Make it So: The PoP!-Stars Take Over Comics!

If there’s one thing we geeks love to do, it’s wax theoretical on all the things that could’ve or should’ve been in regards to our favorite characters or properties. From an unseen final season to a never-produced line of action figures, we want them. Now. Make it So!

This week: The PoP!-Stars Take Over Comics!

Considering March is PoP! Appreciation Month, and the fourth anniversary of PanelsOnPages.com, we thought we’d do something special for this week’s Make it So. Our PoP! Staff are all big fans of comics, and most, if not all, have grand dreams of working on a funny book professionally some day.  Short of going full-fan-fiction, some of your favorite PoP!-Stars pitch you their dream comic projects.

Superman by Ben Gilbert, with Ivan Reis and Joe Prado

This arc will establish an exciting new direction for an iconic character that many readers agree has gotten stale and complacent in his nearly 75-year history. Borrowing the general plot of the 1987 film Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, but updating it for a post-Cold War era, this arc will begin with the Man of Steel taking it upon himself to track down and destroy every single weapon of mass destruction on Earth, thinking perhaps naively that it will finally establish world peace. As expected, this move angers nearly every powerful nation on the planet, many of whom are fearful about what would happen if Superman ever decided to take over the planet himself. Enter Lex Luthor, who uses the world’s fear and paranoia against the being whom they once trusted as their most powerful protector of evil to impose his own anti-Superman agenda to the United Nations. Superman is supported by most of his fellow Justice League members, though some of them, Batman especially, are greatly disturbed by his unilateral decision to force peace upon the world’s nations. All of course makes Supes’ life as a superhero and Justice Leaguer quite difficult, as well as further complicating his life as Clark Kent, who has to report on all the anti-Superman sentiment in the world.

While this would make an excellent Elseworlds tale or “Earth-2″ style graphic novel, I would love to see how this storyline affected the world’s most recognizable superhero within the “New 52″ DC Universe. DC could handle this in the same vein as their recent Batman storylines, with several tie-ins to other titles that show how this story is affecting other characters close to the Last Son of Krypton. This would also be a great opportunity to tie in the “current” Superman with the rebellious, anti-establishment “Blue Jean Superman” from Grant Morrison’s original Action Comics run. A bold storyline such as this would no doubt increase media attention on Superman and would potentially help DC achieve at least some of the potential for change that it instilled in many readers when they first announced the “New 52″ nearly two years ago.

–Ben Gilbert

Clobberin’ Time by Robert Eddleman, with Matteo Lolli & Sean Parsons 

He’s the Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing, and he’s back in his own series, Clobberin’ Time! As a member of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, Ben Grimm has connections all throughout the super-hero world. In the tradition of the classic Marvel Two-in-One of yore, each issue of Clobberin’ Time sees The Thing fight alongside some of the most outrageous characters Marvel has to offer in wall-to-wall action!

When Thor goes missing, Ben, Sif and the Warriors Three are on the trail, with Frost Giants and Rock Trolls in their sights! Can Ben & Iron Man handle a rematch with the newly reunited Blood Brothers when the villains bring the rest of their brood? War Machine & Rescue sure could even the odds! In space with the new Smasher battling the threat of the Badoon, can the original Guardian of the Galaxy lend a hand? When vampires overrun Yancy St. it’s up to the Thing, Blade & Deadpool to defang those determined Draculas! Because nobody demanded it! The Fin Fang Four return to stop the heinous Mole Man, whether Ben wants their help or not! When Dr. Strange goes missing, it falls to Ben & Wong to rescue the Sorcerer Supreme! The UCWF (Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation) has reformed, and for its first main event Ben tag teams with Rockslide against Hercules & the Armadillo! But will even four heroes be enough to stop the All-New Grapplers? And speaking of wrestling, there are smackdowns galore as the Thing is hired to protect WWE Superstar C.M. Punk from the gregarious Grizzly!

Writer Robert Eddleman and artists Matteo Lolli & Sean Parsons (Deadpool Killustrated) bring you more rollicking adventures of the Idol ‘o Millions! All together now: It’s Clobberin’ Time!

–Robert Eddleman

Jason Kerouac takes over as Marvel’s X-Group Editor

I once offered this job to Craig Kyle and Chris Yost as one of my Six Steps to Better X, but if you want something done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself. What the X-family of books need, more than anything, is a bit of organization. Cyclops’ team doesn’t need their own book. Legion doesn’t need his own book. And I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that whatever horrible contrivance dictates an all girl team isn’t going to carry a title for long. Not to mention the ridiculous existence of two X-Force teams?

Here’s how we shake it up: All New X-Men continues to showcase the Original X-Men and uses Cyke’s team as a counterpoint to the youngsters. Wolverine and the X-Men remains the lighthearted story of the kids of the Jean Grey School and the behind the scenes activities of their teachers. Uncanny X-Men becomes the globe-trotting, high adventure book with a rotating cast, Uncanny X-Force tells the tale of Psylocke’s kill squad, and X-Factor rejoins the fold to at least SOMEWHAT acknowledge its existence in a shared universe. Gone are Astonishing, X-Treme, Legacy, and adjectiveless, as well as our second X-Force title. But I LOVE Cable. Why would I can his book?

The biggest mistake the X-office is making is in how it’s handling Kid Apocalypse. The idea that Cable hasn’t even reacted to a young Apocalypse attending the Jean Grey School is baffling. We just saw Cable’s penchant for a paternal role with Hope. We know Evan’s nervous about his future. So we launch Cable and Apocalypse, the story of Cable not trying to defeat his archnemesis, but rather mold him into a good and decent human being. Perhaps even a hero. Keep Forge, Domino, and Hope as his core support staff and give Cable the one thing he’s been missing for too long – a purpose.

Meanwhile, if Frank Cho is going to be drawing a book called Savage Wolverine that costars Shanna the She-Devil, can we make it a MAX book? If I’m group editor, we sure as sh– can!

Oh, and three words: No. More. Gambit. And don’t get your panties in a twist; the character can stick around, but his solo title has GOT to go.

All-New X-Men: Brian Michael Bendis/Stuart Immonen
Wolverine and the X-Men: Jason Aaron/Ron Garney
Uncanny X-Men: Christos Gage/Stefano Caselli
Uncanny X-Force: Greg Rucka/Harvey Tolibao
X-Factor: Peter David/Phil Noto
Cable and Apocalypse: Christopher Yost/Ian Churchill
Savage Wolverine MAX: Jason Aaron/Frank Cho

–Jason Kerouac

New Warriors, by Thacher E. Cleveland with Nick Bradshaw

After returning from space while waiting for Rich Rider, the original Nova, to appear, Namorita returns to earth to try to get on with her life. What she finds is a general mess left by the death of the last New Warriors team, herself included. Determined to not make the same mistakes she had in the past, she gathers some of her old friends from the original New Warriors team, Justice, Firestar and Speedball, even though they’d mostly given up the superhero lifestyle. Nita reminds them that they used to stand for something, to fight for justice and right wrongs, with or without approval from the Avengers or the law.

The world has gotten worse since they stopped being the Warriors, not better. They need to change that. The group is quickly intercepted by Amadeus Cho who has been working on a similar plan with a batch of the newer young heroes that have appeared in the Marvel U, such as the new Power Man; Lyra, the She-Hulk from the future, and Anya Corazon (once Arana and now Spider-Girl). The group bands together to make sure this new generation of young heroes don’t fall into the kind of traps and pitfalls that they did when they were their age, as well as fight for those who have no one to stand up for them and punish those that exploit and prey on the weak. Their first target: The Taylor Foundation.

 –Thacher E. Cleveland

Transformers: Tales of the Lightning Strike Coalition by Lee Rodriguez with Guido Guidi 

The Lightning Strike Coalition was a first introduced back in the Dreamwave era of Transformers comics. There wouldn’t be much mention of the team after that until last year’s Fall of Cybertron. The LSC is a team of specialists not entirely unlike The Wreckers. The key difference is that this is the team Grimlock would lead before the Dynobots and before the Dinobots. IDW’s Last Stand of the Wreckers is a classic thanks to its use of little-known characters and its tight narrative. It’s an in-and-out story that’s still a part of the core continuity.

An ongoing series featuring the Lightning Strike Coalition in the early years of the Great War, or even before the War could be an excellent addition to IDW’s stellar Transformers titles. Grimlock is the obvious star along with the Dynobots (in vehicular alt modes, of course), but the potential to bolster the roster with not only established LSC members like Ironhide and Kup, but past Wreckers and a bevy of heretofore little-known characters is a little ridiculous. There are dozens of characters unused in the mythos thus far. So not only are there plenty of would-be fan favorites to pluck from obscurity, but there’s plenty of canon fodder for the epic battles, too.

–Lee Rodriguez

TMNT Adventures by Jason Knize with Steve Lavigne and Ryan Brown

The original Turtles comics were super-gritty, despite the goofy subject matter, and IDW’s current Turtles series is helping bring the license back to its more serious roots.  For my reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, I’d bring in the team of Steve Lavigne and Ryan Brown, the artists behind some of the most iconic merchandising and imagery in Turtle history, Brown himself one of the minds behind the original Adventures series for Archie.

I’d like my re-imagined TMNT Adventures to be akin to pulling out the old Rubbermaid bins filled with Playmates action figures and just going HAM on the old Turtle cartoon and comic universes. All bets are off.  Every weirdo character that ever received an action figure?  Fair game.   All of those bizarre otherworldly heroes and villains introduced in the Archie comics?  Back in action.  Everything you love about the more “grounded” universes of the IDW Turtles and the NickToons show?  Out the window.  I’d go so gonzo on this book, you’d think it was skeeted onto the page by Grant Morrison on a peyote binge.  Set the universe in the late 80′s and early 90′s to really up the nostalgia-level, and we’d get so meta on this thing, in the spirit of the Turtles’ merchandising boom of the late 80′s, every product ad in the book will be pitched by the Turtles themselves.

My Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures would be a self-referential tongue-in-cheek mess that wouldn’t last past 2 issues, but I’d be in Turtle heaven for as long as they’d allow me.

–Jason Knize

The Crow: Origins by Jose Guzman with James O’Barr

The Crow: Origins would be a Guzman/O’Barr collaboration telling the origin of the Crow’s spirit and it’s first reincarnation. Taking place in the time when the west was wild and the Apache Indians were fighting for their land against the “destined to expand” United States, The Crow: Origins is set in 1886 during Geronimo and his band of Apaches’ surrender to the United States Army. Taken in as prisoners of war, Geronimo and his men were attacked by rogue gang of soldiers while their captain was away. During the attack Geronimo was forced by the soldiers to witness the torture of his men and the murder of his chief warrior.

That night the spirit of the Crow answers Geronimo’s call to the spirits to right the injustices that his people had to suffer by resurrecting Geronimo’s warrior. Still unaware of how he has returned, the Apache warrior follows the Crow to his reservation, finding it burnt to ground. The Crow shows the warrior visions of his tribe and pregnant wife being slain by the same rogue gang of soldiers who killed him, and Geronimo vows to return the favor. Wearing the face paint of the Crow spirit, the Apache Warrior follows the guidance of the Crow down a path of revenge.

–Jose Guzman

That does it for “Make it So: The PoP!-Stars Take Over Comics”! Which of these books would you put in your pull list?  What would be your dream comic project?  Let us know in the comments!

–The PoP!-Stars

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