shaxper
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Posts: 22,268
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Post by shaxper on Jun 1, 2021 12:05:30 GMT -5
There had been superhero types in the newspaper strips before Superman, and I'm not sure the characters … or superheroes in particular … would have flourished to the same extent there. There had been adventure heroes, but not super heroes (which just autocorrected to "super herpes," interestingly enough). There was a mad dash to cash in on the success of Superman after he hit print. It's reasonable to assume that mad dash would have occurred in the newspapers instead. Absolutely, and that would have killed this entire thread fast by altering literally everything we know about comic history, so I went with a less likely but possible outcome that would allow us to keep playing.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jun 1, 2021 14:58:51 GMT -5
I go back to the early 1990s and tell Jim Shooter about the coup that is brewing and that means to remove him as Valiant's EiC.
"What are you talking about?" He asks.
"I assure you it's happening right now. I'm a time traveler, and I know things".
"Prove it".
(I reveal some stuff he said on his blog and that I should not be privy to).
"You realize this will have consequeneces for the timeline, don't you?" he says.
"I certainly hope so, and it's because you handled time travel paradoxes so well in your first year at Valiant that I want you to keep your job. Oops, here's my Tardis... Gotta go!"
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,268
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Post by shaxper on Jun 1, 2021 15:00:28 GMT -5
I go back to the early 1990s and tell Jim Shooter about the coup that is brewing and that means to remove him as Valiant's EiC. "What are you talking about?" He asks. "I assure you it's happening right now. I'm a time traveler, and I know things". "Prove it". (I reveal some stuff he said on his blog and that I should not be privy to). "You realize this will have consequeneces for the timeline, don't you?" he says. "I certainly hope so, and it's because you handled time travel paradoxes so well in your first year at Valiant that I want you to keep your job. Oops, here's my Tardis... Gotta go!" I want to give others a chance to do the long term consequences for these, but I just have to say that I LOVE this.
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Crimebuster
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Making comics!
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Post by Crimebuster on Jun 1, 2021 15:38:40 GMT -5
I go back to the early 1990s and tell Jim Shooter about the coup that is brewing and that means to remove him as Valiant's EiC. "What are you talking about?" He asks. "I assure you it's happening right now. I'm a time traveler, and I know things". "Prove it". (I reveal some stuff he said on his blog and that I should not be privy to). "You realize this will have consequeneces for the timeline, don't you?" he says. "I certainly hope so, and it's because you handled time travel paradoxes so well in your first year at Valiant that I want you to keep your job. Oops, here's my Tardis... Gotta go!" Shooter remains in charge at Valiant. Instead of falling apart, like the company did in our timeline, under Shooter's management it continues to grow in popularity and sales. In 1996, following Marvel's bankruptcy, instead of turning to image, they turn to Valiant to handle Heroes Reborn. Shooter once again has Avengers, FF, Iron Man, and Captain America under his banner, and personally guides the creative teams on those four books. The effort is a critical and financial success. Rather than reclaim the titles, Marvel chooses instead to leave those books at Valiant and begins farming out more content and titles to Valiant while they focus on movie rights and toy deals. By 2000, Valiant is licensing and publishing the entire line of Marvel comics - a much smaller, tighter line of 15-20 titles held together by Shooter's continuity that harkens back to Silver Age Marvel. because of this, there's no need for the Ultimate line, as the Heroes Reborn universe is essentially already that.
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Post by tonebone on Jun 1, 2021 15:50:32 GMT -5
2009 - Dan Didio leaves the comics industry to manage the Franklin Mint mail order collectables division. The Flashpoint event and New52 never happen, and DC Comics rights its ship, and continues successfully publishing quality entertainment to this day. The subsequent lack of vapid, flashy, Do-The-Dew storylines fails to attract the attention of Zack Snyder, and the faithful reboot of Superman's movie franchise is in competent hands, and is met with critical and fan praise. The Justice League movie followed to rave reviews and big box-office, and DC dominated the cinemas for 10 years. So popular are the movies that DC quickly builds upon the success, making movies of Blue Devil, Warlord, Blue Beetle, and Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew.
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Post by adamwarlock2099 on Jun 1, 2021 22:33:02 GMT -5
Not bring back Jason Todd as the whiny little shit that he is? I don’t know whose responsible for it but they need to be kicked in the Richard. Did you want to prevent Gerry Conway from creating him, prevent Max Collins from rebooting him into a whiny, jaded and unlikeable character Post-Crisis, prevent Jim Starlin from reverting him back to that characterization after Max Collins had Jason (quickly) evolve out of that initial characterization, or prevent Judd Winnick from bringing whiny Jason back years after Starlin had killed him off? What got me is the movie. I stopped reading Batman comics with Damien cause insufferable .... but Jason coming back and blaming Bruce for his “death” by the Joker when he clearly warned Jason not to go solo and Jason did to find his mother and then made the choice to do what he did in the hopes to save his mother and then when he comes and tires to psychologically shit on and try and coerce Bruce to kill the Joker because it’s “his” fault rather than owning up to the consequences of his own decisions his actions were based on.
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,268
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Post by shaxper on Jun 2, 2021 5:33:50 GMT -5
Did you want to prevent Gerry Conway from creating him, prevent Max Collins from rebooting him into a whiny, jaded and unlikeable character Post-Crisis, prevent Jim Starlin from reverting him back to that characterization after Max Collins had Jason (quickly) evolve out of that initial characterization, or prevent Judd Winnick from bringing whiny Jason back years after Starlin had killed him off? What got me is the movie. I stopped reading Batman comics with Damien cause insufferable .... but Jason coming back and blaming Bruce for his “death” by the Joker when he clearly warned Jason not to go solo and Jason did to find his mother and then made the choice to do what he did in the hopes to save his mother and then when he comes and tires to psychologically shit on and try and coerce Bruce to kill the Joker because it’s “his” fault rather than owning up to the consequences of his own decisions his actions were based on. So you just want to remove the movie from comic book history? For what it's worth, I consider that the second most perfect Batman film adaptation ever made after Mask of the Phantasm, but to each their own! And please watch the language
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,268
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Post by shaxper on Jun 2, 2021 5:39:14 GMT -5
I go back to the early 1990s and tell Jim Shooter about the coup that is brewing and that means to remove him as Valiant's EiC. "What are you talking about?" He asks. "I assure you it's happening right now. I'm a time traveler, and I know things". "Prove it". (I reveal some stuff he said on his blog and that I should not be privy to). "You realize this will have consequeneces for the timeline, don't you?" he says. "I certainly hope so, and it's because you handled time travel paradoxes so well in your first year at Valiant that I want you to keep your job. Oops, here's my Tardis... Gotta go!" Shooter remains in charge at Valiant. Instead of falling apart, like the company did in our timeline, under Shooter's management it continues to grow in popularity and sales. In 1996, following Marvel's bankruptcy, instead of turning to image, they turn to Valiant to handle Heroes Reborn. Shooter once again has Avengers, FF, Iron Man, and Captain America under his banner, and personally guides the creative teams on those four books. The effort is a critical and financial success. Rather than reclaim the titles, Marvel chooses instead to leave those books at Valiant and begins farming out more content and titles to Valiant while they focus on movie rights and toy deals. By 2000, Valiant is licensing and publishing the entire line of Marvel comics - a much smaller, tighter line of 15-20 titles held together by Shooter's continuity that harkens back to Silver Age Marvel. because of this, there's no need for the Ultimate line, as the Heroes Reborn universe is essentially already that. Added to the OP timeline. Well done!
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,268
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Post by shaxper on Jun 2, 2021 5:40:43 GMT -5
2009 - Dan Didio leaves the comics industry to manage the Franklin Mint mail order collectables division. The Flashpoint event and New52 never happen, and DC Comics rights its ship, and continues successfully publishing quality entertainment to this day. The subsequent lack of vapid, flashy, Do-The-Dew storylines fails to attract the attention of Zack Snyder, and the faithful reboot of Superman's movie franchise is in competent hands, and is met with critical and fan praise. The Justice League movie followed to rave reviews and big box-office, and DC dominated the cinemas for 10 years. So popular are the movies that DC quickly builds upon the success, making movies of Blue Devil, Warlord, Blue Beetle, and Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew. You can make a change to the timeline or you can determine its long-term repercussions, but you can't do both. Love the new avatar, by the way.
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Post by Chris on Jun 2, 2021 7:22:46 GMT -5
Whether or not this is a change for the better or not is up to the individual, and how the suggested consequences play out. And while this might seem like I'm going into consequences, everything here is basically just one great big heated meeting in the DC offices with lots of snap decisions being made.
1983(ish)
Editor Julius Schwartz is informed of Crisis On Infinite Earths and how it will streamline DC's continuity by placing all of their characters on one Earth.
Schwartz says this is crazy, if they think that two Flashes and two Green Lanterns seem redundant now, wait til they have to coexist on one Earth. At least now the parallel Earths provide a thin excuse why there are multiple iterations of characters, and why they are different. Put them all in one place and good luck explaining multiple Hawkmen!
And since this will make the Golden Age characters even more redundant than editorial is claiming they already are, what are they going to do? Get rid of the characters? There's a lot of valuable intellectual property in those characters.
Editorial says that Marv Wolfman, being a former Marvel writer, has a better handle on what the fans want than old-timer Schwartz, and nobody but Schwartz cares about the multiple Earths. Schwartz points out that he helped create fandom, and sends his assistant, E. Nelson Bridwell, to go get someone who also helped shape fandom, a DC writer who cares about parallel Earths a great deal - a former Marvel writer named Roy Thomas.
Schwartz, Bridwell, and Thomas lay out their case, and add that without Schwartz relaunching a brand new Flash and Green Lantern, updating the Justice Society into the Justice League, and successfully revamping Batman, DC might not even have much of a comic book universe to streamline. And when editorial counters that a new starting point will allow them to bring in new and better writers, Schwartz angrily points out that he is already well acquainted with quite a few prestigious science fiction writers, how about we give some of them a shot at comics and see how they do?
Editorial relents, but decides they can't just abandon all the time, effort, and research they have invested so far, and start thinking about another project they can do with the material they have. Schwartz says to do whatever they want with it all and exits, satisfied that DC will not be giving him a huge middle finger by destroying his creative legacies. DC leaves intact both the multiverse and the vehicle by which it was introduced - a signature Schwartz character, the Flash.
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Post by DubipR on Jun 2, 2021 8:54:25 GMT -5
1957
Confronting Jack Cole a year before his demise. Talking to him, getting him medical or psychiatric help he might've needed; whether it be from depression or whatever problems he might've had at home. Hopefully with a clearer conscience and new outlook on life, Cole could've given us more Plastic Man, more works for Playboy and Humorama, leading to a long a fruitful career in and out of comics.
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Post by tonebone on Jun 2, 2021 14:56:35 GMT -5
2009 - Dan Didio leaves the comics industry to manage the Franklin Mint mail order collectables division. The Flashpoint event and New52 never happen, and DC Comics rights its ship, and continues successfully publishing quality entertainment to this day. The subsequent lack of vapid, flashy, Do-The-Dew storylines fails to attract the attention of Zack Snyder, and the faithful reboot of Superman's movie franchise is in competent hands, and is met with critical and fan praise. The Justice League movie followed to rave reviews and big box-office, and DC dominated the cinemas for 10 years. So popular are the movies that DC quickly builds upon the success, making movies of Blue Devil, Warlord, Blue Beetle, and Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew. You can make a change to the timeline or you can determine its long-term repercussions, but you can't do both. Love the new avatar, by the way. Ha... sorry.. got caught up in my newfound God-like ability to shape reality.
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Post by chadwilliam on Jun 2, 2021 15:39:31 GMT -5
Whether or not this is a change for the better or not is up to the individual, and how the suggested consequences play out. And while this might seem like I'm going into consequences, everything here is basically just one great big heated meeting in the DC offices with lots of snap decisions being made. 1983(ish) Editor Julius Schwartz is informed of Crisis On Infinite Earths and how it will streamline DC's continuity by placing all of their characters on one Earth. Schwartz says this is crazy, if they think that two Flashes and two Green Lanterns seem redundant now, wait til they have to coexist on one Earth. At least now the parallel Earths provide a thin excuse why there are multiple iterations of characters, and why they are different. Put them all in one place and good luck explaining multiple Hawkmen! And since this will make the Golden Age characters even more redundant than editorial is claiming they already are, what are they going to do? Get rid of the characters? There's a lot of valuable intellectual property in those characters. Editorial says that Marv Wolfman, being a former Marvel writer, has a better handle on what the fans want than old-timer Schwartz, and nobody but Schwartz cares about the multiple Earths. Schwartz points out that he helped create fandom, and sends his assistant, E. Nelson Bridwell, to go get someone who also helped shape fandom, a DC writer who cares about parallel Earths a great deal - a former Marvel writer named Roy Thomas. Schwartz, Bridwell, and Thomas lay out their case, and add that without Schwartz relaunching a brand new Flash and Green Lantern, updating the Justice Society into the Justice League, and successfully revamping Batman, DC might not even have much of a comic book universe to streamline. And when editorial counters that a new starting point will allow them to bring in new and better writers, Schwartz angrily points out that he is already well acquainted with quite a few prestigious science fiction writers, how about we give some of them a shot at comics and see how they do? Editorial relents, but decides they can't just abandon all the time, effort, and research they have invested so far, and start thinking about another project they can do with the material they have. Schwartz says to do whatever they want with it all and exits, satisfied that DC will not be giving him a huge middle finger by destroying his creative legacies. DC leaves intact both the multiverse and the vehicle by which it was introduced - a signature Schwartz character, the Flash. This is a big one and the one I've wondered most about. Let's see... Len Wein remains editor at Batman since sales are doing fine. We still get The Killing Joke, Dark Knight Returns, and in 1989, the movie. No Year One. Doug Moench remains on the titles which will likely expand as Batman's popularity increases following Dark Knight with perhaps a Legends of the Dark Knight styled title giving different writers and artists a run at the character. Frank Miller kicks things off with something like Year One, but which fits into continuity - Sarah Essen, the adultery, Flass, but no baby, no Alfred raising Bruce, plus references to Harvey Harris, Mrs. Chilton, etc. get worked in; Dick Sprang gets a story; Jim Starlin and Berni Wrightson do The Cult, and with Starlin not getting into trouble by killing off Jason Todd (which he suggests but Wein won't permit realizing the consequences) sticks with the character longer than he did. With DC looking to bring more British writers into the fold, we'll hopefully still get Alan Grant on the titles and with him Norm Breyfogle, and Jim Aparo replaces Tom Mandrake over at Batman with Batman and the Outsiders winding down and everyone accepting that with Batman leaving the team anyway, it makes sense for Jim Aparo to be penciling the character somewhere. Sales are such on The Flash that the series still gets cancelled at 350, but the character is allowed to cool his heels in the future a la the ending of Flash 350 as DC waits for the right project for his return. With Julius Schwartz hitting 70 in 1985, he likely won't be overseeing Superman for much longer. The drastic reboot doesn't happen, but DC still looks for outside talent to get sales and interest up. John Byrne takes over on Superman, but works within continuity though the character doesn't quite feel the same as before. With the success of Dark Knight, Byrne has Superman and Batman adopt a "reluctant allies" approach to their relationship (sort of like Mike Barr had them do in Batman and the Outsiders in 1983), Clark Kent and Lana Lang still broadcast the news together on WGBS and a relationship blossoms with Kent deciding it may be time to retire his "meek and mild-mannered" routine, Byrne will still work the occasional piece of skeevy sexual innuendo into his writing before penning the Barda porn tape issue which, this time, DC will reject. Byrne will feel stifled as a result and leave. We'll still get Curt Swan on art duties for DC Comics Presents which isn't cancelled (though World's Finest is due to Superman and Batman no longer being seen as compatible) and eventually, Marv Wolfman will offer some new bold changes while returning the series. He had previously tried to use Vandal Savage in the early 80's in the same way he would use businessman-Luthor in our timeline. Though that petered out, this time around he tries again, has Luthor come up with an invention which benefits Metropolis and the world and - building off of Eliot Maggin's already introduced idea in our timeline that Luthor would one day build LexCorp off of his inventions - we see a Luthor much like the one we got. Superman can't touch him for a while, but knows he hasn't gone straight. The public thinks that Superman is jealous of Luthor's rise in popularity, Luthor delights in this, and things come to an eventual head when Superman exposes with questionable results for the world. We also get a lot more Brainiac as he was in 1983.
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Post by Calidore on Jun 2, 2021 16:04:14 GMT -5
How about a couple of behind-the-scenes scenarios in which hindsight becomes foresight?
1. When someone at First and Comico (and others? Can't remember) floats the idea of trying newsstand distribution, someone else convinces the powers that be that this would be a very bad idea, and it never happens.
2. When someone at Marvel first floats the idea of buying Heroes World for exclusive distributorship, someone else convinces the powers that be that this would be a disastrously bad idea, and it never happens.
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Post by impulse on Jun 2, 2021 16:26:34 GMT -5
Someone pulls aside a young Rob Liefeld and says "son...there are so many comic book artists already. Why don't you try the guitar instead?"
He does.
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