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Eric Sofer
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Posted: 17 November 2019 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply

This is for our buddy Robbie, who we haven't in nearly enough time.

I want you to suppose what has actually been tried once or twice at DC - change the heroes with the origins and powers. DC had a couple of 60s story, "The Day Superman Became the Flash", and "Crisis On Earth-A" in JLA, and they published a couple of Elseworlds - "Speeding Bullets" and "In Darkest Knight (sic?)". 

Marvel did it too in a couple of What IF- stories. The Punisher became Captain America, Tony Stark became the Sorcerer Supreme, Betty Brant, Flash Thompson, and John Jameson became Spider-Man, etc.

Take one or two of our heroes - or goodness, a complete stranger if it makes a fun idea - and change their super hero ID. A bit more than "Matt Murdock as Spider-Man." Maybe a little speculation into how that would work.

For example: Oliver Queen fell off a cruise boat, came ashore on a deserted island, and taught himself archery - but a couple of friends who saw him go over followed him. They became even closer friends, and remained a team - until the robbers who landed there found them, and killed the two non-Ollie members.

That evening in twilight, half crazed, Oliver is staggering around the island, swearing vengeance - but not as Queen. He must become someone else. He must become something else.

Suddenly, a swarm of bats comes flying out of a cavern, and he gets it. Making up a quick, ramshackle outfit, with a bat head covering, the hero quickly takes down the robbers. And thus is born that black archer of vengeance... Batman!

Obviously, you can leave in or out any other heroes you want. Maybe it's a little fun... let's try it.
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Jabari Lamar
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Posted: 17 November 2019 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

Meanwhile, in Gotham City, Bruce Wayne has returned home after a decade abroad where he's trained himself to physical and mental perfection, and is preparing to wage war on crime. But while has the skills, he thinks he still needs some kind of psychological edge to fight crime, something to make criminals immediately fear him. As he sits in his father's old study, contemplating the fact that "criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot" he suddenly feels something on his hand. "Ow!" a spider just bit him. "That's it! It's an omen. I shall become a spider!"

And thus is born the legend of SPIDERMAN.
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Brian Hague
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Joined: 14 November 2006
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Posted: 17 November 2019 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Someone in Steve Rogers' command hierarchy realizes the handicap with which they've saddled their super-soldier, keeping him a lowly private. He's moved over to the army air corps and becomes a pilot, going down while pursuing enemy spies over the Bermuda Triangle. He is rescued by a race of Amazon women, one of whom competes in a contest to win the right to take him back to the States. Steve is killed in a treacherous attack upon the hospital by the Red Skull, and the Amazon, Diana, takes up his shield and colors to defend the values and country he represented... as Captain America!

Martha Wayne returns home to Wayne Manor after her husband and son are killed in a random street crime. Alfred, the family's loyal retainer and a man with some considerable military history, teaches her a few things about self-defense. She becomes obsessed with gaining greater and greater skills, developing a single minded obsession with seeing the guilty get what's coming to them. She develops a blackout ray so she can operate under the cover of darkness as... the Phantom Lady!

A rocket from Krypton bearing a small child lands in the Egyptian desert where passing Bedouins take it with them as they seek shelter from an oncoming sandstorm in the crevices of a nearby pyramid. The child returns to the area many times over the course of his young life, searching for the craft he is said to have arrived in. Investigating the pyramid, he is able to make his way inside, where a series of traps and deadfalls bring him face to face with another visitor from the stars... the fabled Orb of Ra! Transformed by the strange radiation from the object, he is made into something even more inhuman than he was before... The Metamorphae! 

When young Johnny Storm is lost in battle with a strange shape-changing alien, the weird creature discovers that life is not all fun and games. Determined to make amends for his inadvertently causing the death of a young being of whom there are not thousands upon thousands of identical copies, as things are back home, he begins to fight crime, glowing with a bright, green flame as... the Poppup Toaster!

Wandering from the group on a school field trip to the wilds of Canada, young Peter Parker is attacked by a local carnivore, made radioactive by the goings-on at a nearby secret research facility. Parker's ruined body is taken inside the complex where it is found the bites of the mutated animal have increased the boy's strength and healing abilities. Taking advantage of his greater ability to recover from surgery, the morally-bankrupt team of scientists "repair" the damage done to him with adamantium and cybernetics. Can Peter live with what he has become and what his keepers now expect of him as an agent for the Canadian government... codenamed the Wolverine? 

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Brian Hague
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Posted: 17 November 2019 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

A bedraggled sailing man winds up in the town of Sweethaven in 1929 where he falls for a sweet-natured young woman with a large family. When her father is killed by robbers in 1931, the sailor joins the police force to track down those responsible. Proving remarkably adept at police work and the occasional knock-down-drag-out when necessary, he and his lady move from storm-beset Sweethaven to the big city where he encounters an ever-growing list of weirdos and bad guys which he combats still attired in his battered yellow rain slicker. While others on the force keep in touch with one another via wrist radios, our hero largely goes it alone since they can't make a strap for one large enough to wrap all the way around his enormous forearms... such is life for the deteckatiff man from the high seas known as... Plainclothes Popeye! 

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Brian Hague
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Posted: 18 November 2019 at 12:38am | IP Logged | 5 post reply

Delayed in getting out to the spot where young Rick Jones has foolishly wandered onto a military test site, Dr. Bruce Banner is far too close to his experimental Gamma Bomb when it goes off. The boy is killed and Dr. Banner is blown to atoms. Over the course of next few weeks, Gamma Base is haunted by the half-formed ghost of the scientist, appearing again and again, trying to re-form his scattered self. All too soon, he is successful, reappearing in the air as the Gamma radiation saturated figure of rage and madness the army will come to call... Dr. NewMexico!

Fleeing the comforting arms of Dr. Leslie Thompkins following the deaths of his parents, young Bruce Wayne staggers alone in the rain through the streets of the city until he comes upon a mysterious cloaked figure who directs him down into an abandoned subway tunnel. A large dark train glides forward, decorated in arcane symbols, transporting the traumatized boy to a series of caves beneath his own house. There, a horrifying and ancient bat-creature which hisses at him as it breathes the dank air reappears, having met Bruce once before. The gray thing tells him he may take on the form of a magical champion and avenge his parents if he will accept a cursed gift from a small band of all-but-forgotten gods... An incantation charged with the dark, supernatural powers of Barastyr, Lord of Death and Decision; Aminon, Gatekeeper of the Underworld; Tlepsh, blacksmith to the Gods; Mamber; Lord of Wolves; Aefsati, God of the Hunt; and the Narts, Legendary giants of the Causcasian Mountains... powers which may now be his at the utterance of a single word... "BATMAN!" Thus is born the avenging figure... Captain Bat! And woe betide those who would work mischief upon the innocent under his watchful eye...


Edited by Brian Hague on 18 November 2019 at 2:10am
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Eric Sofer
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Posted: 18 November 2019 at 10:06am | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Brian my lad, I KNEW I could count on you!

Ben Grimm, test pilot, loses control of a new model jet he's checking out for the RAF. Crashing down in a Norwegian field, he is mauled by the damage, half biting through his tongue, in excruciating pain.

But to Ben Grimm, surrender is an unknown concept. Crawling out of the smoldering wreckage, inch by agonizing into cover of a cave. He finds a stick that he realizes he could to support him while waiting for rescue. He starts to stand, and strikes the cane on the ground as he rises.

In a roar of lightning and thunder and smoke, a force envelopes the pilot, transforming him. The new power invigorates him, and partially heals his wounds, although he will always speak with a lisp, and always suffer in pain. And thus, he becomes... MIGHTY THOR!

------

Dr. Will Magnus, a master of robotics, has used his newest invention to create robots as lifelike as humans. Thus, implemented with Responsometers, he has created - Iron Man! Sarge Steel! Golden Eagle! Silver Agent! The Tin Man! And the beautiful but impetuous Quicksilver!

------

During the war with Morgaine Le Fey at the last days of Camelot, Merlin uses his powers to summon an alien entity from the future to merge with Brian Kent, the Silent Knight - Merlin's agent among the civilians. Although this alien is mighty, he is still not enough to turn the tide of war. Finally admitting defeat, Merlin transforms Brian back to human form, but gives him the ability to summon his other self through the ages.

Brian Kent becomes a wanderer through time, performing acts of truth and justice. When a crisis arises, he merely speaks the formula given him by Merlin:
"Free the might from fleshy mire,
"Boil the blood in golden fire!
"Gone, gone the form of man,
"Rise the hero... SUPERMAN!"
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Steve Coates
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Joined: 17 November 2014
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Posted: 18 November 2019 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Do you think Plainclothes Popeye would wear a different hat?
Popeye CGI by Hossein Diba and a frame capture of Gene Hackman as Popeye Doyle from the French Connection (2?) movie.


Edited by Steve Coates on 18 November 2019 at 12:44pm
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Ron Grant
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Joined: 18 December 2016
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Posts: 241
Posted: 18 November 2019 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Eric,
your post reminded me of something from my child hood  Batman 256 (1974)



Edited by Ron Grant on 18 November 2019 at 8:57pm
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Nathan Greno
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Posted: 19 November 2019 at 10:15am | IP Logged | 9 post reply

Those Batman 256 pages are pretty funny — makes Bruce feel super impressionable...ANYTHING could be an omen! 

A suit of armor cashes in front of him — it’s an omen! 

Brunt toast pops out of the toaster — it’s an omen! 


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Eric Sofer
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Posted: 19 November 2019 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

Steve Coates - I got you on picking your Popeye in Poughkeepsie.
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Brian Hague
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Posted: 22 November 2019 at 7:21am | IP Logged | 11 post reply

I find the Iron Knight kind of funny, given the amount of body armor we're told our Bat-line swinging acrobatic hero wears today. Also, it's slightly prescient in regards to 1989's Tim Burton version, who collected suits of armor before creating his own.

I liked your latest heroes, Eric. Verily, I say unto thee, Yancy Street hath best beware. 

Is the lisp there to play on the rhyme, "A thunder god went for a ride/ Upon his favorite filly/ "I'm Thor!" he cried/ The horse replied,/ "You forgot your thaddle, thilly..." ?

While I very much prefer your origin, believe it or not, there already is a canonical Superman/Demon mash-up, said to exist on Earth-13 (or 17, depending on where you look) who was sent by Merlin from the planet Kamelot. 

Also, a nice array of Metal Men. I'm a Metal Men fan going way back, and I can picture this group you've concocted. Fun stuff!

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Scott Wagahoff
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Posted: 22 November 2019 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

It looks like The Iron Knight just stands on that ledge and observes. 
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