How would you go on about this?
Would it be contained to one book, like Astro City, or spread out across several series, like the Invincible universe?
Would it be crazy and Silver Agey, modern and edgy, something in between?
Would you include homages or would you try to be 100% original?
I've been trying to figure that out recently. I've got four 'heroes' that I want to write, and I've toyed with each one having their own separate series. But since the story I want to tell ultimately involves all four interacting, I get the feeling to not spread too thin and combine them into one mega story. It's a hard decision, honestly.
>How would you go on about this?
Jot down some notes, try to doodle some designs. The hardest part is finding an artist and publisher.
>Would it be contained to one book, like Astro City, or spread out across several series, like the Invincible universe?
For the one I'd want to do they'd be several mini-series
>Would it be crazy and Silver Agey, modern and edgy, something in between?
Yes.
>Would you include homages or would you try to be 100% original?
Homages tap into the unconscious pop culture knowledge base and greatly increase emotional impact. When Hyperion says "Maybe my parents were wrong." in Squadron Supreme it's more powerful because he evokes the image of Superman and his parents of the Kents.
I would not make into super heros but super powered people.
I like this thread so I'll post some cape universes to get the discussion going.
Valiant Universe (Valiant Comics)
Invincible Universe (Image Comics)
WildStorm Universe (DC Comics, formerly Image)
Astro City Universe (Vertigo/DC, formerly Image)
Jay Faerber Universe (Image Comics)
Milestone Universe (DC Comics? Formerly Milestone Media)
If you're going 100% on your own, I'd say start with a single book that has ties to other possible books to expand the world. Homages are fine, but don't make all your stuff just your version of the Justice League or whatever. My own has a Justice League pastiche that are important to the world as a whole but they're a supporting/antagonistic role in the books rather than the main focus of anything.
I've been working on a cape universe for 2 years and it's a very difficult process.
Right now I'm in the details, but I feel satisfied with all the hard work.
I've been working on a couple universes for a while and it's a goddamn pain. One universe I made simply as a practice exercise (I can still use the stories) while universe two is where I'm going to spend my time. While it might be easy to come up with a cool character design and a couple neat story ideas, finding a way to mesh them is going to talk up the bulk of your efforts
First things first, establish a timeline for your universe which includes a clear start point and end point as well as when major stories are meant to take place (A before B, B before C, etc). Now comes the hard part, you now need to filling in all the space inbetween with complete ideas. This includes when characters are born, their lives growing up (school/friends) and how they come into contact with your protagonists. If you reference any groups or organizations (company, supergroup) you need to understand their origins, purpose, and how they're structured in case you need to go further.
Honestly, what I would say seperates a good universe from a bad universe is how well it's thought out. There's a good chance that more than 80% of your universe is never going to be seen by the general public (as the only parts they will see are your comic), but how well those ideas come across are going to depend on what you decided to build it on.
Want to state that everything I placed above is simply what I WOULD DO, not what you have to do. I've also been told I spend too much time filling in the details but say get your foundation down and build your scripts when you know your story "works".
Millarverse (Image Comics, formerly Icon)
City of Heroes Universe (Cryptic Studios)
I did this with a group of friends back in elementary school, it was full on 90's extreme and it made no sense, but man was it fun.
New Universe ( now incoprorated into marvel)
Also include a section for Characters as well as themes that you need to keep in the back of your head (as well as laying it out for anyone reading your comic bible). State their appearance, their powers, their likes/dislikes, and motivations. You won't know what to do with a character in a story if you don't fully understand that character. Otherwise you're just throwing the equivalent of action figures into each other and hoping for the best.
If powers do play a role in your universe, where do they come from? When did they appear? Were they always here? Does the human body change to accommodate the powers or do they just "work". Is magic ever going to play a big role? Super science ever going to be brought up? How knowledgeable is the public of what's going on in the world around them? This stuff has got to be included or else your going to have a bunch of moving parts that don't quite mesh as well as they could.
This is a really obscure one. Defiant comics universe. I actually really like "the Good Guys", despite it's huge glaring flaws
Star with one main character. Introduce the fact that other heroes exist in this universe and if fans like one of the side characters then split off and do some stories about them. So on and so forth.
If you like you can even put some other non cape works into this universe to flesh it out.
Lion's Forge Universe
Last but not least, and this is probably the most important part of the whole processes. KEEP IT CONSISTENT! I'm not saying keep your characters completely static and unchanging, but instead make sure they act in a believable fashion and the world responds to them in a consistent manner. Don't have the characters be happy go lucky one minute and then dark and depressing the next unless you have a damn good reason. Don't change your characters to accommodate the stories you want to tell (and risk having them act braindead in some scenes), instead change the story to accommodate your characters. Have events unfold differently based upon how you characters interact with their world. It's better to have super awesome characters you can understand and empathize with and a meandering story than a kickass plot with douchetards that populate it.
If you're feeling overwhelmed, do what this user said and start with one. Once you feel like you got that under your belt, expand from there.
>wrote a whole thing with my own superhero universe
it's pretty crap, might post it online when I'm convinced it's at least 1 level above utter shit. Maybe do the web novel thing for fun
>kind of a Tiger&Bunny thing with commercialism being injected into heroics
>there's a universal reset going on in the background
>some antagonists are heroes that have been rebooted into edgy, violent versions of themselves
>a mix of different ages. Villains are mostly 90's edgelords with some anime thrown in.
>a few homages. I have not-Thor, not-Thing and not-magical girl Venom Snake planned as antagonists
Chapterhouse Universe
I did this when i was Running a game of Mutants and Masterminds. I've run a few games of MnM before and i've built a few different super universe in doing so ( to various degrees of success) the best one lasted for around a year before the group tore itself apart over an argument. It focused on Superheros and international politics. The PCs were a team of superheros working for a disadvantaged team working for the UN ( United Nations Superhuman Actors Bureau) the best adventure delt with them coordinating with an american superhuman team defending the texas coastline from a giant godzila like monster and it's mutant army. They made a lot of strategic decisions and came up with a unique and effective solution.Great times were had by all.
It was a lot of fun coming up with characters who emphasized how superhuman beings change the nature of international politics. Superhuman CEOs influencing elections in third wolrd countries, Superhuman dictators in post communist countries, the aftermath of a traditional supervillian's plan to create duplicates of important individuals eventually leading to a terrorist organization trying to defend the rights of said duplicates. All sorts of crazy things happened. I really enjoyed making and running that game.
Keep going. Sounds like you got a lot of the groundwork already covered. I bet if you revisited now you could really make something of it.
Antagonistic?
I'm working on a story myself and have been creating the universe for it as I go. Right now I'm working on the main characters and their back stories and tying them together.
Creating the actual universe will come later for me, I'm trying to limit the actual power of the heroes and really make the villains a force to overcome, but I'm also coming up with more ideas for things that can happen outside of the initial setting that the story will take place.
I can post some character bios I've created if anyone wants to see. Just a warning, most of the main characters are Japanese, because thats part of the setting I'm going for, but there's also going to be lads that are african, Chinese, and European because the main continent will contain many different cultures.
If you're interested in reading, let me know.
Elaborate, Reflecto, you vile fiend...
I'm interested
One interesting concept I've had are for these creatures called immortals that walked the earth a couple thousand years ago. They were a peaceful race and mainly kept to themselves. The humans wanted a way to control their power and transfer it to themselves. When they couldn't do that, they found that immortals could be killed by being beheaded. There was a massive war that lasted hundreds of years and it led to the mass extinction of the immortals. The three back stories I'm about to post are about 3 immortals that survived.
Kira often ponders where he comes from and how he came to be. So much of his life has been spent fighting in wars and training that he has forgotten who he was or where he came from. Akira was still very young when the war of the immortals had reached his climax. He was an orphan living on the streets, stealing food from bakers to survive. Kira was an expert assassin and also an expert thief and was very wealthy. He was also very smart and did not spend heavy quantities of money at one time so as to tip off anyone that he may have stolen that money from someone very powerful. Kira adopted Akira when he found him begging on the streets for change. This took place roughly 1600 years ago. The war of the immortals was fought for several hundreds of years before they were completely extinct.
1/2.
you could try and follow them one at a time at first, jumpin around between the stories before bringing them together
Shien was also a child when this war was being fought, but he was also incredibly powerful for a child. His psychopathy being what helped him survive. Shien had no fear of death, no fear of blood, in fact, he actually enjoyed killing as a child. The sight of blood thrilled him, he also enjoyed the sight of his own blood and the feel of pain. He would often harm himself for fun.
Even as a child, Shien had excellent persuasive skills and negotiation ability. He used this ability to be an assassin of his own accord and was often hired as a bounty hunter of sorts. His face often struck fear into people's hearts because his emotions were unreadable. When you saw his smile, you knew you were going to die. One other thing Shien did as a hobby was collect blood samples of his victims in small vials that he stored in a cabinet. He still has most of these vials today. Sometimes, when Shien was attacked, he would brutally torture his enemies. Each time more cruel than the last.
After the war was over, Kira and Akira had gone their separate ways. Kira intended to continue honing his abilities and Akira left to become a monk and seek peace and harmony. Akira studied at a Buddhist temple for nearly a hundred years until the tragedy. Word had spread that this temple held several surviving immortals who all seeked peace, and it wasn't long after that the temple was attacked. Nearly everyone in the temple was murdered. 2/3 (sorry)
Akira, in his rage, fought back and mercilessly killed every single one of the attackers with his bare hands using his extensive knowledge of pressure points. He looked on, at the severed heads of all his fellow monks who lined the floors of the temple hall. His heart felt pure rage and he went absolutely berserk. It was then that he discovered his master was still alive, the master was not an immortal and he laid on the floor, close to death, covered in his own blood, several mortal wounds. He only had a few minutes left to live. As he saw Akira, he had no words. He just simply pointed to the door. Akira knew that he could no longer be a monk. None of the other monks fought back, this temple taught peace and harmony and Akira turned into a violent monster.
Akira just simply traveled the world, learning new cultures and trying to enlighten himself, it was then he found Kira, and the two have been traveling ever since, continuing to train and get stronger.
Reminds me of my friend's shitty Naruto fanfiction.
One thing I forgot to mention, immortals are actually immortal. They can't be killed in battle, nor can they die of natural causes, and they age very slowly. The younger one, Akira would still look like a young teenager despite his age. Humans feared what the immortals were capable of.
"Kira"? Aw, come on, user. You can't get away with THAT.
I did that on purpose user.
This.
>"Immortals are actually immortal"
Well
Unless you count the whole decapitation part
Yeah this is not great
Yes, but you have to know that. Most of them didn't even know that. I'm still working on how the humans discovered that.
Does the IDW Hasbro Universe count? Rom, Action Man, the Micronauts and the G.I. Joes are all pretty superhero-y, but there's nobody who fits the criteria of "human with superpowers".
Or good. Or decent. Or even remotely acceptable at all. It's quite shit, s'a matter of fact.
Why does decapitation work, anyway?
And are the immortals supernatural in nature?
I started with one hero, Richard Midnight, villains such as Spider Hands, Aryan Bolt, and Professor Robot, then a team, the American Heroics Guild and its members, and on to other teams, solo heroes, and supporting world structure. It's a lot of fun.
Cringe
BUMP!
I'm actually doing this. I am launching the first 24 pages of my comic next week.
> how would you do it?
Think about it for ages. Try to learn how to draw. Rinse repeat.
>Crazy Silver Agey
Yes
>Homages
I actively try to avoid homages and analogs.
I had an idea for a post-apocalyptic superhero story.
The world would have been exactly the same as Watchmen's at first, with only one "real" superhero (to introduce the idea that people CAN get powers in this universe) and the rest were just a bunch of costumed crimefighters.
Anyway, one day an alien armada shows up and the one superhero Earth has isn't enough to stop them so nukes start being launched. The alien armada is obliterated eventually, but Earth is left as nothing but a wasteland.
We then skip to about a hundred years later, when a new kind of civilization has risen from the ashes, pretty much your average post-apoc society, except after the great invasion is when actual superheroes starting popping up, either because of the radiation, alien experimentation or alien technology. These new heroes, inspired by the heroes of yesterday, are divided into different "city-states" and serve as protectors of each major city-state (how much influence they exert on their domain depends on each group). Some are more Silver Age-like and try to be as morally righteous as possible, others are more like the Authority and both protect and rule their city-state. They're also divided by the source of their powers: the "mutants" (granted powers and sometimes deformities by mutations), the "xenopowered" (powered either by alien experimentation or technology), and the "normals", (heroes with no powers that get around by their wits and technology alone).
They are organized by a sort of Illuminati-like organization, although the mutants and normals don't trust the xenopowered all that much, and the former two don't get along all that well to begin with.
There's also city-states ruled by supervillains, of course.
And there's the wanderers, who travel from minor settlement to minor settlement, trying to either protect them, benefit from them or destroy them (there's both hero and villain wanderers). They're not under the influence of this pseudo Illuminati.
Yeah... I'd go back to the drawing board if I were you, Mike.
Their brains are the link. If something happens to their brain, then they can die. It doesn't happen much.
Other than being immortal, they are mostly human.
Oh, so they're like Wolverine.
Except they don't have his near instant healing factor, no adamantium, and no claws. When they're damaged, it still takes time to heal. If they're stabbed in the heart, their heart will stop and they will be unable to move and will most likely be in a coma, their hearts will regenerate eventually (in like few months or so) and they'll be back to normal. However, some had trained to fight and pain doesn't affect them as much. So if they twist their ankle, or chop their arm off, or some kind of non fatal injury occurs, they can still fight.
Basically, what I'm saying is there was a reason they were killed off. A race full of wolverine's wouldn't go down that easily.
But if their heart stops then their brain stops getting anything it needs to live. It'd be the same as decapitation. And so are they still susceptible to traumatic brain injury? You'd be better off just pulling some magic term out of your ass if you want to do weirdo rules.
>>Homages
>I actively try to avoid homages and analogs.
I realize that a lot of things have already been accomplished in cape comics so homages and analogs are kinda par for the course. You're not going to be able to have a hero flying around in a cape without someone calling him a superman analog (even if that's not the case). My advice, embrace it when it happens accidentally and then make it your own.
>How would you go on about this?
Basically, it's about the story of a ragtag bunch of loser heroes who have to save the day when Earth's biggest heroes fall. I want to get someone else to draw it though, because I suck at drawing myself. I can do designs though.
>Would it be contained to one book, like Astro City, or spread out across several series, like the Invincible universe?
Probably just the one book, starting with these 4 zeroes saving the world and then doing the actual world-building.
>Would it be crazy and Silver Agey, modern and edgy, something in between?
Mostly Silver Agey, I want something that's like the western equivalent of Viewtiful Joe.
>Would you include homages or would you try to be 100% original?
The biggest team of heroes were pretty much the Justice League of Avengers, the rest I'll try to make as original as possible.
Like your concept art. All teh characters look distinct from one another.
Also, is having a team of seven individuals too many or is it just right?
>Really influenced by Justice League. Seemed like that team had all their bases covered in the personality department.
Superman
Batman
Wonder Woman
Martian Manhunter
Flash
Green Lantern
Hawkgirl
>Like your concept art. All teh characters look distinct from one another.
Thanks. Maybe I'd be better at drawing if I actually tried practicing but meh, I'd rather focus on my writing.
>Also, is having a team of seven individuals too many or is it just right?
I'd say go for as many as it feels right, don't force any members in or out just to accomodate to a certain "quota" or whatever. Like you don't need a speedster or a cosmic guy or a powerless hero if you don't want to include one of those. Just go with what you feel is right.
For your trips, I leave you a vague explanation. They're anatomy is not the same as humans. While they appear to look the same as humans, their insides don't work the same. They also don't have genitalia. I still haven't decided how they reproduce, they obviously can't breed with humans.
Your "story" gets cringier and cringier by the post.
I was going for edgy. But I poked my eye out.
Glad to hear it. Seven appears to be my magic number so I'll go with that. With two to three members getting dropped before the series' end. Weird knowing that before I've even written a substantial amount for a character, I already know how they're going to eat it.
That's not weird at all, Thunderbird died in the first arc of Claremont's X-Men so it's pretty clear he was planning to kill SOMEONE off when starting the series.
have any of these people ever even appeared in anything DC related
Lol maybe not the first arc, (closer to issue 50 if I get that far) but I do have planned out which team members die and exactly how it happens (although the when might change). Every scene I put on paper brings me one step further to that inevitable moment.
Just outta curiousity, for those of you planning a written project, how long do you expect it to run (assuming everything works out). Right now I have 100 or or so issues (no more than 120) planned and after that I'm wiping my hand clean of this world and its characters. I would have said everything I needed to say and anything more what be overkill.
Errr, yes? The WS characters were integrated into the DCU after the New 52.
Astro City is its own, creator-owned thing but there is an analogue of them in Morrison's Multiversity.
Trying to do an Astro City style webcomic with some artists I met on Sup Forums. It's an anthology of stories about superhumans all in the same universe. Most will be text stories with sketch illustrations (because getting a comic drawn takes a long time) but there will be actual comics. The first is about a tribe of cavemen discovering superpowers. The story focuses on how human explain and justify superpowers in the absence of any scientific background. One guy for instance thinks spirits are causing things to move around him when he lifts giant boulders with one hand. He doesn't think "he" has the powers. And so he's fearful of his powers.
The second is about a Kamen-Rider esque cyborg hero who goes missing after he defeats his arch enemy. It's about a reporter years later trying to figure out why he went into hiding.
I hope it'll work out.
My superhero universe is already ongoing. Currently focusing on a single story about a teen legacy and her struggles in heroics, social life, and going to a school for kids with powers. But I'm hoping to expand it. I already know the origin of powers and what's happened in the 30+ years since they've been around. Mapped out some social trends, technology, even entertainment and corporate stuff. I've also put in "events" that are referred to but will likely never be seen. But they are equivalent to what would've been crossovers if I had been making the whole universe at the time.
Even galactic politics are somehwat mapped out and will feed into my first planned spinoff which is about a preteen supergenius villain.
I just love this sorta stuff.
sounds cool user
To answer the questions
>Would it be Silver Agey or modern and edgy?
It would depend on the story. The story about two teacher taking a group of little kid superhumans to a museum about superheroes isn't going to have the same tone as the story about a Catwoman expy reaching her 40th birthday and realizing that age is a thing and she can't be acrobatic or sultry anymore and the heroes she flirted with have all gotten married.
I want to be sure to include plenty of positive emotions in my stories though. Like the story about the Kamen Rider expy is about a guy with a hard life. He was an orphan and all his friends at the orphanage were transformed into cyborg warriors. He's the only one to have kept his mind through the process. It's a pretty Image-esque origin right? But he finds friends. He finds things to fight for. And eventually he leaves a legacy he can be proud of. He gets married and finds happiness.
I think positive emotions are something cape comics need more of with Rebirth a step in the right direction. So many times it feels like heroes fight just to survive and nothing more, suffering conflict after conflict without levity or relief.
>homages or something original
It depends. Our Japanese cyborg is Kamen Rider/8-Man/Cyborg 009. He's Shotaro Ishinomori character to his bones. Others like the super powered cavemen are more original without clear analogs.
Thanks. We're working hard to make something special. I doubt it'll be as big as something like Worm but we're all going to do our best.
I like your concepts for stories.
For those of you creating a universe, how much progress have you guys made?
>Prewriting phase
>Establishing a first rough draft.
>Rewriting
>Scripting?
Right now I'm working on two with the first having SIGNIFICANTLY more work done. Two has made some progress but it could be deleted and I'd still be good. Although I plan to build my series around B, I plan on finishing A so I can then use it as a template.
Although I'm not quite sure how to say how much of my work I've actually finished (certain sections take WAAAAYYYYYY longer than others. IF we're going by wordcount, the main universe I've been working on is at 12,000 words and that's without multiple sections of the bible and the story only 2/3 of the way done.
For inspiration on building a coherent universe, I look none other than Greg Weisman in his respective series Gargoyles, Young Justice, and Spectacular Spider-Man. As another user had once said, you know he has some box full of index cards that contain all of the past adventures of the JSA in the series Young Justice.
I used to have this really long-running universe in my head, and had worked out a plot line that started off as small as Ultimate Spider-Man, then grew to contain billions of years of cosmology and a cast that must have numbered over one thousand.
But for some reason I got tired of all this three years ago, and have essentially given up on the universe beyond some vague final adventures an MC does when he's old and alone.
tl;dr My universe died. Feels bad man.
Another question for you guys, if you're still around:
Is there some kind of big, detonative event in your universe that is responsible for all your superheroes existing? Or do they just exist naturally, like in Marvel and DC?
In my case, I guess the event was the war against the aliens, although there was already one radiation-powered superhero around and a bunch of powerless ones.
Yeah. One of the books, AWOL, is about a group going by that name. They're a government-made black ops team that, when they realized how many of their basic human rights were violated in their creation, went on the lamb. They're being primarily pursued by Damocles Squadron, a government-funded super team consisting of the world's premier super heroes: Damocles, a Superman pastiche who was found and raised by the government when he crash landed on earth as a baby. When he was unveiled to the world he himself had taken off and was missing for about a year, it having been the first time he was able to freely experience the world outside of the facility wherein he'd been raised. Six other "heroes" were assembled to reign him in: Alpha and Omega(thrillseeking billionaire playboy who took up crimefighting for the excitement and his teen sidekick), Lady Mars(The Goddess of War), Divine Wind(A Japanese speedster), Triton(Lord of the Seas), and Hephaestus the Maker(NOT!Green Lantern). Afterward they all stayed together as a team.
They aren't bad people, but they're the antagonists of the story because they're opposing the heroes. And Damocles' illegitimate son, conceived while he'd been missing, is part of another team in the setting.
I actually toyed around with a BIG detonative event that was to end the world, leaving just a few super powered heroes and some normal people adrift in a vast universe aboard an experimental deep space exploration vessel. Kinda like Lost in Space with capes. But I keep also wanting to just do everything normally, too.
Well, for me, I started out coming up with heroes, then began building up the setting around them and how that effects the heroes.
For example, a the main hero of the setting is Bulletproof. He is a young man who seeks to atone for spending his youth as an uncaring asshole and abusing his ultimately limited powers to basically be 'king of the schoolyards'.
Living in an alternate 1960's, when he became a vigilante and refusing to work with the US Government's superhero program, he was accused of being a Communist, his identity, once found, was released to the public, and the mafias Bulletproof had been fighting kill his parents and sister which only deepens his distrust of the McCarhyist 60's government.
He is only saved because a UN that's paranoid about the US and Russia's escalating meta-arms conflict (where nukes are considered the 'conventional weapon'), swoop in without US approval to start their own sponsored superhero group to keep Russia and the US in check.
Decapitation in and of itself doesn't damage the brain at all, it just severs the blood (fuel) going to the brain. Getting shot in the head would be far more damaging to the brain then decapitation and that would be the first thing people would try when dealing with something that "couldn't die". The head is literally the best place to hit something if you want to kill it.
>Other than being immortal, they are mostly human.
They are neither "immortal" nor "mostly human" according to your descriptions of them.
I like the natural existence angle.
Yeah. Warring alien civs that have been dead for eons engage in proxy wars that uplift "undeveloped" civs using guided probes. They used to do tbis in a very uniform and controlled fashion. But now they're all buggy and produce uneven results. They made landfall on Earth in 1985. Superheroes have been a pop cultural mainstay for a lomg enough time that it impacts how Earth carries on from there
>How would you go on about this?
Start off with a mini-series to explain the sudden surge of "Super Powered" people. Essentially in my universe, one super wealthy evil genius attempts to gain immortality by opening a rift to a dimension he believes is the actual "Hell" to make a deal with the "Devil" In doing so, he inadvertently causes dimensional rifts to open up all over the world (with a higher concentration of openings near the original rift) that unleashes super natural beings and mutates various normal people in a myriad of ways into super humans.
>Would it be contained to one book, like Astro City, or spread out across several series, like the Invincible universe?
The initial mini-series story would focus on 3-4 specific characters and the different ways they gain powers and how they deal with them. From there those few characters would get their own mini-series where more characters get introduced through them. As each story grows and more characters are met, more series would ultimately split off into their own thing.
>Would it be crazy and Silver Agey, modern and edgy, something in between?
Mostly something in between. Different character series would have differing tones and moods, but ultimately follow the same universal rules set for the world as a whole. I would try to keep most power-levels as down to earth as possible though and keep said powers consistent so when something that pushes the boundaries of those set rules happens, it would carry the weight of being a major, rare event.
>Would you include homages or would you try to be 100% original?
I would do as "original" as possible, but there would still be clear influences from existing comics. Kind of hard to avoid certain archetypes and power subsets. Many of my characters were heavily inspired (aka copied) off existing heroes and villains, but I've attempted to alter and change them over time to minimize their similarities and make them their own characters.
>Build a base with an anthology series to set up characters in the world
>popular characters get their own spin-off books.
>Less popular characters become supporting characters in the Anthology series.
I've been sitting on a concept for about a year now that I think shows a great deal of promise. The only reason I'm not pursuing it right now is because my art skills wouldn't do it justice. That and the whole "I'm in the military" thing I got going on.
Basically, there was this meteor shower, right? But when scientists went to investigate the crash site, they find in the meteorites elements the likes of which we've never seen before. Elements that when combined with known elements and technology produce inconcivable results. This spurs a new age of scientific innovation known as the Second Rennisance. Several years later, in a slightly more advanced Earth, (like a more realistic Futurama) we met our two protagonists. Alan, a lax biologist who is content fiddling with simple projects in his lab, and Iris, a ambitious software inventor who is striving to become a...I don't have a name for this job yet, so call it a "Sci-fi cop".
Basically, in this new world of scientific innovation, there are those that would use new technology to cause harm and the like. Or mad scientists, shady businessmen doing illegal testing, or rogue experiments. And it's up to these Sci-fi cops to use their branch of scientific research to augment their skills and investigate and fight to stop these crimes. For example, if a city was being terrorized by natural raining gasoline, or a herd of super giraffes, the Sci-fi cops step in.
Iris is totally into this, but in a very cold calculating way. Like a female Robo-Cop. And Alan is decidedly less into it, but he gets roped along. Using her inventions and his biological mutant powers, they will fight a host of villains, teaming up with other scientists in different branches of scientific research.
I've had an idea I've been toying with for a while that follows a group of Super-Heroes right after powers start appearing. The main character aspires to be this Superman figure who helps/inspires people and stays apolitical, but the balance of world power is swinging wildly back and forth as more and more supers appear.
I'd like to explore what happens to more underdeveloped parts of the world when superheroes start popping up. It's easy to imagine the US or Europe staying stable, but what happens in the middle of shithole, Africa when a wannabe warlord can suddenly enslave people with his mind? What happens in the Middle East when supergeniuses make power armor mainstream? It sounds more edgy than I would like to play it though.
>>Really influenced by Justice League. Seemed like that team had all their bases covered in the personality department.
JL are pretty epic, especially the Big Seven. What would you say are their personality types user?
It's sort of both for me. Long ago in the time before time the first race that descended from the godhead longed to return to the godhead. But by turning their gaze upward they were surprised to find intelligent life growing out in the cold distance of the cosmos where the godhead's light was cold and pale.
They embraced these beings as living miracles and lifted them up to their level. Life that could think and reason like they could came from...nothing. The godhead created them. Intelligence created them. But humanity had no designer.
What followed in this dream-time is controversial among the first race. Some say humanity tried to destroy the First Race. Some say parts of the First Race feared humanity as a spontaneously generated intelligence, a shadow to the brilliance of the godhead. But the end result was that they stripped humanity of its powers, locking it up in chains they called time and dividing their portion of the universe from the portion of the universe that has humanity (there's a physical universe and a mystical universe)
So basically they hit the reset button on the universe. But the dream-time could not be erased. What has no beginning has no end. And as the collective noosphere of humanity swells with information the soul of man calls to the powers it once knew in the dream time and the walls between worlds weaken.
>So what's the point?
1. Super powers "remember" humanity, and this is why they work to the benefit of whoever has them. This is why when you get fire powers you don't explode.
2. History is basically "real world" history until the 20th century with super powered individuals being incredibly rare and having a negligible impact on history.
3. As humanity starts to get more and more super powers more and more weird dimensions open up to physical reality because the protections of the First Race are weakening.
I had this idea of using the Mandela effect, as retarded as it is, as a springboard for a superhero universe. Basically, superheroes and villains started popping up all over the world during the 80's one random day. They continue to exist until this day, but a bunch of conspiracy nuts are convinced that there's more to their sudden appearance. Some believe that they're government experiments or alien invaders, but the truth is that they're unwilling immigrants from another universe where super-technology, magic, and crazy laws of physics exist. Every 10 years two Earths cross-over and swap random inhabitants (always the other Earth's equivalent of that particular person), and so our Earth ends up not only with people with "faulty" memories, but superpowered people as well.
The plot would be about this bunch of consipiracy nuts trying to find out why exactly this happens, and it's eventually revealed that we may be getting some immigrants from a third Earth as well...
Alright, I'll share my ideas.
>The Life and Times of Kid Darkseid
A very meta story that's been in my head for years about the nature of derivative characters, particularly those written well enough that they become appreciated by fans only to be placed in danger by events and edgy writers. I can substitute expies instead of DC characters but I really would like to be able to pitch this story to DC one day.
>unnamed retcon story 1
Another sort of meta story about three survivors of a continuity reboot. One would be a Supergirl analogue whose Superman analogue cousin has been deaged and is now the only one of his kind. Another would be villain whose only motivation was causing pain to a hero that doesn't exist anymore. The third would probably be the child of two heroes who either aren't in continuity anymore.
>unnamed retcon story 2
5 members of a LOSH expy go the back to the present to witness a historic Human-Alien peace treaty in the aftermath of a failed Alien invasion. Instead of the treaty being announced, the U.N. announces the trial of the Alien commander. The LOSH guys can't return to their time. They seek out a supervillain/time-traveling historian who explains why history changed. And then I don't how it resolves.
I wish I could either draw or knew how to write capeshit prose.
Hey, are there any cape webcomic creators on Sup Forums?
Any of you guys have something to show?
Yes, me. I'm the creator of famed superhero webcomic Lady McFetish, it's totally a serious story about a woman who has to deal with the fetishtastic adventures I put her in. I mean, sure, it's full of fetish pandering, the writing is fucking juvenile garbage and the art is barely passable, but at least I'm a real stand up fellow for having a female protagonist!
I am. I answered here and Not a lot to show to be honest. Maybe in another year when more things ade finished
Links?
I feel like we should have threads supporting Sup Forumsmrades making comics. I don't care if people bitch about shilling.
I've been making something for the past year, which is why my storytime (yes, that Storytime) has been in hold for so long. I don't like shilling my stuff tho, at least not until I have something more concrete to show.
Oops that last post link got cut off. Here it is
Pretty sure that first user is taking the piss. To be fair, Sup Forums-created stuff does tend to be pretty fetishy and embarrassing.
I don't care. I just like the idea of supporting amateur comic makers. If your webcomic is shit still post it, we'll give feedback.