WIDW #23.5: 52 Launch Titles for a Rebooted DCU
Okay, last time we dealt with the general universe outlay and how to handle announcing the reboot, now, finally, here's my interpretation of the 52 launch titles. I won't get into the creative teams, that's not my strong suit.
Aside from the first book on the list, I'll be starting with the solo books (and occasionally 'duo' books) which let us talk about the status quo of certain main characters before we deal with how they do in teams.
1. The Brave and the Bold #1 (instead of JLA#1)
This is not one of the debut comics. The first year builds towards the formation of the JLA for the first time. Instead, the debut comic is The Brave and the Bold #1, which helps establish the universe as a whole, and the heroes starting to come together. It then gets replaced with JLA.
2. Action Comics #1
This comic tells the story of the early days of Superman, after his revelation to the world. I know the Daily Planet is part of the classic, but... newspapers are dying almost as fast as comics. Maybe we should update it to be a local news channel. Clark Kent wouldn't necessarily be an on-air reporter, but one of the small behind the scenes researchers. Lois would be a full-on reporter (although perhaps just an occasional one at first chasing her big break with Superman). One of the buildups for it is the event, talked about occasionally in other comics, that caused the metagene explosion.
Sooner or later (with all of the ones set in the past) it would jump ahead to the main book and just become a 'second Superman book', much like it is in pre-reboot DC, but we get maybe a year or two of 'early days' stories first.
3. Superman #1
This one's set in the 'present day', Superman an established hero. Lois probably suspects his true identity but they're not married or dating. A lot of his history may simply be not there, for example. Kandor could be unfound (and when it's brought back, reimagined as a Kryptonian city converted into data, like a simulation, except the people in it are real, just disembodied. The problem then isn't "how do does
Superman not ever find somebody who can reverse the city shrinking process" but "I'd have to clone new bodies for everybody in the simulation and move them into them"). The Phantom Zone might not have been discovered, and it too can be revamped.
4. Wonder Woman #1
Another iconic character, so we can't change much except for the costume, and maybe not even that. I have liked some of the 'greek armor' type designs I've seen, but we know that most of the time she'll be brought back to her star-spangled panties, as silly as they might be.
Conceptually, we'll go with the idea that Themsycra is in another dimension, one inhabited by magic and Greek Gods. They are the guardians of a gateway between the two lands, and all was well until recently when Circe (or someone) created a second gateway to Earth. Maybe there's some artifact on Earth that she wants. In any event, when the Amazons heard about it, they took responsibility and sent Wonder Woman out to find and destroy the other gateway, and she also takes it as her duty to defend the Earth from the monsters Circe has unleashed on it. In the process she winds up having to reveal herself (the concept of a secret identity not dawning on her) and becomes something of a celebrity/ambassador.
Perhaps one twist would be that there is no gateway of Circe's that Wonder Woman can easily close... what she's discovered is how to pierce the dimensions at will, and that's a genie that can't be put back into the bottle. This requires Wonder Woman to stay.
So where do Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark fit in to Wonder Woman? I don't think they do. Well, Cassie can be retrofit to work - a human girl gifted with powers by one of the forces. You could do the same with Donna. I'd rather Donna be divorced from Wonder Woman continuity and form herself as a hero in her own right.
5. Batman #1
Batman without Robin. Pretty much classic Batman stories, more or less solo. Batman had a sidekick, Dick Grayson (no sacred cows, but sometimes the classics are cool... I wouldn't mind changing some details about it though), but he's off on his own (not that he wouldn't occasionally guest star).
However, I might as well use this to talk about one change I'd like to make to the Batman mythos in the reboot... and that is NO MORE DEBATES ABOUT BATMAN KILLING THE JOKER.
How?
By making the Joker immortal.
There've ALWAYS been discussions about the "is Batman responsible for killing him when he knows that if he doesn't, the Joker will escape and kill lots of people", and although I think he isn't, there's a persuasive sub-argument about "isn't it unrealistic that SOMEBODY hasn't killed him? Some cop willing to risk it all, etc, etc".
And it's true. It's probably the most glaring suspension-of-disbelief-required element in the entire Batman mythos, and this includes a guy dressing up as a Bat to fight crime and a girl able to control plants. Most of his other opponents you can mentally think of an average mob criminal, just super-powered... they might kill, but it's just a part of doing business. But the Joker will kill a busload of kids just for kicks, and sooner or later somebody would decide it's better to live in a world without the Joker. Hell, if I was in the Batman verse and I knew what I did about the Joker and how often he escapes, I probably would kill him given the chance, too (and be willing to go to jail for it).
I've thought about how to solve this, and the only ones I can think of is either a) make Joker into a legacy character (individual Jokers might die, but somebody will decide to take up the mask) which has the benefit of allowing us different takes on look, methods, etc, but the drawback of doing away of all the history between them, or b) make the Joker immortal.
Here's how I see it working: The Joker is an angry, virulent meme made flesh. You could even modernize it by having him having been a force on the internet before turning to real life crimes, although I'm a bit iffy on it. In any event, sooner or later someone kills him... and then a new Joker appears. It's like a demon possession. Maybe it's even the person who killed him that becomes the Joker, or somebody close to them, or in the event of a suicide/accident, just somebody random. They probably have to be 'susceptible' somehow, depressed and finding life pointless and absurd, but sooner or later somebody will start to feel that way enough to start to turn into the Joker. But the Joker has all the memories and knowledge and even appearance of the original (save a few identifying features of the host). In the early stages, maybe something like an 'exorcism' (more like reminding them of the things that have meaning in their life) can work to drive him out to seek a different host, but, even though it might take time, there's always somebody who'll "get the joke." Or we could combine that idea with the Internet thing... if the joker dies, some fan can summon him to take over their body based on instructions on the Internet, instructions that inexplicably work (but wind up driving his or her own soul out of their body permanently).
The challenge in containing the Joker then becomes locking him up in such a way that he can't kill himself and seek a new host. The rebirth-after-death is his only power (maybe the original 'sold his soul to the devil' to get this power... or sold other people's souls, the people who summon him... joke's on them!), and he can't just will himself dead (and he wouldn't always kill himself just for fun, sometimes he'll accept being locked up because in his warped logic it makes sense not to strike again until people've had a little respite... don't want to hammer the joke into the ground). So locking him up still has a purpose (because killing him just makes a new Joker active all that much quicker), but there's no way to solve the Joker problem once and for all and no debates about Batman killing him. I don't think we necessarily have to go into all the details on how it works for the audience, just so that it's obvious that killing the Joker doesn't stop him.
6. Batman: The Dark Knight #1
Let's make this our 'Batman set in the past' book. Before Superman. Before Metahumans. Batman fights gangs that have a stranglehold on New York, and forms an uneasy alliance with James Gordon.
7. Aquaman #1
Aquaman's probably too recognizable for a full redesign, but I kind of think he needs one. I'd like to get him away from the King of Atlantis idea, which puts him too close to Namor, and maybe to something else. I'm not saying get rid of the Atlantis part entirely, it's a key part of the mythos, but, I don't know. Maybe it's because I've been watching Game of Thrones recently, but maybe instead of King, he's the Rightful Heir, the Exiled Prince, forced to go out into the world because if he returns home, his head is on the line (but he has reason to keep returning anyway, family, friends, etc).
But... aside from them wanting him dead (for political reasons), it's not THAT bad a place, which is why any friends he makes in the Justice League would be reluctant to just pop in and help him reclaim his rightful throne.
8. Mr Terrific #1
I don't know much about the character, never having been a JSA fan, but sure, why not let him have a series to see if he can catch on.
9. Flash #1
Flash is fairly iconic, so we can't change much, aside from the Speed Force which should be refined and redefined and get rid of stupid (IMHO) elements like Black Racers and such. No opinion on whether it should be Barry Allen/Wally West or some fusion of the two, or of course race/sexuality changes which are doable despite his semi-Iconic status.
10. Green Arrow #1
While less iconic than many DC lead heroes, he was a key part of Smallville, so has some mainstream recognizability, so it probably doesn't do to change him too much. We can sever his automatic attachment to Black Canary and have them never have met yet, at least we start (although comic writing being as it is, they'll probably gravtate back together at some point).
11. Green Lantern Corps #1
This is the flagship Green Lantern book. Earth doesn't know it yet, but it's in deadly danger, located in an area of space that's slowly being taken over by a totalitarian force. The one light that stands between Earth and the Darkness is the Green Lanterns of sector 2814...
But that light has just been dealt a severe blow. The entire squadron has been wiped out, and the last survivor, Abin Sur, dying. He makes it to Earth, a backwater planet considered by the Oans to be too primitive to recruit from, and tells the rings to find a new team to continue the fight.
The rings shoot out across the world and select 7 champions and tells them of their danger. One will leave and attempt to break the barricade and find help. The others have to protect Earth, and the rest of the sector, alone... as long as their rings hold out.
Although it's a group of 6 in the book, and they are a team, it's not always a team book in that a lot of the missions are solo missions, just coordinated. We get a cast composed of both men and women of various different races (although you might say that the ring chooses from countries where there are certain standards with respect to human rights and equality and freedom). Another way we could tweak this is to have, instead of it just recruiting humans, it specifically looks out for low level metas, giving each member their own "trick" that perhaps the ring can help enhance. That might be a little gimmicky, though. If we don't use it, this could be a tendency of one of the other Lantern colors.
12. Green Lantern Alpha #1 (instead of Green Lantern)
This one is a solo book of one of the Green Lanterns, one designated 'Alpha' (normally sort of a team leader, and perhaps, the one charged with recharging the Lantern battery) who has to get to Oa and get help. Once the immediate crisis is past, he or she'll probably be assigned to a team composed of different aliens, rather than the Earth based team.
13. Oracle #1 (instead of Batgirl #1)
I think it's too early for a Batgirl. It's one of the problems with the reboot, even if we start it five years in, we can't just launch EVERY character at once.
So, I think we'll go with the plan I mentioned before. Barbara Gordon was never Batgirl. She was always Oracle. Maybe she has a Batgirl avatar in Cyberspace, but that's about the limit (and if DC absolutely pushed Barbara as Batgirl but let me choose the methods, that's how I'd do it: Batgirl is a book set in the Internet and she doesn't exist out in the world). So this book explores the life of a ultra-elite Cyber-hacker. She still has relationships with the Batcrew, and probably still dated Nightwing.
The big question is whether she should be in the chair to start with. I'm thinking yes. Not from being attacked by the Joker, but maybe keep some of the essence of that and have somebody tried to have James Gordon killed, and they were together when it went down, and Barbara got hit. But just having been in her chair all or most of her life is also a possibility.
14. Batwoman #1
Ideally I'd also think a Batwoman title doesn't have much place in this revamped DCU, at least not yet. Especially since she just started out in the DCU and to start out AGAIN feels a little off. However, she was well-publicized, and actually is an attempt at diversity, and what little I've read of her actually seems quite good, so I think that deserves something, so she'll also get a place. Batwoman exists before Batgirl (and, in fact, is probably why "Batgirl" as a name winds up existing at all - Batwoman was already taken and whoever takes it up doesn't want to step on toes).
Since I haven't mentioned her before, I should mention Cassandra Cain. I love the character to death, so naturally she has a place in my reboot, right? Of course. Except, I don't know where, and I don't think it can be right away, for the same reason... too many Batcharacters, too soon.
If she DOES come into play early, it MIGHT be as Kathy Kane's part of the Batverse, not Bruce. Maybe make a link between Cain/Kane... not that Kane is another daughter of Cain, but that they're related a little more distantly, like cousins (with the child of one of their common ancestors having changed their name)... probably cutting Betty Kane out of existence, but then she never seemed to bring much to the table, to me. Cassandra Cain seeks her out, or (more likely since the research would be beyond her) maybe Kathy is looking up her family connections because of the whole Alice thing, and stumbles upon this assassin and his raised-to-kill-from-birth girl who can't speak but refuses to kill. Kathy's a little unsure what to do with her, but Cassie latches on. She can migrate out to the wider Batworld (no real reason why Kathy can't be in touch with Oracle and letting Oracle be her mentor).
15. Catwoman #1
The traditional semi-bad-girl book, have her actually be a thief, albeit a good-hearted one.
16. Cry of the Huntress #1 (instead of Red Hood and the Outlaws)
Red Hood and the Outlaws doesn't really work in my relaunch, so let's give the Huntress her own book instead. The general 'daughter of mobsters' story works well enough as a concept.
17. Question #1 (instead of Batwing #1)
Trying to cut back on the "too many Batcharacters", so Batwing sadly has to go. I don't really know that the Batman of Africa would really work as a solo book anyway. I mean, does he cover the whole continent?
So let's bring back the Question.
An anonymous crusader for truth and justice, without a face. Is it a man? A woman? Is it even human? Those are not the right questions. The right question is: Why does it take an anonymous vigilante to speak out against the rampant corruption in the city. Why aren't you doing it yourself?
I don't know who the Question is. I don't care, either. And I think it would be cool to have a hero who's identity is a mystery even to the audience. We could include both previous Questions (Vic Sage and Renee Montoya) as cast members in the book, but both claim and for the most part act like they have no idea who it is.
I see the Question operating sort of like an investigative reporter on the Internet, posting videos exposing crime and corruption, and soon into it deciding that he/she can't just stand back and report any more, s/he has to actually intervene.
18. Nightwing #1
He used to be Batman's protege, but after a falling out, he's decided to move to a different city to go to college, and start a new life... but he can't leave crimefighting behind, particularly when Bludhaven's so corrupt.
19. Superboy #1
I know I said we could change things up and make Superboy actually his cousin and, say, Supergirl his clone, but I don't think I personally want to do that. I'm not sure I want to include Superboy at all, but we need books, so let's give him one. He's a clone, of course, and Lex Luthor stole a strand of Superman's hair very early on and used it to clone a human/Kryptonian hybrid, maybe as a means to replace Superman without the world knowing (but if we want to change his race, screw that idea and just have him be a normal hybrid, just not crossbred with Lex... or, with Lex, if we changed Lex's race). Perhaps he escapes or disaster strikes the facility before he's totally "ready" and so is a little unsure of himself and his place in the world.
20. Supergirl #1
I'm going to go way out in left field here.
I'm a fond of the 'kid superhero' trope. Power Pack, Molly in Runaways. And Supergirl tends to always get super-sexualized, so let's play against type and make her a young girl (not that that will stop some people with the sexualization, but, well, let's not go there). I was charmed by the idea of "Supergirl's adventures in the 8th grade" comic, and what scans of it I saw, so let's make Supergirl still Kal-El's (originally) older cousin, still come to Earth...
But she's like 11.
Hyperactive, full of energy, idealistic, and with a little more super-powers than sense. That's who Supergirl will be. Too young even for the Teen Titans (although they might take her in for a time).
Maybe one of the twists are that she's even more powerful than Superman in some areas, or at the very least, FASTER (I mean, ever try to chase down a kid when you're an adult? It's not easy. Or maybe I'm just lazy and out of shape. For the record, because I just realized that that could sound creepy, I am referring to chasing down nieces and such in games of tag at family gatherings). So unless he's willing to watch her 24/7 she can always get away and try her heroism.
21. Adam Strange (instead of Red Lanterns #1)
The adventures of a man who periodically is transported to an alien world, which he must defend. It's a lot like John Carter of Mars, but different, and with a good creative team and the freedom of a reboot to completely set the tone of the alien world it could really be something. In fact, it might work best with the writer being told "It's a guy named Adam Strange who for some reason is transported to an alien world somewhere else in the universe... everything else, make from scratch." I must admit I never read the original, but I was looking through wikis for concepts that might work and this one stood out.
Now, since this replaces the Red Lanterns book, I had the idea that Red Lanterns will still play a major role. Rann is in an area of space right at the interface of the Lantern Wars... except the Green are nowhere to be found. It's mostly the Yellow vs the Red. The Red are the closest to the good guys (and Adam might temporarily get a ring at some point), but very scorched-earth type of good guys.
Or, we could actually have Adam Strange set in another galaxy, unlike the majority of DCU races, and we can explore that aspect of things, what a different Galaxy means to the "rules". The only thing I'm a little leery of is that this would probably be the first place we see the Red Lanterns and some of the other colors, so we wouldn't necessarily want to introduce them in a way that is deliberately divorced from the rest of the Green Lantern mythos. Maybe leave it up to the writer - if they want a clean slate to define how the Lanterns work, they're in a different Galaxy. If they're prefer crossover potential with other titles, they're in ours.
We could also make it not Adam Strange, but something like Strange Adventures, and make the main character a woman... I like it just because 'woman transported to an alien planet' isn't done as much as it is with men (they do get a fairer shake when it's being transported to a magical universe), but for now I can't think of a good name that rolls off the tongue as Adam Strange, so we'll keep it as is.
22. Power Girl #1 (instead of Green Lantern: New Guardians)
Now, we mentioned that in a reboot like this, we can totally revamp Power Girl, even to the point of giving her a totally different power set. Although, I must admit to some trepidation. Although she's probably virtually unknown among non-comic fans, Power Girl probably is one of those characters who is virtually iconic WITHIN DC fandom (at least in terms of appearance and powers). Probably more than virtually any other character that the "man on the street" would have no idea about. So I'm a little leery about losing that.
So, I'm going to, but I'm going to take the coward's way out and do it in a way that allows us to preserve the past and even go back to it should we want to.
So, Power Girl features Karen Starr, who has the flight, invulnerability, and other such powers that Power Girl is traditionally associated with.
But Karen Starr is NOT Power Girl.
Power Girl is a different girl, a girl who has the ability to grant powers to other people. She doesn't choose what powers, she can just choose to grant them or not, and what powers they get is determined by their own genetics, or fate, or whatever, but they're always the same for the same person. Power Girl can grant one other person powers at any given time, but she can't grant them to herself, and she has to remain within a short distance or the powers fade.
Karen Starr is Power Girl's friend, and becomes the person she gives powers to most often in order to make a difference and act like a traditional superheroine (taking some other name, Bombshell maybe?), but it's really the story of the granter, a person who can make other people 'great' but can't be that herself (even though, the twist is, she's the most heroic of all because she has to be in the area of danger, without powers, in order to empower somebody else). Maybe she has self-esteem issues that can be explored as part of it.
Now, if this approach fails, we can easily think of some way to make Karen's powers permanent (possibly the "granter's" death while Karen has the powers), and it then becomes an origin story for Power Girl (she takes the name afterwards to honor her friend, I'd assume) that is completely independent of Superman.
23. Firestorm #1
I make no excuses that I never 'got' Firestorm, conceptually. I mean, the general idea (super-powered guy with an intelligent voice in his head) is kind of cool, but... well, for one thing, he just looks SILLY to me. And considering it's a comic universe with people dressed up like Bats or circus acrobats, that says a lot.
So this is a concept that I think deserves a more or less total rethink and redesign, and, because of low mainstream visibility, we can get away with it.
But, to keep the nugget of the concept, let's have it multiple people fused into one body. But not just two...
let's go out there and have it be a whole classroom, or maybe a school bus on a field trip, or something. Caught in an unfathomable catastrophy, there is only one survivor... maybe the outcast, the one most people picked on. Maybe even for being gay, to get a gay male hero leading his own book (or maybe identifying as transgendered, too young to go through transition but trying to live that way anyway... I actually like that and that would probably be my preference).
But all of the souls on the bus were absorbed into him. Mostly teens like him/her, but also the bus driver and the science teacher who was chaperoning the trip, and they ride along in his head, occasionally taking control and trying to work through their own issues. And what's more, the accident imbued Firestorm with lots of power, and opened a rift to another dimension that's spewing out monsters, monsters Firestorm may be the only one who can fight.
Or we could have two survivors, one becoming the traditional arch nemesis.
(The other Firestorm revamp idea I had was him being inhabited by an alien consciousness, but that's probably too overdone).
24. Hawkgirl #1 (instead of Hawkman)
I'm probably going to catch some hell from Hawkfans (are there Hawkfans) but I never much cared for the Hawkverse, and so I think this is a good opportunity to incorporate the Wildstorm universe. See, as I mentioned before, one of the problems is that a lot of Wildstorm characters are thinly-veiled analogs of normal DC characters. You can see it in the Authority, for instance, where you have Apollo and Midnighter (Superman and Batman), and Swift (Hawkgirl).
So let's actually combine Swift and Hawkgirl. Hawkgirl is Shen Li-Min, a Buddist from Tibet. We don't need to get into her history too much, but we could have her be a Thangarian/human hybrid or something, and use the Justice League animated ideas that Thangarians actually have wings. Anyway, she struggles with her pacifist upbringing and leanings and her desire to fight evil directly, with a mace. Eventually she becomes part of the Authority, a group of superheroes that take over the world trying to do good (and certain books set in the future refer to this as a dark time), but for now she's just a normal hero.
25. Blue Beetle #1
This one also doesn't need much revamping. Although I never got around to reading his book in full, what I saw of it and the character looked like a lot of fun, so Jaimie Reyez and a mystical scarab that gives him powers.
But, you might wonder, what about the original Blue Beetle, Ted Kord?
Well, he and Booster Gold go so well together, I'm thinking of making him not a previous holder of the Blue Beetle, but a FUTURE one. Yes, he and Booster are BOTH from the Future, although perhaps different eras. It'll be written later.
26. Vixen #1 (instead of Animal Man)
Instead of Animal Man, let's do an ongoing Vixen comic. She has similar powers. I don't know much about her beyond her appearances in the JLU cartoon, but I did like her there. If there are problematic origin issues or she's just not considered 'cool' enough we can try to revamp. We might even think about changing the name, Vixen could potentially be too oversexualized, but Animal Girl or Animal Woman doesn't sound very good.
27. Swamp Thing #1
More or less as normal.
28. The Atom #1 (instead of Captain Atom)
I don't like Captain Atom, conceptually, so instead I replace it with The Atom, the hero whose power is to shrink. But we can change the lead in any way we like, maybe give Ryan Choi a second chance or maybe make a completely new person.
To be honest though, I'm looking towards a female Atom. Why? Because DC doesn't have a whole lot of 'science heroes' that are women. You know, the ones who are scientists and get their power from some kind of scientific achievement, rather than just magic/accident/metagenes. A female Atom does kind of run up against comparisons to Wasp, but I think they're different enough to make it work.
29. Grifter and the Cyborg #1 (or maybe Cyborg and the Grifter, both sound pretty good) (instead of Grifter)
I don't know, I just like the name and making the book into a duo-book, at least until they split, has some potential.
30. OMAC #1
The original OMAC was set in the future. Although I'm worried at having too many 'future characters' in the DCU at the start is a risk, my first instinct is to make him from the future. My second instinct is to make him a Stormwatch operative.
...
Which then makes me think about Midnighter.
Yes. That's what I want. Midnighter is the One Man Army Corps. But we disguise it at first, give it a bit of a surprise twist. He's an operative designed to take out metahuman threats. Early on he's given the assignment to take out Apollo, an experiment in a home-grown Superman that went wrong, with predictable results... he ends up falling for his target (who's probably wrongfully accused in the first place).
31. Resurrection Man #1
A different type of Superhero, but a fairly standard superhero book, so I think it stays. Maybe change things up so that each time he/she dies he gets a completely new body in addition to powers. Or when he dies, he jumps immediately to the body of somebody else who's died at the same moment, heals their body and revives with new powers? Lot of angst there with family constantly expecting him/her to be a miracle, so maybe not quite that, but I do like the idea of every time he dies, he has to reappear not just with new powers, and a new body, but in a new place, lets him appear all over the world (and makes it so he can't just get out of a rough situation by dying and getting new powers). I just don't know the exact mechanism for how it would work. If we do go this way, we'll have to cut the nanites part of the origin, probably, and make it pure supernatural, but he's such an obscure character total rethinking of concept is doable.
If we do stick with one-body-and-nanites... I think we should combine him with Milestone's "Xombi" idea, which is very similar, but was, I think, unfortunately titled (I saw it in solicits and assumed it was just another zombie story). Maybe lean a little more heavily towards Xombi in terms of character name and origin, and just tack on the "new super powers each time" from Ressurection Man.
32. Hawksmoor #1 (instead of I, Vampire)
I always liked Hawksmoor from the Authority, probably one of my favorite concepts, so I'd like to give him his own series about the first city he formed a bond with, and maybe a revamped origin.
33. Voodoo #1
I know very little about the character, but I'm willing to stick with it because the idea of a person who can see aliens or demons possessing humans, and is able to free them, seems like it could be a decent idea for a solo ongoing. And I'm running out of my own ideas to replace books I don't like.
34. Static Shock #1
More or less normal Static Shock, except Dakota's in the DC universe, and Static's eventually a member of the Teen Titans, at least I'd hope. The book may be a semi-origin story at first.
35. Plastic Man #1 (instead of Sgt Rock And The Men Of War)
Because we need some kind of light-hearted character.
36. Savage #1 (instead of Deathstroke)
The life of Vandal Savage. Part flashback, part present-day... a sort of semi-villain book, but hopefully making him at least somewhat sympathetic.
37. Knight and Squire #1 (instead of Justice League International)
Set in Britain, this is something of a placeholder mini before we get to the Justice League International (which is formed at the same time as the regular Justice League). Featuring revamped versions of Knight and Squire, but also Nightrunner (the Muslim 'Batman of France') and a few other characters. Yes, I'm committing the sin of treating all of Europe as one big country, but I mean more that whatever mission Knight and Squire are on takes them all over Europe and lets them interact with other heroes.
38. Detective Comics #1
This is the one that leads up to and builds up Batman's supporting cast, the intro storyline probably involving him finding and recruiting a new Robin candidate, and perhaps working with Oracle. The Robin candidate? Given how little she was respected the first time, I kind of like my earlier suggested idea of Stephanie Brown. He finds her as Spoiler, at first thinks she's a villain, then that she's in over her head, but she impresses her. In the book he also encounters Gotham-based Detectives like Huntress, Batwoman, and Question, having varying reactions to them.
Speaking of Spoiler, the other tweak we COULD make is that instead of the Cluemaster, we could actually make the Riddler her father. This does sort of work against the cool origin where her father overcame his psychological need to leave clues, and so she did it for him to help him get caught. The Riddler couldn't overcome it. But they're just so similar, that streamlining them makes sense. Why have two Riddle-themed figures?
Hmmmm... maybe make them two brothers. The Riddler and the Cluemaster, and Spoiler's still the Cluemaster's daughter... that way she has the connection to both. And she actually likes the Riddler more, in that he's the sort of Uncle that actually treated her halfway decently, unlike her father, even though they both committed crimes and she'd work against him, just a little more reluctantly. Anyway, after trying to dissuade her at first, he decides he likes her skills and her spirit and makes her the new Robin.
39. Gotham Central #1 (instead of Batman and Robin)
Since we're just developing the Robin relationship in "Detective Comics", we can't start out with a "Batman and Robin" unless it becomes our Batbook set in the past, with Dick, instead of The Dark Knight, without... which was an option, actually, and worth considering... but I'd rather start out with Gotham Central and tell stories about the Gotham Police, and then, if it doesn't succeed, replace it with a Batman and Robin book once Robin becomes "official".
40. Outsiders #1 (instead of Adventure Comics DC Universe Presents #1)
The original Teen Titans are likely to get short shift by the relaunch, so here's where we give them the spotlight.
Outsiders is a meta-term, it's not used within the book itself, but each member of the cast feels like an Outsider for one reason or another, and they come together in a common cause... not all the time, but on a regular basis. Maybe they all go to the same college (except Starfire, and maybe rescuing her is what binds them together at first, she's an alien hiding on Earth and they all help).
Set in Bludhaven, a city of crime and corruption but a decent place to disappear. Our cast is
Nightwing, who's just trying to make it on his own after his split with Batman
Starfire, an alien refugee who's hiding on Earth
Donna Troy, with a new origin and maybe all-new concept, although I have to confess, I don't have a good
idea for.
Raven, daughter of demons and prophesized to end the world
Beast Boy... I'm thinking of making him be the most significant change in his history, to cut off his ties to the Doom Patrol, and maybe having him be originally from South Asia, like India or Pakistan... and, I knew it's practically heresy, but... kill the green. Or rather, he's still green when he transforms into an animal. And he can choose 'human' as an animal and make himself green, if he needs an instant superhero disguise. But he does have a normal, non-green form he can retreat to. Maybe give him another weakness with unfortunate social implications (like he has to spend a certain amount of time each day in animal form? Or maybe if he touches an animal, he automatically becomes that animal, including 'humans'?) to keep up with his 'outsider' status.
and... one more, probably. Maybe Arsenal? Could have him early on and still actually being an addict, which he hides from the others.
So pretty much the classic New Teen Titans under a different name, but if that's the case... where's Cyborg?
I never really felt he fit, conceptually, with the others. So I think I'll follow DC's lead - Cyborg will be a member of the Justice League when it forms, and probably aged up a little compared to the others. Until then... hmmm, I like the idea of Grifter and the Cyborg... (note, this part was written before I rearranged the order so solo and duos came first in the list)
41. League of Tomorrow #1 (instead of Legion Lost)
The Justice League from, let's say Fifty Years in the future has come to the past on a desperate mission... and they can't return home, even if they succeed.
The cast includes Booster Gold and the Ted Kord Blue Beetle, as well as Indigo and maybe a few other characters (Shift, son of Metamorpho?).
Part of their mandate is they have to stay in the past and start new lives, which can be heroic ones, but they have to try not to a) interrupt history as they know it, and b) not tell anybody they're actually from the future. So they never actually refer to themselves as the Justice League (because they arrived before the first Justice League was formed). However, because the time they come from is a sort of "dark ages" (in part because of the disasters in the wake of the Authority) they don't know everything.
42. Birds Of Prey #1
Oracle's team of operatives. This is the early days, though, and so the team is more in flux. Power Girl wasn't Oracle's first partner so we might have somebody else created to be the 'disastrous first partner who won't work with Oracle again'
Black Canary might be a member of the cast right away, but I think Huntress needs a little solo time before she should join. Instead we populate it with other characters, maybe Hawkgirl, a revamped Lady Blackhawk (since she can't be the girl out of time any more, at least not easily). Maybe Grace Choi, or Thunder, or both, as early members?
43. Teen Titans #1
I know it's a failing of me, but part of me really wants to work in all the batcharacters (with the possible exception of Jason Todd (and Damian), and that means finding a place for Tim Drake. But... I don't want him working with Batman, at least not right away.
So I'm kind of thinking of Teen Titans as a 'Young Avengers' style take... that is, the Titans are heroes who don't really have much connection with the heroes they're inspired by. Red Robin is Tim Drake, trading on the mythos of Batman and Robin - maybe he actually CLAIMS to have been one of the original Robins, but Batman's never heard of him, and as long as nobody calls him on it, all is well. Likewise, we can have Wonder Girl as a girl who worships the Greek Gods to be edgy, a fad among girls in the wake of Wonder Woman, but Wonder Girl for some reason, was actually granted a boon by one or more of gods and takes it as license to go operating in her name. You could have a younger Flash, maybe who slows down time instead of moving fast in the traditional sense (so if she races across town it feels to her like she just walked or ran the same distance). Inspired by their mentors and perhaps brought together by Tim Drake on the internet (where he claims to be the real deal), they team up, at first being more of a club than a team. Not all the members have to be inspired by specific heroes, some can create their own identities.
One worry I do have is that the Justice League we're building up to as being "The First Superhero Team". Outsiders gets around it by not being a team, just a cast (at least at first), and most of the other contenders aren't known as teams at all, but the Teen Titans does seem like it would be a team. We could get away with it by having them be mostly obscure at least at first, taking down lower level threats while they raise their confidence, or we could have it basically be that history just sort of winds up ignoring that the Teen Titans actually were FIRST, because the Justice League are bigger and it sounds better, with the TT referred to as a "gang" or "club".
I'd like to get Static Shock and Blue Beetle in on this, but there's a big issue: how does the team meet up when they're probably in different cities. If you use just characters who aren't spoken for, it's easy, you just set them in the same city. But having Blue Beetle and Static AND the Teen Titans all in the same city seems a little off (Static, I think, should be in his own city). So, maybe hold off on including them at first, and they get recruited when the team gets a little bigger and maybe some official sponsorship. Or maybe we can have some kind of teleporter on the team early that summons everyone together for team business (Snapper Carr?)
Eventually I'd also like to get Spoiler to join, undercover, so she gets to meet this guy who's pretending to know who Batman is. Maybe he proves he's got some detective chops by realizing that's why she's there... I could see Tim Drake becoming an 'official' Robin eventually, either in addition to Spoiler-Robin, or with her deciding to go back to Spoiler permanently, that creating her own identity works better for her. But that's for later.
So, our cast...
Red Robin
Wonder Girl
Impulse
and maybe a few new characters. Or characters like Arrowette or Speedy or Secret, and other general Young Justice characters.
Superboy's a natural choice, but even though I liked him in the book when I read it, something inside me keeps resisting. Maybe it's because he tends to up the power level of any team he's on and I prefer lower-powered teams in general. I could see him being an associate, temporary member, and even friend, but resisting being a full time member.
You know, to change things up a little, let's put in Grunge from Gen13. I thought about starting with Gen13 as one of the launch titles (and also with making Gen13 sort of a mix of TT and Gen13), but it didn't work. But I do like the idea of having a member on the team, and we can work it into a relaunch for the title... Grunge is on the outside but knows about Gen13, and is hoping the Teen Titans (and specifically, Robin's claimed connection with Batman) might help him rescue the others. When they eventually do rescue them, he can leave with then, start a new book, and make room for Static or the Blue Beetle.
I also thought of introducing Harley Quinn here sort of in a nod to the Joker's Daughter, but no, I think she works best already in the Batman lore like most of his Rogue's Gallery.
44. Legion of Superheroes #1
This is a series that apparently gets reboot a fair bit, and fans are probably sick of it.
WELL TOO BAD, FANS! MUAHAHAHAHAHA.
Err, I mean, sorry, but this is one of the ideas that can take an extensive reboot.
Moreover, it allows us to be a lot more experimental. One thing that's always bugged me about the Legion is that it's a thousand years in the future, but it feels like the 50s, with high technology... and not even all that great technology. At least one reboot had some thought behind it with the world of the future being an oppressive regime that the Legion are rebelling against, but I want to go another way.
The future is a bold place, so let's take a page out of another SF series, the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks, and Singularity fiction in general.
In the 31st century, at least within the United Planets, death is pretty much abolished - people can back themselves up and if they die, restore their last save in cloned bodies ( souls are automatically drawn to bodies that are exact enough copies, right down to memories), and the legion rings could contain regularly updated copies (though there'll always be some who choose not to have backups because they think life lived with a risk of death is more meaningful...), and there's virtually no prejudice as we know it. Although people are still born to one skin color, sex, and sexual preference, all of those can be changed as a matter of choice, and many, possibly most, people are omnisexual in the Captain Jack way, by choice... most people also will experiment with becoming the opposite sex for a while (and some choose to go completely asexual). There's no poverty, with pretty much all the necessities of life being able to be provided by demand, although 'perks' are still competed over (and one of those might be super powers, which are still fairly regulated)
Now, with all of these benefits, it might be that telling stories that are exciting can be difficult. What does the team do, for instance? Save lives? Two general approaches suggest themselves. In the first, the United Planets are great for those living in them, but they're also pretty much isolationist. They don't mix with their neighbors, even when their neighbors are suffering (maybe having taken the lessons from the time the Authority tried to impose their 'better world'). The Legion thinks this is immoral, and so form with the self-imposed mission to get involved and help people, where ever they need it. Maybe this includes other human colonies who've split off from the main UP.
The other approach is to have this utopia being the starting state, but having it shattered and coming under threat, an outside invader, the machines that recreate bodies and minds from backups get destroyed, so there's no more immortality, and the Legion fights to maintain the way of life they've known all their lives.
I'd rather go with the first approach, with an option to move into the second at any time. The Legion are trying to help people, even though their society doesn't want them to (and may be one of the things they actually make efforts to stop, because it violates treaties or somesuch). They find ways to leave their utopias and make a difference in the wider universe, which is not all that great (various alien empires, perhaps the Green Lantern Corps have become corrupt)... and, because Legion is a stand-alone title that doesn't have to share details with the rest of the universe (mostly) they actually CAN succeed and change the world around them drastically.
We use many classic members, although some tweaks to them (some of the alien races might just be different strains of human evolution), probably abandoning the 'Lad/Lass' type names in favor of the better ones, and maybe adapt some characters from Wildstorm/Milestone/Other Imprints, especially some of the ones that feel like copies of regular DC superheroes... set them in the future and it's no longer much of a problem. And I know it's a classic element, but I think we should also get away from having Superboy/Supergirl a member, at least on a regular basis (I'm sure there'll be temporary stories of teamups, and maybe other characters may be temporarily recruited.)
45. All-Star Western #1
Leave as it is, give some diversity to the line in terms of the types of books it gives.
46. Shadowpact #1 (instead of Justice League Dark)
A group of magical characters who fight magic evil. Pretty much the same cast as now, maybe slight changes, but we can't use the "Justice League Dark" name when there's still no Justice League.
47. Demon Knights #1
Set in the Middle Ages, minimal ties to direct continuity and so it's an opportunity to do a different type of story. Not my thing perhaps, but it can work out.
48. House of Mystery #1 (instead of Frankenstein: Agent Of SHADE)
We've already got a whole lot of "agent of a secret group dedicated to protecting the world" book, and while Frankenstein does seem like an interesting concept, in the right hands anyway, I think we should replace it with a supernatural/horror book, maybe focusing on Doctor Thirteen investigating and trying to debunk paranormal experiences.
49. Doom Patrol #1 (instead of Hawk And Dove)
Never liked Hawk and Dove, and giving Rob Liefeld a book is just insane. So, let's make a Doom Patrol book. I'm actually tempted to throw out all of continuity and just take the name for an all new concept, using some of the neglected members of DC history that are getting the short shaft in the reboot.
The Doom Patrol, though a great name and a few great concepts, always seemed like it doesn't work too well as a whole (particularly with the whole idea of the scientist deliberately making them into freaks), but maybe with a fresh start it could get some traction.
I have to admit I have no real clear idea of what to do with this concept. My instinct would be revamp it totally, new concept, new mission, maybe even new members (although some old ones and ones based on rethinkings of old concepts), but I can't think of one to present, so I guess by default that means we use the old one.
50. Stormwatch #1
One of the precursors to the JLA, monitoring the rise of superhumans. Martian Manhunter is on the team, but he's actually in disguise, infilitrating it in a "who watches the watchmen" type way.
51. Suicide Squad #1
Deathstroke leads a team of mercenaries employed by the government to do black ops missions. He also does missions on the side, trying to track down what's happened to his children.
Harley Quinn is not on the team. I don't know who is, aside from Deathstroke, it would require too much continuity knowledge.
52. Blackhawks #1
Originally there were two books that looked like they were straight 'military books set in the DCU', this and Sgt. Rock. I think we only need one, so this one stays, because it sounded more interesting.
And although they're not part of the 52, I'd also think about doing a post-Age-Of-Superheroes book set in
the old DCU, a couple out of continuity kid-friendly books, and, because the concept of it was just so stupid it must be done, Gotham High, reimagining the batverse as kids all at one high school. It was almost a cartoon, so make it a comic.
Diversity Watch:
Like I said, I can't exactly breakdown by race or sexuality because I didn't name every specific instance, but one thing we can relatively easily look at is the number of books with male leads vs female leads. Team books or 'concept' books (All-Star Western) don't count, duos do, but only if the genders are explicitly defined as the same.
Right now, by my count, 10 more books with male leads than female leads. Some are iffy because I do think that genders could be tossed around without much difference, even if I might have written it as one or the other, or if they have 'man' in their name. So, it's not perfect, but when you consider that some of these are duplicates (Batman and Superman both getting more than one book... I actually did think of having two Wonder Woman books... one set mostly on Earth, one set in the ancient Greek dimension... maybe if we cut Doom Patrol, an idea I don't have a firm idea for, we can do that), it's not TOO bad. I'd like to do better, but by my count the DC relaunch has roughly the same amount of solo/duo books but there's more than 20 more male lead books than female ones. 1 explicitly gay male and 1 explicitly gay female hero headlining their own book, and 1 who's bisexual in her previous canon (The Swift Hawkgirl), 1 that I see as crossing gender lines (Firestorm, even before the 'soul-magnet').
So, there we go, 52 books for my reboot. I thought about attempting the Reboot exercise on Marvel, but well, they already have the Ultimate Line, and I expect hardly anybody will read _this_ much less would be interested in What I'd Do With a rebooted Marvel universe (but if you are, let me know and I may change my mind). And of course, as always, any comments/your own ideas on the same general topic are always welcome.
Aside from the first book on the list, I'll be starting with the solo books (and occasionally 'duo' books) which let us talk about the status quo of certain main characters before we deal with how they do in teams.
1. The Brave and the Bold #1 (instead of JLA#1)
This is not one of the debut comics. The first year builds towards the formation of the JLA for the first time. Instead, the debut comic is The Brave and the Bold #1, which helps establish the universe as a whole, and the heroes starting to come together. It then gets replaced with JLA.
2. Action Comics #1
This comic tells the story of the early days of Superman, after his revelation to the world. I know the Daily Planet is part of the classic, but... newspapers are dying almost as fast as comics. Maybe we should update it to be a local news channel. Clark Kent wouldn't necessarily be an on-air reporter, but one of the small behind the scenes researchers. Lois would be a full-on reporter (although perhaps just an occasional one at first chasing her big break with Superman). One of the buildups for it is the event, talked about occasionally in other comics, that caused the metagene explosion.
Sooner or later (with all of the ones set in the past) it would jump ahead to the main book and just become a 'second Superman book', much like it is in pre-reboot DC, but we get maybe a year or two of 'early days' stories first.
3. Superman #1
This one's set in the 'present day', Superman an established hero. Lois probably suspects his true identity but they're not married or dating. A lot of his history may simply be not there, for example. Kandor could be unfound (and when it's brought back, reimagined as a Kryptonian city converted into data, like a simulation, except the people in it are real, just disembodied. The problem then isn't "how do does
Superman not ever find somebody who can reverse the city shrinking process" but "I'd have to clone new bodies for everybody in the simulation and move them into them"). The Phantom Zone might not have been discovered, and it too can be revamped.
4. Wonder Woman #1
Another iconic character, so we can't change much except for the costume, and maybe not even that. I have liked some of the 'greek armor' type designs I've seen, but we know that most of the time she'll be brought back to her star-spangled panties, as silly as they might be.
Conceptually, we'll go with the idea that Themsycra is in another dimension, one inhabited by magic and Greek Gods. They are the guardians of a gateway between the two lands, and all was well until recently when Circe (or someone) created a second gateway to Earth. Maybe there's some artifact on Earth that she wants. In any event, when the Amazons heard about it, they took responsibility and sent Wonder Woman out to find and destroy the other gateway, and she also takes it as her duty to defend the Earth from the monsters Circe has unleashed on it. In the process she winds up having to reveal herself (the concept of a secret identity not dawning on her) and becomes something of a celebrity/ambassador.
Perhaps one twist would be that there is no gateway of Circe's that Wonder Woman can easily close... what she's discovered is how to pierce the dimensions at will, and that's a genie that can't be put back into the bottle. This requires Wonder Woman to stay.
So where do Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark fit in to Wonder Woman? I don't think they do. Well, Cassie can be retrofit to work - a human girl gifted with powers by one of the forces. You could do the same with Donna. I'd rather Donna be divorced from Wonder Woman continuity and form herself as a hero in her own right.
5. Batman #1
Batman without Robin. Pretty much classic Batman stories, more or less solo. Batman had a sidekick, Dick Grayson (no sacred cows, but sometimes the classics are cool... I wouldn't mind changing some details about it though), but he's off on his own (not that he wouldn't occasionally guest star).
However, I might as well use this to talk about one change I'd like to make to the Batman mythos in the reboot... and that is NO MORE DEBATES ABOUT BATMAN KILLING THE JOKER.
How?
By making the Joker immortal.
There've ALWAYS been discussions about the "is Batman responsible for killing him when he knows that if he doesn't, the Joker will escape and kill lots of people", and although I think he isn't, there's a persuasive sub-argument about "isn't it unrealistic that SOMEBODY hasn't killed him? Some cop willing to risk it all, etc, etc".
And it's true. It's probably the most glaring suspension-of-disbelief-required element in the entire Batman mythos, and this includes a guy dressing up as a Bat to fight crime and a girl able to control plants. Most of his other opponents you can mentally think of an average mob criminal, just super-powered... they might kill, but it's just a part of doing business. But the Joker will kill a busload of kids just for kicks, and sooner or later somebody would decide it's better to live in a world without the Joker. Hell, if I was in the Batman verse and I knew what I did about the Joker and how often he escapes, I probably would kill him given the chance, too (and be willing to go to jail for it).
I've thought about how to solve this, and the only ones I can think of is either a) make Joker into a legacy character (individual Jokers might die, but somebody will decide to take up the mask) which has the benefit of allowing us different takes on look, methods, etc, but the drawback of doing away of all the history between them, or b) make the Joker immortal.
Here's how I see it working: The Joker is an angry, virulent meme made flesh. You could even modernize it by having him having been a force on the internet before turning to real life crimes, although I'm a bit iffy on it. In any event, sooner or later someone kills him... and then a new Joker appears. It's like a demon possession. Maybe it's even the person who killed him that becomes the Joker, or somebody close to them, or in the event of a suicide/accident, just somebody random. They probably have to be 'susceptible' somehow, depressed and finding life pointless and absurd, but sooner or later somebody will start to feel that way enough to start to turn into the Joker. But the Joker has all the memories and knowledge and even appearance of the original (save a few identifying features of the host). In the early stages, maybe something like an 'exorcism' (more like reminding them of the things that have meaning in their life) can work to drive him out to seek a different host, but, even though it might take time, there's always somebody who'll "get the joke." Or we could combine that idea with the Internet thing... if the joker dies, some fan can summon him to take over their body based on instructions on the Internet, instructions that inexplicably work (but wind up driving his or her own soul out of their body permanently).
The challenge in containing the Joker then becomes locking him up in such a way that he can't kill himself and seek a new host. The rebirth-after-death is his only power (maybe the original 'sold his soul to the devil' to get this power... or sold other people's souls, the people who summon him... joke's on them!), and he can't just will himself dead (and he wouldn't always kill himself just for fun, sometimes he'll accept being locked up because in his warped logic it makes sense not to strike again until people've had a little respite... don't want to hammer the joke into the ground). So locking him up still has a purpose (because killing him just makes a new Joker active all that much quicker), but there's no way to solve the Joker problem once and for all and no debates about Batman killing him. I don't think we necessarily have to go into all the details on how it works for the audience, just so that it's obvious that killing the Joker doesn't stop him.
6. Batman: The Dark Knight #1
Let's make this our 'Batman set in the past' book. Before Superman. Before Metahumans. Batman fights gangs that have a stranglehold on New York, and forms an uneasy alliance with James Gordon.
7. Aquaman #1
Aquaman's probably too recognizable for a full redesign, but I kind of think he needs one. I'd like to get him away from the King of Atlantis idea, which puts him too close to Namor, and maybe to something else. I'm not saying get rid of the Atlantis part entirely, it's a key part of the mythos, but, I don't know. Maybe it's because I've been watching Game of Thrones recently, but maybe instead of King, he's the Rightful Heir, the Exiled Prince, forced to go out into the world because if he returns home, his head is on the line (but he has reason to keep returning anyway, family, friends, etc).
But... aside from them wanting him dead (for political reasons), it's not THAT bad a place, which is why any friends he makes in the Justice League would be reluctant to just pop in and help him reclaim his rightful throne.
8. Mr Terrific #1
I don't know much about the character, never having been a JSA fan, but sure, why not let him have a series to see if he can catch on.
9. Flash #1
Flash is fairly iconic, so we can't change much, aside from the Speed Force which should be refined and redefined and get rid of stupid (IMHO) elements like Black Racers and such. No opinion on whether it should be Barry Allen/Wally West or some fusion of the two, or of course race/sexuality changes which are doable despite his semi-Iconic status.
10. Green Arrow #1
While less iconic than many DC lead heroes, he was a key part of Smallville, so has some mainstream recognizability, so it probably doesn't do to change him too much. We can sever his automatic attachment to Black Canary and have them never have met yet, at least we start (although comic writing being as it is, they'll probably gravtate back together at some point).
11. Green Lantern Corps #1
This is the flagship Green Lantern book. Earth doesn't know it yet, but it's in deadly danger, located in an area of space that's slowly being taken over by a totalitarian force. The one light that stands between Earth and the Darkness is the Green Lanterns of sector 2814...
But that light has just been dealt a severe blow. The entire squadron has been wiped out, and the last survivor, Abin Sur, dying. He makes it to Earth, a backwater planet considered by the Oans to be too primitive to recruit from, and tells the rings to find a new team to continue the fight.
The rings shoot out across the world and select 7 champions and tells them of their danger. One will leave and attempt to break the barricade and find help. The others have to protect Earth, and the rest of the sector, alone... as long as their rings hold out.
Although it's a group of 6 in the book, and they are a team, it's not always a team book in that a lot of the missions are solo missions, just coordinated. We get a cast composed of both men and women of various different races (although you might say that the ring chooses from countries where there are certain standards with respect to human rights and equality and freedom). Another way we could tweak this is to have, instead of it just recruiting humans, it specifically looks out for low level metas, giving each member their own "trick" that perhaps the ring can help enhance. That might be a little gimmicky, though. If we don't use it, this could be a tendency of one of the other Lantern colors.
12. Green Lantern Alpha #1 (instead of Green Lantern)
This one is a solo book of one of the Green Lanterns, one designated 'Alpha' (normally sort of a team leader, and perhaps, the one charged with recharging the Lantern battery) who has to get to Oa and get help. Once the immediate crisis is past, he or she'll probably be assigned to a team composed of different aliens, rather than the Earth based team.
13. Oracle #1 (instead of Batgirl #1)
I think it's too early for a Batgirl. It's one of the problems with the reboot, even if we start it five years in, we can't just launch EVERY character at once.
So, I think we'll go with the plan I mentioned before. Barbara Gordon was never Batgirl. She was always Oracle. Maybe she has a Batgirl avatar in Cyberspace, but that's about the limit (and if DC absolutely pushed Barbara as Batgirl but let me choose the methods, that's how I'd do it: Batgirl is a book set in the Internet and she doesn't exist out in the world). So this book explores the life of a ultra-elite Cyber-hacker. She still has relationships with the Batcrew, and probably still dated Nightwing.
The big question is whether she should be in the chair to start with. I'm thinking yes. Not from being attacked by the Joker, but maybe keep some of the essence of that and have somebody tried to have James Gordon killed, and they were together when it went down, and Barbara got hit. But just having been in her chair all or most of her life is also a possibility.
14. Batwoman #1
Ideally I'd also think a Batwoman title doesn't have much place in this revamped DCU, at least not yet. Especially since she just started out in the DCU and to start out AGAIN feels a little off. However, she was well-publicized, and actually is an attempt at diversity, and what little I've read of her actually seems quite good, so I think that deserves something, so she'll also get a place. Batwoman exists before Batgirl (and, in fact, is probably why "Batgirl" as a name winds up existing at all - Batwoman was already taken and whoever takes it up doesn't want to step on toes).
Since I haven't mentioned her before, I should mention Cassandra Cain. I love the character to death, so naturally she has a place in my reboot, right? Of course. Except, I don't know where, and I don't think it can be right away, for the same reason... too many Batcharacters, too soon.
If she DOES come into play early, it MIGHT be as Kathy Kane's part of the Batverse, not Bruce. Maybe make a link between Cain/Kane... not that Kane is another daughter of Cain, but that they're related a little more distantly, like cousins (with the child of one of their common ancestors having changed their name)... probably cutting Betty Kane out of existence, but then she never seemed to bring much to the table, to me. Cassandra Cain seeks her out, or (more likely since the research would be beyond her) maybe Kathy is looking up her family connections because of the whole Alice thing, and stumbles upon this assassin and his raised-to-kill-from-birth girl who can't speak but refuses to kill. Kathy's a little unsure what to do with her, but Cassie latches on. She can migrate out to the wider Batworld (no real reason why Kathy can't be in touch with Oracle and letting Oracle be her mentor).
15. Catwoman #1
The traditional semi-bad-girl book, have her actually be a thief, albeit a good-hearted one.
16. Cry of the Huntress #1 (instead of Red Hood and the Outlaws)
Red Hood and the Outlaws doesn't really work in my relaunch, so let's give the Huntress her own book instead. The general 'daughter of mobsters' story works well enough as a concept.
17. Question #1 (instead of Batwing #1)
Trying to cut back on the "too many Batcharacters", so Batwing sadly has to go. I don't really know that the Batman of Africa would really work as a solo book anyway. I mean, does he cover the whole continent?
So let's bring back the Question.
An anonymous crusader for truth and justice, without a face. Is it a man? A woman? Is it even human? Those are not the right questions. The right question is: Why does it take an anonymous vigilante to speak out against the rampant corruption in the city. Why aren't you doing it yourself?
I don't know who the Question is. I don't care, either. And I think it would be cool to have a hero who's identity is a mystery even to the audience. We could include both previous Questions (Vic Sage and Renee Montoya) as cast members in the book, but both claim and for the most part act like they have no idea who it is.
I see the Question operating sort of like an investigative reporter on the Internet, posting videos exposing crime and corruption, and soon into it deciding that he/she can't just stand back and report any more, s/he has to actually intervene.
18. Nightwing #1
He used to be Batman's protege, but after a falling out, he's decided to move to a different city to go to college, and start a new life... but he can't leave crimefighting behind, particularly when Bludhaven's so corrupt.
19. Superboy #1
I know I said we could change things up and make Superboy actually his cousin and, say, Supergirl his clone, but I don't think I personally want to do that. I'm not sure I want to include Superboy at all, but we need books, so let's give him one. He's a clone, of course, and Lex Luthor stole a strand of Superman's hair very early on and used it to clone a human/Kryptonian hybrid, maybe as a means to replace Superman without the world knowing (but if we want to change his race, screw that idea and just have him be a normal hybrid, just not crossbred with Lex... or, with Lex, if we changed Lex's race). Perhaps he escapes or disaster strikes the facility before he's totally "ready" and so is a little unsure of himself and his place in the world.
20. Supergirl #1
I'm going to go way out in left field here.
I'm a fond of the 'kid superhero' trope. Power Pack, Molly in Runaways. And Supergirl tends to always get super-sexualized, so let's play against type and make her a young girl (not that that will stop some people with the sexualization, but, well, let's not go there). I was charmed by the idea of "Supergirl's adventures in the 8th grade" comic, and what scans of it I saw, so let's make Supergirl still Kal-El's (originally) older cousin, still come to Earth...
But she's like 11.
Hyperactive, full of energy, idealistic, and with a little more super-powers than sense. That's who Supergirl will be. Too young even for the Teen Titans (although they might take her in for a time).
Maybe one of the twists are that she's even more powerful than Superman in some areas, or at the very least, FASTER (I mean, ever try to chase down a kid when you're an adult? It's not easy. Or maybe I'm just lazy and out of shape. For the record, because I just realized that that could sound creepy, I am referring to chasing down nieces and such in games of tag at family gatherings). So unless he's willing to watch her 24/7 she can always get away and try her heroism.
21. Adam Strange (instead of Red Lanterns #1)
The adventures of a man who periodically is transported to an alien world, which he must defend. It's a lot like John Carter of Mars, but different, and with a good creative team and the freedom of a reboot to completely set the tone of the alien world it could really be something. In fact, it might work best with the writer being told "It's a guy named Adam Strange who for some reason is transported to an alien world somewhere else in the universe... everything else, make from scratch." I must admit I never read the original, but I was looking through wikis for concepts that might work and this one stood out.
Now, since this replaces the Red Lanterns book, I had the idea that Red Lanterns will still play a major role. Rann is in an area of space right at the interface of the Lantern Wars... except the Green are nowhere to be found. It's mostly the Yellow vs the Red. The Red are the closest to the good guys (and Adam might temporarily get a ring at some point), but very scorched-earth type of good guys.
Or, we could actually have Adam Strange set in another galaxy, unlike the majority of DCU races, and we can explore that aspect of things, what a different Galaxy means to the "rules". The only thing I'm a little leery of is that this would probably be the first place we see the Red Lanterns and some of the other colors, so we wouldn't necessarily want to introduce them in a way that is deliberately divorced from the rest of the Green Lantern mythos. Maybe leave it up to the writer - if they want a clean slate to define how the Lanterns work, they're in a different Galaxy. If they're prefer crossover potential with other titles, they're in ours.
We could also make it not Adam Strange, but something like Strange Adventures, and make the main character a woman... I like it just because 'woman transported to an alien planet' isn't done as much as it is with men (they do get a fairer shake when it's being transported to a magical universe), but for now I can't think of a good name that rolls off the tongue as Adam Strange, so we'll keep it as is.
22. Power Girl #1 (instead of Green Lantern: New Guardians)
Now, we mentioned that in a reboot like this, we can totally revamp Power Girl, even to the point of giving her a totally different power set. Although, I must admit to some trepidation. Although she's probably virtually unknown among non-comic fans, Power Girl probably is one of those characters who is virtually iconic WITHIN DC fandom (at least in terms of appearance and powers). Probably more than virtually any other character that the "man on the street" would have no idea about. So I'm a little leery about losing that.
So, I'm going to, but I'm going to take the coward's way out and do it in a way that allows us to preserve the past and even go back to it should we want to.
So, Power Girl features Karen Starr, who has the flight, invulnerability, and other such powers that Power Girl is traditionally associated with.
But Karen Starr is NOT Power Girl.
Power Girl is a different girl, a girl who has the ability to grant powers to other people. She doesn't choose what powers, she can just choose to grant them or not, and what powers they get is determined by their own genetics, or fate, or whatever, but they're always the same for the same person. Power Girl can grant one other person powers at any given time, but she can't grant them to herself, and she has to remain within a short distance or the powers fade.
Karen Starr is Power Girl's friend, and becomes the person she gives powers to most often in order to make a difference and act like a traditional superheroine (taking some other name, Bombshell maybe?), but it's really the story of the granter, a person who can make other people 'great' but can't be that herself (even though, the twist is, she's the most heroic of all because she has to be in the area of danger, without powers, in order to empower somebody else). Maybe she has self-esteem issues that can be explored as part of it.
Now, if this approach fails, we can easily think of some way to make Karen's powers permanent (possibly the "granter's" death while Karen has the powers), and it then becomes an origin story for Power Girl (she takes the name afterwards to honor her friend, I'd assume) that is completely independent of Superman.
23. Firestorm #1
I make no excuses that I never 'got' Firestorm, conceptually. I mean, the general idea (super-powered guy with an intelligent voice in his head) is kind of cool, but... well, for one thing, he just looks SILLY to me. And considering it's a comic universe with people dressed up like Bats or circus acrobats, that says a lot.
So this is a concept that I think deserves a more or less total rethink and redesign, and, because of low mainstream visibility, we can get away with it.
But, to keep the nugget of the concept, let's have it multiple people fused into one body. But not just two...
let's go out there and have it be a whole classroom, or maybe a school bus on a field trip, or something. Caught in an unfathomable catastrophy, there is only one survivor... maybe the outcast, the one most people picked on. Maybe even for being gay, to get a gay male hero leading his own book (or maybe identifying as transgendered, too young to go through transition but trying to live that way anyway... I actually like that and that would probably be my preference).
But all of the souls on the bus were absorbed into him. Mostly teens like him/her, but also the bus driver and the science teacher who was chaperoning the trip, and they ride along in his head, occasionally taking control and trying to work through their own issues. And what's more, the accident imbued Firestorm with lots of power, and opened a rift to another dimension that's spewing out monsters, monsters Firestorm may be the only one who can fight.
Or we could have two survivors, one becoming the traditional arch nemesis.
(The other Firestorm revamp idea I had was him being inhabited by an alien consciousness, but that's probably too overdone).
24. Hawkgirl #1 (instead of Hawkman)
I'm probably going to catch some hell from Hawkfans (are there Hawkfans) but I never much cared for the Hawkverse, and so I think this is a good opportunity to incorporate the Wildstorm universe. See, as I mentioned before, one of the problems is that a lot of Wildstorm characters are thinly-veiled analogs of normal DC characters. You can see it in the Authority, for instance, where you have Apollo and Midnighter (Superman and Batman), and Swift (Hawkgirl).
So let's actually combine Swift and Hawkgirl. Hawkgirl is Shen Li-Min, a Buddist from Tibet. We don't need to get into her history too much, but we could have her be a Thangarian/human hybrid or something, and use the Justice League animated ideas that Thangarians actually have wings. Anyway, she struggles with her pacifist upbringing and leanings and her desire to fight evil directly, with a mace. Eventually she becomes part of the Authority, a group of superheroes that take over the world trying to do good (and certain books set in the future refer to this as a dark time), but for now she's just a normal hero.
25. Blue Beetle #1
This one also doesn't need much revamping. Although I never got around to reading his book in full, what I saw of it and the character looked like a lot of fun, so Jaimie Reyez and a mystical scarab that gives him powers.
But, you might wonder, what about the original Blue Beetle, Ted Kord?
Well, he and Booster Gold go so well together, I'm thinking of making him not a previous holder of the Blue Beetle, but a FUTURE one. Yes, he and Booster are BOTH from the Future, although perhaps different eras. It'll be written later.
26. Vixen #1 (instead of Animal Man)
Instead of Animal Man, let's do an ongoing Vixen comic. She has similar powers. I don't know much about her beyond her appearances in the JLU cartoon, but I did like her there. If there are problematic origin issues or she's just not considered 'cool' enough we can try to revamp. We might even think about changing the name, Vixen could potentially be too oversexualized, but Animal Girl or Animal Woman doesn't sound very good.
27. Swamp Thing #1
More or less as normal.
28. The Atom #1 (instead of Captain Atom)
I don't like Captain Atom, conceptually, so instead I replace it with The Atom, the hero whose power is to shrink. But we can change the lead in any way we like, maybe give Ryan Choi a second chance or maybe make a completely new person.
To be honest though, I'm looking towards a female Atom. Why? Because DC doesn't have a whole lot of 'science heroes' that are women. You know, the ones who are scientists and get their power from some kind of scientific achievement, rather than just magic/accident/metagenes. A female Atom does kind of run up against comparisons to Wasp, but I think they're different enough to make it work.
29. Grifter and the Cyborg #1 (or maybe Cyborg and the Grifter, both sound pretty good) (instead of Grifter)
I don't know, I just like the name and making the book into a duo-book, at least until they split, has some potential.
30. OMAC #1
The original OMAC was set in the future. Although I'm worried at having too many 'future characters' in the DCU at the start is a risk, my first instinct is to make him from the future. My second instinct is to make him a Stormwatch operative.
...
Which then makes me think about Midnighter.
Yes. That's what I want. Midnighter is the One Man Army Corps. But we disguise it at first, give it a bit of a surprise twist. He's an operative designed to take out metahuman threats. Early on he's given the assignment to take out Apollo, an experiment in a home-grown Superman that went wrong, with predictable results... he ends up falling for his target (who's probably wrongfully accused in the first place).
31. Resurrection Man #1
A different type of Superhero, but a fairly standard superhero book, so I think it stays. Maybe change things up so that each time he/she dies he gets a completely new body in addition to powers. Or when he dies, he jumps immediately to the body of somebody else who's died at the same moment, heals their body and revives with new powers? Lot of angst there with family constantly expecting him/her to be a miracle, so maybe not quite that, but I do like the idea of every time he dies, he has to reappear not just with new powers, and a new body, but in a new place, lets him appear all over the world (and makes it so he can't just get out of a rough situation by dying and getting new powers). I just don't know the exact mechanism for how it would work. If we do go this way, we'll have to cut the nanites part of the origin, probably, and make it pure supernatural, but he's such an obscure character total rethinking of concept is doable.
If we do stick with one-body-and-nanites... I think we should combine him with Milestone's "Xombi" idea, which is very similar, but was, I think, unfortunately titled (I saw it in solicits and assumed it was just another zombie story). Maybe lean a little more heavily towards Xombi in terms of character name and origin, and just tack on the "new super powers each time" from Ressurection Man.
32. Hawksmoor #1 (instead of I, Vampire)
I always liked Hawksmoor from the Authority, probably one of my favorite concepts, so I'd like to give him his own series about the first city he formed a bond with, and maybe a revamped origin.
33. Voodoo #1
I know very little about the character, but I'm willing to stick with it because the idea of a person who can see aliens or demons possessing humans, and is able to free them, seems like it could be a decent idea for a solo ongoing. And I'm running out of my own ideas to replace books I don't like.
34. Static Shock #1
More or less normal Static Shock, except Dakota's in the DC universe, and Static's eventually a member of the Teen Titans, at least I'd hope. The book may be a semi-origin story at first.
35. Plastic Man #1 (instead of Sgt Rock And The Men Of War)
Because we need some kind of light-hearted character.
36. Savage #1 (instead of Deathstroke)
The life of Vandal Savage. Part flashback, part present-day... a sort of semi-villain book, but hopefully making him at least somewhat sympathetic.
37. Knight and Squire #1 (instead of Justice League International)
Set in Britain, this is something of a placeholder mini before we get to the Justice League International (which is formed at the same time as the regular Justice League). Featuring revamped versions of Knight and Squire, but also Nightrunner (the Muslim 'Batman of France') and a few other characters. Yes, I'm committing the sin of treating all of Europe as one big country, but I mean more that whatever mission Knight and Squire are on takes them all over Europe and lets them interact with other heroes.
38. Detective Comics #1
This is the one that leads up to and builds up Batman's supporting cast, the intro storyline probably involving him finding and recruiting a new Robin candidate, and perhaps working with Oracle. The Robin candidate? Given how little she was respected the first time, I kind of like my earlier suggested idea of Stephanie Brown. He finds her as Spoiler, at first thinks she's a villain, then that she's in over her head, but she impresses her. In the book he also encounters Gotham-based Detectives like Huntress, Batwoman, and Question, having varying reactions to them.
Speaking of Spoiler, the other tweak we COULD make is that instead of the Cluemaster, we could actually make the Riddler her father. This does sort of work against the cool origin where her father overcame his psychological need to leave clues, and so she did it for him to help him get caught. The Riddler couldn't overcome it. But they're just so similar, that streamlining them makes sense. Why have two Riddle-themed figures?
Hmmmm... maybe make them two brothers. The Riddler and the Cluemaster, and Spoiler's still the Cluemaster's daughter... that way she has the connection to both. And she actually likes the Riddler more, in that he's the sort of Uncle that actually treated her halfway decently, unlike her father, even though they both committed crimes and she'd work against him, just a little more reluctantly. Anyway, after trying to dissuade her at first, he decides he likes her skills and her spirit and makes her the new Robin.
39. Gotham Central #1 (instead of Batman and Robin)
Since we're just developing the Robin relationship in "Detective Comics", we can't start out with a "Batman and Robin" unless it becomes our Batbook set in the past, with Dick, instead of The Dark Knight, without... which was an option, actually, and worth considering... but I'd rather start out with Gotham Central and tell stories about the Gotham Police, and then, if it doesn't succeed, replace it with a Batman and Robin book once Robin becomes "official".
40. Outsiders #1 (instead of Adventure Comics DC Universe Presents #1)
The original Teen Titans are likely to get short shift by the relaunch, so here's where we give them the spotlight.
Outsiders is a meta-term, it's not used within the book itself, but each member of the cast feels like an Outsider for one reason or another, and they come together in a common cause... not all the time, but on a regular basis. Maybe they all go to the same college (except Starfire, and maybe rescuing her is what binds them together at first, she's an alien hiding on Earth and they all help).
Set in Bludhaven, a city of crime and corruption but a decent place to disappear. Our cast is
Nightwing, who's just trying to make it on his own after his split with Batman
Starfire, an alien refugee who's hiding on Earth
Donna Troy, with a new origin and maybe all-new concept, although I have to confess, I don't have a good
idea for.
Raven, daughter of demons and prophesized to end the world
Beast Boy... I'm thinking of making him be the most significant change in his history, to cut off his ties to the Doom Patrol, and maybe having him be originally from South Asia, like India or Pakistan... and, I knew it's practically heresy, but... kill the green. Or rather, he's still green when he transforms into an animal. And he can choose 'human' as an animal and make himself green, if he needs an instant superhero disguise. But he does have a normal, non-green form he can retreat to. Maybe give him another weakness with unfortunate social implications (like he has to spend a certain amount of time each day in animal form? Or maybe if he touches an animal, he automatically becomes that animal, including 'humans'?) to keep up with his 'outsider' status.
and... one more, probably. Maybe Arsenal? Could have him early on and still actually being an addict, which he hides from the others.
So pretty much the classic New Teen Titans under a different name, but if that's the case... where's Cyborg?
I never really felt he fit, conceptually, with the others. So I think I'll follow DC's lead - Cyborg will be a member of the Justice League when it forms, and probably aged up a little compared to the others. Until then... hmmm, I like the idea of Grifter and the Cyborg... (note, this part was written before I rearranged the order so solo and duos came first in the list)
41. League of Tomorrow #1 (instead of Legion Lost)
The Justice League from, let's say Fifty Years in the future has come to the past on a desperate mission... and they can't return home, even if they succeed.
The cast includes Booster Gold and the Ted Kord Blue Beetle, as well as Indigo and maybe a few other characters (Shift, son of Metamorpho?).
Part of their mandate is they have to stay in the past and start new lives, which can be heroic ones, but they have to try not to a) interrupt history as they know it, and b) not tell anybody they're actually from the future. So they never actually refer to themselves as the Justice League (because they arrived before the first Justice League was formed). However, because the time they come from is a sort of "dark ages" (in part because of the disasters in the wake of the Authority) they don't know everything.
42. Birds Of Prey #1
Oracle's team of operatives. This is the early days, though, and so the team is more in flux. Power Girl wasn't Oracle's first partner so we might have somebody else created to be the 'disastrous first partner who won't work with Oracle again'
Black Canary might be a member of the cast right away, but I think Huntress needs a little solo time before she should join. Instead we populate it with other characters, maybe Hawkgirl, a revamped Lady Blackhawk (since she can't be the girl out of time any more, at least not easily). Maybe Grace Choi, or Thunder, or both, as early members?
43. Teen Titans #1
I know it's a failing of me, but part of me really wants to work in all the batcharacters (with the possible exception of Jason Todd (and Damian), and that means finding a place for Tim Drake. But... I don't want him working with Batman, at least not right away.
So I'm kind of thinking of Teen Titans as a 'Young Avengers' style take... that is, the Titans are heroes who don't really have much connection with the heroes they're inspired by. Red Robin is Tim Drake, trading on the mythos of Batman and Robin - maybe he actually CLAIMS to have been one of the original Robins, but Batman's never heard of him, and as long as nobody calls him on it, all is well. Likewise, we can have Wonder Girl as a girl who worships the Greek Gods to be edgy, a fad among girls in the wake of Wonder Woman, but Wonder Girl for some reason, was actually granted a boon by one or more of gods and takes it as license to go operating in her name. You could have a younger Flash, maybe who slows down time instead of moving fast in the traditional sense (so if she races across town it feels to her like she just walked or ran the same distance). Inspired by their mentors and perhaps brought together by Tim Drake on the internet (where he claims to be the real deal), they team up, at first being more of a club than a team. Not all the members have to be inspired by specific heroes, some can create their own identities.
One worry I do have is that the Justice League we're building up to as being "The First Superhero Team". Outsiders gets around it by not being a team, just a cast (at least at first), and most of the other contenders aren't known as teams at all, but the Teen Titans does seem like it would be a team. We could get away with it by having them be mostly obscure at least at first, taking down lower level threats while they raise their confidence, or we could have it basically be that history just sort of winds up ignoring that the Teen Titans actually were FIRST, because the Justice League are bigger and it sounds better, with the TT referred to as a "gang" or "club".
I'd like to get Static Shock and Blue Beetle in on this, but there's a big issue: how does the team meet up when they're probably in different cities. If you use just characters who aren't spoken for, it's easy, you just set them in the same city. But having Blue Beetle and Static AND the Teen Titans all in the same city seems a little off (Static, I think, should be in his own city). So, maybe hold off on including them at first, and they get recruited when the team gets a little bigger and maybe some official sponsorship. Or maybe we can have some kind of teleporter on the team early that summons everyone together for team business (Snapper Carr?)
Eventually I'd also like to get Spoiler to join, undercover, so she gets to meet this guy who's pretending to know who Batman is. Maybe he proves he's got some detective chops by realizing that's why she's there... I could see Tim Drake becoming an 'official' Robin eventually, either in addition to Spoiler-Robin, or with her deciding to go back to Spoiler permanently, that creating her own identity works better for her. But that's for later.
So, our cast...
Red Robin
Wonder Girl
Impulse
and maybe a few new characters. Or characters like Arrowette or Speedy or Secret, and other general Young Justice characters.
Superboy's a natural choice, but even though I liked him in the book when I read it, something inside me keeps resisting. Maybe it's because he tends to up the power level of any team he's on and I prefer lower-powered teams in general. I could see him being an associate, temporary member, and even friend, but resisting being a full time member.
You know, to change things up a little, let's put in Grunge from Gen13. I thought about starting with Gen13 as one of the launch titles (and also with making Gen13 sort of a mix of TT and Gen13), but it didn't work. But I do like the idea of having a member on the team, and we can work it into a relaunch for the title... Grunge is on the outside but knows about Gen13, and is hoping the Teen Titans (and specifically, Robin's claimed connection with Batman) might help him rescue the others. When they eventually do rescue them, he can leave with then, start a new book, and make room for Static or the Blue Beetle.
I also thought of introducing Harley Quinn here sort of in a nod to the Joker's Daughter, but no, I think she works best already in the Batman lore like most of his Rogue's Gallery.
44. Legion of Superheroes #1
This is a series that apparently gets reboot a fair bit, and fans are probably sick of it.
WELL TOO BAD, FANS! MUAHAHAHAHAHA.
Err, I mean, sorry, but this is one of the ideas that can take an extensive reboot.
Moreover, it allows us to be a lot more experimental. One thing that's always bugged me about the Legion is that it's a thousand years in the future, but it feels like the 50s, with high technology... and not even all that great technology. At least one reboot had some thought behind it with the world of the future being an oppressive regime that the Legion are rebelling against, but I want to go another way.
The future is a bold place, so let's take a page out of another SF series, the Culture novels by Iain M. Banks, and Singularity fiction in general.
In the 31st century, at least within the United Planets, death is pretty much abolished - people can back themselves up and if they die, restore their last save in cloned bodies ( souls are automatically drawn to bodies that are exact enough copies, right down to memories), and the legion rings could contain regularly updated copies (though there'll always be some who choose not to have backups because they think life lived with a risk of death is more meaningful...), and there's virtually no prejudice as we know it. Although people are still born to one skin color, sex, and sexual preference, all of those can be changed as a matter of choice, and many, possibly most, people are omnisexual in the Captain Jack way, by choice... most people also will experiment with becoming the opposite sex for a while (and some choose to go completely asexual). There's no poverty, with pretty much all the necessities of life being able to be provided by demand, although 'perks' are still competed over (and one of those might be super powers, which are still fairly regulated)
Now, with all of these benefits, it might be that telling stories that are exciting can be difficult. What does the team do, for instance? Save lives? Two general approaches suggest themselves. In the first, the United Planets are great for those living in them, but they're also pretty much isolationist. They don't mix with their neighbors, even when their neighbors are suffering (maybe having taken the lessons from the time the Authority tried to impose their 'better world'). The Legion thinks this is immoral, and so form with the self-imposed mission to get involved and help people, where ever they need it. Maybe this includes other human colonies who've split off from the main UP.
The other approach is to have this utopia being the starting state, but having it shattered and coming under threat, an outside invader, the machines that recreate bodies and minds from backups get destroyed, so there's no more immortality, and the Legion fights to maintain the way of life they've known all their lives.
I'd rather go with the first approach, with an option to move into the second at any time. The Legion are trying to help people, even though their society doesn't want them to (and may be one of the things they actually make efforts to stop, because it violates treaties or somesuch). They find ways to leave their utopias and make a difference in the wider universe, which is not all that great (various alien empires, perhaps the Green Lantern Corps have become corrupt)... and, because Legion is a stand-alone title that doesn't have to share details with the rest of the universe (mostly) they actually CAN succeed and change the world around them drastically.
We use many classic members, although some tweaks to them (some of the alien races might just be different strains of human evolution), probably abandoning the 'Lad/Lass' type names in favor of the better ones, and maybe adapt some characters from Wildstorm/Milestone/Other Imprints, especially some of the ones that feel like copies of regular DC superheroes... set them in the future and it's no longer much of a problem. And I know it's a classic element, but I think we should also get away from having Superboy/Supergirl a member, at least on a regular basis (I'm sure there'll be temporary stories of teamups, and maybe other characters may be temporarily recruited.)
45. All-Star Western #1
Leave as it is, give some diversity to the line in terms of the types of books it gives.
46. Shadowpact #1 (instead of Justice League Dark)
A group of magical characters who fight magic evil. Pretty much the same cast as now, maybe slight changes, but we can't use the "Justice League Dark" name when there's still no Justice League.
47. Demon Knights #1
Set in the Middle Ages, minimal ties to direct continuity and so it's an opportunity to do a different type of story. Not my thing perhaps, but it can work out.
48. House of Mystery #1 (instead of Frankenstein: Agent Of SHADE)
We've already got a whole lot of "agent of a secret group dedicated to protecting the world" book, and while Frankenstein does seem like an interesting concept, in the right hands anyway, I think we should replace it with a supernatural/horror book, maybe focusing on Doctor Thirteen investigating and trying to debunk paranormal experiences.
49. Doom Patrol #1 (instead of Hawk And Dove)
Never liked Hawk and Dove, and giving Rob Liefeld a book is just insane. So, let's make a Doom Patrol book. I'm actually tempted to throw out all of continuity and just take the name for an all new concept, using some of the neglected members of DC history that are getting the short shaft in the reboot.
The Doom Patrol, though a great name and a few great concepts, always seemed like it doesn't work too well as a whole (particularly with the whole idea of the scientist deliberately making them into freaks), but maybe with a fresh start it could get some traction.
I have to admit I have no real clear idea of what to do with this concept. My instinct would be revamp it totally, new concept, new mission, maybe even new members (although some old ones and ones based on rethinkings of old concepts), but I can't think of one to present, so I guess by default that means we use the old one.
50. Stormwatch #1
One of the precursors to the JLA, monitoring the rise of superhumans. Martian Manhunter is on the team, but he's actually in disguise, infilitrating it in a "who watches the watchmen" type way.
51. Suicide Squad #1
Deathstroke leads a team of mercenaries employed by the government to do black ops missions. He also does missions on the side, trying to track down what's happened to his children.
Harley Quinn is not on the team. I don't know who is, aside from Deathstroke, it would require too much continuity knowledge.
52. Blackhawks #1
Originally there were two books that looked like they were straight 'military books set in the DCU', this and Sgt. Rock. I think we only need one, so this one stays, because it sounded more interesting.
And although they're not part of the 52, I'd also think about doing a post-Age-Of-Superheroes book set in
the old DCU, a couple out of continuity kid-friendly books, and, because the concept of it was just so stupid it must be done, Gotham High, reimagining the batverse as kids all at one high school. It was almost a cartoon, so make it a comic.
Diversity Watch:
Like I said, I can't exactly breakdown by race or sexuality because I didn't name every specific instance, but one thing we can relatively easily look at is the number of books with male leads vs female leads. Team books or 'concept' books (All-Star Western) don't count, duos do, but only if the genders are explicitly defined as the same.
Right now, by my count, 10 more books with male leads than female leads. Some are iffy because I do think that genders could be tossed around without much difference, even if I might have written it as one or the other, or if they have 'man' in their name. So, it's not perfect, but when you consider that some of these are duplicates (Batman and Superman both getting more than one book... I actually did think of having two Wonder Woman books... one set mostly on Earth, one set in the ancient Greek dimension... maybe if we cut Doom Patrol, an idea I don't have a firm idea for, we can do that), it's not TOO bad. I'd like to do better, but by my count the DC relaunch has roughly the same amount of solo/duo books but there's more than 20 more male lead books than female ones. 1 explicitly gay male and 1 explicitly gay female hero headlining their own book, and 1 who's bisexual in her previous canon (The Swift Hawkgirl), 1 that I see as crossing gender lines (Firestorm, even before the 'soul-magnet').
So, there we go, 52 books for my reboot. I thought about attempting the Reboot exercise on Marvel, but well, they already have the Ultimate Line, and I expect hardly anybody will read _this_ much less would be interested in What I'd Do With a rebooted Marvel universe (but if you are, let me know and I may change my mind). And of course, as always, any comments/your own ideas on the same general topic are always welcome.