I now leverage the power of having my own blog to force you, the unwitting reader, to pay attention to my latest ideas for comic books which I will never actually publish! This reminds me of something I read by a popular author who kept getting people deluging him with book ideas. They would always tell him "I did the hard part in coming up with the idea, all you have to do is write it!" But the ideas are the easy part, as evidenced by the masses of people who keep thrusting them on him. The hard part is actually sitting down and cranking out the product, fleshing out the characters, making the action real, revising and revising and revising until you actually have something people can read.
That's the hard part.
Having said that, I now will do the easy part and just throw my ideas out there, secure in the knowledge that I am too lazy to actually get them done.
Badges: "Green Lantern Corps" meets "Top Ten" by way of "Kingdom Come". Ten Badges exist in the world, each having chosen a regular human to wield its authority. A Badge protects its owner from harm, but grants no offensive powers at all beyond the ability to "Judge" and thus drain super-powered human of his or her abilities. Badges are the non-supers' answer to how you enforce the law against meta-humans. A Badge is unable to lie, unable to cheat, unable to steal, unable to harm another. All they do is serve, protect, and Judge. They are the conscience of homo sapiens, the bridge between the normal and super worlds. The origin of the Badge artifacts is unknown, causing some to mistrust them, but so far their ability to choose honorable men and women of good intent has been unfailing.
Sidekicks: I think this may have been done before, but if so I'm sure someone will point it out in comments. Batman gets all the credit, but what if the real brains of the outfit was Robin? Like the setup of "Without a Clue", which posited that Sherlock Holmes was actually a bumbling idiot covering for the brilliant Watson, I think it might be fun to explore a super-hero/sidekick relationship where all is not as it seems. I could even foresee a sort of "League of Sidekicks" where the hidden masterminds can be themselves and let it all hang out, telling tales of how they had to save their "mentors" time and again. Tonto would be the founding member, of course.
I like both of these. I hope you’ll do something with them. Inspired by characters I created on HM, I’m trying to write two superhero stories that are really two different versions of the same story–I can’t decide which one I like better, and which one is more doable or more likely to become a finished story. Writing them both is the obvious answer, but since they’re so much alike, I feel as if I’m constantly repeating myself. Any advice?
I haven’t learned much over the years, but one thing I have is that to be a good writer, you have to write. To be a good artist, you have to draw. So I would say if you have to ideas you like, write them both — more writing only makes you a better writer.
Thanks, Jeff. I was afraid you’d say something like that 🙂 .
I’m always happy to make more work for someone else! :-p
I love the Badges idea. I can see a story arc where one the badge holders decides that the big super hero of that world is doing wrong and drains them leaving the world weak.