Rebooting the Marvel Universe

Image by John Hain from Pixabay

Looking through my Twitter Feed a month or so ago, I came across the following tweet from Sean Taylor’s:

“You’re given the task of making a clean break (a la DC Golden Age to DC Silver Age) for Marvel and can only keep four existing characters to continue unscathed into the new Age. Who are they?”
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It started the wheels turning in my head. And while Sean was only wanting a list of characters, I began sketching up ideas for who would be there in this fictious future version of the Marvel Universe.
The interesting/funny thing here is that they sorta have done this at least 2x already. When Marvel launched the Fantastic Four ushering in their version of the Silver Age, this was an effective launch/relaunch of their existing universe. And while maybe continiuity was fairly fast and loose back then, it wasn’t long before they brought back a couple of characters from their Golden Age stories. You had the Human Torch as a part of the Fantastic Four – a direct call back to the Golden Age Android version and in some ways more along the lines of how DC Comics seemed to update their characters with Flash and Green Lantern.
Avengers 4 then brought back Captain America making it a more direct line to the 1940s (even if he’d had an ongoing comic book throughout the 50s as well).
Finally, the other “main” one was Sub Mariner who, in a twist, they brought back as a villain. And while the years have softened that version of him, he still wins the award for most likely to find himself hanging out with other big named villains more so than any other hero in Marvel.
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The second time they did this is with the 2099 launch in the mid-90s. There they had 4 titles. Spider-Man 2099 was a brand new version with no real ties to Peter Parker other than taking up the mantle. Punisher 2099, who in the regular universe was one of their most popular characters (he had 3 ongoing series at one time), received a version of the character who I honestly don’t know enough about to talk about. Doom 2099 who either was the Doom from our time and was time-displaced or was someone who thought he was Doom from our time and was time-displaced. I’m not 100% on where we ended up with that one to be honest. Finally they had Ravage, a brand new character to help usher in this new line.
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In both cases those 3 or 4 characters really helped jump start their respective universes.
So going along those lines we could go a few ways:
Think about who the most popular characters are, and then make sure you have updated versions of them. This helps to solve the problem of not having someone who can sell comic books.
Who are Marvel’s best sellers right now? Spider-Man, Wolverine, Venom, randomly Moon Knight (the comic is really good right now), X-Men, Daredevil… those are the ones I see in the top 25 of sales. Maybe you could throw Deadpool in just due to the movie side of things. From a movie point of view, you would have to include pretty much any of the Avengers and Guardians (basically anyone who showed up in Infinity War and End Game).
However, even before we get into that, we should probably think about the situation. Is there a potential time jump that we have going on here? Has 20 years passed since the last generation of heroes? Is this more of a thought process where we have to save Marvel from flagging sales (maybe along the lines of their Ultimate Universe in the 00s)?
It’s also one of those things you don’t want to copy things specifically because it has come before without some form of a twist. With the Marvel Silver Age, those other characters were enhancements to all the new ideas which eventually led to the juggernaunt that it has become.
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Strictly speaking, if we are going to go with the best sellers approach then my list might look something like this:
Spider-Man has to be there in some form or fashion. He is the heart of the Marvel universe. In we have the time jump version then perhaps he can now be the retired hero we were all hoping for with wife and kid(s) that eventually can be the one that trains the youngsters? And that doesn’t consider what happens if we use Miles for this…
Wolverine is your immortal character who can kind of swiss army knife things in this new world. You need to older teacher, got it. You need a wild man out in the wilderness who needs to tracked down? Got it. You need to touch on the Mutant side of things, he’s your connection.
Iron Man – This one I can see as the inheritor/pure update to the old idea. It’s either a long lost relative to Tony Stark or perhaps even better he is a relative to one of Stark’s enemies who decides to do something good with the suit of armor. Maybe even set this up as a bit of a mystery at first with him (her?) showing up in the other books before finally revealing the person under the armor and launching their own book.
The fourth character feels like it should be someone low key. Someone who in current comics isn’t a big deal but now in this new world could become that new hero. Or potentially someone who never got by before and now could go on to the villain (or at least anti-hero) side. This would be the someone like Elsa Bloodstone or Speedball or something like that. I don’t have anyone specifically in mind here.
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But then it occurred to me, one of my favorite things about the Marvel Universe is that it can be so many different things to so many different people. So what are the main pillars of the Marvel Universe? And then which characters let us focus on those ideas and build?
In my mind, the four major pieces of the Marvel Universe are the following:
Cosmic
Mutant
Magic/Tech
Street Level
Those you pretty much touch nearly all the characters who currently exist within the comics. And while it is a little bit of a cheat to lump Magic and Tech together, given that so many quotes from the comics and movies talk about how Magic is simply technology we haven’t figured out the science for… I’m going to say it works.
With that in mind, here are my four leads:

Silver Surfer

He’s such a singular character within the greater framework of Marvel, and he allows you to tell as many adventures as you’d like throughout the cosmic side of things. He is an immortal style character, so whatever time jump might have happened, he might have been there at the EVENT.
When written well, he becomes a focal lens for all the cool stuff you can do in comic books.

Storm

Allows you to have those true connections to the Golden Age of X-Men while not leaning on Wolverine for the 1000 time. She could allow you to have an X-Men style team with her role as more in the Prof. X stylings. This would be a woman who perhaps has learned the original Dream is dead, but that doesn’t mean the struggle isn’t still ongoing.

Dr. Doom

My favorite character in Marvel, I would be remiss if I didn’t include him in some way. That said, this would be a version of Doom that we only ever get to see glimpses of most of the time. This is someone who finally decided to put the pettiness behind them and actually strives to be something better. And that all came about because Dr. Strange is no longer the Sorcerer Supreme (whether he died or retired or whatever would be a portion of the story). Doom then assumes this mantle and with it the responsibilities it requires. You wouldn’t have the FF “baggage”, at least at first, and could focus Doom on things again we don’t see a ton of – the magic side of things.

Daredevil

This would be my brand new person wearing the suit slot. A new ‘Devil’ for Hell’s Kitchen to lend some hand to the little people. Not sure they’d need to be a lawyer, but whatever their profession it should give the writers something to play with as that’s one of the things the Daredevil character does the best – weave his daily life into his night life.
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Of course, if I thought about this more, I’d probably come up with about ten other combinations of characters to restart things with. That’s really the beauty of the comics, anything can find a way to grab a reader and never let them go.

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John McGuire is the writer of the sci-fi novel: The Echo Effect.

He is also the creator/author of the steampunk comic The Gilded Age. If you would like to purchase a copy, go here!

Click here to join John’s mailing list and receive preview chapters of upcoming novels, behind the scenes looks at new comics, and free short stories.

His other prose appears in The Dark That Follows, Hollow Empire, Tales from Vigilante City, Beyond the Gate, and Machina Obscurum – A Collection of Small Shadows.

He can also be found at www.johnrmcguire.com

Let’s Escape

Escapism:  the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy.”

I’m finding myself escaping a bit more nowadays.

Let me flesh that out a little better.

For the past year, things have been a bit hectic. Sometimes stressful. Many times head scratchingly so. On a variety of fronts.

Though there’s also been a great helping of good, I find often, I need a break from the other zany/ taxing stuff we call life.

Not to the point of just completely checking out. Just a way to get away for a minute or two. Let the ‘ole brain unwind for a while.

So whether it’s writing, reading, catching a movie/ tv show, or just hanging with friends and fam’, I just wanted to share some of the ways that I’m finding that release of sorts.

1. Food Paradise/ Travel Channel

Ok, bear with me here. 🙂

I like to eat. Now if only I balanced that out with a healthy dose of working out, I’d be Kool and The Gang. That’s another story for another day.

What I love about this show though is it unabashedly celebrates the many  varieties of food that these 50 states has to offer. You want to find the best seafood spots, fried chicken eateries, ice cream parlors, pizzerias, steakhouses that are spread all across this country? This show has it all.

Maybe I’m a food connoisseur. Who knows. All I can say is watching this show gets me in a chilaxin’ mood come Sunday evening when it airs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jagve7uOy_o

 

2.Bob’s Burgers/ Netflix

Bob’s Burgers gives me so much life, it probably needs to be bottled up and prescribed. I’ve gone through all of the seasons on Netflix, and it’s become sort of a daily ritual for my wife and I to watch an episode every night during dinner.

In my opinion, this is the best animated sitcom that network television has to offer, and after a long day of work (plus a hour and a half commute home to work) Bob’s  Burgers provides a hilarious wind down.

 

3. Deep Space Nine (DS9)/ Netflix

One of these days I’m going to put together a post about why this show kicks show much a#$. Until then I’ll just lay out a few points about why I’m going through this series a second time.

Star Trek represents hope for me. Hope that we as human beings can stop with the B.S. and just aspire for something better. As has been shown in the numerous Star Trek series’ that have come since STOS (Star Trek: The Original Series), a sort of Utopian society is created as the end result of years upon years of just mucking ‘ish up.

The funny thing is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) kind of flips this Utopian ideal on its head, and I enjoy it all the more. What I find heartening about DS9 (sometimes known as the “dark Trek series”) is the fact that through the constant butting of heads that occurs between the differing groups of characters on this series, this show, better than any other Star Trek series, shows how we can get to that place of understanding even in the face of our differences and insurmountable odds. To a spot where we can possibly create something better.

Though it doesn’t always work out this way (as we see daily in the “real” world), when it does, it’s a beautiful sight to behold.

So yeah, in a strange way what acts as a stress reliever, and a sort of beacon of hope that things can get better, is the conflict/ differing views of characters on this series. I guess I like seeing that the process works sometimes, albeit on a fictional space station in this case.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TREQGl54BU8

 

4. Any fight scene from Daredevil Season 1 & 2/ Netflix

Sometimes just seeing folks beat the heck out of each other can be therapeutic.

 

5. Mistborn

I’m still rolling through this book and really enjoying it. As I said before in a recent Tessera post, “Ocean’s 11 meets Magic: The Gathering, with a smidgen of steampunk.”

A great place to escape to.

mistbornfinalempire

 

6. Writing The Okun & Untitled Anthology Project

I recently finished up an additional 5 pages of script for The Okun, a story/ potential series in the making (publishers, we’re coming for ya) co-created by myself and artist extraordinaire Takeia Marie. This is the space epic that I’ve wanted to write for a while, and to have a chance to play around in a war torn cosmos has been fun.

Add to this, I’m in the early stages of working on an anthology project with the aforementioned Ms. Marie. Anytime numerous story ideas keep you up to the wee hours of the night jotting down story ideas, a good time is had.

That’s about all of the escaping I’ve got this go around.  🙂

theokunpic

 

Honorable Mention:

7. Ghost Adventures/ Travel Channel

Okay, so if you’re looking for a ghost investigation series that takes itself ultra seriously, and doesn’t have paranormal investigators saying “Whoa!” and “Dude” every five seconds, this isn’t the show for you.

Ghost Adventures is a guilty pleasure for me. Following the exploits of a group of paranormal investigators on their weekly ghost hunting escapades, this show never fails to please in all the wrong ways. I definitely appreciate the professionalism and respect that the crew brings to all of their investigations and the field of paranormal science, but what I love the most is that this show is essentially “Ghostbusters: Dude Bros Edition”.

Not in the obnoxious, preppy/ entitled frat boy/ full of themselves being a-holes type of Dude Bros. More of the Keanu Reeves/ Dazed and Confused slacker/ rocker types that yell “Whoa!” and “Dude” with some random door closing by itself during an episode, or with unexplained creak that happens off camera.

As with Bob’s Burgers, the show keeps me laughing a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osS-uvNLV7s