DC, on the other hand, has a high-profile Batman trilogy that isn’t even wrapped up yet, one which establishes an internally consistent mythos for the character that doesn’t involve any other superheroes. It’d be difficult to imagine Nolan and Bale’s Batman standing on the same screen with Green Lantern and Superman, even if it seemed likely that Bale would return to the role (which it doesn’t.) They have a Superman franchise whose most recent movie has been more or less entirely disavowed by the studio despite positive reviews and box-office success. And they have a Green Lantern movie that woefully underperformed both financially and critically. The Superman reboot that could serve as the beginning of a hypothetical Justice League launch is coming this year, but it’s anyone’s guess whether Warner Brothers had gotten its act together sufficiently by the time Man of Steel went into production to be able to think of their comics properties in these terms. (I have insisted, and will continue to insist, that the reason Marvel’s films have done so well while DC’s have done so poorly is because Marvel is in a position to be able to dictate terms to the studio, while DC is ultimately just “the hired help” at Warner Brothers.)

So the first thought ultimately leads to the second: There’s gonna be a lot of rebooting going on. Two of your three core members (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman) need a new movie to establish themselves as part of the DC Movie Universe, and one of your second-tier members has a stinker that needs to be swept under the rug (a la Ang Lee’s Hulk.) How do you handle this?

You start by ignoring it. You’ve got an Aquaman movie, a Wonder Woman movie, a Green Arrow movie and a Flash movie to make. By the time you get through those four films, there’s a pretty good chance that you can go back and do a soft reboot of Green Lantern that isn’t so obviously an admission that the previous film tanked. Then, with five films under your belt, you can go in and do your Justice League film.

“Wait, what, five?” I hear you say? “What about Batman? What about Superman? What about the Martian Manhunter?” But honestly, I don’t think you need a movie to establish Batman and Superman before putting them in a JLA film. Batman and Superman are, at this point, such iconic characters with such iconic origins that babies practically come out of the womb knowing that Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed and he was inspired by a bat to fight evil. The last thing we need, pardon my mild frustration, is yet another goddamn retelling of the origin of Batman and Superman. (You can see how excited I am for the Man of Steel movie, aren’t you?) Just mention them from time to time in the other films, establish that they exist, and then throw them in the final flick.

As to the Martian Manhunter, he’d be filling the Nick Fury role on the DC end. He’d appear in all of the different movies, talking to the different heroes about how he’s getting them together to face a larger threat, one that he knows about as a telepathic space alien. (Maybe even one that killed off the Martian race…) This would link the various heroes together, whet interest for later films, and give audiences time to get used to the Martian Manhunter, who is definitely something of a legacy from a very different age of science fiction and comics.

So who would the villain be? Actually, surprisingly enough, I’d pick Libra. Go back to his original roots, where he was a supervillain attempting to steal the powers of the entire Justice League, and give a tip of the hat to his recent role in ‘Final Crisis’ by a) having him do so in order to better prepare Earth for the coming of Darkseid, and b) having him recruit a passel of henchmen to help him out. Then, in the Justice League movie, you pull a big surprise at the end…in the third act, after he steals the powers of Superman and the Flash and Green Lantern and seems pretty much unstoppable, you find out that the Martian Manhunter’s been recruiting a lot more than just the heroes who have movies. The final battle would have cameos by dozens of superheroes, from Zatanna to Black Canary to the Elongated Man to Steel to everyone who you haven’t gotten the rights to, all dogpiling on Libra and his Secret Society. In the end, Libra overloads himself absorbing everyone’s powers and blows up (a la his original appearance…) but the greater threat is still out there.

But all that, of course, assumes that Warner Brothers is interested in replicating Marvel’s success, something which has never been particularly clear from their actions. Certainly, it’s hard to believe that the people who made ‘Batman and Robin’ are interested either in making money or in bringing joy to the lives of others.

Andrew Miller: What’s the best horror movie that most people haven’t heard of?

I’ll go with Demons 2, Dario Argento’s sequel to his somewhat more famous but less scary Demons. For those not in the know: the Demons films are essentially “fast zombie” films twenty years before fast zombie films became a thing – the titular demons attack and either kill their victims or turn them into more demons in a very zombie-like way, and the movies are gory and violent. The first one is okay, but the second one takes place entirely inside an apartment building where the demon attack begins when a girl watches a TV show with a demon in it and then the demon on the TV sees her and comes out of the TV – which is ridiculous, of course, but it sells the horror quite effectively and the movie as a whole is a pretty good take on the “locked in the building with zombies” genre. Except, as I said, twenty years before that was really a thing. The original Demons isn’t bad either, but I like the second one better.

What’s the best horror movie that has an undeservedly poor reputation?

Probably The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Yes, the one with Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. I’m not going to say it’s good exactly, but it got pilloried for being total shit because it’s not like the earlier films in the series – this one is just sort of insane in a weirdly entertaining way and I think it deserves to be resurrected as a bold failure if nothing else.

Goattoucher: Why, God? WHYYYYY?!?

Bud Dry.

Darren K: Do you like travelling? Have you done much of it? Left the continent? Been to Winnipeg?

Yes, no, yes (Australia, Bolivia, and South Africa when I was little), and yes (it’s quite pretty along the river, but other than that – sorry, too small for me).

Bret: Pete Ross (The Superman supporting character): Why doesn’t he work?

Pete Ross doesn’t work because there is nothing special about him; he learns that Clark Kent is Superboy completely by accident and that is basically all there ever has been to the character, and it’s simply not enough because A) Lois either already knows or will eventually figure out that Clark is Superman, B) there’s a strong argument that Perry White and Jimmy Olsen know (or have at least guessed) and are just playing along because Clark is their friend and they’re covering his ass, as friends do, and C) Batman knows, and if you’re gonna write a Superman story, are you going to team him up with Batman or Pete Ross? The answer to that question is never going to be Pete Ross.

mason stormchild: Do you think reddit is basically becoming 4chan with a veneer of respectability?

“Becoming”?

Brendan: What do you think the best policy is for coming up with fantasy names/words without making them sound too silly?

Take a name from the culture you want the character to reflect/imitate (since nobody is really imaginative enough to truly come up with their own completely original culture, when you get down to it). Change 1-3 consonants depending on how many syllables the name has (if it’s two syllables or less, only one), keep the vowel sounds intact, and you’re done.

Kai: Marvel Studios, riding high on their successful series of movies all leading up to the Avengers (which is going to be a hit whether it’s actually awesome or manages to totally suck, let’s be honest here), is looking for their next big Marvel-verse thing and comes to your door with a dump truck full of cash and a request for you to take the helm of their newest project, a Doctor Strange movie. So how do you do it? Who do you cast? What’s your script breakdown look like? Bear in mind that you have to try and keep things roughly within the style and tone of the Marvel movies we’ve seen so far, but beyond that you can tackle it however you like.

Dr. Strange is, I think, one of the great unexploited origin stories in comics and a film version of it would be the wisest course for an initial Dr. Strange film: a bad (but not irredeemable) person becomes a good one when his quest to make himself whole becomes a quest of an entirely different sort. The overall tone would be more contemplative than your average Marvel film (although still with comic moments) and lean more in the direction of Guillermo del Toro visuals than Joss Whedon-style wit because you really have to sell the otherworldliness of Dr. Strange in order to make him stand out from the superheroic crowd, but you’d still have the vicious and awesome magical battle with Dormammu as your closing piece. I would probably borrow a few story elements from JMS’s Strange miniseries since it had some excellent ideas in it.

And: Benedict Cumberbatch as Strange, Daniel Dae-Kim as Wong, James Hong as the Ancient One, August Diehl (from The Counterfeiters) as Baron Mordo and Rosario Dawson as Clea.

In this case, “all-different” definitely describes the character. Her name is Hannah Hunter (I’m sticking with “is” here, because “would have been” is such an awkward bit of sentence construction), and she’s a teenage high school student; both her parents are devoted to their careers, leaving her as pretty much a latchkey kid. There are pretty much two ways you can go when your parents barely pay any attention to you, and Hannah went the second direction; she’s hyper-responsible, almost an adult in miniature. She cooks her own meals, does her own laundry, and basically has a house to herself with parents she only occasionally sees. (The fact that she doesn’t use this house for wild, frequent parties tells you what the other direction was, the one she didn’t go.)

As can happen with children like this, she gets along much better with adults than other teenagers her own age; it doesn’t help that she’s somewhat bookish and has never had much luck trying out for sports teams. She almost made it onto the varsity softball team due to her pitching skills, but they had no designated hitter rule and she was too slow on the base paths. She tried out for the basketball team, but despite being a great shooter, she’s too slow on the fast-break. In short, she’s not unathletic, she just has lousy foot-speed. She idolizes the Flashes because they can do the one thing she desperately wants to: Run.

As a result of the above, she spends the after-school hours at the Flash Museum, doing her homework and chatting with the staff (who, as with many adults, admire precocious and mature teenagers.) She knows every exhibit inside and out (at one point in the development of the idea, she idolized Barry best of all because he was also a police scientist. When they reconcealed his identity, she idolized him as a person without even knowing he’s the Flash because she wants to get into forensics someday and admires his work. Yes, she is a teenager geeky enough and focused enough to know about prominent forensics experts. Unfortunately, she doesn’t know who Justin Bieber is.)

She gets her powers when the Flash Museum gets attacked by Rogues’ Gallery members who want to make a statement about their feelings towards their arch-nemesis…the Flash shows up to foil them, there’s a fight, innocent bystanders get endangered, and Hannah winds up taking an inadvertent spin on the Flash’s Time Treadmill. She winds up back in the 30s, with all the powers of the Silver Age Flash…

…except one. She can’t think at superhuman speeds. Without the ability to process information and perceive time the way the Flashes do, her super-speed is utterly useless to her; the second she tries to run, she’s impacting into a solid object before she knows it’s even there. (Luckily, she has Wally’s super-fast healing. Even so, she spends time in the hospital in the 30s, as well.) As a result, she’s forced to use her speed-powers creatively, adding and subtracting speed from objects around her instead of using it just to speed herself up. (That’s why she calls herself Impulse–because momentum is mass times velocity and impulse is the physics term for an object’s change in momentum. Have I mentioned geeky?)

Her first story arc, where she learns to use her powers, involves her “bouncing” through time on her way back to the Flash Museum in the present. She meets the Golden Age Flash, the Legion of Super-Heroes, and comes back to the present day with a reasonable amount of skill at fighting and so forth (so as to gloss over some of the learning curve of being a superhero. Karate Kid teaches her judo, because using someone’s own leverage against them is a good fighting style for a scrawny teenager, and because throws and flips become extra-nasty when you can pump an extra 500 miles per hour of velocity into someone on their way out.) She helps the Flash defeat the Rogues’ Gallery, and becomes a crime-fighter in Central City when not attending classes.

I thought it had some potential; since she doesn’t have “run really fast” to fall back on, the character has to use her super-powers creatively to defeat bad guys. The high school setting is always fun for a comic book hero, and let’s face it, comics fans dig geeky teenage girls with weird senses of humor. But of course, at this point I’m not even sure whether there ever was an Impulse, let alone whether another one would be welcomed by comics fans. But I’m sure the current direction of DC makes perfect sense to someone.

But WrestleMania mostly blew for two reasons.

1.) The WWE is either unable or unwilling to work at grooming new stars. WrestleMania’s two most important matches were A) between two guys who are inches away from retirement and B) featured someone who hasn’t wrestled regularly since 2003. Their big returns on the following RAW were Matt “Albert/Lord Tensai” Bloom (last seen in the WWE in 2004) and Brock Lesnar (ditto). I loved 2000-2004 WWE as much as anybody (indeed, I think it was probably the company’s creative and performance peak), but this is a well that has diminishing returns to say the least.

It used to be more straightforward: you had your A-level stars, your B-level stars, your C-level stars and your jobbers. When you wanted to “promote” a B-level star to A-level, it was simple: they beat an A-level star fairly and presto, they were in the club. Back in 2001, Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho were both mired in the midcard until they beat HHH and Steve Austin in a hot match. (Beating heels when heel tactics backfire on the heels is “fair.” Don’t look at me, I didn’t make the rules of wrestling storytelling.) This method works. Kurt Angle beats the Rock, Eddie Guerrero beats Brock Lesnar – presto, instantly credible World champions.

But nowadays, there are problems with this approach. Firstly, there aren’t many A-level stars (right now it’s probably CM Punk, John Cena, Chris Jericho, the Undertaker, HHH and Brock Lesnar now that he’s back – and Daniel Bryan is probably on the cusp) and the company is extremely careful to protect them. Secondly, there aren’t really a whole lot of well-defined B-level stars any more (right now I’d say the only real candidates are Kane, Mark Henry, the Miz, and Dolph Ziggler).¹ Everybody else just sort of floats around in this morass of boredom and nobody really cares about them – call it the Kofi Kingston Zone. They’re just sort of there. Maybe they have a gimmick, but nobody cares about the gimmick. Heath Slater is the One Man Rock Band, but who gives a damn about that when Heath Slater matters less to the stories than Barry Horowitz ever did?

2.) The WWE has gradually stopped writing long-term plotlines. Partly this is because the WWE’s writers got tired of having to change their stories on the fly when a wrestler got injured, but that doesn’t really change the fact that going into WrestleMania, there was not one match that had a storyline that effectively went back more than a month. Rock/Cena doesn’t count, because that wasn’t an ongoing year of buildup to that match: Cena was doing other things (like feuding with Vince and/or CM Punk) for most of the year, and then Rock shows up for this one tag match, and then Cena fights Kane for two months just because, and… okay, Rock time now!

Or another example: another match on the card was Kane versus Randy Orton. Why were these two fighting? “Because.” That is literally the only reason – three weeks before WrestleMania Kane decided he hated Randy Orton. This is stupid. Never mind that there was a golden opportunity for the WWE to conclude or at least develop a longer storyline by having Kane fight Zack Ryder – you know, the guy Kane repeatedly brutalized during that feud with Cena I just mentioned. Plus, if they let Ryder go over Kane (and they should, because Kane is 44 and doesn’t have much gas left in him), they would elevate Ryder.

Really, long-term wrestling plotlines aren’t hard to write. You’ve got your classics (“escalating match stakes until things get insane,” “baddie runs away/cheats for seventeen thousand matches until good guy finally beats him,” et cetera), you can switch guys in and out, it’s not that hard. But the WWE has lost the knack for it.

1. The Big Show is sort of a special case because he is a giant, and giants play by slightly different rules because they can be instantly credible A-level stars whenever the company decides to have everybody suddenly realize “wait, this guy is seven feet tall.” Unless they are terrible like the Great Khali is.

1) A “strong female character” is strictly limited in the scope of where she is allowed to be strong, usually to combat; she is strong, but she is not active. The best example I can think of for this particular trope is Cherry Darling, Robert Rodriguez’ supposedly strong character in ‘Planet Terror’. Certainly, she’s strong in one sense–she is able to kick lots of ass, mowing down dozens of zombies and Marines and zombified Marines in the film’s action climax. The ending of the film even shows her as the leader of the group of survivors. But when the film isn’t showing her shooting people and blowing people up and openly defying the laws of physics in various violent ways, it’s showing her…taking orders from El Wray, the male protagonist. He tells her to stop moping. He gives her both her wooden leg and her gun-leg. He practically drags her along through every scene of the movie. Even her final decision, to become the group’s charismatic leader and take them south to an easily defensible coastal region, comes from a scene where El Wray says, “Honey, time for you to become a charismatic leader by following my plan.” “Yessir.” She is never a decision maker, only an exceptional fighter. The two should not be conflated, and all too often are. (This is what John Scalzi referred to as “Spinny Killbot Syndrome”.)

2) A “strong female character” is strong in a way that does not threaten male gender roles. The implication that’s always given in these roles is that anytime women are anything other than helpless and simpering, they are automatically challenging sexist assertions and should be lauded for it. But the fact is, in practical terms, there is a strong societal belief that violence is perfectly acceptable for women under the right circumstances. Take Ripley, for instance. She is definitely seen as a feminist icon, and there’s certainly a lot of justification for that. But her most iconic scene is actually her least feminist; when she confronts the Queen Alien at the end of ‘Aliens’, it is with the intent of defending her surrogate daughter. It is automatically assumed, in fiction and in life, that a woman standing up for her family (her children, her husband) is going to use violence far more effectively and with less hesitation than a man would in the same situation, because her primal maternal instinct is aroused. The “Mama Grizzly” stereotype is every bit as sexist as the “Damsel in Distress”, even though one involves inflicting grievous bodily harm on people and the other involves helplessness in perilous situations. So are all the female characters who fight with determined efficiency while the battle is going on, only to faint when it ends because they’re so relieved, so are the femme fatales who vamp their way through combat. In ‘Aliens’, it’s Vasquez who is the truly challenging female character, determined to succeed better than men in their own field. (Unsurprisingly, people seem to prefer Ripley’s brand of “feminism”.)

3) A “strong female character” is either sexless or hypersexualized. The “virgin/whore” dichotomy is a classic complaint about the treatment of women in both fiction and life; female characters, it seems, are never to mention that they have body parts that produce orgasms or otherwise they’re supposed to be teases, sex kittens, vamps and sluts. Red Sonja is one example of the former; she’s a “strong female character” whose actual motto involves a vow of chastity to be enforced at swordpoint, while Catwoman gives us a view of the opposite extreme, a character who fights crime in a slinky catsuit and high heels. There’s very rarely a middle ground (and ironically, characters who inhabit it are all too frequently deemed “sexist”, because in the minds of many feminists, it’s better to fall on the “sexless” side of the divide than the “hypersexualized”. Slut shaming is all too common, even among people who know better. Of course, that isn’t to say that all sexual characters can be or should be defended by saying, “Oh, you’re just slut shaming!”. Sometimes hypersexualization is exactly what it appears to be, turning a female character into nothing more than an object of male lust. Are you listening, Scott Lobdell?)

4) A “strong female character” derives her strength from victimization. And speaking of Red Sonja, her origin story is par for the course for about two-thirds of female heroes…she was made helpless and victimized (“sexually” is often implied even if not outright stated), and she has made it her mission never to be helpless and victimized again. Lady Bullseye, Beatrix Kiddo…even X-23 has an element of pointless victimization grafted into her origin, as she apparently spent some time as a prostitute with an abusive pimp. When the female equivalent of Wolverine gets sexually abused, you know the trope is a little bit nuts. (By the way, it’s worth pointing out that the number of male heroes with the same element of victimization is exactly one: Batman. And he was a ten-year-old when it happened.)

And 5) a “strong female character” has an existence that revolves around the male protagonist. This is why I grew less and less enamored of River Song, even though I couldn’t articulate exactly why at the time. It’s because while she started as a mysterious archaeologist with a hidden past, she rapidly became “The Doctor’s assassin who became the Doctor’s lover who became the Doctor’s wife who became the Doctor’s murderer who became the Doctor’s Doctor’s Doctor’s…” While she’s active, competent in ways other than the merely physical, and has an active sex life but isn’t defined by it, she does come to be defined by her relationship to ther Doctor. Her story revolves around his, it does not cross it independently; this is all too common regarding “strong” women. (One of the biggest and most positive changes to Lois Lane was when she stopped trying to prove that Clark Kent was Superman so that she could marry him and started becoming an actual journalist.)

Now, appearing on this list does not immediately mean that a female character is sexist, or that their creators are sexist. Every character is on a journey that may involve them overcoming personal issues like those mentioned above (take River Tam, who moves from being passive to active over the course of a season of ‘Firefly’.) Some characters are meant to be flawed, but still admirable (River Song, for all that she has become obsessed with the Doctor, is nonetheless an active figure who refuses to blindly trust him or follow his orders.) If your character can check off a box on this list, it doesn’t mean you’ve made a huge mistake. (If they can check off all five, on the other hand…) But they are things worth discussing, and they are definitely things worth remembering when creating future female characters. Because an actual strong female character shouldn’t be that hard to create.

But like all comic book characters, he’s been handled by literally dozens of writers over the decades, and some of those writers have dealt with him better than others. Doom is actually the poster boy for the TV Tropes “Actually a Doombot” trope, where all of his more embarrassing stories are explained away as being the work of Doombots masquerading imperfectly as him. Some writers, on the other hand, have developed a reputation as handling the character so well that he almost becomes a second protagonist…but in a fandom that comments obsessively on the best writers and the best runs for heroes, the best writers of recurring villains often go overlooked. This essay attempts to rectify that by answering the question, “Who are the best Doom writers?”

5. Steve Englehart. Englehart’s main Doom credentials are his long run on ‘Super-Villain Team-Up’ and his slightly less-well remembered, but still interesting run on ‘Fantastic Four’ (he had the bad luck to be in between John Byrne and Walt Simonson, both of whom will be on this list.) His SVTU run showed Doom going toe-to-toe with Namor, the FF, and the Avengers, and coming out on top more often than not; in addition, Englehart’s Doom goes into battle directly, something that isn’t often seen even among the other writers on this list. When Englehart writes Doom, you remember that he built a suit of battle armor every bit as tough as Iron Man.

He also wrote the story where Doom was deposed by his own adoptive son, which was interesting and showed a side of Doom we hadn’t seen, but is also the reason he’s #5 on the list; Walt Simonson elegantly showed that a man smart enough to plan for his own death by brainwashing his adoptive son to replace him is smart enough to have countermeasures for that, too. A Doom that has problems with a ten-year-old kid is a Doom that gets bumped a few notches down on the list.

4. Walt Simonson. He’s #4 because he only wrote one Doom story in his brief-but-spectacular FF run, but it was a doozy. In the span of two short issues (okay, one double-sized issue and one short issue) Doom retakes Latveria from Kristoff, brainwashes Ms Marvel into fighting the Thing, imprisons the FF in perfectly-designed traps, and then battles Mister Fantastic in one of the most innovative issues ever written. (It’s a time-travel story, with a clock at the bottom showing the progression of “real time” and time-teleportation effects showing when Reed and Doom are traveling to each time they leap through time. So you can read it front-to-back to experience the story in real time, or jump around from page to page to experience it as Reed and Doom do.)

Simonson’s Doom is slightly different from all the others, almost an older and wiser Doom. (Some have speculated that this is Doom after returning from the “Doom 2099″ series, a speculation supported by his altered armor.) He’s calmer, almost melancholy at times, but no less intimidating and powerful. Definitely worth reading, and it’ll make you wish Simonson wrote the character more often.

3. Jim Shooter. A surprising choice, as he never wrote an issue of ‘Fantastic Four’, but Doom’s appearances in the Shooter-written ‘Secret Wars’ and ‘Superman vs. Spider-Man’ are truly wonderful. Shooter writes a bombastic, almost-comic Doom who’s utterly megalomaniac, so convinced of his greatness that he literally tape-records his every utterance for posterity. (That’s right. You ever wonder who Doom is talking to when he delivers all those monologues? Motherfucker’s talking to history, bitches.)

And yet for all that his egotism is played for laughs, Shooter’s Doom is a character of terrifying intellect and deadly cunning, winning not just the Beyonder’s prize but the Beyonder’s power as he outwits an omnipotent god. In the end, the only thing that can defeat Shooter’s version of Doom is his own fatal imperfections. That’s a pretty deep take on a kid’s character.

2. Stan Lee. He created Doom, of course he’s getting a high spot on the list. Sure, there were some cheesy elements in the early Doom stories; in retrospect, it’s a little silly that he invented a time machine to force the Fantastic Four to steal Blackbeard’s treasure. But it was a sillier time, and it’s not like Lee and Jack Kirby (who deserves just as much credit as Lee) didn’t give us some of the iconic Doom moments, like the “Battle of the Baxter Building” (Doom vs the Thing in an absolutely unforgettable sequence.)

Also, they developed Doom’s unique aspects; his code of honor (there’s a wonderful scene where Doom has the FF trapped in his castle, but he lets them pass through the art gallery unscathed because it would be barbaric to risk damage to the paintings) and his downright mythic origin story. And, of course, Stan Lee’s dialoguing style is so distinct that even decades later, you can still tell when Doom is speaking without needing tails on the word balloons. Really, he’d almost be #1 worthy…

1. John Byrne. Except that Byrne didn’t just write half the classic, definitive Doom stories, he practically cared more about the character than he did about the FF. When Byrne wrote Doctor Doom, you could tell he was fully able to understand that in Doom’s world, he is the hero of the story and Reed Richards is the villain. It’s Reed who has to admit that Doom rules Latveria better than his successor, and that he is sincerely beloved by its people. It’s Sue who’s able to detect a Doombot by realizing that Victor would never be so uncouth as to strike a woman. And it’s Byrne who gave Doom his own issue without the FF even appearing, to show what the world is like from behind Doom’s metal mask. John Byrne “got” Victor von Doom, and after reading his comics, you will too.

Those are my top five. Anyone else got opinions? Feel free to put them in the comments!

Night of the Living Dead: The biggest threat in any crisis isn’t whatever’s going wrong, it’s the stupid ways people react to it.

Up: What’s important in life isn’t whether you achieve what you set out to do, it’s whether the things you did were worth doing.

Memento: Revenge is an ultimately hollow and meaningless pursuit that makes you into a monster.

The Limey: It still beats not getting revenge.

Star Wars: Adventure reveals people’s hidden talents.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie: If you’re stuck in a bad situation, it helps if you can keep your sense of humor.

Labyrinth: If you make a mistake, you have a responsibility to make it right no matter how hard it is.

Logan’s Run: It’s easy not to care about a problem until it becomes your problem too.

Blade Runner: Anyone who tries to divide the world into “us” and “them” is probably trying to justify the terrible things they do to people.

The Little Mermaid: You have to let your kids grow up, even if it means they make some really dumb mistakes.

The Wicker Man: The protections of civilization do not extend beyond civilization’s boundaries, and you forget that at your own peril.

The Ring: Just because bad things happened to someone does not automatically make them worthy of your sympathy.

The Princess Bride: Love is worth everything you have to go through for it.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Obsession can be a very dangerous thing. (Actually, this could be the ultimate message of just about every story ever.)

Aliens: Imperialism has consequences.

Spider-Man: Being a hero requires sacrificing your own personal happiness.

Donnie Darko: Being a hero requires sacrificing your own personal happiness.

Pulp Fiction: The path of wickedness might be glamorous, but it’s ultimately poisonous and destructive.

A Nightmare on Elm Street: Part of growing up is dealing with the crazy fucked-up world your parents left for you.

The Birds: Sometimes bad shit just happens and all you can do is deal with it.

The Wedding Banquet: Your parents are always going to be smarter than you are.

Doctor Strangelove: People in positions of authority are no less likely to be crazy and/or stupid than the rest of us; in fact, they’re probably moreso.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Greed and selfishness are ultimately the root cause of all of society’s problems, even the ones that seem minor and unconnected.

Transformers: As long as you cram enough giant fighting robots that turn into cars and planes into your movie, it doesn’t have to mean a goddamn thing.

The Seven Samurai: Tatooine moisture farmer Luke Skywalker stumbles upon information that his insignificant homeworld is about to become the crux in the Empire’s plan to destroy the Rebellion. Princess Leia of Alderaan, a key figure in the Rebellion, is coming to this distant world to exchange vital information with Rebel spies; little does she know that the Empire has already learned of her mission, and has set a trap for her with a hidden garrison of Imperial troops…a garrison led by the Emperor’s personal enforcer, Darth Vader. Skywalker longs to help the princess, but he’s only one man, and an untrained fighter at that; he needs help if he’s going to save her. So he recruits a rag-tag band to help him: An exiled Jedi Knight named Ben Kenobi, a smuggler with a heart of gold named Han Solo, a bestial Wookie named Chewbacca, a grizzled bounty hunter named Boba Fett, and a Rebel pilot named Wedge Antilles. The six of them rescue the princess from the initial ambush; and together, the seven of them retreat into the Tatooine desert, where they use Ben’s knowledge of the terrain to slowly winnow away the Empire’s advantage of numbers. In the end, although Ben and Boba die in battle, Leia succeeds in her mission and (possibly) begins the end of the Empire.

Yojimbo: In the distant galactic backwater of Mos Eisley, Ben Kenobi (a former Jedi Knight who fled to the Galactic Rim after the fall of his order) becomes embroiled in the middle of a war between rival gang lords Jabba the Hutt and Xizor. He hires himself out first to one, then the other, playing both sides against the middle while he secretly works to clean up “the most wretched hive of scum and villainy.” The end features him dueling against Jabba’s top enforcer, Boba Fett. (The scary thing is, this requires only minimal changes to fit into continuity…)

Rashomon: In the aftermath of the death of Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi at the hands of Sith Lord Darth Vader, we see differing interpretations of the event from Vader, Kenobi, Leia, and finally the droid duo of C-3P0 and R2-D2. In the end, though we see many versions of the final battle between the two, the truth remains elusive and unknowable.

The Lower Depths: Owen Lars and his wife, Beru, run a small flophouse on Tatooine for scoundrels down on their luck. Among them is Han Solo, a smuggler and thief, and Ben Kenobi, a mysterious wise old man with a troubled past. Han is having an affair with Beru, but his growing friendship with Beru’s nephew Luke makes him consider breaking it off. At the same time, his admiration for Ben makes him think about finding a better life. When he discovers that Owen and Beru beat Luke, he breaks into their house to defend his young friend, only to wind up inadvertently killing Owen. Beru claims that he did it to continue their affair, which ends his friendship with Luke, and Ben flees when Imperial stormtroopers come to arrest the smuggler. In the end, Beru is arrested as well, leaving Luke without guidance and support.

Ran: Emperor Palpatine’s ambitious plan for his succession backfires on him when he delegates power to three of his most senior advisors, Grand Moff Tarkin, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and his apprentice and “son” created through Jedi magic, Darth Vader. Vader questions the wisdom of splitting the Empire between so many ambitious men, and is disowned and banished along with his droids. But Vader is proven right when Tarkin and Thrawn go to war over the Empire, and both of them try to put the Emperor out of the way as a potential obstacle; with his Royal Guard slaughtered, the insane Palpatine is left to wander the countryside. There he is discovered by R2D2 and C3Po, two of Vader’s droids that have remained loyal to the Emperor. They take refuge in a peasant’s hut on the swamp world of Dagobah, only to find it occupied by Yoda, Palpatine’s old Jedi foe who he had ordered to be blinded.

Vader discovers what happened to Palpatine and gathers an army to find him; this is viewed as an attempt at conquest by Tarkin and Thrawn, who send their own armies to stop him. In the final battle, the three armies weaken each other to the point where the Rebel Alliance is able to overthrow them; it’s revealed, in the end, that this was the ultimate goal of Tarkin’s wife, Mon Mothma. Tarkin kills Mothma, but is himself killed when Rebel ships blow up his Star Destroyer. Vader finds Palpatine, but is killed by Boba Fett, an assassin sent after him by Tarkin before his death. Overcome with grief, Palpatine dies, marking the end of the Empire. The film ends with a shot of Yoda, blind and alone on Dagobah, the only survivor of the film’s events.

(And by the way, before anyone thinks to comment on it, yes, I know ‘Ran’ came out after the trilogy was finished. If I can postulate an alternate universe where Lucas based ‘Star Wars’ on other movies, I can postulate one where he did it a decade later.)

Then, in Excalibur #15, we see her celebrating her 15th birthday in the company of Saturnyne. (Who she thinks is Courtney Ross at the time. God, it’s hard explaining Chris Claremont comics.) These two comics were both written by the same author, so there’s no question of continuity mistakes or differences in authorial intent. The span of X-books from January 1983 to late July 1990 are fully intended to take place over roughly one 365-day span of time.

And since this occurred during one of the most crossover-rich periods in comics history, we have plenty of mutual data points to tie the other Marvel books into a cohesive timeline. “January 1983″ doesn’t necessarily translate across every title to the exact same moment in Marvel Time, but we know that Secret Wars happened within that span. So Johnny and Alicia started their relationship during that year, Tony Stark lost his company and had his bout with alcoholism, the Hulk turned intelligent, and Spider-Man got his black costume.

Likewise, Secret Wars II happened in that year. Which places Xavier’s mugging and subsequent exile to space, the Hulk’s exile to the dimensional crossroads, Power Pack’s…um, almost their entire career, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves, Thor’s turning into a frog (in fact, the whole Simonson run was during that year), the founding of the West Coast Avengers, Tony Stark’s retaking his company from Stane and Stane’s subsequent suicide, the end of the Dire Wraith Wars, Cyclops’ marriage and leaving of the X-Men, the entire freaking existence of the Beyonder in the Marvel Universe, Kristoff’s becoming Doom and Doom’s war against Kristoff, the return of Jean Grey and the founding of X-Factor…deep breath…all in that year too.

Oh, and the Mutant Massacre hit in that year, and the Fall of the Mutants (which means that by extension, the Armor Wars saga, Captain America being defrocked and replaced by Super-Patriot, and then returning to the role as Super-Patriot became USAgent also all hit in that year…oh, and the deaths of the X-Men and their subsequent resurrection and relocation to Australia…) And Inferno hit in that year, so that meant that Johnny and Alicia’s marriage, the Thing becoming leader of the FF, Quicksilver’s descent into and return from mental illness, the entire career of the Hobgoblin, the first appearance of Venom, the death of Kraven the Hunter, Ms Marvel becoming the She-Thing, the Hulk’s career as a Vegas enforcer, the Thing’s career as a pro wrestler, the Masters of Evil’s assault on Avengers’ Mansion, the Avengers disbanding and subsequent reformation as a team consisting of Mr Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, Gilgamesh, Thor and Cap, the Avengers’ relocation to Hydrobase, Daredevil’s secret identity being discovered by the Kingpin, Storm losing and regaining her powers, the destruction of the X-Mansion, the temporary transformation of New York into a demonic netherworld…and although we can’t be sure, since Excalibur didn’t participate in that particular crossover, it also looks like Acts of Vengeance happened around then. So that adds the founding of the New Warriors, the destruction of Hydrobase…

Basically, it was a busy freaking year. (You may feel free to contribute further momentous events in the comments section, but I think you get the idea.) The plan for the series I want to write borrows from DC’s “52″; only instead of telling a “missing” year of continuity in real time, this 52-issue weekly series would go back and retell that 365-day span of Marvel Time in real time. The reverse of decompression, it would try to convey to the readers the sheer chaos that exists in the Marvel Universe, and what it feels like to live in a world moving that fast. A year where snow fell in summer, where gods and more-than-gods walked the earth, a year where Iron Man quit and Captain America got fired, a year of destruction and creation and joy and sorrow…Marvel. One Year.

Anyone interested in reading that?

My idea comes from noticing the pattern that the series has established over its first five seasons in its “Doctor Who meets a famous creative person” episodes (‘The Unquiet Dead’, ‘The Shakespeare Code’, ‘The Unicorn and the Wasp’, ‘Vincent and the Doctor’.) The creative person runs afoul of a menace that is peculiarly fitted to their creative endeavors, with a Doctor Who twist (Dickens meets alien “ghosts”, Shakespeare fights evil witches from another dimension, Agatha Christie wanders into a murder mystery that involves space wasps, and Vincent van Gogh discovers aliens that, due to his unique perception, only he can see.) The menace brings the creative person to a personal low, even as the Doctor finds himself unable to thwart it; he succeeds by using praise to bring out the creative person’s unique gifts, allowing them to defeat the menace in a way the Doctor can’t. Finally, the Doctor reveals a hidden truth to the creative person: Their gifts are unique and their works will endure throughout eternity.

Naturally, I had to subvert the formula.

In this story, the Doctor and Amy wind up in England, in 1844. The politician and author Edward Bulwer-Lytton is at a personal low, having been forced out of Parliament, separated from his wife, and dealt with the death of his mother…and he’s not handling it well. In fact, he’s having a nervous breakdown, hearing voices that tell him to excavate a massive hole on his estate.

The Doctor finds this highly suspicious. Not because he thinks Edward is insane, but because the TARDIS is picking up high-end telepathic broadcasts that suggest he very much isn’t. He insinuates himself into Edward’s company in order to find out just what’s at the bottom of the hole, and isn’t surprised to find that it’s an alien race. The Vrilya, as they are called, came through from another dimension that was losing its cohesion, and when they escaped, well…beggars can’t be choosers. A portal to a maze of subterranean caverns, with no way up to the surface, still beat a world where the laws of physics were breaking down.

The Vrilya are angelic, intensely powerful, and bring with them a miracle substance that is the pinnacle of their technology, called “vril”. They plan to offer Edward, and by extension Britain, the substance in exchange for a path for the rest of their species to come through. With the prospect of all his shames and failures erased, Edward is sorely tempted.

But the Doctor realizes that vril is more dangerous than it appears. Its energies are actually the cause of the destabilization of the Vrilya’s home universe, and if they begin using vril in large quantities on Earth the way they did back home, well…”unmitigated disaster” barely begins to describe it. The Vrilya don’t take well to what they see as a death sentence for their people (they see life without the miracle of vril as a fate worse than death) and use their powers to banish the Doctor to their universe.

But the Doctor makes contact with Edward through the TARDIS’ telepathic circuits (the ones that let him instantly understand any language.) He convinces Edward that his mind is receptive to the Vrilya, but that link works both ways–he needs to open himself up completely to the Vrilya, let them see the fullness of the human condition as expressed through the mind of one of its most celebrated authors. Startled back to normality by the Doctor’s praise, Edward does so…and unexpectedly, the Vrilya flee back to their home dimension. The Doctor pops out as they pop back in, relieved to be back. “Where did they go?” asks Amy, who really hasn’t had much to do in this episode. “Oh, probably off to try again somewhere else. Anywhere the portals can open. Anywhere that’s not here.”

“And my works, Doctor?” Edward asks. “Will they endure? Will I be remembered, in ages hence?” The Doctor smiles thinly, and assures Edward that the name Bulwer-Lytton will be famous for centuries to come. But unlike Vincent, he decides not to give him a ride in the TARDIS to show him exactly how…

It begins, as so many Doctor Who stories do, with the TARDIS arriving on a future Earth where everything seems calm and orderly… too calm and orderly, at least to the Doctor (“Never trust a utopia,” he’ll say to whatever fetching young lady is his companion at the time.) A bit of investigation reveals that this peace and order is, indeed, artificial, but it’s not achieved by force: instead all war, violence and conflict are defused before they even begin by a mysterious, unseen figure only ever referred to as “He” or “Him.” The Doctor can sense that time manipulation is afoot, and begins to suspect that this is the work of Daleks, or the Master, or even a lost Time Lord who somehow survived the Time War. Until he finds a little asteroid in the middle of nowhere where time literally stands still and finds the machine that is constantly making all those little alterations to history, to maintain “His” utopia –

– and finds it’s the TARDIS. His TARDIS. And it’s screaming, because it’s being made to violate time in ways it was never made to do — and to end history itself, grinding it down into the stasis of enforced peace.

Now He makes his appearance — he’s been watching the Doctor for some time, of course — and reveals that he is a future incarnation of the Doctor. It’s not clear whether he’s the last regeneration or whether he somehow extended his lifespan beyond the normal limit for Time Lords, but one thing is clear: he’s on his last go-round. (We’ll call him “Doctor Thirteen” for convenience; if this were a two-parter, that would be a good title for the second episode.) He explains how he saved the Earth, and the universe, again and again, and still it needed saving; how his allies died, and he got older and older, but his enemies just kept coming back.

Now the Doctor is given a choice: he can leave, and let things run their course until he winds up here again, or Doctor Thirteen will use his bastardized TARDIS to make him relive all the agonizing steps between them almost instantaneously. And the Doctor runs, but it’s no use because Doctor Thirteen is older and cannier than he is, and knows all his tricks, and in the end the Doctor is caught once more. The Doctor’s fetching young companion rescues him, of course, but it’s too late: in just a few minutes he’s experienced everything that brought Doctor Thirteen to where he is — the last defender of the Earth, all alone.

Except that our Doctor isn’t alone: though his companion couldn’t save him in time, the fact that she was there for him makes him realize that the only way he’ll ever run out of allies is if he turns humans into something not fit to be his companions. Together he and his companion fight Doctor Thirteen and defeat him, and Doctor Thirteen begs him not to destroy everthing he’s built, to have pity — after all, he was the Doctor once. But the Doctor turns back from the door to his TARDIS, shakes his head and says “Not you. You were never me.”

No, let us instead discuss the merits of a Lone Ranger remake, which has not received entirely kind press from the movie blogging community, mostly because the Lone Ranger seems sort of corny. Which is ridiculous, of course, because the guy has the finale of the William Tell Overture – one of the most exciting bits of classical music ever – as his theme, and no trailer with a lot of explosions and horse ridin’ and shootin’ set to the William Tell Overture is going to be boring.

If they asked me to write it, I’d go to the Mask of Zorro well and make it generational. Have the original Lone Ranger emerge out of the Bleeding Kansas period – Texas Rangers were known to occasionally cross into Kansas, and the possibility that a group of Texas Rangers could have been involved in something horrific involving escaped slaves – or at least allowed it to happen – and disillusion the Lone Ranger so much so that he would abandon his unit and become, well, the Lone Ranger? That seems entirely reasonable.

Now, if the Lone Ranger gets his start in northern Texas and Kansas, that means he’s not very far off from the historic stomping grounds of several of the Apache tribes. So let’s say Tonto is an Apache. The Apache were, frankly, some of the baddest asses of the southwest native tribes of the time – a lot of other tribes thought, not unfairly, that they were kind of crazy. And they didn’t like anybody.

So why the Lone Ranger/Tonto partnership? Well, in Apache legend, there’s a pair of heroes/demigods/myths (their exact status is unclear) named Child-Born-of-Water and Killer-of-Enemies. These two always work as a pair. Were the Lone Ranger – not yet the Lone Ranger yet, not really – to stumble into an Apache camp, half-dead from exhaustion and thirst, in such a way as to resemble many of the legends surrounding the beginning/birth/genesis of Child-Born-of-Water, perhaps the medicine men of the camp would suggest that he not be killed off in the usual way but watched closely, to make sure this was indeed a child of Usen. Sticking Tonto – antisocial even among his own, but with the Power that very few Apache have, to leave no tracks and know men’s thoughts – with him to make sure he didn’t die of eating the wrong snake. Eventually sending the two of them off together to defeat the enemies of mankind, as the legends demand that Child-Born-of-Water and Killer-of-Enemies do. And thus begins a partnership that lasts twenty years.

Twenty years later, with the Ranger and Tonto in their late forties, it’s a new era: the peak of the Wild West, and not coincidentally the sunset of the Apache nations. Mangas Coloradas was killed in 1863. Cochise is jailed in 1872, dies in 1874. His son Taza dies in 1876. Geronimo lasts until 1886, but by the 1870s he’s reduced to small-scale guerilla raids and escaping from the whites on a regular basis.

This is when the Lone Ranger dies, in the course of protecting innocents (as you might expect). Tonto tries to go home, but by this point there’s not really any home left for him to which he might return. And one of those people is a young man whose family was murdered by a rail baron relentlessly expanding west, who only wants revenge – but, as Tonto sees, for a second time a white man satisfies the legends of Child-Born-of-Water’s birth…

See? You’d go see that.

Enter Gambit and Rogue.

ROGUE: There’s just no point, Remy. I know you love me, but my powers are my curse, we both know that. The second ah touch you, ah’ll steal your mind and your powers.

GAMBIT: So you keep saying, ma petite chere…but I’m a gambler, non? I’m willing to press my luck, especially when the rewards…

He leans in.

GAMBIT: …are worth the risk.

Rogue pulls away, but not too far.

ROGUE: Ah, ah can’t, ah can’t risk it…

GAMBIT: You’re not the one taking the risk, amie. I am…

He leans in again, and this time his lips make contact.

GAMBIT: Definitely worth it.

Rogue’s eyes widen in shock. Speechless, she allows Gambit to lead her to the bed. He sits down and pulls her down to him. They kiss again, more passionately and longer this time.

ROGUE: Ah don’t believe it!

GAMBIT: Neither do I, chere. You never expected a man to kiss you but you still wore flavored lip gloss.

Rogue giggles, and the two of them clinch together in a longer, more fevered embrace. Gambit pulls Rogue’s gloves off and takes her hand in his, and then reaches out to undress her further…

Suddenly, the stereo stops.

GAMBIT: Merde!

He leaps to his feet.

ROGUE: What’s the problem, sugah? It’s probably just the end of the CD, and…say, did you hear something?

GAMBIT (fumbling with the stereo player): No! No, ma petite chere fille amie, it’s probably just, um, the pounding of your heart.

ROGUE: No, it sounds like it’s coming from under the bed.

GAMBIT: What? Ahahahahaha! Oh, that’s rich. There’s nobody under the bed!

ROGUE: Who said anything about a person?

GAMBIT: Nobody! You’re just imagining crazy talk, that’s all. Worrying about nothing. Now let me–

ROGUE: That was a thump. Ah distinctly heard a thump.

GAMBIT: It was nothing! I mean, nobody! I mean–

Rogue gets up and kneels down next to the bed. She peers underneath the hanging bedspread.

ROGUE: Oh mah God! Is that Leech!?!

GAMBIT: I can explain, ma petite chere petite fille petite–

ROGUE: Did you tie him up down there?

GAMBIT: A little, maybe, but it was for us!

ROGUE: When were you going to let him go?

GAMBIT: Um. Depends. You gonna stay the night?

To give some examples: I’m a fan of, say, Spider-Man. I haven’t read the series in a few years, and I decide to step into a comics store and browse the latest issue on the stands. I pick up a copy of “Amazing Spider-Man”…and Spider-Man is a Starbuck’s barista named Ben Reilly, with no sign of MJ, the Daily Bugle, Aunt May, or anything else they recognize. I shrug, and put that comic back on the shelves. Maybe I come back in another year, maybe I don’t.

Or I’m an X-Men fan. I’ve been away for a while, and I pick up an issue…the team is headquartered in San Francisco instead of the X-Mansion, and Cyclops is the team leader. But there are still characters and sub-plots I recognize, and the basic concept–mutants protecting humans from world that fears and hates them–remains more or less intact. I decide to pick up an issue for old time’s sake, and who knows? I might even get hooked again.

Or I’m a Hulk fan. I pick up an issue of the book, and the Hulk is red and smart and uses guns. I roll my eyes, since as an established comics fan I know that it’s probably just a gimmick and the real Hulk will come back soon.

But you get the basic idea. The further away the series gets from that mental snapshot the fan takes of “what the series is like”, the less chance that they’ll come back to it. Iron Man has machine-controlling powers due to a techno-virus called “Extremis”? Um, okay, we can kind of see it. Iron Man as a teenager from an alternate timeline who has to wear the armor to stay alive due to fatal injuries he sustained in battle with his future self? Check, please! The concept of a series has a lot less elasticity than writers, editors, and even established fans think. (Admit it, you all felt a subconscious feeling of relief when Bruce Wayne came back as Batman, didn’t you?)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m boring, and my column “eats”. No, seriously, you’re wondering about the Silver Age. Surely, turning Green Lantern into a space cop and the Atom into a shrinking scientist and Hawkman into a different kind of space cop and the Flash into a different kind of scientist…that has to violate the Five-Year Rule, right? But the difference is, back then those characters didn’t have a fanbase to speak of. Comics were a different animal back then, one without a devoted group of long-term fans who would follow a series for years. The Silver Age revamps built their fanbase from scratch, something that comics have a lot more trouble doing these days without a newsstand distribution system. It’s something that comics companies might bear to keep in mind during their next reboot.

The art director is the key, because I’m going with the Archie route: We would have a house style, and all the artists at the company would be expected to conform rigidly to that house style. (Keep in mind that when I say, “the Archie route”, I don’t actually mean “looking like Archie”. I picture it as being something fairly timeless, a sort of Neal Adams/Jim Aparo hybrid. Something that you could still look at twenty years later and say, “Ooh, that’s nice.”) But the point is, we are not chasing big names here. If you come to my company expecting to be rich and famous, you’re coming to the wrong place.

Which isn’t to say that we wouldn’t have credits. On the company website, and on the inside front cover of every book, it would say, “(Insert Title Here) was produced by:” and it would proceed to list the writers, artists, editors, and art director that made the book possible. You would be able to say to your family, “Yes, I work in comics.” But you wouldn’t, y’know, be able to say, “I do all the work around here. Give me a raise.” This is not a place for rock stars. (Actually, you would, in a sense. Artists would be paid an hourly wage, but they would also get completion bonuses for every page they did that passed the art director’s approval. So the faster you draw, the more money you make.) To make up for the fact that I’m treating it like a job and not like a creative opportunity, you get the sorts of things you get in a job–hourly wages, health and dental, 401K, et cetera. This is a career for people who want a career.

The books themselves would be done assembly-line style. The writers break down the plot into pages, and each page breakdown is circulated to the pencilers to draw. They, in turn, pass the finished pages to the inkers, then back to the writers for dialoguing, then to the letterers, and then to the colorists. (Every step goes through an editor/assistant/art director/assistant, as well, just to make sure it all comes out nice.) Once the story is finished (all stories are thirty pages long, and entirely self-contained. No multi-parters, no exceptions) it goes up on the website, which is advertiser-supported free content. Anyone who wants to read the comic can do so there.

Or, if they don’t like that, they can read the magazine. It’d come out monthly, and be 120 pages long (90 pages of story, thirty pages of ads, contains three different titles.) This would be sold on newsstands, alongside magazines like Shonen Jump. For those who only wanted to follow one title in dead-tree format, there would be semi-annual anthologies, printed in manga-style digests, and cheap black-and-white “Reader’s Editions” that would be collected in eighteen-issue chunks. Oh, and the occasional hardcover “Best Of”. And, once there’s enough backlog material out there, cheap reprint editions that collect a few random stories together and can fit in supermarket checkout lanes, a la the Archie reprints you see everywhere.

So there’s my idea of the ideal super-hero comic book company. No big stars, heavy emphasis on the characters instead of the creators, self-contained family-friendly stories, and lots of reprinting. In short, the Archie model applied to super-heroes. So who wants to be the first to tell me I’m crazy?