Elseworlds Exchange: Pitching Two Crisis Events

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Alright, let's get on with the show. Weeding down upon the underworld to smash gangland, come a friend of the unfortunate enemy of criminal. In a serious, powerful character, a problem to the police, but a good state of law. Hey everybody, welcome to L-Source Exchange, I'm Sal.

And I'm Joel. So, it's been a while, welcome back Joel. Thank you. Pleasure to be back.

You're very welcome. Glad you're back. Glad to be back. Glad to be doing a live show.

If you're not familiar with this show, of course, you're welcome to Comic-Pop. With this channel where we talk about comic books, Joel's over on his own channel. Gabe Joel where he talks about comics as reviews and so forth. This show in particular is fun because we're going to be pitching a DC crisis.

Oh yeah. Just, you know, why not, right? It's inevitable, I think we're getting to that, you know, like five to, you know, seven years where they do on. DC's been edging for a while now, and it's pretty soon.

DC's just going to completely just blow it all over you. Oh yeah. Let me tell you something. They've been really, really stoking the fires with their medals and their clocks and whatnot.

No, no, no, DC is just aching for a crisis. And man, did I hear a pitch on Twitter not too long ago that really got into it. But before we get into that pitch, let's talk about this show in particular. Here we do the show live, but you're listening to it on the the audios.

Welcome to the show there. But don't forget to go to youtube.com. slash comic-pop and catch the show live usually anywhere between 3.30 and 5 p.m. Eastern Standard Time here on this channel on Wednesdays.

What we do here is we will talk about a topic for about an hour and we'll include the audience by having them encourage to use their super chats. This is a game within the system in which you can like toss us a little bit of bones to contribute to the show. We answer your question. We try to make it kind of organic and not as disruptive as some other shows.

So you can influence the show. It's true and often does suggest some really, really terrific conversations. So we do encourage you to do it. Like Alan Osborne here who says, what's up, boys?

Glad to have you back. Well, we are glad to be back. Alan, make it so much for being here. Okay.

I was on Twitter the other day and somebody tweeted at me and suggested I check out Ron Mars's tweet. Ron Mars is a prolific comic book author or author and is instrumental in the status quotes of not only Hal Jordan and the Spectre but also the progenitor of Kyle Rayner who was on everything until he wasn't. Justice for Kyle Rayner, the poor kid barely had a shot. But Ron Mars is talking about how he had this idea for Emerald Twilight and clearly it was what the inspiration became for the DC Comics Crisis event known as Zero Hour and the formation of a little thing called Hyper Time.

Yeah, which I love as a concept. I love Hyper Time. See, now Hyper Time is a funny thing because it should work really well to help to dispel any issues with time, particularly when you have timeless characters who can't age. But Zero Hour managed to actually make it even more complicated and even more of a problem.

Yeah. When Zero Hour itself was not an event that was meant to be anything. In fact, DC had the idea for Zero Hour because they went, you know, Crisis Event at Earth, our first significant in public read. That was 10 years ago.

We should honor it by screwing things back. It's tradition. Right. Well, it becomes tradition, you see.

At first, we gave it to Marvel, Wolfman and George Perez and we were like, do something amazing and make everybody young and hip and cool. They did. And then they went, well, let's do it again. But we can't change things too much because people still really like it.

Oh, yeah. So they created this thing called Zero Hour, which I am almost entirely convinced was inspired by the Ron Mars pitch for Emerald Twilight. Now, if you're not familiar with Emerald Twilight, first of all, if you're on this channel, you should go check out our back issues episode about it. It's a really fun episode.

But we talk all about how that is that like, how Jordan went nuts because CoSid was destroyed in a Superman event, didn't have agency over his own stupid cast status. Well, freaked out, rebuilt CoSid with his power ring, made the Guardians who are the like, largest hypocrites in the galaxy, pissed themselves and I can't rebuild my city with my magic right. Right. Exactly.

Now that is something that he shouldn't have done. But at the same time, that was something that he needed to work through himself. And it really wasn't the Guardians. Like, anyway, point being the Guardians have a problem.

It caused how to go over the edge. He nearly killed everyone in the Green Lantern Corps, took all their, took all the rings and jumped into the battery and changed his costume, became parallax. And then of course, Jeff Johns went ahead and retconned that. So, you know, anyway, that's a quick and dirty version.

The idea here is that like, how Jordan becomes a new bad guy. Yeah. And that's kind of the, the original pitch or rather what actually happened. Ron Mars is pitch was that apparently, Hal wanted to create an entire earth with his newfound power from the battery.

Bit of an upgrade from building a whole city. Right. Went from, no, no, no, why should I make like ghostly constructs when he can create an entire earth as part of the multiverse? And why stop there?

Why not also make this earth kind of silver age, bring back Barry Allen, who was of course dead at that time. And way earlier than he was supposed to come back, certainly, who was also his friend and he knew him. And of course, there was no plan to bring back Barry Allen back then. But the idea was for how to create an alternate earth where he could live.

And it could be simpler, seemingly simpler, that like everything kind of stays where it is. And the idea was kind of to combat or react to the naysayers and complainers out there who were in full force back then, who were like, you know, these books are getting kind of dark. Superman's dead, Batman's back is broken. Hal Jordan went insane.

You know, what are we doing here? What happened to the simpler times? I happened to the good old-fashioned superhero comics, all that stuff that I remember when I was a kid. And I feel like, what a great idea because of how meta textual that pitch is.

It's like, I'm going to have Hal literally give the readers what they think they want, which would inevitably be blown into the silver age earth that Hal created battling with the earth prime from the Christ and the earth's. Yes, which I read, which man, that sounds like a concept almost from today, doesn't it? That sounds a little bit like, what is it like, incursions and everything Earth's will fight to survive. Yeah, man.

Well, it sounds a lot like a smaller, like a smaller version of convergence. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so that concept, it's so good. And it's actually has such like, not real world, but modern day applicability.

I'm just going to steal from this great master from ours and completely fabricate a concept from there. At least do. Before we do, I just want to acknowledge that couple of superchats came in while I was talking from Will. I am golden.

Sup guys, we're talking about Christies pitches. Why don't we use Death of the Endless? Death is a great concept. Unfortunately, you don't really see her very much and you need Game in its permission, or at the very least you should have Game in its permission to use these characters.

It's very rare. It's tacky to not do it. And again, we've seen what happens when DC tries to use characters that legally don't belong to them, what that turns into. Yeah, they do own Morpheus and the Endless and Death and all that.

But they also know how bad it gets when they don't understand what they're doing with those characters. They're like, tasteful with their inclusion. Yeah. Polish gamer says, or GMR says, hey guys, I'm wondering if you've seen Shazam, what are your opinions on it?

And do you guys want to do a review of it? Specifically, Salant Tapper, you guys are going to talk about it like you've been talking about it. We were going to do it, but we were super busy. And so as such, I dropped these at Darcy interview instead of the author episode, which is our review show.

We might still talk about it, but we did talk about it in Weekly just this past week. And I talked about it on my own show that went live just today with my other co-host Matt for Comic Multi-Burs, so if you want to check it out there. Yeah. So, you know, we'll say probably not long and short, we liked it.

Yeah, Chris Beck, hello guys. First, did you see Shazam? Yes. Second was wondering if you could build a crisis event around Shazam, how would it work?

It would be involved in the magic. Reportedly, Dark Knight's Medal was going to have a big surprise Shazam appearance in it, but couldn't do it because Jeff Johns wanted to use it. They did mention the Rock of Eternity several times. They certainly did.

I think they were alluding to it. I think they had to swap out the the monitor reveal for Shazam. Well, if you want some Shazam goodness in your crisis, when I get to my page after Sal, I have some Shazam inclusion after seeing the movie. If I wanted to start with Shazam or Jonah Hex, where to start, New 52 Shazam run, jump on that.

I would also read Super Smash's Am. First Thunder, it's a nice introduction to the character, while also not going too far away from the DC universe. The Monster Society of Evil by Jeff Smith is a lot of fun too. Also, it's not technically like the most DC comic all the time, but you might join.

Jack O'Connell is not super in DC, but I'm here. Well, thank you very much for being here, man. As far as Jonah Hex goes, anything by Jimmy Palm, the audience Justin Gray, pre-New 52, and then all-star Western all the way until it's done. Exactly.

So the concept is not too dissimilar from the Mars pitch. Basically, that like, okay, so zero hour crisis in time. And after that, of course, every DC event from there. Zero Hour was written by Dan Jurgens and Jerry Orgway, and it involved parallax basically saying, I'm going to go back in time.

I'm going to fix this universe, and I'm going to make a new one out of it where people can't suffer. So clearly, I'm going to make a new worth with Blackjack and Hooker as you'll see. Now, zero hour was horrendous and terrible, and it didn't make any sense. And it ended with a real timeline, a hard timeline for the DC universe, which says that 15 billion years ago, the Big Bang starts.

1938 was when the Golden Age of Superheroes begins. 1940, JSA has formed. Superman was dropped, landed about 35 years ago. The heroic age starts 10 years ago, and so on and so forth.

And so like, today we got things like Bane and Azrael and Doomsday and Guagard and Warrior. And the future, of course, like all those timelines that they mentioned, like the Legion Superheroes, now, you know that kind of thing. But everything's kind of still set in stone. But Ferm Hardstance, Shazam Shazam Shazam Shazam, everybody else 10 years ago, you know that kind of thing.

It's very like, but like for no reason, hamstringing themselves into being like, this is the timeline. They printed a timeline, which is the worst possible thing you could do in a comic book that has a shared universe and a sliding time scale. So never make that mistake again. Right.

DC will never mess with that again. Like they'll never write themselves into a hole where they say specifically the year anymore, or if they do, it is done by a stunt writer who will do whatever they want anyway. Yeah. Excuse me.

So, okay. My pitch is simply this because here's the thing, Nif-52 came out of Flashpoint. It did. Flashpoint was not supposed to be a crisis or an event.

It instead became this thing that came, that wasn't. And became a sales juggernaut because Nif-52 was the time when they were like, yeah, we're throwing everything away. It's all rebooting. So many people started taking notice around that time.

I remember it was it was an electric, you could say it was an electric time. Yeah, got a lot of, got a lot of print in mainstream publications and the sales cannot be disputed for how well the Nif-52 did. I think it's a big driving force to why I ended up covering comics on long. So I'm like, oh, a fresh DC star.

Hey, this will be something to talk about. Seriously. But my point about Nif-52 is simply that they weren't afraid to say that everything you read doesn't matter. And it's all starting over again, regardless of the caliber of people we have working on most of these books.

Except for Batman and Green Lantern, because they were always selling well and we don't want to take off those fans. Right. Even though they still did. Like they initially they were like, oh, we don't even know if it's going to work.

So we just left alone. But anyway, so the reason I'm prefacing all that is because what I'm saying is we're going to go back to zero hour. And by the way, this is also inspired by the fact that apparently DC is in a dispute right now over the copyright of the term zero hour. And I was like, hey, DC, you want to fix that?

Maybe come up with a new book. Refer to zero hour, because here's the thing. Zero hour happened just like it does kind of like in the seven crises that Bendis suggested. But the twist is that Hal Jordan, because at the end of that zero hour, by the way, like they defeat Hal Jordan, he doesn't get the creative new universe.

But a couple of things change. Hawkman is condensed in one person, which doesn't make any sense. A couple of them over the day, so I get old, even though they get young later. It's ultimately nothing really happens.

No. Instead, what happens is Hal Jordan won zero hour. Yeah. And he created the new universe and stuck everyone who was involved in zero hour in that universe.

That more or less there, he that more or less, he does create the Silver Age timeline and he's been living in it. But the other, the rest of them, his friends are stuck in kind of like a pocket universe. Allah heroes were born, where they all are kind of like trapped in this bubble that where time does not affect them, which is why they're not getting older. Right.

And Hal Jordan has been kind of like just mucking around with the universe. And basically, it's only until like everything since zero hour has been fake. Right. And not real.

And because Hal Jordan was like so omnipotent, by the way, according to zero hour, he was able to like manipulate reality itself and time. He was able to trap characters like the Spectre and the monitor and other things. And so as such, if everyone's stuck in his bubble with all of these other characters, but in reality, there's technically really reality that everything that happens, all these events that have taken place in zero hour are basically manifestations of their deep, like their deep subconscious understanding that everything they're doing doesn't matter and isn't real. Oh, some persona stuff.

Yeah. So all the all the crises are reactions to their desire to change reality because they know they aren't really in the real world. Okay. And that's why they keep happening.

Yes. Why crises happen even shorter, shorter times. Oh, I like this. I like you giving a reason to this.

Right. So everyone's stuck in this bubble. They've been like, and because they're their own desire, their own will, they're subconscious, like maybe like auto, auto writing, auto working, and of course, the subconscious of these omnipotent beings like the monitor and so forth, created all this shit that makes it such that like final crisis and new 52 flashpoint, all that crap happened. And so we have that.

And basically the next event that happens for real is doomsday clock. Right. That the only thing that can fix it is the actions of another Oh, super god. Dr Manhattan.

So Dr Manhattan is mucking around and that's why it also gives credence to and explains why doomsday clock is so like nebulous in terms of who everybody is. Like, why is there like, why is everybody wearing their like original costumes? Why is we're in a ones like, I don't understand like, there's a lot of like iconic versions of those characters. Oh, yeah.

That don't reflect their technically new 52 universe counterparts. Not at all. But some of them do. And that's what's so vexing like the Tim Drake Robin costume is the old Tim Drake Robin costume or I'm sorry, the new comp Tim take Robin costume from new 52.

So it's got the red Robin R's on them. Also, night wing is still night wing and red hood is still red hood, even though they're not right now. Right, exactly. So yeah, it also explains like all like why the Doom controller involved and why they look like the Doom Patrol and all that stuff.

I love that bit there. Hey, do you think these guys have a new popular television show or something? Why is the Doom Patrol suddenly been invited on this mission? Right, exactly.

So that's the concept. It's basically just like, okay, we've got to square the circle when it comes to these crises and everything. So ultimately the battle, by the way, so what's it called? Doomsday clock.

That's an event that still happens, right? Because it is technically still happening to these heroes. Like it's just that document happens the first real being to interact with any of them. Right, right?

Because he's strong enough to break on through. Yeah, so we don't touch doomsday clock. Jeff Johns gets to do whatever he wants. It's its own event.

The events of doomsday clock don't really affect anything. The only thing that really happens is at the end of it as a post script to doomsday clock, whatever happens, whatever the fallout is, they are at least one or two characters. I'm thinking Superman, but like Flash or whatever, but like one or two characters are awakened. Right.

And so they so they and it ultimately boils down to a big battle between how Jordan Parallax and the DC universe. Because isn't that all these stories and right? Because it also has to end that way. But also we need to re-establish the new universe.

We need to establish that like reality will eventually come back into being. And you know, we have a new it allows us to also kind of like fix a few things and solve your problems. It also explains a couple things, redundancies, extra whileies, all that stuff. Yeah, but it's it's a major event that you can call something like zero hour to I wouldn't but you know, to save some money or to fight that legal battle you have a book called zero hour.

But rather I call something else. I don't have a pitch name for it yet. But what's the what's like the Greek thing for zero? I don't know.

Like the Greek symbol call it that hour. Right. Zeta hour. I don't know.

Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't say. But anyway, so the pitch is that zero hour is like the only true of that which kind of like a joke.

Like a meta joke. But also when you do find how he's more or less playing in the like Silver Age happy universe, right? Playing superhero or and this is another more this could be another thing like how doesn't really leave like he is playing as how the entire time. And when things don't go his way or he doesn't like it, he just changes it.

Right. So it becomes like like a twilight zone episode like you better behave in parallax's beautiful Silver Age world or go make you go to the cornfield again. Exactly. That's also by the way, could explain the Mr Oz problem because Mr Oz like was was was really interested in these characters who were from the 90s.

But then Jeff Johnson wasn't editor anymore. And so as a result, like they just kind of threw that away. Boy, did they ever like you could say no, no, how Jordan was doing that parallax was doing that. Do you really believe no, no, how Jordan didn't become like he wasn't he wasn't infected by a big silly space monster.

He's a jackass. He just went insane. He has a psychic break and no one tried to help him. Right.

And no one could help him. And he had like this nyum nimpotent ability. So who was going to stop him anyway? What would you do with that short of killing him?

Right. Exactly. So that's the idea. It's more or less just like a big like how Jordan's centric events, but it doesn't have much to do.

I guess the other idea of the other implication is that like there are no real green lanterns. How you use the power battery to activate whatever he needed in order to create or alter reality. So the fallout from it, of course, is you get to basically come up with a whole new pitch for the DC universe. You get to bring in a whole host of new creators, new blood, new designs that either refer to or just straight up our old school versions of those costumes, depending on how they feel when they come out, you know, when they wake up and they realize that like they're now finally in reality, like do you do they feel nostalgic or are they like I've had enough of nostalgia?

Like you just kind of update this. Exactly. But you have like the time to develop an actual pitch for your new universe instead of what they do with the 52. They were like, well, we'll go along, which is we all know doesn't work.

Hey, some of these new 52 suits look pretty good. Or some of these was it Earth two suits look pretty good? Why not use those? Yeah, plus then you get to play with the idea of like what has the DC multiverse or universe been doing in the absence of Earth Prime?

Yeah, so you could play with all that like there's all kinds of shit you can you can mess with as a result of that. How many issues do you see this? Is this going to be like a 12 issue maxi series? Is it going to be like a six issue summer event?

What's interesting is like, I mean, like you got to start in the summer, which is too bad, just because I don't like, you know, we've seen so many of them do that like I would love to have done it some time up like some other time, but but in terms of sales, you got to sell the summer. I if I were an editor, I'd be like, let's make it four, like really short. But you do need to explain a lot of things and you need some big set pieces and double page splashes and all that shit. So like, my thing is six, like make it six issues.

Don't make it nine, 12, 100, like make it six plus you got plenty of time and opportunity for that you can do like, especially if you have the plan before the book is implemented. Like, yeah, basically you just wait until two o'clock is over before you implement it, which means you have another year and a half, two years, to really develop what you're going to do with the DC universe. And you basically let everyone on the plan and then you go into your pitch room, you go like who wants to tie in that's going to set up the new universe, or that's going to that's going to wrap up plot lines. Yeah, from those from from the previous universe.

Here's the thing, we're still in the new 52 universe. Yes, whether people want to admit it or not, you can say, Oh, but Superman fuses and no, no, no, but we still are, though, right? But Superman fuses. There was no explanation for any multiversal character who says the action of putting a 52 Superman and free and post crisis in the same body made the universe affected.

No, that's just that one story. But it had a butterfly effect. Say people in my comments, actually, yeah, for that family of characters and only when they remember it. Exactly.

Because here's the thing, you know, who doesn't know that? Anyone is working on any of those other books. That to say, which is so frustrating. And that's really the problem is with your six shared universe, you all need to be on the same page.

So, and of course, there's an opportunity here to play with the whole like, I remember things to be this certain way. I remember how simple comics used to be, how characters used to like do, you know, they used to be superheroes, they used to do this thing. So like you could really like, meta up your story, like critiquing the critics of your current universe or the previous universe and kind of like embellishing or putting too much stock in what came before being like, naturally, the things weren't like the things weren't nearly as simple or as like pure as you remember them. Yeah, take off your rose tinted glasses.

Yeah, so there you go. That's it. Emerald Crisis would be my pitch. That's a good one.

But there you have it. Before we move on, I want to jump into the super chats because we we we we masked quite a few of them. But Mr. Obados says, we you've been where you've been.

I feel like the wizard waiting for Orphan. That's fine. We've been well, we've been busy, man. Kaboos 111 says Crisis Babbin will become the Overlord of Earth and Red Hood forms a team to stop them.

Big cliche, but it'd be fun seeing Red Hood as an anti-hero saving world. That's basically Nightwing New World Order, but Red Hood, New World Order. I suggest you pick up that book because it's a lot of fun. But Red Hood being like an anti-hero, like basically just read Future Zend, but replace grifter with Red Hood and new book.

There you go. That's basically it. Or a force don't always make the live stream, but just wanted to show some love. Thank you very much, Orphaners.

I'm glad that you were able to make it this time around, but I'm sorry if you can say. Ollie Roger, here's my pitch universe is threatened by a being known as the editor whose dialogue will come from the continuity matter. That is called Final Crisis. The Dark Monitors or whatever are all Vampiric editors who want to change what your pure stories are all about.

So literally that is a book. And it was written of course by Grant Morrison. Mr. Vodos is the idea that he used the Spectre as the Wrath of God on Manhattan.

I think we saw it. Is the Spectre in Doomsday Clock? I thought I saw him in it. But like no, because Spectre wouldn't work because he was part of the JSA and the JSA doesn't exist.

But I know he's been referencing numerous times before this forever. They're like, oh, you know, shock waves in the magical universe. Yes, absolutely. I do like that idea, but that would also have to presuppose that God exists and Document doesn't have to be the God.

Yeah, that's a big thing. I feel that's what stops the Spectre from coming back every so often. And Telekastor says, big question is how will there be any tie-ins and if so, how many? You need tie-ins because you need to bolster the sales of that book.

And the reality is like you have as many as as conversions had because convergence is able to tie up loose plot threads from previous timelines. Yes, the entire line just became convergence books. Yeah, and that's not a bad idea. I would do that with Emerald Twilight.

I would converge with the shit of it. I know that sounds like the last week, but the reality is like not only do you have gorgeous chip kid covers, but you also have like this opportunity to give like you could let Scott LoDell just literally do anything he wants with the Red of a be like do anything you want. No restrictions because it doesn't matter. Yeah, because you could put it back.

Well, maybe he didn't make it out of this like you know that kind of thing. I do anything and everything with him and anyone like dark, just like dark friggin just like Odyssey everything all of it like just just just balls to wall donuts go nuts with all of that. Hell bring back Mr. Bloom for all we care.

And Gorgon Fish says I've always wanted to see an Els where else where Kevin Sir lands in Smallville and John Kent becomes the first Green Lantern and then how the second I love that idea that Jonathan Kent becoming a Green Lantern. That's hilarious. They find this crash alien ship and then like Jonathan Kent you'll have to do. Yeah, that's fun.

That sounds that sounds like a classic Els world. I'm surprised that hasn't been written. Yeah, that feels like what's funny is I was actually looking at an old like list of all the Els worlds books. There are so few that aren't Batman.

So few so you know and Doom 2814 says anybody else ready for a world's finest relaunch with Batman Superman. Yeah, please. It's been a while for that. It's been a while since we've had a Batman and Robin book.

That's true, which I feel like is on its way. So yeah, Joel, you got your own thing going on. Let's hear it. Indeed I do.

We actually came to this idea on very similar wavelengths. Mine was actually trying to square the circle of a lot of the weird golden age characters. And I know you and I have this conversation all the time where we're like, hey, remember so and so we're having, you know, where have they been? We haven't seen them for a decade.

What about these characters they tried to launch which is didn't go anywhere and just fell off the base of the earth. Yeah. Well, my crisis style event is called Justice League The Lost Ones and it seeks to answer that very question. Okay.

Well, let's hear who are the lost ones and why? Oh, we're gonna find that. So like basically my pitch if I had to elevate her this one, I'd be like, all right, let's have a DC crisis by way of Stephen King. Ah, okay.

Would be my pitch. And the idea is that one day after a big battle, the Justice League, they save the world from honor like a tornado or an earthquake or some shit. And out of the rubble comes the Mad Monk. Now remember the Mad Monk?

Vaguely. Mad Monk is a really, really obscure ass Batman villain. Everyone kind of knows him because I think he liked Bottom and like issue two. Okay.

He's like one of the earliest DC super villains, crazy obscure. No one has done anything with him, but he exists as like a hallmark of like, oh, remember that guy? Yeah. Yeah.

I know what you're talking about now. And he shows up just raving being like, I've been there. I've been to the other side. I've been to the other side of the mirror.

They're going to kill me for it. And they're like, what the hell are you talking about? Even Batman kind of has a moment of like, I kind of remember this guy. And he has to like go through his files.

And it's like, Oh, he's not on the computer. Oh, he's on like the hard copies and I'm like, files and paper. I don't remember writing these. Yeah.

Oh, okay. Because it's back from the golden age, Batman's like, well, this is clearly my handwriting. I clearly did this. Right.

Exactly. But I don't remember writing it. But I don't remember writing this, but you know, you do exist. You do have a file.

And the Justice League has to end up protecting Mad Monk because he's being hunted down by this crazy cult called the Glass Men. Okay. And the Glass Men where these like really slick, like reflective robes and like masks that are all crack mirrors. Okay.

All right. And they want to kill him with like big pieces of glass again. They're very creepy. We'll have like jock design, these guys.

Oh, okay, sure. Yeah. They'll be really freaking horrifying. And they're like, you know, we got to, you know, we got to kill the Mad Monk.

The Mad Monk knows too much. He's given away our secrets. And what we eventually discover is that the Glass Men worship a being called the Fisher. Okay.

And the Fisher is an extra dimensional creature that every time there is a crisis that causes cracks in the universe. And the Fisher reaches on through and takes golden age characters and silver age characters and like weird background characters. No one talks about it. He disappears them.

Okay. All right. Do you like the the the Langolier cell? Oh, I'm all too familiar with the Langoliers.

The Fisher is the Langolier of the DC universe only instead of eating time, it eats continuity. Right. Yeah. That's it.

It cleans up continuity. It eats it and it disappears them to the realm up until now. It's only been disappearing for getable characters again. Your golden age, your silver age, your aunt, Harriet's your weird side characters.

Yes, exactly. But now that the Justice League know the Fisher, now that they know its name, kind of like a Voldemort thing going on here, once you say its name, it starts disappearing important characters like Batman and Superman. And by the end of what I'm thinking, this is going to be like a like a weekly series that's going to run for like a month. Okay, like 52 like a 52 exactly.

And by the time like the first arc is over, every triple A character, if you have a book and if you've been relevant in the last 10 years, you're gone. You've been disappeared by the Fisher. Okay. And this causes complete anarchy in the DC universe because now the second string Justice League has to step up to you know, kind of keep order.

Right. That's why I like it to 52 because I'm like this, the same because the A team is gone, the second stringers have to step up, which of course is like, here's a deal. 52 was such a successful series despite like it starring Booster Gold and like the question and so forth. And it became like the number for DC forever.

Yeah. So like, yeah, no, like before you scoff at the idea of the D list here is the second stringers like saving the universe and being the central central focus of the other Christ event. They already have. I'm also taking a lot of reference here to from Avengers No Surrender as well.

Oh, yeah, sure. So you know, instead of Batman, you got Green Airy, you got Black Canary, the Adam, Vixen, Vibe, Firestorm characters where it's like, all right, so when this is done, these characters are going to get solo titles. So let's really work with them here. And we're going to spin them off where it's like, yeah, Batman, Super Ant, Wonder Woman, they're evergreen, but let's try and have, you know, a green arrow book that sells super high or a Vixen book that sells super high now.

Right, exactly. Let's remind these people why they're so great. And again, this would lead to tie ins to you know, special one shots where the characters have to keep peace. Because again, it's not just the heroes who disappeared villains have disappeared too.

Oh, sure. No, yeah. So this has created huge amounts of anarchy and you know, obviously chaos is a ladder for these guys. So I imagine where it's like, all right, you know, Captain Cold realizes that he's the only member of the rogues left in central city and is like, well, this is bullshit.

I'm going to Metropolis. He takes over Intergang and then we get King Pin Captain Cold. Okay, why not? The number one criminal in the DC universe.

And then you know, you got guys like Bronze Tiger, it's like, oh, Rachelle Goul is gone. All these ninjas are running a muck all over the world. Okay, I'm the leader of the League of Assassins. Now you listen to me.

Yeah, why not? And Cheshire, oh, you know, Deathstroke is gone, Deadshot is gone. All these assassins, people still need to die. I guess I'll do it.

You could really play with Suicide Squad, by the way, because of the like, the, the, the finality of their name and the fact that you basically turn into like a Giffon and Demetrius, like, Met a book. Oh, yeah. And you know, you do some magic stuff too, where it's like, Oh, Dr. Fade is gone.

All the Lords of Chaos are gone. Hey, me, Dr. Savana, I'm a Lord of Chaos now. Right.

Yeah. Giving them new status quos and upgrades so that they are first-year baddies. Oh, yeah. And when we inevitably put it back, that'll be a big thing too, where it's like, well, obviously Lex Luthor is not going to like the idea of Captain Cold running metropolis.

Oh, yeah, no, naturally. So he's going to scratch and claw and try and get his stuff back. Yeah, the, the trick will be to not immediately have like Captain Cold be assassinated by like a random Lex Luthor, like, flunky exactly. Somebody desperately just wants to keep writing about Lex Luthor.

Totally. You have it be like, no, no, no, I prepared for this. I knew you'd be coming back. Yeah, yeah.

And again, you know, we move on with the story here. We eventually find out that the Glass Men this weird cult, we make a big deal that they all get unmasked at certain points. Sure. Yeah.

And we discover that they're, they're actually forgotten Golden Age villains too. Naturally, that's what I figured is that like, they are, they are, they're looking for justice. What are the agents of? Yeah.

Oh, it's more complicated than that. But yeah, we make this like a who's who have forgotten Golden Age characters. You get like, like, Paul Sloan, the guy who was actually the first two face. Right.

Yes. I remember him. You get guys like Von Gunther, who's like, Hey, remember when there was a lot of Nazis and remember when superheroes only fought Nazis for a little bit? Yeah, exactly.

You get your mad scientist like Dr. Radium, you get like, you know, a less a law who's like the evil Kryptonian that Supergirl fought back in the 30s. Okay. All right.

So you get a nice mix of powers there and everything and you find out that they have been sacrificing people to the Fisher to try and prolong their own lives. Right. To keep themselves relevant. Because yeah, to keep themselves relevant and so they don't get eaten up in one screen arrow and the rest of the team discovers that they're like, Oh, well, we got to lead a mission to like track down the rest of the heroes.

We got to go to the other side of the mirror where the fissure lives because the fissure lives in cracks, the cracks in all things, the cracks in universe, the cracks in mirrors. But how do we get to the mirror? Oh, well, we're going to need what is it? We're going to need Miramast or we're going to need the Flash villain because he's the only one who knows how to get there.

Yeah. But he's an idiot and he's in hiding. So Oh crap, we got to kind of deal with Captain Cold now to find him. Okay.

All right. Because only Captain Cold knows and Captain Cold is using his new power and you know, affluence to protect his money. Right. Exactly.

And also to probably sell him out because he knows that the heroes really want it. Yeah. And he knows that like he's not going to be able to hold it forever. Like it's better if they're friends of mine.

Absolutely. Me declaring war on them. Yeah, good. The big standout for the Glassman too is that you know, we unlock their leader.

You know, he takes off his mask and his face is already a broken mirror. And that's because he is the villain Glassman who fought Batman one time in like the 40s. And he's like, I am a living mirror. That's how I was able to escape, you know, the realm of mirrors.

Right. Yeah, man. And you know, he's horrifying looking. Did you ever play?

What is it? Wolf among us? No, yeah, I played the first played like a demo for Wolf among us. Okay.

Because at the end, you fight Bloody Mary and Bloody Mary is like this horrible, horrible looking thing that's just, you know, covering glass and everything. Oh, sure. Yeah. I mean, the Glassman himself is bizarre looking.

Like you can really play with that whole concept. Oh, yeah. He more looks like a cubic zirconia. Exactly.

Make him make him absolutely horrifying. When the heroes do make it to the fissures realm, they discover that this isn't just any place behind the mirror. It's the ruins of Fawcett City. Oh, okay.

Yeah. And the fissure itself is this like crazy moth thing, this moth monster that keeps people in cocoons and drains their life force. Oh, yeah. I'm off.

You say? I'm off. Yeah. What did he what did he what did he manifest from?

All right. We'll get there. So here's the thing. So they so they try and fight off this creature and it's like, you know, it's unstoppable and everything.

It's like a Lovecraftian horror as it would normally be. And they see the cocoons there. And this is where you get into interesting tie in territory. Okay.

Because it's so many forgotten characters. It's like, you know, characters from across the spectrum. It's like from lines of comics that DC owns but doesn't do anything with. So it's like, Hey, here's all the war and Ellis, Stormwatch characters.

This is where they've been. Yeah, yeah, here's all the here's Gen 13. Yeah. They're sitting in cocoons getting drained.

You even make it like this happens across time where it's like, Oh, here's Jonah Hex and Sergeant Rock. Right. Yeah, yeah. They're all here to and the big twist.

This would be like in the middle of the book. They are one of the cocoons opens up and out of the cocoon falls the Mad Monk. Right. Right.

But wait a minute. Yeah. But it wasn't he wasn't he the catalyst for this. Was he not the catalyst for this?

And the Mad Monk is completely reborn. He's young now. He's got a new costume. He's he's young and happy.

He's got he's got current facial hair. Exactly. He's young and hit. Here's the thing.

The Fisher doesn't eat characters that it takes. The Fisher recycles continuity. It doesn't eat it. It protects them and watches over them until they are ready to be reborn and rejoin the universe.

Yeah, they don't. Nothing ever truly dies here. No, no. No, they're really worn.

Exactly. The Fisher isn't evil, but something has been starving the Fisher. That Mad Monk was not the Mad Monk at all. That was someone pretending to be him.

Okay. That was Mirror Man or Mirror Man. Yeah, Mirror Man, who is a weird creation of Amadeus Arkham who I think he offhandedly mentioned once in the idea of being that he has like the narcissist disorder. Okay.

Yeah. He got sent there very early on, but refused to be recycled because he's like, no, I'm beautiful and perfect and I refuse to die. Yeah. He by the way isn't everybody, if you haven't ever seen the Mirror Man, like he's basically looks It looks like a gross Dr.

Savana, but with like little hilarious glasses and the worst bowler tie. Yeah, he refuses to die because he has power over mirrors. Anyway, he was able to escape and set all this in motion. He's starving the fissure because he's set up a whole contraption to take the power of the current DC universe into himself so he can live forever and be eternally beautiful forever.

Naturally, okay. And so the carrots are like, ah crap, not only do we need to defeat this bad guy, but we also need to set the universe back in order now that we have a better fundamental understanding of how it actually works and how that messes with their heads of being like, oh, so we do this over and over again and the universe is often rewritten over and over again. Yeah, and now I assume that you have to do it where it's like, it's a secret or their minds are wiped or someone vaguely remembers what happens because you can't, it would be tough to have Batman like deal with the existential crisis of realizing. He's been like, people die or get reborn or disappear.

Like I've been 32 for like how many years? Exactly, and you have that moment and then at the end it's like Martian man, Hunter and Zatana get together and I'm like, all right, everyone come together, we're gonna do the men in black three wipe your mind. Cause this is way too much shit. Right, right.

But yes, that's basically the long and short of my story that that would be like a month. You'd have interesting tie-ins to be like, okay, how do these golden age characters show up in this universe? What was their last moments? Right, exactly.

And again, you make it a crisis about crisis. Exactly, that's kind at this point because nowadays, recent in the universe is such a like trope that like there's no point in doing it unless like either you're actually fixing something or you're talking about how fixing something is, like how cavalier we are about rewriting people's lives. Yeah, and again, you know, this could be like a perfect thing too, this could be like your, what is it? Like that Marvel moment they never capitalized on to where it's like, okay, so every character who's ever been or ever has been is here in the Fisher's care.

Okay, who do we wanna bring back with us? Exactly. Who do we wanna wake up and bring back? Yeah.

Or who stows away or who would like do anything to leave? Yeah, exactly. So yeah, you have a really cool war among the forgotten. Absolutely.

And then you know, this could be a way again, a nice soft reboot is where it's like, all right, so we all come back, everyone gets new number ones. Everything continues, but the universe is different now. Where it's like, oh yeah, so Captain Cold is in control now and all this other stuff is happening. And how do we fix this?

And that would be like the next year's worth of stories. Yeah, so it's technically metaphysical, but it's more like a like a crisis, identity crisis where it's like, it's more like, we're just changing the status quo. We're not. Exactly.

And maybe we'll bring a few people with us. The way that secret invasion was supposed to be. Just like that. It's like it's story driven, but like if we need to retcon anything, we can.

And plus this now we know this place exists out here as well. Yeah, you can use it like the way that race uses the Lazarus pits. Like somebody dies or someone's about to die and they're like, you know, and then flash, you know, like strong arms mirror mask, we're gonna take them to the dimension and then like, reboot like, listen, if you like Iris is horribly hurt. And he's like, do this, she will not remember you.

Yeah, exactly, she will be completely new. And I like the idea to do that the phaser like is only semi-intelligent. It's like a bee doing its job. Right, exactly.

It's just auto doing it. Yeah, you can't reason with it, but you can't anger it. So don't do that. Right, exactly.

Now that's yeah. Don't starve it either or it'll just start taking everything. Exactly. Yeah, because it will defend what it does.

Yeah. As don't, what do you call it? Justice League, the lost ones. OK.

Dylan, Gup to Cassidy. Spectre was in Gotham by midnight. And here's my pitch is that that that may last takes down all the just leak except that that family. So it could be a smaller, bad family crisis.

I mean, like we're basically getting there right now. Joshua, right? Hey guys, here's a pitch. Crisis in Gotham, Batman frame from murder in Gordon.

Rest of the Batman tries to bring him in while proving his innocence. Literally, that is a book called Batman called Bruce Wayne Murderer, and then Bruce Wayne Fugitive. It's a big long story in which that exact same thing happens when he plays Gordon with a random person. Now it's a big trilogy.

Yeah. Taylor Pester, since you're pitching these, would you hypothetically be the writer? I like this question. If not, would you be the writer and be extension the creative team?

I feel that I was tapping into a real kind of grant more anything with this. I feel like this is an idea he would run with because it's stories about stories. True. The only problem is if you were to hire him to do it, he would do his own thing and whatever you were working on to be gone.

Yeah, you totally don't. Maybe Gerard Way, he seems like a more reasonable morsel. Yeah, I give it to Demetaus of Gerard Way, somebody who knows the metaphysical loves the spiritual and wants to play in that universe and gets character. Yeah, I definitely want to get, I mentioned Jock before.

I'd want someone who can do some really terrifying redesigns of these old golden age villains and make them scary again. Yeah, that'd be dope. And they stick around too. So there you got a new influx of villains as well.

Totally. Heartless Bang says, would it be fun to see Harper Rolcom back as Bluebird and Joel's idea, at least for a little bit? Maybe we'll be able to vanish. They leave holes in memory?

Oh, yeah, yeah. She's there. Everyone's there. Everyone you've ever lost.

And here's two. Before we write this, we have big internet campaigns. We're like, who is your favorite forgotten character? Who would you like to see return, man?

Yeah, you literally just take everyone you're going to reference or that has ever been forgotten. Put them all online in one big chart and say, who's coming back? You get to decide, everyone. Yeah.