Build Your Own DC Universe

[comicstar100]

Always fun to see everyone's answer to this. DC tells you to reboot the universe across the board and launch everything brand new. What would be your DC universe?

[Starchild]

If I were to reboot my DC universe. It would be a true reboot. Ages would be vague and there wouldn't be a Five year thing going going on. I'd keep that vague too. In this universe:

Batman would be the fairly new to the superhero community. Damian would be the second Robin after Dick. Grayson will be doing his thing in Bludhaven. Barbara never became Batgirl, she works for Batman as Oracle. Cassie would be the first Batgirl. The Bat family would be very small. No Tim, no Steph, No Luke, No Harper. But there is a Batwoman with no connection to Batman at all. Alfred would be out in the field a bit more.

Superman would have been active for decades. But he started out as Superboy. He was even a reserve for the JSA and a member of Infinity Inc. But for unknown reasons he vanished. Years later, he reappears again. He somewhat resembles KC Superman. His origin and everything is pretty much the same. No Supergirl yet.

Teen Titans: No sidekicks. You have a team consisted of Static, Pantha, Red Star, Bunker & Terra who occasionally get mixed up in superhero affairs. But other than that, they are more concerned with helping out the youth.


I'll type more later.

[colonyofcells]

I prefer to use the new gods as the model for all the powerful aliens and powerful groups. The new gods can be killed by powerful weapons and need transportation thru space. Superman can be injured by kryptonian weapons and amazonian weapons made of amazonium. Superman can also be injured by weapons made of inertron from Legion mythology. Kryptonite can become a powerful energy source similar to the energon in Transformers. I prefer all the amazons and atlanteans to have powers. Green Lantern energy, Qward energy and shadow demon energy can also injure Superman. I would upgrade the powers of Flash to include turning into living lightning and fly. For the Lanterns, I would get rid of the emotion energy explanation and just go with plain energy. Those from new genesis and apokolips will have secret identities on earth. To make the Legion easier to use in 21st century big events, will just have the Legion as belonging to the 21st century and the Legionnaires will also have secret identities.
I agree with no sidekicks in Titans (except for maybe Nightwing). For a younger team of sidekicks led by Damian Wayne, can use the brand name Young Justice instead of Titans.
For history, can have heroes in the past such as cowboy Jonah Hex and Sgt Rock. World War 2 can have heroes like the immortal Dr Occult, phantom stranger, Madame Xanadu, Demon, Creature Commandos, abin sur, etc. 1950s heroes can include the immortal Captain Comet and martian manhunter.

[Prisoner 6655321]

I don't think there was ever an era when all comic books were universally good, nor do I think there is a universal standard for “good comic books”.

Honestly, despite any amount of gripes I may and do make it is not my desire as a reader to dictate specific plot points. That said I wouldn't mind seeing DC build themselves up in a way like this...

It should be noted that I suggest this, in lue of other “events” and that this would not so much be an event as a cycle… maybe… I dunno.. But here's what I would suggest.


Spotlight weekly book:

Each year brings with it a new weekly which threads together seemingly disparate but interconnected plot threads. This book should highlight the range of DC, Capitan Carrot could be fighting one aspect of a greater threat while the Wildcats and the Guardian are both independently dealing with a different aspect of the same threat. The characters don't even need to meet up or connect the dots (but they could) but we as readers should be able to.

Diverse minis vaguely related to weekly plot:

The DCU, especially in its current incarnation is a potentially very vast, tonally diverse place (even if it isn't so much in practice) with a lot of For the first six months of the year release six issue minis (as so the last one ends in December as well). These minis should have the slightest connection to what's going on in the weekly but not really focus on the same plots.

Hypothetically, in the weekly there's a plot about the Wildcats and their conflict with a dark corporation with a nefarious agenda tied to interdimensional conquest. Anarky also stumbles across some information about this group and decides to wage his own private war, not because of their agenda (unknown to him) but because of their practices.

Small cross over w/ bookend issues:

Which ever mini sales enough to justify becoming its own series, along with any series that may spin out of the weekly and one major ongoing book has a short cross over with two bookend issues dealing with ramifications of the weekly.

Hypothetically, response for the Wildcats in the weekly and the Anarky mini seems the most promising. While the threat of interdimensional conquest was adverted in the weekly, there are still a number of rogue elements in play, hangers on from the evil corporation front or whatever. Green Arrow finds himself in conflict with this group / individual, the Wildcats want to clean up the mess and Anarky. They do what they do and go their own ways, in their own books.

After a few (3-5) years of this, look at what you've done and piece together an event:

Obviously, they should have some idea of this while they're doing it but there's no need to over plan. There could be seemingly disparate threads that weave through out the weeklies that are even less superficially connected than the plots in the individual weeklies. It'd add a sort of gravitas to the event and emphasize the universe aspect of the DCU

I could come up with a hypothetical for this but honestly it'd just be more complicated than saying “pick out elements from your past several years of plots and tie them together”.

*More tonally diverse books. The DCU could have Planetary (maybe?) as Planetary-like as it ever was, Hellblazer as dark and gritty as it ever was and Ambushbug as irreverent as ever. As such, it should.

*More supporting casts.

*Somehow fix the age demographic issue, where there can be heroes of different stages of life. This radically limits the sorts of stories that you can tell.

[scary harpy]

I would use Beware the Batman cartoon as the basis of my DCU.

Alfred would be fully healed and far more active. Other characters would be added when necessary to the story.

[JBatmanFan05]

My "brand new" universe would be "classic" (which of course is a bit of an elusive word for some properties). Pre and post-COIE fusion (no New 52) where room is left for mostly all pre-FP stories to have happened in some form or another, if you want to think they happened.

Trunks, legacies, relationships, fun, no Marvel or Image feel. A DC unafraid of being its old iconic classic self.

[Falcon7]

The REAL Kaman
THE REAL Mr. Miracle
THE REAL New Gods
THE REAL Forever People
THE REAL JSA
THE REAL Freedom Fighters
THE REAL Shazam!
THE REAL Secret Society of Super Villains
THE REAL Aquaman
THE REAL Ragman
THE REAL Rima: The Jungle Girl
THE REAL Legion of Super heroes
THE REAL Earth 2 Heroes
THE REAL Sgt Rock
THE REAL Losers
THE REAL G.I. Combat
THE REAL Blackhawks
THE REAL Prez
THE REAL Plop!
THE REAL Brave and the Bold
THE REAL Worlds Finest
THE REAL Hawk and Dove (Titans Hunt)
THE REAL Hackman and Hawkgirl
THE REAL Doctor Fate

[maxmcco]

THE REAL Shazam!

That would be the wizard

[Falcon7]

NO! He never had his own comic called SHAZAM!
he never wore the red suit!
He never.... I could go on..... REAL DAMNIT!


Until such time, I continue to read and purchase back issues. I only DC I currently buy = Titans Hunt, The REAL Swamp Thing, Poison Ivy, and WW

[colonyofcells]

To justify the many teams, I prefer all the teams to be illegal except for the govt teams. The many teams and villain teams can have different ideologies and war with each other. Aside from JL, other teams will be Secret Society, Rogues, Authority, Gen 13, Outsiders, Titans, Watchmen, New Gods, Legion, Squadron of Justice. Freedom Fighters can be a govt team. I would reduce the number of color lanterns. The Green Lantern Corps just needs 1 main enemy group and this can be the Yellow Lantern Corps of Sinestro. The Green Lantern Corps already has lots of other enemy teams without the need to use more color lanterns : Zamarons, Manhunters, Mobius and shadow demons, Qward and thunderers, Controllers and Darkstars, Black Hand and the black lanterns, Atrocitus and red lanterns, etc.

[Ascended]

I don't think there was ever an era when all comic books were universally good, nor do I think there is a universal standard for “good comic books”.

Honestly, despite any amount of gripes I may and do make it is not my desire as a reader to dictate specific plot points. That said I wouldn't mind seeing DC build themselves up in a way like this....

Really like this post here. Well conceived.

The problem has never been continuity, but execution. For everyone complaining about how DC destroyed their classic universe with the 52 reboot, there were people thirty years ago saying the same thing about post-Crisis, yet post-Crisis did just fine, and five years in, the 52 is still a success despite the lackluster 2015. Clearly there's not much to be said for continuity, but in how the stories are actually told. So rebooting the DCU to match my personal views wont actually accomplish much unless the talent working on my books knows what they're doing.

But if I were to create my own version of the DCU? Well, for one thing I'd have to wonder why I was re-creating the DCU and not doing my own thing, which would certainly be more rewarding on almost every level.

But I think I'd actually start the DCU in 1938, with the debut of Superman, his peers in the JSA, Batman, the Freedom Fighters, Wonder Woman, and many of the other Golden Age characters (not all; I like the idea that Arrow showed up in the 60's for example). And I'd plot out the history, who retired when, who debuted, who died, who went evil, how it all affected the course of history, all that stuff.

The modern world would look quite different from reality; more arc-deco retro-futuristic, something akin to Tomorrow World or Tom Strong in its aesthetic. A book does not need to be grounded in reality to be successful, so why not a whole line? Would it work? I figure, since this is WB's money and not mine, let's find out.

Some Golden Age heroes would still be around; Superman's practically immortal, Diana actually is, Allan and Jay are very long-lived due to their powers....maybe Batman found a Lazarus pit, took out Ra's decades ago, and now controls the League of Shadows (no more Assassins) and uses it to enforce his own goals for the world (basically the same thing he's always done, but on a larger scale). You'd have characters of all ages, from the young up-and-comers to people who were there from day one. Lots of history, lots of legacy, a fantastic world beyond imagining....its what the DCU is supposed to represent, so let's just embrace that completely and see how it goes.

Books would make use of flashbacks, and some titles might be set in the past entirely, with that fact very clearly made in their titles and on their covers. Each issue would have an editor's note listing a website that covers the DCU's seventy-plus history as well as the history for each character relevant to the issue at hand. The website would do most of the heavy-lifting in regards to the long history we'd be dealing with; rather than a particular issue having to delve into Superman's long standing battle against the Ultra-Humanite, it can be mentioned in passing and the website will explain the rest. Make things a little more immersive for the readers, hopefully, without bogging down a comic with needless exposition. And it would also serve as an easy check for editors and writers; a resource they could use to maintain as tight a continuity as is possible in a medium like this.

The idea would likely fail. But like I said, its not my money.

[colonyofcells]

For a New Frontier type of continuity where the 1938 Superman is immortal, that can be used for the multiverse earth 2. For a multiverse, can have earth 2 with immortal golden agers, earth 3 with evil versions, earth with Justice League composed of Titans for a legacy earth, earth where the Justice Society is made up of legacies, etc.

[stephens2177]

First came superman,he started out leaping tall buildings and way more aggressive and impulsive.
He finds others with powers and abilities and helps create the JSA.
As the years go by he gets more and more poweful,as many of his teammates retire,get older but keep going,and some slow down aging.
More years go by and new heroes spring up,a new green Lantern that has nothing to do with the original,a new Flash,martian manhunter gets transported to earth,Dick Grayson becomes robin.
Present day,superman is the most powerful hero on earth bar none,and also the inspirational and actual leader of all generations of heroes.
Lex creates a superman clone with his own dna which mutates,but doesn't turn into a bizzaro.
The clone gets freed from Cadmus by new Robin time drake,Impulse,wondergirl.
In a couple years start bringing on the next generation,like damian,jon kent,wallys kids,Roy's daughter,etc.
Heavy on generations,legacy,and hiarchy of heroes.

[colonyofcells]

For generations, I would put Flash and Wally at about the same age. Wally can be in the Titans. The Young Justice can have Kidflash Bart Allen. I would use the more popular Damian Wayne over Tim Drake for Teen Titans. For a Young Justice, it can be Damian, Bart Allen and Superboy.

[MoneySpider]

In the beginning, there were Vixen and Bronze Tiger, or "Tiger and Vixen."

Then the other superheroes arrived after them.

The end.