Updating an Old Superhero

Very early this year (or did it start last year?), I emailed Mort Todd, the head of Charlton Neo comics, a pitch for a couple of projects I was eager to see drawn and published. CN's submission editor asked for a piece of the superhero script and the whole thing of one of my short horror scripts. The horror script was selected to be included in one of their anthology books (nothing was said of the superhero script, which I think is awfully good, even if it needs some polishing). Then there was nothing else from this editor for a couple of months, at least, so I finally contacted her with pics of the sketches I'd done of my horror host character (who was, of course, inspired by the horror hosts that began with the EC comics in the 50s and pretty much died with the original Charlton horror books in the early 80s). She responded briefly, and then silence again. I had to contact Todd to get another email from her about the progress of the script. After more months of occasional back-and-forths, I finally asked her to forget my script, especially since I really wanted to include that story in my own horror anthology book, Tome of Terror, for which I have a stack of 7-to-10 page scripts. When I communicated with Todd again around this time, he suggested I get back to him at the end of the year, when he'd again be considering submissions for CN's anthologies.

The months went along, and Todd--who's a Facebook friend of mine--continually posted announcements about CN's upcoming books, which were to feature a number of older comics veterans reviving mothballed properties and creating new--but vintage-style--characters. I felt really jealous and even suspicious about why I'd not made the cut, so I messaged Todd and asked him if I'd been left out because I'm a newbie, to which he responded that it's not that way at all. I took him at his word and planned to hit him with some fresh proposals at year's end.

As the time approached, I reflected on the fact that the emphasis in The Charlton Arrow (the new anthology) was not on new, experimental stuff but on tried-and-true old concepts. I concluded that following that example might be the best way to grease my path into the club. Cut to November (yesterday, in fact): I messaged Todd and asked him which properties Charlton still held the rights to (since the company had sold off some of its most important characters in the mid-80s) or which characters they were allowed to use, such as public domain characters. He said anything that's not held by DC Comics is pretty much fair game, so I looked up a silly old 40s character I knew of named Airmale, who had a young sidekick named Stampy. Deciding they were just a little too silly, I moved on to a more famous classic hero called Amazing Man, who was much more appealing and had more potential for revival. Thumbtacking that idea, I happened on a more obscure guy named 13 and became more intrigued by the possibilities the more I thought about it.

See, my concept for a revival, or reboot, of an old superhero was inspired by the terrific work done by two masters of the art, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Despite claiming to prefer fresh, original ideas, and being quite facile with those, Moore had successfully resurrected and updated a number of defunct characters over the years. These included the old Nedor heroes, such as Doc Strange and Black Terror, but one of his most ingenious (and famous) projects was The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which featured a team made up of classic Victorian literary characters including the Invisible Man and Alan Quatermain. One of my favorites, though, was his work on a more recent series, Rob Liefeld's Supreme, who was an obvious Superman rip-off. Moore was invited in as a guest writer for a lengthy run, and he chose to embrace the "homage" aspect by giving Supreme all the trappings of the Silver Age Superman. Suddenly, this unoriginal hero had a dog, a female relative, a childhood nemesis, and a multiverse of alternate versions of himself. It was glorious.

Morrison, more of a punk stylist than the venerable Moore, did something different with his hero revivals. He took the obscure, one-off 60s DC character Animal Man and turned him into a vegetarian eco-warrior. Then, he blew the lid off the until-now-standard superhero title by having Animal Man slowly come to realize that he is, in fact, a comic-book character.

During this same period, Morrison replaced Paul Kupperberg (another FB friend) on the 18-issue-old update (actually a "sequel") of the 60s series Doom Patrol. The original comic, by the great Arnold Drake, had carried the tagline "The World's Strangest Heroes," and the team members lived up to that ably: Rita "Elasti-Girl" Farr was a former movie star who could stretch and grow to great heights, Larry "Negative Man" Trainor had landed after a test flight and found that he could expel a "negative" being from his body, and Cliff "Robotman" Steele had been so messed up in a race-car crash that his brain was put into a mechanical body. These misfits bickered with each other as much as they fought bizarre villains like the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man.

Well, Morrison took the "strangest heroes" bit seriously and immediately began messing with the current crop of characters. Larry Trainor was merged with a female doctor to form the hermaphroditic Rebis, who teamed up with a monkey-faced girl, the unkillable Robotman, and a hero who didn't want to be one, to fight such enemies as the truly inspired Brotherhood of Dada. One of their best adventures took place inside a French painting.

All of this explanation was to show my thinking about how to revive the character 13 (and his sidekick Jinx) for The Charlton Arrow. My plan is to set the main narrative in present day, where 13 is a 25-year-old neophyte vigilante in a T-shirt and cargo pants who fights everyday crooks. This part is a nod to the young Superman of DC's New 52 reboot of 2011. 13 soon meets up with the rich orphan Daryl, who becomes Jinx after paying for the creation of a new, state-of-the-art uniform for 13 (need I even say what this is a nod to?). At some point, the older hero is presented with a 6-year-old son, the result of a drunken liaison in college with an international terrorist. Eventually, 13 will discover the "Mega-timeline," which allows him to glimpse his past lives. You see, every decade, there's another reboot of the continuity that alters 13 and his world somewhat. In the 40s he was a cape-and-shorts-wearing vigilante, in the 50s a smiley public servant, in the 60s an adventurer through time and space, in the 70s a shadowy detective, in the 80s a grim and husky brute, and in the 90s a weapons-wielding cyber-knight with a spike and chain fetish.

While my ambitions lie in publishing my original materials (and characters inspired by existing ones), I'm actually intrigued and energized by the prospect of dusting off a forgotten mystery-man and making him my own. There are worse ways to spend my time than writing escapist fantasy with a new twist.

#comics