Reader Participation: One-sentence series pitches for existing franchises.
110 Comments | Posted: January 25th, 2009 | Filed under: Thinking About ComicsMy Fantastic Four begins with the heat death of the universe and ends at the dawn of time.
Put yours below.

My version of The Flash would be the speeded up J-Pop/anime version of DC Comics.
Vic Sage’s Question contemplates existence in the near future with Ghost in the Shell style cyborgs.
My Avengers is a cross-time, pan-dimensional, emotionally overwrought, character-driven slugfest that rips through the Marvel Universe every 30 days.
“What is the strange secret of Clark (Lobo) Kent?”
He knows killing Doctor Claw won’t bring Penny back, but for hard boiled gumshoe Inspector Gadget, it’s not about justice anymore, it’s about revenge.
In a world where the strange is usual and the unusual is not strange, the new stories have gotta be really weird to be uncovered only by the country’s leading supermarket tabloid–which is why their new photographer Jimmy Olsen is in for the story of his life!
“It’s House, except instead of keeping patients alive they’re keeping our dimension intact, and instead of Dr. House you have Dr. Strange.”
Hulk smash.
Brother Voodoo battles back-alley conjurors and the living dead while seeking redemption in Post-Katrina New Orleans.
Batman punches everyone… WITH SCIENCE.
My Strikeforce: Morituri would ignore everything that happened from Issue 21 on, and pick up with a new issue 21 continuing the story from where the original creative team left off.
Spider-Man wants his wife back, enter John Constantine.
It is 2003, and Spider Jerusalem is Judith Miller.
Alternate: He partied too hard in the ’80s, and people died. Now, to protect the free world, he has to dust off the Wayfarers and go undercover in the brutal world of international extreme partying. Summer 2010: That guy that Bruce Willis played in the Seagram’s wine cooler commercials is going to find himself OFF THE LIST.
My Spider-Man begins and ends with heartbreak, with love and the Vulture sandwiched in between.
Jimmy Olsen, king of Atlantis.
We are ALL Captain America.
My Superman would have him teaming up with Solaris to save the future from the invasion on an evil Legion.
My Batman would have Alfred and Batman risking their lives to save Robin. In the 853rd century.
It’s like all the hours of Frost-Nixon times a million, but with Morrison and Moore chatting and living together on a 24-7 live feed turned into a comic book of many casts of a bunch of fiction pieces acting out Finnegans Wake in many media formats. It ultimately ends with the sea’s end (big crunch or whatever) into the start’s river (Morrison and Moore realizing they’ve just enacted an “Adam & Eve’s Big Bang Ritual” on shrooms — one is without a rib bone, in a scene very much like a cosmic tantric romantic psychedelic novelle vague version of “Saw”).
Aztek: The Ultimate Stoner.
The X-Men aren’t Children of the Atom; they’re Our Children.
We open on a misty fjord and Mr. Immortal is playing checkers with a robed figure.
Chuck Taine and Tenzil Kem, trapped in 1934, have to make their way as hoboes from New York City to Miami Beach in time to stop Benn Pares from stealing the Hope Diamond… and to get their wives Luornu and Eve away from millionaire playboys Lee Travis and Bruce Wayne!
Marvel Adventures replaces the current “Marvel Universe” for the good of all.
Wolverine working nights as a ‘courtesy boy’ in a Partytreff-style sex club. We could get Kyle Baker to draw it!
Hulk raps!(I have pitch for this one…)
Supergirl as 70′s shojo.
The All-New All-Different X-Men; they aren’t a team, they’re a revolution.
The Avengers as the mixtape/mashup of the Marvel Universe best played at 300bpm.
My Doom Patrol starts in wreckage, ends in wreckage,and costars a megalomaniacal telepathic penguin.
I could do these all day.
My Mr. Miracle begins with a retirement party, but not even the world’s greatest escape artist can escape destiny.
The Runaways, the Young Avengers, and every other Marvel teen character go to one private school… run by DOOM.
Just bring back Marvel Team-up, goddammit.
Billy Batson discovers other magic words that change him into…other things.
Cloak & Dagger have a three way with Spoiler and then she dies.
I punch Chris Sims in the brain for 22 pages every month.
Nextwave 2.0 – Aaron Stack, Awesome Andy and the Livewires show the Marvel U that you should never send a mutant to do a robot’s job.
Wonder Tot and Super-Baby team up with Baby Jesus to form The Super Toddlers.
In the first six issues they fight their grown-up counterparts.
Superman battles the one villain he can’t escape from — super-rabies from Krypto!
My Swamp Thing…begins in the swamp…and ends in the Big City…with lost of ellipsis…in between.
Only one man can save the world from certain destruction, and it is not the Green Arrow.
Gotham City legalises same-sex marriage and the Joker tricks Batman into marrying him. Hijinks ensue.
(Alternatively, at the altar Batman says “Over my dead body” and dies to great publicity)
Darkseid : The College Years.
Charter members of the new Lantern corps set up by Mr. Mxyzptlk and his “Guardians of the Multiverse”: Harley Quinn, Perry White, Jonah Hex, and Bizarro-G’nort.
Kevin Church takes all our one sentence pitches and rewrites them slightly, then submits them and achieves comics immortality.
How will the world react to Pope Optimus Prime?
Alfred vs Jarvis in the ultimate showdown in “Two Butlers Enter, One Butler Leaves!”.
The Punisher wrestles with his toughest job yet — babysitting the next door neighbor’s 12 kids for the weekend!!!
My Ghost Rider is not longer ghost nor rider, as a skeleton with a flaming skull wearing a leather jacket is severed at the waist by a demon and his lower half is magically replaced by a motorcycle.
Man-Thing gets a show on the travel channel, samples exotic barbeque around the world.
Checkmate rounds up all of DC’s legacy war heroes, including the new ENEMY ACE, Sgt. Rock’s grandson, and a new generation of Creature Commandos. For a second sentence, the first arc is “Closing the Closers”, dealing with the shadowy organization from XERO.
Black Hulk smash racism! (but who is Black Hulk?)
My Fantastic Four is a family comic that very strongly resembles Bob Sagat’s version of “The Aristocrats.”
Jimmy Olsen sees metahumans all the time, but who are these mysteriously powered animals who keep appearing in Metropolis, and what does The Dog of Steel have to do with them?
Wonder Woman helps Sgt. Rock, The Haunted Tank and The Losers defeat Hitler’s newest threat: Thor!
So there’s a dude who drives a taxi — wait for it! — IN SPACE.
Jesus Christ, Teen Detective.
Pip the Troll Team-Up: where every issue, Pip seeks out a new guest-star to defend him from the irate guest-star from last issue.
If Batroc fails, EARTH DIES!
Brother Power the Geek runs for President in 2012 on a “Change You Can SEE” platform, wins this time.
A multi-issue arc of “The Flash” crammed with love, death, adventure, betrayal, honor, and redemption, all within a span of three hundred milliseconds: the length of an eye-blink.
Y:ellowjacket: The Last Man: Wanda Maximoff declares “No More Men,” depopulating the Earth of all males except Henry Pym and his companion, Ken Hale the Gorilla Man.
Religious upheaval shakes Metropolis when ninety-five arguments casting Superman as a force for evil are nailed to the door of a cathedral by Martin Luthor.
NIGHTWING: Dick Grayson decides to clean up Vanity, the worst city in America, with nothing but a pair of Escrima sticks, boundless optimism, and joie de vivre.
WONDER WOMAN: Diana becomes an Special Ambassador for the United Nations, authorized to engage hostile parties in combat if negotiations fail.
FANTASTIC FOUR: The FF travel to Renaissance Italy after Reed becomes obsessed with proving Leonardo DaVinci was not a Skrull.
SUB-MARINER: It’s an underwater version of “The Fugitive” as Stingray is assigned to bring Namor to justice for an act of terrorism against the surface world he didn’t commit.
Doctor Strange violates every oath he has ever taken and countless laws of magic to resurrect a worthless, spiteful, lonely man, and in so doing, Strange brings down upon the world the wrath of a dozen godlike beings — and nobody can figure out why.
Jughead Jones: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.
On the first page of my Aquaman run, Atlantis sinks and annexes Manhattan.
Amanda Waller blows up, falls in a swamp, becomes The Black Thing and stars in her own comic; Tales You Wouldn’t Understand.
Superman is an advocate for social justice with a science fiction theme and a professional wrestling level of action.
When Reed Richard’s 1st annual Interdimensional science symposium ends in murder, Ken Hale is the only man who can set things right.
Off his meds, Henry Pym organizes a family reunion. Unfortunately, Ultron is family too. And he brought the kids along.
A new nation, created from thousands of floating platforms in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and free from international law, is a nightmare of lawlessness and petty tyranny…until a man in orange and green arises from the waves to bring justice.
So Spider-Man, see, he makes a deal with the Devil, and now he’s no longer married, and–huh? What do you mean, it’s been done? Are you serious??
Deadpool gets transported to the Crystal Palace by accident but the coordinates of Earth-616 are lost, so his only hope is to travel (or ‘leap’) around the multiverse and fix it, in the hope that the next leap, is the leap home…
The Hypno Hustler and Klaw’s awesome scheme kicks off just as Mr Fantastic experiments with the harmonic resonations of Cosmic Cube and the M’Kraan Crystal, resulting in the whole Marvel universe being rewritten… TO ROCK! (Cue an issue of pin-ups of characters playing guitar, leading up to Mephisto vs Galactus rock-off while the Watcher throws up the horns!)
Fing Fang Foom, accidentally left behind when his family flies to France for Christmas, has to defend his home against a pair of bumbling burglars.
Brother Voodoo, Man-Thing, Zombie, Satana, Werewolf by Night, Son of Satan, and Morbius the Living Vampire in a Seven Soldiers of Victory-style series of interconnected mini’s having absolutely positively nothing to do with Marvel Zombies.
Robocop meets The Bourne films as Deathlok awakens & escapes into a new world, fighting Norman Osborn’s HAMMER task force reprogramming while trying to avoid recapture and hunt down The Hood & his gang for revenge.
Faster Faster Thrill Thrill: a 70′s exploitation extravaganza as She-Hulk, Tigra, & Dazzler try to get away from it all with a cross country road trip only to come face to face with the super-powered Bonnie & Clyde known as Absorbing Man & Titania.
The Savage Land and W’Kanda are dying & under attack by seemingly unrelated foes as kings Ka-Zar & Black Panther, joined by their queens Shanna the She-Devil and Storm, realize that they cannot fight it alone in a story inspired by the pulp stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lester Dent.
I replace all the heroes of Avengers and X-Men in all his titles with Wolverine and clones of him.
O’Shaunnesey, Cairo, and Gutman seek, steal and eventually lose the original Green Lantern, resulting in it’s falling into Alan Scott’s posession–thanks to Zatara!
Avengers: Boogie Knights
The Fantastic Four team up with The Beatles to fight Doctor Doom. Follow-up: Spider-Man teams up with The Monkees to fight The Sinister Six.
It’s “Thelma and Louise” but with Dart from “Atari Force” and Princess Lana from “Captain N: The Gamemaster.”
A fraternity of nerds (Bruce Banner, Peter Parker, Reed Richards and Ted Kord) must take on the dominant fraternity of jocks (Thor, Hercules, Superman and Strong Guy) for control of the Greek Council, acceptance and the heart of Wonder Woman and her sorority of Greek Goddesses. Hi jinks ensue.
Arthur…Arthur Curry! King of the wild frontier!
Two best friends (Booster Gold and Blue Beetle) must convince people that their boss (Deadman) is still alive through a weekend of wackiness.
Buddies Solomon Grundy and Bizarro share an apartment together in a building exclusive for women forcing the friends to dress up as women when entering and exiting the building and try to fool the suspicious landlord Tigra!
Dogwelder (Vertigo)
Three words: Joe Matt’s Spider-Man.
THE BIG ONE: Vic Sage travels the afterlife(s), encountering fallen heroes and villains, getting answers, and questioning Authority.
ACTION COMICS and DETECTIVE COMICS: Keep the stars for the feature, but add a backup feature showcasing lesser used heroes and detectives.
JUSTICE BRIGADE OF AMERICA: Inspired and backed by the JSA, a group of 8 to 14-year-olds help their communities and school mates in a socially-conscious book for all ages.
Iron Fist and Rom Spaceknight blow up a textiles factory while trying to apprehend ruthlessly intelligent drug lord Henry McCoy. New police chief J. Jonah Jameson insists that commissioner Hulk is going to ‘have his ass on a plate’ and chastises the two ‘loose cannons’ for being ‘out of control’. Stripped of their badges and guns, the duo is going to have to take McCoy down off the books. With Rom’s 1973 gran torrino. Adorned with the iron fist logo on the hood.
Dr. Alan Moore, Sorcerer Supreme, and Stan Lee, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, stand alone against the Garth Ennis, Sith Lord.
Reid Fleming tells you to shut up and punches your mom in the face.
It’s the 1960s, and the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest thief”, the Black Fox, romances beautiful heiresses before stealing their priceless jewels; but who will catch up with him first, Interpol or the Maggia?
Raised by the Kiowa as Ke-Woh-No-Tay (He Who Is Less Than Human) and known to white men as the Scalphunter, Brian Savage brings his own brand of justice to the frontier; but just what is his connection to the immortal Vandal Savage?
Sons of the Tiger: action, romance, humor and more in this saga of a martial arts school in Hong Kong
When college dropout Rick Sheridan and his alien counterpart, the Sleepwalker, switch places, Rick is trapped in the surreal Mind Scape, while the Sleepwalker haunts the streets of New York City
On an Earth where the Axis nations were victorious in WWII, the Phantom Lady aids the French resistance; the Black Condor rises from the ruins of an Incan city; the Human Bomb carries the secrets of Nazi science in his veins; and the Doll Man brings a message of peace from another world; along with the time traveler, “Uncle Sam”, they are the Freedom Fighters.
Reid Fleming punches everyone who writes more than one one sentence.
My version of (fill in the blank) is just like the current version – except that it is good – the heroes are heroic, death is meaningful and happens no more than once every 5 years, the stories all work as “jumping on points,” kids can enjoy them, the entire series is printed on cheap paper and sold in 7-11 stores and newstands.
Reared on the mean streets of Vathlo Island, only one mutha was bad enough (and highly developed enough) to escape the destruction of his home planet–make way, suckas, for Kal-X, Soul Survivor Of Krypton!
Reid Fleming catches a ride to Krypron, tells Jor-El to shut up and punches Krypton into oblivion.
Care Bears: Judgement Day.
Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE, teaches recent draftees THE CREATURE COMMANDOS, valuable lessons about life and love and replacing limbs torn off during battle.
Oracle and her Birds of Prey spend one perfect week doing nothing but enforce the basic fucking rules of grammar, punctuation and spelling on the Internet.
Next week on SMALLVILLE: the only force who can save Clark from Doomsday’s might is… his future self!
Reared on the mean streets of Vathlo Island, only one mutha was bad enough (and highly developed enough) to escape the destruction of his home planet–-make way, suckas, for Kal-X, Soul Son Of Krypton!
(Corrected, due to bleariness on my part in my original post.)
“Robocop meets The Bourne films as Deathlok awakens & escapes into a new world, fighting Norman Osborn’s HAMMER task force reprogramming while trying to avoid recapture and hunt down The Hood & his gang for revenge.”
I would love to see the above book.
Robin, The Teen Wonder, is framed for the murder of the president and must go on the lam when even the Batman is convinced of his guilt! Running out of options, Robin is forced to seek help from the only hero who believes he is innocent….The Odd Man!
Bueno Excellente of the Six Pack is back…and randy…and sweaty…”Heh heh…Bueno…”
Returning from 20 years of stasis, the Space Knight is upgraded to CD-ROM, and completely outmatched by dire wraiths in the haunted USB FlashDrive.
Mr. Mxyzptlk gets a taste of his own medicine when Superman decides to kill a few hours in the fifth dimension and becomes “The Super House Guest from Hell!”
The Baby New Gods
One more just in case anybody checks back in:
WWII superheroines Golden Girl, Sun Girl and Blonde Phantom team up to protect their retirement community in Boca from nefarious land-developers backed by the Red Skull.
Mephisto’s time-tampering accidentally causes Assistant Editors’ Month to become mainline continuity, leading to an enraged, cosmically powered Aunt May beating the stuffing out him and restoring her nephew’s marriage.
Usagi Yojimbo and Samurai Cat team up to battle Aku and Fing Fang Foom.
Amalgam-style Empowered/Major Bummer crossover book!
Hugh Jackman brings all his considerable talents to the fold, reprising his role as Wolverine in the new Mutant musical extravaganza– VIVA GENOSHA!
Post modern meta-comedy gets a facelift as Garfield Minus Garfield transforms the survival horror genre with, ALF: HE, WHO EATS CATS.
The Metal Men? So last-century, Daddy-o. Meet their teen-hipster upgrades, THE YOUNG ALLOYS! Haney-rific heroes for a new generation! (Special note from Dan D: “When they grind on the dance floor, they really grind on the dance floor!”
Okay, that was five sentences, but hey, no one’s reading this thread anymore anyway!
Harvey, dude: Section Eight was the team, Sixpack was the guy. Blondie was the band.
Lessons in Perspective by Rob Liefeld
Scott Pilgrim is the next Grendel.
A “What If” adventure in which Doctor Doom forsook science and magic for an even darker calling: Heavy Metal.