Ten Comics I’d Love To See
Filed under: Comics
1. All-Star Detective Comics
Emphasis on the word “detective.” Each would be a done-in-one mystery story starring Batman, Elongated Man, Jason Bard, or any one of DC’s other great and not-so-great detective characters. Writers would “play fair” with the clues and solution (reasonably), and readers could see if they’re a better detective than Batman. I’ll admit it wouldn’t be an easy book to write, but even if it comes out only every six months, that’s still twice as often as All-Star Batman and Robin.
2. Poetry
I’d love to see some comic book adaptations of classic poetry. Paul Pope does “To The Virgins To Make Much of Time.” Lea Hernandez tackles Shakespeare’s sonnets. Steve Bissette draws “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Bryan Lee O’Malley takes on Emily Dickinson. And how about we get four comic artists of vastly different styles and they each have a go at “The Waste Land.”
3. John Carter of Mars
I know it’s been done before, but I’d like to see it done again, only better. Not necessarily a retelling of the books, but stories on Mars in their style, like Dark Horse’s Conan.
4. The Skrull-Durlan War
We’ve had the Kree-Skrull War and the Rann-Thanagar War. It’s time to take this concept to its logical conclusion: The Skrull-Durlan War. When everybody’s a shapeshifter, how will you know who’s fighting whom?
5. Dr. Mid-Nite
A JSA: Classified story arc that highlights the Doctor Mid-Nite legacy. I’d especially like to see it redeem the forgotten Dr. Midnight, Beth Chapel. Sure she had an ugly costume, but what member of Infinity Inc. didn’t?
6. 206
The follow-up to 52. Each week, a comic exploring a different bone of the human body. This week: the C1 Vertebrae, “Holding Up the World.” Next week: the Second Left Metacarpal, “The right hand doesn’t know what he’s doing!”
7. Penultimate X-Men
Featuring Penultimate Wolverine: “I’m the second best at what I do!”
8. Solomon Kane
Conan is good, but how about bringing back Robert E. Howard’s best character? The Marvel mini-series from 1985 was actually quite good, especially the first four issues that had Bret Blevins (#1-#3) and Mike Mignola (#4) art.
9. Ben Casey versus Dr Kildare
The grudge match to end all grudge matches. Two doctors enter, only one leaves.
10. Girlz
DC’s new imprint for minks.
February 1st, 2007 at 8:00 am
That’s a fine line of comics you’ve suggested. Penultimate Wolverine and Ben Casey vs.
Dr. Kildare sound like pie-in-the-sky wishlist fun, but All-Star Detective is one that really should happen.
February 1st, 2007 at 8:25 am
There is absolutely no reason why some version of All-Star Detective should not happen. That is a brilliant idea. And I really have no answer as to why someone has not previously come up with the idea of a parody of “penultimate” X-Men, Spider-Man, etc. Hilarious.
While most of the other ones are also really good ideas (I assume you were being humorous with the “206″), the Skrull-Durlan War would be an excellent Marvel/DC crossover. The Durlans are better shape-shifters, but the Skrulls run a galaxy, not just one world. Someone at either company should propose that to their boss…
February 1st, 2007 at 9:19 am
You make me laugh (WITH, not at). And Bill Sienkiewicz is the only one that I would trust with T.S. Eliot. Do you remember Encyclopedia Brown? I was obsessed with those books when I was a kid. The one thing that always pissed me off about them (other than the fact that I could never outhink Donald Sobol – hey, I was like 11) was the fact that all of the solutions always hinged around a single “central clue” which always stuck out like a sore thumb (even if the solutions that they pointed to did not). Detective Conan has the same problem, but the show is so fun and the solutions to the mysteries are often so bizarre and convoluted (not to mention the inherent humorousness of an 8 year-old boy not only present at incredibly horrendous and violent crime scenes, but poking at dead bodies with sticks) I find myself not minding so much.
February 1st, 2007 at 10:10 am
Solomon Kane is coming from Dark Horse in the , hopefully , not too distant future.
Terry
February 1st, 2007 at 11:13 am
Obviously all-star detectives needs detective chimp.
Lots of detective chimp.
February 1st, 2007 at 1:21 pm
“Girlz for Minks” is possibly the funniest thing written in English, ever.
February 1st, 2007 at 3:44 pm
Isn’t Paul Dini’s current Detective Comics most of what you’re looking for? Done-in-one stories focusing on Batman figuring out what’s going on?
Admittedly, doesn’t feature the other detectives, but Jason Bard, Limping Detective doesn’t pay the office rent.
February 1st, 2007 at 3:59 pm
I realise that there’s a lot about this post that is rocksome, but the tagline for the second issue of 206 has go me laughing during a class when I’m supposed to be paying attention.
Blast!
February 1st, 2007 at 6:07 pm
Official Comment
Greg,
I think Dini nearly has it; he’s certainly closer than any other mainstream super-hero writer at this time. I think he cheats a bit on the ending, and he’s a little too enamored of the “super villain of the month” approach, but those are relatively minor complaints. I’d like to see something like Mike Barr’s Maze Agency — just in the DCU (or “All-Star DCU”, as the case may be).
February 1st, 2007 at 7:20 pm
“2. Poetry
I’d love to see some comic book adaptations of classic poetry. ”
Have you read The Wild Party? Poem by Joseph Moncure March in 1928, pictures added by Art Spiegelman in 1994.
February 2nd, 2007 at 7:02 am
You know, I was about to ask if you had any recollection of Maze Agency’s playfair mysteries, but you already answered that question…
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:13 am
All I buy these days are Showcase Presents and maybe the odd Essential Marvel, so to list only from those series:
Showcase Presents I want:
Doom Patrol
Rex the Wonder Dog
Jack Kirby’s Fourth World
Hippies (Brother Power, Prez, Shade the Changing Man, doomed series like that)
Essentials I want:
Rom Spaceknight
Essentials I can’t understand were made at all:
Nova
Marvel Universe Deluxe
Tales of the Zombie
Ms. Marvel but NOT Captain Marvel
I mean what’s next? Essential Omega the Unknown?
Consider these anti-votes.
February 3rd, 2007 at 11:31 am
Honestly, if someone put out a Jon Carter of Mars with art by Kevin O’Neill (who did some Carter for the beginning of the second series of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), I’d read that in a second.
February 3rd, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Siskoid:
I happen to enjoy the Essential Tales of the Zombie. Part of it is that I love zombies, of course, but it’s generally just very fun, light horror. There’s not enough of that sort of thing in the comics world.
February 3rd, 2007 at 10:55 pm
How about a Skrull-durian war?
February 4th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Regarding #2.
Dean Motter did an amazing job adapting “Rime of The Ancient Mariner” back in 1991 during the brief re-launch of Classics Illustrated.
February 4th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
I don’t know if you’ve read The Maze Agency recently, but Barr doesn’t exactly play fair. I like the comics, but some of the clues – come on! They leap out of nowhere.
A Princess of Mars was solicited in June’s Previews, from IDW, featuring art by Ted McKeever. Not too long afterward I heard the book got killed, but I’m not sure why. It’s a bit disappointing.
February 6th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Have you read Neil Gaiman’s take on Midsummer Night’s Dream in his Sandman comics?
February 6th, 2007 at 10:56 am
[...] 10 Dream Comics [...]
February 9th, 2007 at 1:39 am
I just wish the market were bigger.
If the market were bigger than all the comics that I would like to see…. would exist. There’s a hunger for all the genres and stuff in the entire reading world, but surprisingly little room for all sorts of stuff within the tiny audience of the medium. In the real world westerns, as a genre of story, does not compete with the other genre. In the movie theatre, they compete for space. In a comic book store it is even worse.
If the market for comics were bigger than a comic book store would be the size of a Virgin Megastore and more importantly…. Detective Comics would be an anthology again and there may be two or three Wonder Woman comics.
There used to be two Wonder Woman comics in the seventies, and two in the forties but for the most part she barely supports one title before they start bringing in younger versions of herself or sidekicks or Earth-2 tales or whatever wierdness.
Wonder Woman canon yeesh.
I cannot have my Science Fiction anthology comic because the apropriate fans are elsewhere. Whatever.
I can’t even get my Ant-Man/Goliath/Giant-Man comic because the audience for that kinda stuff reads comics so the neato explorer/adventurer character that Hank Pym is is now no longer used except as that great fill-in biped when they need to write/draw a semi-suicidal wife-beater in a comics story.
That’s right. When Batman comics stop selling Bruce Wayne will be a child molester.
When Elongated Man has no title his wife gets raped.
If the Thin Man movies lasted another decade something terrible would have happened to Myrna Loy’s character.
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