Working Title: Astonishing Adventures

Comic books, like everything else, have their good periods and bad periods. Pick a superhero, any superhero, and you can probably find a lot more bad comics than good ones they have been in. Occasionally, comic companies like to pretend the bad stuff didn't happen, so they have a "revamp" or "retcon" (stands for "retroactive continuity") to help bring everything up to modern standards.

But then its only a matter of time before someone decides that those old concepts were pretty cool and then tries to retcon a retcon. The result is that the medium is completely unapproachable to an audience that doesn't have a self-awarded Master's Degree in comicology, and those that do engage in a desperate attempt to reconcile contradicting information. (Come to think of it, I imagine its a lot like being a biblical scholar.)


Well, thinking of superheroes as a modern mythology, I am often tempted to rewrite these worlds in a manner which reinforces the larger allegorical themes, demonstrates character growth and development (mirroring that era's interpretation of the character), and features a definitive story end. This would also be an opportunity to define that universe's philosophical, historical, extraterestrial, and physical dimensions. Does God exist? Is there one or many? How about parallel universes? How many are there? How do they come into being? What is the state of interplanetary politics? Is Earth too small and undeveloped to be worth noticing, or is our planet located in the middle of an interplanetary war zone? Did Atlantis exist? Did aliens influence ancient civilizations?

So I wrote a broad outline of the Marvel Universe... notable events, first appearances, theories on the multiverse, alien races, fictional history, possible futures, gods, demons... and started forming a cohesive universal picture in the form of an epic series of novels. Then I did the same thing with the DC Universe. Then this horrible thing happened, which tends to happen with writers: I wanted to read it.

Rather than write a four hundred page piece of unpublishable fan fic, I decided to create my own superhero universe. Now, if you've never tried to do this yourself, let me tell you, it's damn hard. First, there are very few superhero names that have not been used. Even the worst ones are taken (I'm looking at you, Stilt-Man). Second, with so many hundreds of superheroes out there, just about every concept has been tried. And if you are trying to do an homage, well a dozen others have already done their Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and X-Men homages.

So for inspiration, I had to look beyond the standard superheroes. First I looked at the pre-superhero pulp fiction heroes like Doc Savage and the Shadow. In time, it occurred to me that the biggest difference between superhero universes and others is that superheroes have greater crossover potential.

So what if Indiana Jones, James Bond, Conan, Luke Skywalker, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Captain Kirk all existed in the same world? It means that there was an ancient alien empire, the bible is (more or less) accurate, magic/vampires/the Force/gods are real, and in two hundred years, Earth will be an atheist, socialist utopia.

So using the template that I should borrow from anything and everything, I'm working on developing an epic story taking place from 1938 to 2000 but referring to the past, the future, other planets, and other universes. It should represent the history of comic books as well as the cultural climate of the period.


The very rough working title is Astonishing Adventures and I will be outlining specific stories and characters in this story in upcoming posts.