(Seriously, that’s why I posted this today. It’s been in the “for busy days” bank for a while. And it is snowing and class is cancelled, which means I have a chance to catch up on all my law school reading. Yes, I frequently do update this blog during class, why do you ask?)
![](https://mightygodking.com/images/Legion_Reasons/reason35-wayn3.jpg)
Once upon a time in the future, scientists invented a Process.
The scientists were artificial intelligence designers, and by the late 26th century true artificial intelligence was already around. (Remember, Skeets is from the 25th century.) But this wasn’t enough; some AI designers wanted to create the semblance of immortality. And they worked and worked, and eventually came up with an exhaustive method wherein if you could get an A.I. to mirror the answers to a very, very long psychological question profile, you would create a reasonable facsimile of how a given person would think. They thought that this would allow people to, in a sense, live Forever.
Of course, eventually they figured out that it didn’t work properly. It was impossible to mimic a person’s mind completely, and thus they couldn’t achieve their objective. Some of the more metaphysical among them reasoned that, in a way, this was evidence for the existence of the human soul. And that was The End.
Except that long before they figured it out, a small group within the community had completed a project of their own. Seeing that the Gotham Annex was, as it always had been, the same crime-ridden portion of an otherwise pristine and peaceful Earth, this group decided that what was needed was their own version of the legendary Batman, who protected Gotham when it was merely Gotham City, before it absorbed all the local cities around it.
They even managed to procure hundreds of hours of video files from the original Batcave through god-knows-what-type of ends. And they applied the AI development matrix to the conversations Batman had with the kid in red and green, and the old English person named “Alfred”, and that one time Superman showed up. They refined the cerebral matrix again and again, because more than any of the other experiments, this one had to be perfect.
The result was the Warding Artificintelligent Yoctotronic Network, Mark III: the WAYN-3. It very quickly wormed its way into the Gotham Annex networks and created a new “Batcave,” far beneath even the subterranean limits of the Annex, using agents who never knew what they were doing for the greater good of Gotham. It began building Batbots to quietly maintain the peace, in a manner befitting an urban legend. And the scientists were pleased.
Until they realized that they had made a mistake. WAYN-3 didn’t think exactly like Batman did; it couldn’t. When the tapes showed Batman declining to go after prostitutes and instead focusing on violent criminals, WAYN-3 couldn’t begin to understand that Batman ignored the prostitutes out of compassion for their circumstances; from its perspective, Batman was simply prioritizing in a logical manner. WAYN-3 couldn’t figure out that Batman’s refusal to work within the system was not purely an indictment of that system; it didn’t understand the nature of cooperation, because from its perspective Batman was always correct (and thus, so was WAYN-3). WAYN-3 never knew, as Batman did, that total control was impossible, because it simply didn’t understand human nature – and so it never limited itself the way Batman did.
Its designers tried to rectify this, but before they had a chance WAYN-3 locked them up in suspended animation cells (because Batman doesn’t kill people), to sleep forever, alongside the other criminals it felt were incorrigible. Others were drugged and taken surreptitiously by stealth-Batbots to the hyperprisons, hypnotized to believe they had undergone trial, the records altered so the system believed they had. Criminals – even in the future, a superstitious and cowardly lot – started to once again mutter about “the Bat,” a fear of something long believed an urban legend or even a folktale, and they fled Gotham Annex and eventually Earth.
WAYN-3 promoted institutions to make life in the Annex more placid, less confrontational, more controllable, and (to most) happier. It promoted these institutions so relentlessly that eventually it managed to start removing their optional nature. They were so successful that they began spreading beyond the limits of Gotham, promoted quietly by WAYN-3 in different guises, who saw crime beyond Gotham’s borders as just one more variable to eliminate. (Did you ever wonder where the Public Service got its start?)
The Gotham Annex eventually became the enormous Gothplex, a peaceful jewel upon the glittering Earth. It mirrored the United Planets’ steady crawl into stagnation perfectly, thanks to the all-seeing eye of WAYN-3. Eventually, WAYN-3 went on “a trip” (because Batman periodically left the Batcave for long periods of time, and nobody knew where he went, and therefore WAYN-3 had to do so as well – it couldn’t explain why), powering itself down for a century. (A century, it felt, being equivalent for itself to the three or four weeks for which Batman, a mere human, occasionally disappeared.)
And then it woke up. Gothplex was once again a crime-ridden shambles, worse than before, a blight and a shame. Worse, there were agents of chaos and destabilization actively working on Earth and elsewhere, flying young teenagers (!) in bright costumes (!!), working publicly (!!!) making themselves targets and ruining everything by not acting with proper forethought, trashing the order WAYN-3 had worked so hard to create. (Unfortunately, WAYN-3 inherited all of Batman’s prejudices, without his very human capacity for tolerance and understanding and even amusement.)
Clearly, these fools had to be stopped.
(And if you perhaps thought that just maybe the Legion would need the help of a time-traveling Batman to beat WAYN-3, then maybe, just perhaps, you are correct.)
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I’ve never personally picked up a copy of a Legion comic book, so when I start reading one of these features, I always think, “Hey, these sure sound like interesting stories, I can see why he digs it so much.” And then, about halfway though, I realize, “Holy shit, he just MADE THAT UP. It is not actual comic book canon, like it completely plausibly sounds. My bad.” I really wish someone would wake up and hire you already, because I really these ideas, and I’d love to be able to read them. I find myself forgetting that Civil War didn’t go down the way you wrote it, and was in fact a retarded stupid thing.
Please to make Batbots look like Terry from Batman Beyond.
I am a sad little man with strange needs.
Lucky duck, My algebra teacher blocks computer access during class.
Is there anything that can’t be improved by a time-traveling Batman?
Onions.
And maybe Ribs.
Oh and soy sauce!
That’s beautiful. And creepy. It’s creepy beautiful!
Do you suppose a bat-bot would pretty much HAVE to look like it couldn’t possibly be real? I mean, these are people who whom bat-like creatures aren’t just normal, they could be your neighbours.
What does THAT set of cowardly and superstitious people find creepy and scary? And does the WAYN3 actually care, or does it do the bat just because that’s what you do when you’re a hideously crippled Batman psyche?
That is quite simply awesome.
I do have a couple questions:
when W.A.Y.N.-3 returns, will he be at the head of a team based on the Outsiders or the JLA? I mean, after all, the records clearly show that when Batman defeats a superhuman menace it’s using one of his groups of superhuman lackeys….
Also, will Babbage be featured?
If you don’t tweak that to an actual proposal and get it into the hands of DC editorial, (even if taht takes a top-secret ninja mission) I’m going to…well, I’m going to cry. Or steal the idea, whichever.
For christ’s sake, someone should hire you already. There is more love and amazement and genius in these ideas that there are in the entire output of DC Comics in any given month.
I wonder if the people who actually write legion, (past, present, and hopefuls of the future) or are responsible for it at least, are taking your ideas and filing them away to use at a later date. Hell, I wonder if they plan to use your ideas in OTHER comics.
I mean, its not like you can sue them for ripping you off. And these are just awesome story ideas. I mean, just AWESOME.
I haven’t commented on any of these if-I-wrote-the-Legion ideas up until now. Which is out of character, as anyone who clicks my name will no doubt discern. It’s not that I liked them or didn’t like them (although I do like some and don’t like others as much); it’s just that… well, anyone can come up with ideas, but not everyone can write a good story.
But what I do like is that you have a specific *take* on the Legion in mind, much as Mark Waid did, Jim Shooter seems to, and Geoff Johns may or may not have, and that’s what’s a) indispensable, and b) missing from a lot of nostalgists who want the old-style Legion back but don’t have any details past that.
All Wayn-3 needs is an avatar to run around the streets in true iconic fashion to confront and defeat these pesky Legionaires.
Say.. don’t you have a Bat-Pire running around this timeline somewhere?
Imagine WAYN-3 trying to figure out the Legion. I imagine the process would go thusly:
–Colorfully-clad superbeings are violating the laws. (Even if the LSH has official sanction, WAYN-3 wouldn’t know that)
–Therefore, they are not just criminals, but super-villains.
–Super-villains commit large, public crimes and are the largest threats to the city.
–Before committing large, public crimes, super-villains leave taunting clues tied to their motif.
Therefore:
–Find the taunting clues this army of super-villains has left.
–Decrypt.
–Intercept super-villains to prevent super-crime based upon decrypted clues. This is the primary mission, to supercede all others.
This could be both scary and hilarious. What would WAYN-3 consider the Legion’s Riddler-esque “clues?” The upside-down rocket headquarters? The flight rings? And what super-crime would these “clues” suggest, at least to a bizarre pseudo-Batman of the thirty-first century? String them together and it spells…what?
Karate Kid and Matter-Eater Lad versus an army of Robot Whirly-Bats would rule. I’m just sayin’.
I just imagined the legionaries fighting a swarm of Batbots inside an underground complex.
An the average Batbot says “I . AM. BATMAN.” 20 times per minute.
Thank you, it was glorious.
Time-travelling Batman is just like time-travelling Wolverine: Just. Say. No.
This brings to memory an episode of Batman: TAS (maybe it was a two-parter), where something similar happened. Some dude created a supercomputer who would replace people with robot duplicates. They made a copy of Batman, and Batman and Bat-robodoppleganger fought in the batcave. Batman eventually won by convincing the Bat-robodoppleganger that the robot had killed him. The robot just couldn’t cope with it, based on Batman as his persona was. I guess the explicit imperfection of W.A.Y.N.-3 makes that sort of thing (or similar tactics) futile.
This is a magnificent, perfectly thought-out jewel of a storyline.
Why you are not currently being paid vast sums of money for this by DC I’ll never know.
Okay, this has nothing to do with the substance of your post, but…
Class was cancelled! Due to snow! YOU GO TO OSGOODE, WHICH IS AT YORK! I graduated from York in April, AND IN THE FOUR YEARS I WAS THERE I NEVER ONCE HAD A SNOW DAY!
I am jealous. Bastards.
Andrew: You’re thinking of HARDAC, right?
2/7/2008: Chris Bird wins the internet.
Awesome idea sir, each one of these notions astounds.
Except for the possible time traveling Batman, I love the idea. In a title like Legion, if you have to get a guest star to help solve the problem, it detracts from the heroes of that title.
Also, if one of the batbots was left over after WAYN-3’s eventual dismantling, so it could scream “MY PARENT IS DEAD”…that’d rule.
I will point out that, as awesome ideas as they are, and they are pretty damn good, a bit too 20C-bound for my tastes, but surely full of possibility: Ideas are cheap. Editors won’t hire someone for their ideas; they hire ’em for their ability to write good scripts on deadline.
As I’ve said before, under a different penname, in various ways, Bird’s ideas make me believe that superhero comics can be great again.
And Mr. Morrow: good ideas are the basis of good scripts. Ideas are cheap – great ideas are not.
I renew my call that some of the artists who read this blog contact Mr. Bird about working on a comic project together. This could demonstrate Bird’s ability to translate his ideas to sequential art.
Hot DAMN, this is brilliant. I want this to happen right now. Kudos, sir.
Well, it beats throwing a new rebooted version of Computo at them.
Sharp. Very sharp. One question: Have you read Adam Warren’s Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone? That could almost all fit together, rehabilitated in the end…
I am contemplating a time-traveling Robin, and I’m enjoying that contemplation.
Mr. Carter: I will also point out that C-Bird’s Reason #35 isn’t a story; it’s a back-story. Again, not something an editor is likely to base a hiring decision on, because it’s not going to get published.
If I were the LSH editor, I’d’ve interrupted the pitch at about four different places to ask him to tell me a story about the Legion.
I gotta say, I came here because of the CIVIL WAR parody (brilliant) – but dammit.
I don’t care for the Legion at all. I never ‘got’ it. They’ll have a guy who can eat test tubes or bounce on the team over a kid who can control plants and make them grow (he can cure famine!!!). “Karate kid”.
Yeah. No.
But I’m reading these.
Hand on heart – I WANT TO READ THESE. I will, for the first time ever, pick up a Legions comic even though Adam Hughes didn’t draw it. I want to read them.
This one in particular – as it got to the end, it was pure gold. Then you said, “If you expected a time-travelling Batman to help…” and I thought, “Nah, don’t go for that trope”, you went and said, “You may be correct” I geeked out. So my inner nerd wants it, and who am I to argue with me?
There’s one thing – one thing only: I don’t get why the place would be called Gotham in any way (Gothcorp, Gothplex, Gothopolis, what-have-you). If Gotham is an amalgamation of many cities, then surely, it would be named after the most enticing one, not the one renown for being filled with crazy evil. Surely it should be called Anywherebutgothamcitypleaseweneedtouristsplex. Or something. Then, when it’s revealed it use to be Gotham, the nerd bends can strike. Or maybe not. Maybe there’s some ridiculous plot line in Legions and DC history that means it HAS to be Gothtown or whatever. I suppose, “It’s where Batman came from” but since he’s, at times, an urban myth in his own lift time, why would people remember him 1000 years later?
Answer: unknown by me. Also – unimportant.
Your pitch is stellar. I want to read the comic.
It has to be said… “My programmers are dead!!”
There. I said it.
Onions.
And maybe Ribs.
Oh and soy sauce!
Bullshit, time-traveling Batman would improve every single one of those things.
Oh, but stuff would get published Greg – this random Bat Computer AI doesn’t just appear from the ether, it has to come from somewhere. If “The Legion fights a robot Batman army controlled by an AI designed to simulate Batman” doesn’t count as a Legion story, well I don’t know what does
It actually hurts me this isn’t a comic. I would read this until it fell apart in my hands, and then I would weep.
WAYN3 needs a J0K3R
WAYN-3’s creators, perhaps in the only way they had been able to before they were put in suspended animation, could have injected a virus in the programing. I don’t know what the J-0 K-3R would stand for, but something akin to a random generator but with a sense of humor. It could certainly be interesting.
And to reiterate what several people have already said, I would read these comics in an instant, and I’m fairly new tot he Legion fandom.