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

The Reboot

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

Normally I take the week between Christmas and New Years’ off and use it to recharge/reboot for the coming year. I take the time to figure out what my goals, both in life and from a writing perspective should be. Formulate a plan and then see how much of it I end up accomplishing. Some years are better than others, to be sure.

However, as this is being published, I will be elsewhere, enjoying my last few moments at a beach. Trying to summon the willpower to leave an island paradise to return again to the real world. I’m hopeful that this retreat will allow me to also have a nice reset on the year and be able to start the next quarter of the year as we make it into summer. I already updated the whiteboard behind me with a list of things that need to be looked at. I have prepared my spreadsheets for what pieces I want to focus on.

I have big plans, but those plans require hard work.

But for now, I’ll rest a little while longer.

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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

Break out the fake hacking, techno, martial arts, and black leather! Why a Matrix relaunch could work.

I’m a huge fan of  The Matrix, and from a creative side of things, an even bigger fan of the overall universe/ concept of the property. On the other side of things, I’m lukewarm to outright “will turn the movie off because I’ve been bored to tears” when it comes to Matrix: Reloaded and Matrix: Revolutions.

The movie, along with a few other creative sources, propelled me into my career as a writer of all things super heroic, epic, sci-fi, and all around kick ass.

So when I heard that Warner Brothers was giving some thought to possibly restarting the franchise, I thought I’d just share a few opinions. Really trying not to rant here.

There’s enough of that on the internet, so call this a “calm laying out of ideas/ thoughts”.

Original Recipe or Crispy is the true answer we seek……

-In the second movie Col. Sanders, I mean The Architect, established that there had been other “One’s” in the vein of Neo.

He explained that fights/conflicts like the ones of the Matrix trilogy had happened before, suggesting that this was sort of an endless loop.

So like it or not, the Wachowski’s left the door open for more stories to possibly be told for a concept which they no longer completely own (when they sold the idea to New Line Cinema/ Warner Bros.).

Unless they signed a kick ass deal which put the complete rights of the franchise in their hands, then WB always had the possibility of telling more stories in this universe without them, and they inadvertently (or maybe that was their plan from the beginning) provided a really solid jumping off point for future stories to be told.

It would be nice for Warner Bros to bring them in on a creative front, but legally speaking, they probably aren’t obligated to. Definitely sucks, I know.

Or not, which leads me to my next point……


-As much as I love The Matrix (one of my favorite movies of all time and a trend setter for modern sci-fi film) the subsequent sequels were a’ight to just horrible. I’m not a huge fan of the Animatrix as a whole. Enjoyed some of the shorts. Others just weren’t my cup of tea.

So any other stories that could be told in this universe, which is extremely expansive, should be told probably by someone else.

I like Sense 8 well enough, and even enjoyed that Channing Tatum roller skating in the sky space opera movie they directed, but with the subsequent Matrix sequels and other movies they’ve directed since then (though I hear Speed Racer has a cult fan following) I’d rather have them on as producers, or hands off, sort of in the vein of Lucas and the current round of Star Wars.

The Star Wars franchise has hit an all time creative and pop culture high with handing off the reigns to other creators, examples including Rogue One and Star Wars: The Force Awakens

-There are some awesome creators who can tackle this material in the form of screenwriters and directors who could kick ass in this universe, and I think they deserve a chance to tell stories set in the world of The Matrix. Once again, look at the Star Wars franchise, and the hiring of such modern/ talented storytellers as J.J. Abrams, Gareth Edwards, Rian Johnson, Phil Lord and Chris Miller to continue to expand this universe.

Heck, I’d be up for writing an expanded universe comic for The Matrix.

Warner Bros: hit a dude up.

Please let this be good. By all that is holy, please let this be good.

-I think between this possible relaunch and the burgeoning Harry Potter film-verse restart with Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, I feel that Warner Bros. is trying to get a viable franchise in their hands because the DC film-verse is currently just not cutting it.

Though the Matrix movies steadily got bad in quality, they still made a crap ton of money, and that’s all these studios care about.

-Lastly, don’t do a reboot. Just pick up with another The One as suggested by Col. Sanders. Create a new story, new conflict, higher stakes, etc.

That’s about all that I have. Just a few opinions.

Please discuss below, share, and be civil. 🙂