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  1. #1
    Boisterously Confused
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    Default "Swamp Thing" another DC character...

    Alan Moore may be ... eccentric, but he did some jaw-dropping comics. One of his Reputation Builders was his work on Swamp Thing, where he redefined a moldy Hulk/Heap mashup as an elemental creature, completely changing the tone and theme of the book, and the kinds of stories it could tell. The real genius of the hard turn he pulled was in doing so in manner that didn't invalidate anything we'd seen before; it's just that Alec Holland's memories were overlain on the muck monster, rather than Holland having become the muck monster.

    So let's see if we can do it too:
    • Pick a DC Character, and make a major change by tweaking something in their past
    • Avoid anything that invalidates the major features of what's gone before
    • The more different or unexpected the outcome, the better

  2. #2
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    Pantha

    Original version: Feline-like member of the 1991 Teen Titans team. During her time with the Titans, she had no knowledge as to her origins, whether she was a woman or a female panther before the Wildebeest Society mutated her. But tragically, her ultimately fruitless search led her to many dead-ends. The significance of her designation as "X-24" (ha!) was also never revealed. Name later revealed to be Rosabelle Mendez.

    My version: Pantha is a Mayan Jaguar demigoddess of protection with her divine status descended from the Mayan Jaguar Goddess Ix Chel. She was taken from her family for her protection from some of Ix Chel's enemies.


    Gloss

    Original version: A Chinese woman who was introduced as a member of the 1988 New Guardians (not to be confused with the team that appeared in the New 52). She was granted the power of immortality and could draw on power from the "Dragon Lines" (Ley Lines) and was part of a "eugenics project" to create a race of enlightened metahumans for the future so not the most dignified of starts as you can imagine.

    My version: A young woman who was granted god hood after saving the life of Nu Wa.

  3. #3
    Boisterously Confused
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    Dr. Fate is not a vessel of Nabu The Wise; he has always been Kent Nelson. The mind guiding the others who have taken up Dr. Fate's role has not been Nabu's but Nelson's.

    Nabu died in 1936. He was not a Lord of Order himself, but a skilled, ancient wizard whose persona was essentially hollowed out by The Lords of Order, who then used his body as an avatar. His attempt at rejuvenating himself in hibernation was a failure, which is why he took Kent Nelson for an apprentice. On his death, he implanted all of his memories in Nelson's mind.

    The helmet of Nabu does two things, increases Nelson's ability to tap Nabu's memories, and it enhances Nelson's ability to perceive mystic forces. While the helm's memories do influence Nelson's attitudes a bit, it does not make a passenger in his own body of him. Between Nabu's knowledge, and his expanded mystical perceptions, wearing the helmet allows Dr. Fate to more capably execute complex spells, and to wield mystical forces with far greater efficiency that he can normally do.

    Nelson found it useful for others to assume that Dr. Fate is something beyond human. It intimidates his enemies, and inspires more confidence in his judgement among his allies. Although Nelson is loathe to admit it, the charade also allows him to blame some of the harder decisions that he's made on a different persona.

    Every time Dr. Fate appears to have died, it's actually been Nelson entering a deep meditative state for two purposes. First, the rest allows Nelson's body to heal from the strain of wielding such powerful magic. Second, the meditation serves to order Nelson's thoughts, ensuring that his memories remain distinct from Nabu's, and minimizing the risk that the entangled memories might unhinge him, or allow The Lords of Order do to him what they did to Nabu. Some of that is mere self-preservation, but some is Nelson's conviction that The Lords of Order require the constraint of a human soul. He doesn't want to become the kind of creature that murders a child's father just to secure a successor as Nabu did, even if only as an avatar.

  4. #4
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    The thing I admired about Alan Moore's "Anatomy Lesson" is that it didn't throw out any of the Swamp Thing continuity. Unlike the retcons and reboots that have happened at DC since then, Moore came up with a wonderful idea that allowed everything that came before to stay and yet include even more ideas into the Swamp Thing world.

    I once tried a thought experiment to see how I could get Superman to somewhat the same place he was in with the Byrne Superman--as the lone survivor of Krypton--but without COIE destroying his continuity.

    My explanation (in brief) is that Superman's even more powerful than he realizes and his super-mind can make his dreams come true. We see this when he's under the effect of red Kryptonite. My idea about Kryptonite is that the radiation actually increases his power levels--but green K is so powerful that his body attacks itself and destroys itself from the massive overloard of energy. With red K, his subconscious desires and fantasies are made real for a limited period of time. His body has so much energy that it can transmute the elements around him into whatever form he wants.

    All the Kryptonians that Superman encounters are simply an answer to his desire for companionship. They come into being because he wants them to be.

    The "Crisis" for Superman is when he realizes this truth and then all the other Kryptonians start to go away, until he's left alone again. Of course, if Superman has this latent power, it's always possible for more fake Kryptonians to arrive on Earth all over again. And Superman can either decide to keep them around or let them go.

  5. #5
    Astonishing Member Pohzee's Avatar
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    This is a fascinating thread idea. Unfortunately, I don't have anything to contribute.
    It's the Dynamic Duo! Batman and Robin!... and Red Robin and Red Hood and Nightwing and Batwoman and Batgirl and Orphan and Spoiler and Bluebird and Lark and Gotham Girl and Talon and Batwing and Huntress and Azreal and Flamebird and Batcow?

    Since when could just anybody do what we trained to do? It makes it all dumb instead of special. Like it doesn't matter anymore.
    -Dick Grayson (Batman Inc.)


  6. #6
    Boisterously Confused
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Kelly View Post
    The thing I admired about Alan Moore's "Anatomy Lesson" is that it didn't throw out any of the Swamp Thing continuity. Unlike the retcons and reboots that have happened at DC since then, Moore came up with a wonderful idea that allowed everything that came before to stay and yet include even more ideas into the Swamp Thing world.

    I once tried a thought experiment to see how I could get Superman to somewhat the same place he was in with the Byrne Superman--as the lone survivor of Krypton--but without COIE destroying his continuity.

    My explanation (in brief) is that Superman's even more powerful than he realizes and his super-mind can make his dreams come true. We see this when he's under the effect of red Kryptonite. My idea about Kryptonite is that the radiation actually increases his power levels--but green K is so powerful that his body attacks itself and destroys itself from the massive overloard of energy. With red K, his subconscious desires and fantasies are made real for a limited period of time. His body has so much energy that it can transmute the elements around him into whatever form he wants.

    All the Kryptonians that Superman encounters are simply an answer to his desire for companionship. They come into being because he wants them to be.

    The "Crisis" for Superman is when he realizes this truth and then all the other Kryptonians start to go away, until he's left alone again. Of course, if Superman has this latent power, it's always possible for more fake Kryptonians to arrive on Earth all over again. And Superman can either decide to keep them around or let them go.
    That's cool. In your notion, was Supergirl also one of these projections?

    I once cooked up a Last Son Solution, but it doesn't fit the "Anatomy Lesson" standard of avoiding retcon. The idea is that Krypton was run by a central computer whose core program was essentially a compilation of the memories of all the Kryptonians who'd died, and that The Phantom Zone is where they isolated all the Kryptonian criminals' memories. It was a section of the database that Brainiac had stolen, and "Kandor" was actually a sim, playing the personas of the stolen Kryptonians in endless loop. Phantom Zone criminals entering the real world were basically the criminal personas managing to upload to a small supply of the same material from which Bizarro was made, in a manner similar to that in the film Virtuosity.

  7. #7
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    In my idea, Supergirl was not really real (she just thought she was)--and her "death" is what triggers Superman's realization that none of this is really real.

    But I also had a similar idea about Kandor, that it's all a simulation. Essentially Brainiac just havested the information about Kandor but in fact destroyed the city in the process. Also with the Phantom Zone, they are just wraiths and they have to reconstruct host bodies for them to exist in the real world.

    If you look at the Weisinger/Schwartz era of Superman, there'a nice symmetry to it where Superman get's the bottle city of Kandor at the beginning and Supergirl comes to Earth. Then near the end Superman and Supergirl enlarge the Kandorians and give them their own world (in another dimension) and Supergirl dies. I imagine that Alan Moore could have done something with that--like maybe the bottle makes everything else possible, releasing a genie from a bottle. And with Supergirl, the prototype for her is when Jimmy Olsen wishes for a Supergirl on a magic totem, but she dies sacrificing herself to save Superman. Kara Zor-El's life and death is already suggested in that story.

  8. #8
    Extraordinary Member CRaymond's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Kelly View Post
    his super-mind can make his dreams come true.
    That sounds really familiar ;-)

    I'd suggested a future reboot retcon that reveals that "Krytpon" is a four-dimensional planet in fifth-dimensional space. Superman is an exile from the realm of Myxptlk. It gets bigger, as the gods indigenous to Krypton are New Gods, and the explosion that killed Krypton is the one that broke Urgrund.

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