explicitly stated as the children of WWII heroes, it's getting to the point where even if they'd been born in the 60's (with their parents well into their 40s), they'd be around 50 years old now.  Clearly they're not.  

I'm afraid I don't have a solution for either of these, so it'll have to be something I address in the future.

Just...Dove

Dove

Despite the ever-increasing gaps in my posting habits, my mind is still tuned to My52 and another character who deserves her own title in my fantasy publisher camp.

'Dove' is a simple title, but I like it.  Within these pages we'll continue the story of Dawn Granger as Dove, the mortal representative of the Lords of Order.  Since the character first appeared (and before, since she's a legacy character to the first Dove), Dove has always been paired up with a Hawk, the mortal representative of the Lords of Chaos.  With the previous Hawk (Holly Granger) killed off in Blackest Night, and my BN-changes which skipped the first Hawk, Hank Hall's reincarnation, Dawn currently finds herself Halwk-less, and I'm going to fight temptation and NOT team her up with yet another Lord of Chaos counterpart.

You got it, boss.

A key player in Blackest Night, Dove is ready to take the spotlight on her own, actively taking on the role as an Agent of Order to keep society moving forward and defeating any efforts from Chaos to undermine the peace.  She'll be doing this in two fronts: in her superhero identity as Dove, and also in her involvement in politics as a Congressional aide in Washington D.C. Although not a decision-maker in U.S. politics, she at least has the ear of one who is, and can influence policy whenever she can overcome the petty bickering of her co-workers.  That government thing might be totally out of nowhere, but I remember her (and her partner) being based in Washington during a previous series.  Since then she'd spent a few years in a magical coma and believed dead, but I don't think that invalidates her previous status.

Hawk and Dove were initially created as an experiment between two Lords of Chaos and Order who were in love with each other to see if their methods could ever work together.  As far as I'm concerned, that experiment is a failure.  We've already lost one Dove and two Hawks. Don't expect any cosmic balance to attempt to try again with a new Hawk.  If anything, a spurned and angry Chaos would produce an enemy Hawk to try to take care of his ex-girlfriend's avatar.  In fact, expect T'Charr (the Lord of Chaos) to become a Hera-like power which will produce obstacles to Dove's mission just out of jealousy.

They sort of already did this with a character called

Kestrel, but that was Liefeld and doesn't count.

Children of the Atom

Astonishing X-Men

2008 kicked off with Messiah CompleX, the last X-Event to contain anything I recognized as X-Men.  Following this event, all the mutants of the world moved to San Francisco and created their own nation (or something), inviting people like Magneto and Sub-Mariner to join the team.

By pulling the e-brake here, though, I get to keep my X-Men as the struggling minority, working to keep the world safe in spite of overwhelming bigotry and hatred, but not isolated in their own nation.  With the death of Charles Xavier at the end of CompleX (uh...spoilers?), the X-Men must refocus on attaining his dream, and the existence of Hope Summers, the first mutant born since Decimation, gives them a renewed sense of optimism and wipes some of the "we're dying as a species" angst which darkened recent years.

Personally, my view of the super-powered mutant is that mutations in the X-Men comics (I believe created by Celestial tampering in human genetics at the dawn of time) should lead to beneficial mutations the vast majority of time.  Sure appearances may deviate a bit, and there can be some side-effects, but Celestial-tampered genetic mutations will lead to laser eyes and rocket punches rather than wax skin or early-onset aging.

The greatest power possessed by these mutants, fer instance,

is that the girl in green can vomit acid...

However, I really like the idea of the X-Men serving as the faculty of a school in addition to being crime-busting superheroes.  I'll be discussing the student body at some future post, though.  For the time being, I want to focus on the X-Men themselves.  My X-Men were selected based both on experience with the team as well as contributing a distinctive power and ability to the group dynamic.  Fer instance, with Cyclops providing the laser blasting power, I had no interest in other-blasty characters like Gambit, Chamber or Dazzler (although I did seriously consider the latter).

With that in mind, these are the mutants who made the cut:

Cyclops
For years Cyclops has been aware that the slightest misstep on his part could lead to disaster from his uncontrollable eye beams.  The events of Messiah CompleX lead him to see that same quality in his leadership of the X-Men. Under his watch, the team has become a dangerous weapon and he dedicates himself to stepping away from that edge.  He realizes trying to keep mutants separate from humanity only leads to conflict, and true peace can only come from full integration.

Cannonball

The first New Mutants "graduate," Sam is most in tune with the Academy as a place of learning.  He knows what it's like to want to be an X-Man, and he's the best at relating to the students on campus.  He also recalls how much trouble he had learning to control his own powers, which makes him a great teacher when dealing with young mutants with the same limitations.  I'm not 100% current on what Cannonball can do with his powers these days (I think I saw him making a force field once), but I'd like to keep it focused on his main "invulnerable while blastin'" smash-thru-things qualities, although I can see him being able to throw explosive punches to strike with the force of a cannonball.  Creating defensive blast shields or throwing energy blasts are outside what I think his unique powers would allow.

 Iceman

Of all mutants present at Messiah CompleX, seeing Professor X killed affected Bobby the most.  Charles' death opened his eyes to how far they'd come from the initial forming of the X-Men and how much he himself had changed in that time.  The re-commitment to Xavier's dream is driven mostly by Iceman as he strives to return to what made him and the team great in its heyday.  As the "heart" of the team, Iceman also begins focusing his powers more on defense and restraint rather than offense and weapons.  

Wolverine

I've never been a big fan of the character, but I do appreciate the way his animalistic loner nature has taken to the idea of being an X-Man.  No longer the one Cyclops has to keep on a leash, Logan has become an equal voice on the team.  He provides an interesting counterpoint to Scott in that, while they both agree on the team's goals, it's Wolverine who's most willing to get his hands dirty achieving it.  In the end, though, he has a fierce loyalty to the X-Men and the school.

Husk
As a former member of Generation X, Paige is the youngest I'd go in terms of establishing a "senior" mutant body.  However, she has a lot going for her as a contributor to the team.  While her power is delightfully random and versatile, it's her voice that most sells her. As a trainee of Banshee and Emma Frost, Husk has less invested in the Xavier Dream than the rest of the X-Men and is the most likely to be a "loyal opposition" when discussing what role the team plays on the world stage.  And since she grew up in the country with a lot of siblings, keeping her mouth shut hasn't become one of her strong suits.  She's also Cannonball's sister, and the two of them bring a family element to the team for all the drama that can carry.

Legion

I confess, I'm not 100% sure what David Haller's status is these days, but Wikipedia tells me he's probably alive (or can easily be made so) so I'm willing to give him a spot in the team. While in one sense Legion's multiple-personality based powers steals some of Husk's thunder as far as "random effects" goes, he brings a couple other things to the table I really want to have in my X-Jet.  A) As Charles Xavier's son, he brings a bit of legacy to the Dream and carries on his father's traditions proudly, and 2) his weird mental status lets me have a telepath on the team with a little more interest (and a little less reliability) than some of the other trump card telepaths.  To be honest, it can be fun to have a character able to read another's mind, but if it's too available, it becomes difficult to keep secrets or hold mysteries against the team. David's no-guarantee powers means it's often available, but can't be relied on.




One side note to my roster, so far I've been very lucky in my comic team rewrites (mostly in my DC Comics My52 posts) that I've never had to pay much attention to race or gender.  There were always enough good characters to choose from which met my needs that I never wanted for a decent balance of race or sex.  To my surprise, though, the X-Men seem pretty weak in those areas.  There are only two significant black X-Men, Storm and Bishop, and one of them is now evil (and the other has a different role to be discovered later on in these posts).  So I just have to accept that my X-Men, for a while at least, are going to be mostly white males.  It's not my preferred status quo, but to do it any other way would cry of tokenism, and fortunately I don't have to bow to that.

In the comics, the X-Men restructured after Messiah CompleX by reforming in San Francisco. To my mind, at least, that gives an undesired air of counter-culture to the team.  Maybe at some point I'd be interested in an X-Men spin-off group on the West Coast that's more "alternative" to the main team, but for now, I like my Xavier's Academy as a posh, upstate New York prep school, so that's where they'll stay. 

The Jade Giant

Incredible Hulk

The Hulk has never been a favorite character of mine, but I do understand the enjoyment of seeing him go all  rage-monster and smash everything in sight.

I probably wouldn't even put much thought into a Make My Marvel relaunch of the character if an idea hadn't popped into my head unrequested.  According to my limited Hulk readings, the last we saw of the Hulk around the time of Civil War was the Planet Hulk and World War Hulk storylines.  Here, the gamma-irradiated goliath was launched into space by some of his so-called friends, and then came back for some sweet, sweet revenge.  At the end of World War Hulk, I guess he was captured by the Army and wasn't seen for a while until the launch of his follow-on series?

After 50 years of being hunted by the Army, I thought, why not turn things on their ear and have the Hulk work for the Army.  No threats, no coercion, just Hulk agreeing to atone for his crimes. Or, more specifically, Bruce Banner agreeing to atone.

This may actually be the premise behind Agents of SMASH, I've never seen it, 

but I'm very tempted to steal the title anyways.

I don't want there to be any doubts about the Hulk's sincerity, so the decision will be driven by a guilt-ridden Banner, appalled at seeing what he'd done during WWHulk.  As a former employee of the Army, he returns to his position as an adviser, with the primary task of identifying events which warrant the Hulk's intervention.  

An added bonus of kicking off my Hulk following WWH is that, at that point, the Red Hulk had not been introduced.  Not only do I get to dodge such an unnecessary character as "Rulk", but I get to keep Gen. Ross purely as a military foil to Banner.  Ol' Thunderbolt will chafe at not being able to use Hulk as his personal tool of mass destruction.

Even thought Banner's intellect decides when the Hulk is released, don't loose sight of the fact that Hulk himself is a raging monster.  Banner has to be careful about what calls for his gamma-intervention, but when he does cut loose, expect his alter-ego to go all HAM on the enemy.

Another job well done for Team Hulk

Ol' Web-Head

The Spectacular Spider-Man

Rolling forward in my change points for Make My Marvel, we come to the moment Marvel chickened out hard.

One of the boldest moments of Civil War was when Peter Parker unmasked, revealing his long-held secret identity to the world.  It took almost exactly one year for them to undo this with an ill-advised deal with Satan.

Technically speaking, Parker's deal with Mephisto was to save his Aunt May's life after she was shot by one of Spider-Man's enemies.  The bonus for the editorial staff was that Mephisto's price was to undo everything they didn't like about the evolution of the character over the past 20 or so years.  They reset the whole thing back to a time when Spider-Man was his most iconic, an understandable goal, but one counter to my "make your bed, you lay in it" philosophy.

Here's how I'd run with Parker's outing:

After receiving amnesty for his actions during Civil War, and gaining national sympathy for the murder of his Aunt May, Peter finds his public identity brings a level of fame and celebrity he'd never had before.  He's finally achieved the showbiz career he initially sought in his first outing as Spider-Man, and becomes the world-famous Spider-Man we saw in 'House of M'.  Movie offers and product endorsements are coming in, he's a valued member of the Avengers, and even Mary Jane's acting career is taking off thanks to her marriage to Spider-Man.  He even has a crack legal team tying up J. Jonah Jameson's lawsuit against him for faking all those photographs over the years.

Heheh

Of course, we all know Spider-Man is at his best when his personal life is in the dumps thanks to his webswinging life, and it's no different here.  With all the adoration and celebrity comes an almost total lack of respect.  Once one of the most trusted superheroes in New York, Spider-Man is now seen as more of a money-grabbing shill, and few people believe any more that his heart is in the right place.  Also, all the work he and MJ are getting has kept them apart enough that they're not enjoying their lives together.  Peter has finally gotten what he always wanted, and it's nothing like what he hoped for.

I've no real reason to change Spider-Man's look at all, although I do favor the shoulder-only web pattern of the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon over the arm-length stripe.  I also kind of like the lensed eye pieces in the Doc Ock version of Superior Spider-Man.  I'm not opposed to subtle changes, so if I were drawing this, I'd probably add those.

Yeah, Superior Spidey had the shoulder things too, but I didn't like the muted colors.

God of Thunder

Thor

Taking a sort of chronological approach to Make My Marvel, I'm kicking off with my first continuity change following my rolling start of Marvel Comics timeline.

As I mentioned in my MMM kick-off post, I'm 100% on-board with Marvel continuity up through the end of Civil War.  My first deviation kicks in in September of 2007 with the never-happened introduction of Thor vol. 3.  Here's why that'll never happen in my Marvel.

Unlike seemingly every other comic book fan out there, I've never cared much for Thor when he focused on his Asgardian heritage.  At my core, I'm a superhero fan, and I like seeing Thor acting in Midgard as a hero, rather than hanging out with all his god friends in Asgard.  In fact, my favorite period of Thor's history was when the son of Odin was banished and his powers bestowed on mortal man, Eric Masterson.

They added some armoring to his costume, but without going full-on Viking like in recent years.

This aesthetic will influence my costuming decisions for MMM Thor.

By coincidence, when last we saw Thor, he and all of Asgard were destroyed in the most recent period of Ragnarok during Avenges Disassembled.  That was back in 2004, so by the end of Civil War, Thor had been dead for three years, with only his hammer, Mjolnir, appearing on Earth as it crashed into Oklahoma in 2006.

Thor vol. 3 sets the big Asgard reset button as a Doctor Don Blake latches onto the hammer, revealing himself to be the son of Odin, and going on a quest to revive all the previously-dead Asgardians.

I call bull%@#$.

The death of Thor was one of those bold moves I really appreciated, all the more because it sets me up for the Thor stories *I* want to tell.

See, following Mjolnir's appearance, I imagine tons of people and organizations would be attempting to claim it, but for all the wrong reasons.  Thanks to the hammer's enchantment, none were able to lift it.  Time passes and, other than the reactivation of nearby Fort Cobb as an Army outpost to keep an eye on the artifact, nothing much has developed from it.  

This volume of Thor introduces the character of Grant Stewart (or whatever I decide to name him), a former sheriff's deputy who was retired from the force due to injuries received in the line of duty.  Grant's opening storyline will have him be the first person to attempt to claim Thor's hammer for entirely selfless reasons (in general terms, related to the circumstances behind his injuries) and gaining the powers of Thor.  Without retreading old ground of having Thor's mortal form being a medical man, he still retains his status as a civic servant, and his connections with the sheriff's department tie him into the crime-fighting community of the region.  On the throw-back side, though, his injuries do require him to walk with cane, so he gets that old familiar device for summoning Mjolnir.  I admit Broxton, Oklahoma is a tough sell for supervillainy, but since I'm writing these stories, all I have to do is write stories with supervillains.  I think we're past the point of needing to justify their appearance.

Grant's supporting cast include his friends at the sheriff's office, significant members of the nearby Army base, whatever conspirators were involved in his injury, and the townsfolk of Broxton.  Three townsmembers in particular will demonstrate a penchant for getting into trouble and, while they will become strong allies of Thor, their tendency to need rescuing will take steps toward cancelling that out.  Although I've no intention of resurrecting the Asgardians, these three will have shades of Warriors Three, and may even take on that name during their adventures.

The only exception to my "No Asgardians" rule is the survival of Loki.  If anybody's clever enough to survive Ragnarok, it's Loki, and he returns to pester this new wielder of the power of Thor.  I may even pick up on events in the comic where Loki took on the form of a woman. I don't think I ever understood the reason for that in the comics, but I like the look the artists generated for Loki's female form, and can probably think of a reason Loki would need to change forms in order to survive Ragnarok.

Thor's appearance would also change to mirror his new "host body," and I'm even tempted to make Grant a redhead, not only to dial into the mythology of Thor as a ginger, but also to match this awesome illustration of a redheaded Thor by a bloke named "MasterOniHunter" over at Superbuddies.net:

Although I would very definitely include the masked helm as seen on Erik Masterson.

Make My Marvel

My blog entries petered off there for a bit as I sort of used up all the DC Comics titles I'd introduce in my My52 publishing empire.  With the exhaustion of my favorite DC titles (and not ready to develop pitches for titles I don't care much for), I turned my attention to doing the same thing with Marvel's comics.

While my My52 pitches were rooted in the single event of Blackest Night, my most recent Marvel Comics awareness is spread over a few "recent" Marvel events.  It's hard to pick just one point.  While I see 2006's 'Civil War' as a reasonable starting point, there were a few follow-on events and bold moves I appreciated enough to want to keep in my timeline. Unfortunately, there were just as many backpedals and reverses for my tastes, and I'd like to excise those.

For these reasons, I'm opting for a sort of rolling start to Make My Marvel.

MMM Canon is solid up through the conclusion of 'Civil War'.  That mini-series saw Marvel's hero community violently split down the middle over support or resistance to a newly-enacted Suuper-Hero Registration Act.  Iron-Man's supporters ultimately won the battle against Captain America's resistors, and the whole thing ended tragically with the assassination of Cap on the afternoon of his arrest for his actions.

Right on the heals of Civil War was 'Secret Invasion', the revelation that a number of Marvel's characters were actually shape-shifting alien Skrull invaders.  While this story was even better than Civil War, the time in-between saw a couple reversals I never wanted to see, and my MMM timeline will tentatively progress through Secret Invasion, but with some retcons to maintain some of the bolder elements I'd liked from previous stories.

If you think I'm being vague on which elements I'm keeping, that's intentional.  No spoilers here, gang, you'll have to keep reading to see where I'd take My Marvel.