DC Comics Fan Blog

The Elongated Man

One of the best things that can be said about DC’s New 52 is the amount of possibilities on the horizon.  Regardless of how many books you enjoy or how many creative decisions you support, it can’t be denied that there is an “anything can happen” atmosphere in the air.  So many different types of books all seem to be finding an audience or at the very least positive critical reception.  I’ve humbly been cooking up dream ideas of new series that could potentially see a renaissance in the new DC Universe.  My latest is “The Elongated Man.”

When I first heard the idea for the Elongated Man I thought it was inherently cheesy.  Not only does the power set already exist with more well known heroes (Mr. Fantastic, Plastic Man) but it has that vaguely goofy silver age feel that is more nostalgic than entertaining.  I happily admit I was wrong.  Identity Crisis may have completely wrecked the beauty that was the marriage of Ralph and Sue Dibney and turned one of the lamest superheroes into one of the most grim but it made me take notice.  It’s sad to see such a hopeful and happy children’s character go through such an emotional and tragic experience, yet I have to admit it made me care.

Of course this would have ended up being a one off grim and depressing moment that was all flash and no substance.  Had DC simply chosen to move on this would have probably been remembered as a grim misstep.  However DC stuck with Ralph Dibney, following his path of grief and loneliness throughout the pages of the yearlong series “52.”  During the course of this story Ralph proved himself as a three dimensional character, a genius detective, and a hero.  He sacrificed his life to save the day, and now he needs to come back.

There are a few things I would want to incorporate into a book like this.  First off, I would like to return to the days of Ralph and Sue.  The endearing romance of these two characters was the pure heart of the concept.  I would play up the sci-fi and the fun zany elements of their adventures because the basic idea of the character is inherently goofy.

 However, the series should be grounded in realism.  Ralph Dibney is a private investigator, a brilliant detective and Sue is his beautiful partner.  He isn’t randomly stretchy, he chews on the extract of a rare fruit called the gingo which affects his biology and grants him his rubbery abilities.  If he doesn’t keep chewing on the extract the powers go away.

I would like to see Ralph’s scientific brilliance and creativity discover other odd homemade superpowers.  Sort of like a MacGyver-type character who can fashion up superpowers in a bind.  He figured out how to get elastic powers from the extract of a rare fruit, what other power concoctions could he cook up?  Also, I would like to dive into the concept of why the gingo plant isn’t used by everyone, and why it has such a special effect on Ralph.

This character is really exciting to me, and the idea of a more human detective book with humor and sci-fi hooks is something I would love to read.  I think it offers something that the DC Universe currently does not in the new 52 lineup, and comics in general which could always benefit from a bit more levity.

Let me know what you guys think.  I’m always happy to talk about my thoughts and ideas more I just feel bad spamming people’s tumblrs with walls of text.  Feel free to reply me, “ask” me, or tweet me @edietel

Kamandi

There are a ton of books that I’d love to see DC try out during the relaunch.  Most of them involve cool superhero characters that I think deserve more of a mainstream appeal (like Cass Cain) but some are different.  After reading “Demon Knights” by Paul Cornell this past week one of the biggest strengths of the relaunch is NON-superhero titles (hopefully) earning mainstream appeal.

Why not Kamandi?  The post apocalyptic journey of a young boy living in a savage wasteland ruled by humanoid beasts.  There’s nothing I really feel compelled to add to this concept, I personally think it’s pretty awesome and would love to see it relaunched by DC.

Black and Red

DC Comics is preparing to relaunch their entire comic book universe in September.  They will debut 52 new #1 titles in an effort to reintroduce characters and draw in new readers.  I have a lot of opinions about this initiative, and I’m going to keep them to myself for awhile.  I would like to let the work speak for itself, and then judge the new DC Universe on it’s own merits when the dust has cleared.

Until then, I’ve been having fun imagining what kind of books we COULD see someday in the new DC Universe.  Specifically featuring DC’s incredible roster of diverse and exciting character who do not appear to have a home at the moment.

I’d like to share some of these ideas with all of you.  I hope you like my first one (I think it might be my personal favorite)

The first ongoing book I envision features two of my favorite DC Universe characters: Cassandra Cain and Tim Drake, The Black Bat and The Red Robin respectively.

Despite how it may appear in this image, these two characters are great friends and teammates.  Cassandra Cain served as Batgirl for a long time before the role was passed on and she went M.I.A.  Tim Drake served as Robin for a long time before the role was passed on and he moved to a (recently concluded) ongoing series.

In the new DC Universe, Tim Drake is the leader of the Teen Titans as Red Robin, and Cass Cain is Black Bat, a member of Batman’s international crime-fighting agency “Batman Inc.”

Both of these characters are far more beloved and important than they seem to be given credit for.  Tim Drake is one of the most brilliant characters in the Batman family, yet he’s relegated to a Teen Titans book.  Cass Cain is the undisputed greatest fighter in the Batman family, yet she is nowhere to be seen in any of the books so far.  The two of them may be set to guest star in the Batman books, but neither of them seem to have a place at the moment.

I believe this series would not just find a place for two displaced characters, but would fill a void in DC Comics creative lineup.

There needs to be DIFFERENT type of Batman book.  Something that can distinguish itself from the lineup.  The new DC lineup has all sorts of genres, from war stories to westerns.  One genre that I would like to see put to use is the Secret Agent genre.  Some good old espionage, globetrotting, international mystery in a comic book.

Black Bat is an international agent of Batman.  Red Robin travels the globe fighting crime.  It seems only natural that these two trusted former sidekicks would perfectly fill the role of Bruce Wayne’s two most trusted agents.  Batman cannot be everywhere at once, but he would trust these two to protect his interests abroad.

Something like Alias, or James Bond.  Two superhero secret agents teaming up to uncover and destroy evil organizations around the world.  One is the most brilliant detective mind in the DC Universe, the other is the most feared fighter of all time.  Both are looking for their place in the world, and both are dedicated to the cause of justice.

To me this concept just makes to much sense and really feels fun and fresh.  Tim and Cass have known one another for years, serving together as Robin and Batgirl.  Now they are grown up, and deeply care about one another.  How playful would it be to see the two of them going undercover?

Spies are sexy, confident, fun and extremely badass.  These two are tailor made for the roles, and together they are even more exciting to watch.

There is also a ripe potential for exciting guest stars during their travels.  There’s potential for crossover with Batwing in Africa, but also Mr. Unknown in Japan, and Nightrunner in France.  These characters have become fan favorites despite little to no details revealed about them.  Why not showcase them?

Two secret agents, on a mission from Batman.

I think that would be pretty incredible.

Wonder Woman Rogue Re-Imagination

A Hero can sometimes be best measured by the strength of his or her villains.  Superman’s villains reflect the various corruptions of humankind, Batman’s villains reflect our wildest nightmares, Green Lantern’s villains test the limits of our courage.  The way these villains test their heroic adversaries reveal a great depth about the character of our superheroes. 

Wonder Woman has a surprisingly plentiful cache of rogues to fight, but some of them can be a bit derivative.  We don’t want to see Wonder Woman fight a “female version of Lex Luthor” necessarily. (maybe we do)  We want to see her fight villains that are all her own, and challenge her in unique ways.

With the upcoming DC Comics relaunch on the way, I thought it would be fun to tweak, and adjust a few of Wonder Woman’s rogues.  Some of them are already wonderful characters in their own right, but I wanted to see if I could create a fresh and compelling take on Wonder Woman’s Rogue’s Gallery as a whole.

            The theme I decided to take for the various evildoers in Wonder Woman’s life is redemption.  Wonder Woman is a special hero not only because she kicks all kinds of ass, but also because she heals the people around her with her influence.  She will not only defeat an opponent, but work to redeem her enemy and create and a friend.  What I think makes an interesting set of adversaries for Wonder Woman are people who COULD be redeemed, and has an opportunity to make the right choices, but consistently chooses to go to the dark side.

So without further ado, here are the first three (and my favorite) Wonder Woman Rogues, as I envision they could be:

Silver Swan:

Visual: A very “Lady Gaga” esque high fashion wardrobe.  No “meat dresses” but an outfit that can be beautiful and sexy but also downright bizarre and nightmarish.

Attitude: Bold, Outrageous, a Wild Card.  Silver Swan should be unpredictable, much like the Joker is for Batman, but without the murderous, creepy side.  The Silver Swan in my mind kind of behaves like High Society fashion queens, with the long cigarettes and the air of royalty.  The Silver Swan is cruel, and she gets away with it because she’s “perfect.”

Background: I see Silver Swan as the leader of some kind of underground cell.  Batman fights criminals, Superman fights aliens and monsters, I feel like Wonder Woman would fight organizations and conspiracies.  The Silver Swan is the kind of villain Wonder Woman could be constantly fighting but almost never see.  Every trail to the Silver Swan comes up a dead end.  Fighting her well dressed minions across the world and trying to put the pieces together as to what her endgame could be.  I feel like Silver Swan is also just a great name for the secret leader of an international terror conspiracy.

Why She’s Important:  The question of who the Silver Swan is would be a big source of interest.  Is she an Amazon?  Is she even a woman?  What is her endgame?  Is she, in a dangerous and evil way, fighting for the same things that Wonder Woman does?

Who wouldn’t want to see Wonder Woman fight an evil Lady Gaga?

Cheetah:

Visual: I really love the iconic visual of the Cheetah.  A beautiful woman/cheetah hybrid.  Strong, fast, beautiful and cunning.  I wouldn’t change a thing.  I often take issue when women are over sexualized in comics, but in the case of evil villains, I tend to be forgiving.  It just makes them seem so sinister.

Attitude:  Again, I would not change much about Cheetah’s attitude.  I think of her as the perfect example of a Wonder Woman villain.  I feel like she’s incredibly relatable and redeemable, yet she makes poor choices.  She’s vain, selfish, and cruel.  She looks for the easy way out of her problems, rather than facing a reality that might hurt.  I feel like she’s the girl in High School that everyone called a “slut” rather than using even a shred of empathy and realizing she’s just lost and perhaps trapped.  If you tell someone for long enough that they are evil they will start to believe it.

Background: I believe I’ve taken some liberties here in an attempt to “modernize and refresh” but the gist of the story is the same.  Cheetah was a beautiful woman once.  An archeologist who went on daring adventures.  I imagine her as a sort of Lara Croft character, but with a darker edge.  She was also a bit of a thief.  I picture her seducing men to get the answers she needed, then stabbing them in the back.  Eventually it all came back to bite her, as one of the artifacts she stole placed a curse upon her and transformed her into the Cheetah.  She’s like one of the characters at the end of an Indiana Jones movie who is too greedy and too self interested and therefore is punished by some occult object.  Now, instead of changing her ways, she continues to hunt for artifacts of mystical power as Cheetah in an effort to reverse her curse.

Why She’s Important: Because if someone would simply show her compassion, and help her get out of the situation she has brought upon herself, she might become a hero.  It’s not hard to imagine Cheetah fighting alongside Wonder Woman occasionally, but always falling back into her old ways when an easier path presents itself, much to Wonder Woman’s heartbreak.

Giganta:

Visual: A gigantic, beautiful woman.  I don’t know how she’d find clothes to fit herself, so I’d assume she’d wear some sort of makeshift Garden of Eden style clothing, or some sort of robes.

Attitude:  Bossy, rude, obnoxious.  A sort of exhaustingly bratty “popular girl.”

Background: I’ve heard a lot of stories about Giganta, and her character has grown and developed a lot to be nothing like what I’m pitching.  But I believe the source of how she became who she is HAS to be rooted in self-interest.  Woman can be so image obsessed (and in our society, can you blame them?) that there is always countless examples of taking it too far.  Paying too high a price for beauty.  Giganta is so beautiful, but I imagine she can’t see it.  Like a lot of beautiful woman, she only focuses on her imperfections.  I can imagine that eventually, her constant attempts to use shady scientific treatments to improve her beauty backfired, and she became a giant.  I sort of love this story as a cautionary tale.  Love who you are because if you try to play God and push it to far in the pursuit of beauty, you will regret it.

Why She’s Important:  What so beautiful women don’t have souls?  I think of Giganta as a tragi-comedic enemy for Wonder Woman.  It’s sad that she’s so arrogant and bossy and rude, but you know she has a heart under all of that exterior.  Trust me, the popular girl in High School wasn’t really such a bitch, she hated herself.  But Wonder Woman is just the kind of friend she needs!

So there you have it.  There are my three favorite Wonder Woman villains, slightly re-imagined in a new way.  If there’s positive response to this article, I’ll probably post a few more!  I have thoughts on several Wonder Woman villains, and I’d love to share those as well!

Feel free to comment or contact me, I’m always happy to chat and I love to talk creativity and comics.  You can also find me on twitter: @edietel

Fixing The Boy of Steel

This title is a bit of a fake out, since Superboy isn’t necessarily broken, but I’d argue he isn’t operating at maximum capacity either.

The DC ongoing books Superboy and Teen Titans have both undergone relaunches lately, and for the most part they’ve been very successful.  But they could be better.

So without further ado, I’m going to offer some humble suggestions for improving Superboy, specifically in his solo title:

Superboy

The Good:  Written by the extremely talented Jeff Lemire.  Set in Smallville.  Quirky Cast of Characters.  Fun Cameos by characters like Poison Ivy and Phantom Stranger.

What to Fix:

The Art: Pier Gallo is an EXTREMELY talented artist.  However his style is not a match for this book.  He renders some beautiful shots, but his more fluid style clashes with the quaint small town vibe of the book.  I can totally see him kicking ass on a book like Green Lantern Corps or Emerald Warriors.  Something vibrant with bizarre characters and settings.  I bet he could render the forests of Mogo with extreme skill.

The Fix:  During his brief stint on Adventure Comics, artist Francis Manapul showed us how a Superboy story should look.  Currently he’s unavailable, doing a kickass job on “The Flash” but that doesn’t mean there are no other options.  Several artists have a knack for lush, Norman Rockwell-ian characters and landscapes.  Superboy needs an artist who can wow us with the beauty of small intimate moments, so that when the big crazy stuff rears it’s ugly head, we are genuinely taken aback.

Tim Sale, Darwyn Cooke, Rafael Albuquerque or (probably the best fit) Dustin Nguyen would all be great candidates for the book.  Though I’m sure there are plenty of others.

Lori:

This one is a bit more of a personal problem.  I just don’t like Lori.  She was introduced in Adventure Comics as Lex Luthor’s niece and a friend to Superboy.  However under Jeff Lemire she seems to be positioned more as a love interest.  This is upsetting because A) They’re technically cousins B) Conner had the perfect love interest with Cassandra Sandsmark aka Wonder Girl.  Not only this but her character isn’t all that interesting.  She’s a “bad girl” type of character, constantly smoking and wearing alternative clothing.  She’s abrasive to Superboy but really just wants his love.  She was incredibly interesting as a friend with ties to Lex Luthor who operates in moral grays, but now she’s just a hot mess.

The Fix:

The selfish solution in my opinion would be to bring Conner and Cass back together.  Cass is a far more interesting and deep romantic interest for Conner, and because of her role as Wonder Girl, she only needs to show up in Smallville occasionally.  However, I will try to respect what DC is doing by breaking them apart (hopefully temporarily).

So here’s a new idea for a fix.  Lori is not the love interest, instead she will ultimately betray Superboy.  His conflicting emotions for her and her troubled personality could make a recipe for disaster.  It would also highlight an important moral - Don’t dump your hot girlfriend for some hot chick from the other side of the tracks, because karma is a bitch.  Also, and this goes back to the art, stop drawing Lori so that she looks just like an alternative version of Cassandra.  It seems weird that Superboy would dump her for her evil twin.

Of course, I don’t know what author Jeff Lemire plans for these characters, and this problem may simply be a false alarm intended to intrigue readers (I guess it worked).

Mopey Conner:

Conner is sad and confused.  Hanging out in Smallville, feeling emotional.  This story is familiar because it already happened, in the lead-up to Infinite Crisis.  In that story, Connor redeemed himself and returned during Final Crisis with a new lease on life.  He was shown much more positive and energetic.  He grappled with his dual genetic identity (Part Superman, Part Luthor) but he did so with purpose.  Now we’ve gone back to a more passive Conner.  He’s hanging out in Smallville but he’s sad that his presence may put a burden on the town.  There’s no mission.

The Fix:

Give this kid something to do!  Jeff Lemire has been peppering a mystery into the story so far, but every time a clue pops up, Superboy just dismisses it.  Apparently nobody told him that to solve mysteries you have to figure stuff out, not just shrug and wait til the next clue falls into your lap.  5 issues in and we have a bit of a problem.  These stories aren’t one-shot fun adventures in Smallville, nor do they seem to be building with any intensity.  The plot is moving forward, and somewhere down the line we will see where it all leads, but by the fifth issue, I feel like we should care a lot more.  Especially because the story looks like it’s going to take a detour next month as part of the Reign of Doomsday event.

I’m not saying Jeff Lemire is telling a bad story, but he needs to pull back the curtain a little bit more.  Or pepper in some higher stakes.  Mysterious disappearances?  Scary changes in the weather?  Anything will do, right now all we get is occasional cameo’s by Phantom Stranger and some weird robots/aliens.

I’d also love to see some more one-shot adventures, like Poison Ivy or the Kid Flash race that add to the overall story.  This is were the book really shines.

Identity:

Conner doesn’t really have a secret identity.  Every character has figured out he’s Superboy.  I used to love this, because I felt that it distinguished the new generation of heroes as more trusting and more comfortable in their lives as super beings.  However, I do miss the drama that comes with double identities.

The Fix:

Conner needs something to do when he’s not Superboy.  Something more interesting than school.  I was thinking some fun opportunities could be a summer internship at LexCorp or STAR Labs with Simon or could even be as simple as more fun scenes of small town life.  I know Jeff Lemire excels at this and I’d love to see a bit more of it.

In Summary:

I want to stress that I love all the talent that goes into making this book, and I love the character Superboy.  I hope to be entirely respectful in my criticisms, and I respect the right of the creators to tell whatever story they want.

If you have any feedback or ideas of your own you’d like to share please feel free to let me know in the comments, or message me on twitter: @edietel