The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent
vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums
here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules
document is now in effect.
TLB's Secret Community Project - Finally Revealed
Posts
That is some awesome neo-silver age whackyness I can get behind!
Not so much direct mind control: think of it as having a little Joseph Stalin in a devil’s costume on your shoulder suggesting you do bad things with your shiny new superpowers.
"Передача Начинается…Greetings Comrade. This is Project Everyman Superpower Superman. Ve have given you flying pover so that escape and avoid gulag, Da? As token of small appreciation, kindly destroy radio tower…big trouble for moose and squirrel! Da!... Конец Передачи"
Think bigger. What if in the middle of a meeting of the House Un-American Activities Committee, Sen. McCarthy secretly gets zapped by the soviets and thinks everyone else around him is speaking commie gibberish...and he just so happens to now be able to shoot napalm out of his fingertips. Capitalism's only hope would be Senator Strom Thurmond superpowered with the ability to manipulate water.
Like I said, hilarity would ensue.
God, I love this concept...I could spin it so many different ways.
Though I think as an added twist have the commie satellite be in orbit, but not work until modern day. Just a thought.
Time period wise, if we're going by Sputnik I, the earliest that satellites could be established would be late 1950s with the mid-1960s as to when commercial satellite launches were common. However, that's way over-thinking the concept and ruining the fun.
Let's keep it simple and absurd: Like if some joker were to register his dog in his place on the registry list and the satellite decided to utilize the dog in a pinch.
and hell it is my idea if you aren't having fun with it get out is what I say
There is another aspect to it though. These satellites will have to be very, very smart to talk to so many people in such a complicated way. What will happen when they start talking to each other?
(Oh yeah, I volunteer to write for this if you're short of writers, but I have no experience and can't draw so I have no problem being low on the list.)
it's an anthology after all, so everyone who thinks they can write pitch a story
eeeeeeeeeeeh.....
JordynNolz.com <- All my blogs (Shepard, Wasted, J'onn, DCAU) are here now!
Is there a specific font you'll be using?
Format/page size?
Do you like like me? (Y/N)
Picturing a flashback kind of thing, where the person in question is falling to his/her death after beating a random supervillian in a mid air fistfight, and seeing their life pass before their eyes. Maybe as a way of showing some backstory, the person is old, and saw the early debates on the morality of forcing regular people into being temporary superheroes, then watched the satellite being launched. He saw the first sentrys making big news, and can see how they are just another part of life on a super-powered planet now, barely more notable then a car wreck.
It could end with a real super hero (as in, not a civilian on sentry duty[are you still using that?]) showing up just in time to save the person from a horific splattery death or, should a writer be so inclined, a horrific splattery death with a real super hero showing up just too late.
Another story that might be interesting, what if the civilians had to select their powers when registering for sentry duty? The satellite has to choose someone at the latest threat site, but noone with a suitable power selection can be found near enough, so it has to keep sending expendable civilians at a target they've got no chance against just trying to delay it until Captain Invincible can show up and save the day. Might be a challenge to think of enough useful powers that would be useless in a specific situation though. As an example, imagine a person who can control plants trying to fight the Human Torch. It's not likely to go very well for Mr Smith, local botanist.
edit: And I see by reading the thread that I'm not the first to imagine Joe Schmoe falling to a horrific death after serving his country.
Goddammit! I *just* submitted an idea based on this and yours is frigging better!
I'm curious as to what your idea was. Tell me, I promise I won't steal it, rewrite it to make it a million times more awesome and then submit it as my own. This is an easy promise to make because I'm fucking lazy.
Ha! Nah, it's cool. I fully admit to not being very good at this.
The idea was a straightforward face-off between a young guy zapped for the first time, and a scientist who uses a robot suit to give himself superpowers (they called me mad, the fools!) and ends up causing chaos. The character would be very Jaime Reyes - likeable, decent, inexperienced hero type. The story would be very straighforward until the very end, when he uses the ability to fly to defeat the bad guy - which immediately causes his powers to cut out so he plunges to his death.
My idea was that the hero would be set up to be the, well, hero, and would be someone the readers would expect (or hopefully like) to see more of. Then he would die. I may have watched a bit too much Joss Whedon. I think the scientist would end up becoming something of a regular though, feeling horribly guilty that his invention caused the death of a "mere child" (yes, the hero would be 18 but we're talking crazy old scientist here) - which in turn becomes rage against the satellite and what the scientist considers its disregard for the lives of its sentries. That's all.
Story opens on a regular dude sitting on his fire escape, listening to a police scanner, and writing in his journal, which serves as the narration for the story. His writes that he's always wanted to be a superhero and how, since the launch of the satellites, he's dedicated all his free time to sitting around, listening to a police scanner for supervillain activity that he can intercede in. He rambles for a bit about how he's gotten close a few times, only to be stopped by other circumstances; stuck in traffic, flat tire on his car, fell asleep, etc. his narration them flows into a full on wish-fulfillment fantasy about what it'll be like when he finally gets zapped.
How he'll arrive on the scene, just as a "real" superhero, the greatest in all the city, has fallen. How he'll pummel the villain, even as he, outclassed and outmatched, gets brutalized in return, with their fight ending in one titanic, Superman/Doomsday exchange of blows, which ultimately results in his own death, as he rests in the arms of a very grateful, very attractive, civilian. "It's cool though," he muses, "Everyone knows all the great superheroes never stay dead. They always come back. And me? I'm going to be the best."
The twist would be that, interspersed with his fantasy, would be silent panels of him reacting with excitement to the police scanner, running down his fire escape, finding a supervillain robbing a bank, getting zapped with powers, and then having an extremely ugly, very un-comic book-like, knock-down, drag-out fight that ends with both parties laying sprawled out among the debris, the "hero" looking around the crowd of wary onlookers, his swollen eyes finally shutting, leaving the reader unsure of whether he survived the fight.
Title: Heroic Bloodshed
A bit melodramatic, but I see a big, superpower-grantin' satellite as being Superhero Fan Wish Fulfillment 101, and I think that acknowledging, and then subverting that, could be kind of interesting. But I've been wrong before.
Tumblr Twitter
Edit: But that's okay, because TLB said no Faynor stories because he doesn't want people to remember me after I die.
Seems to me that all you need is a buncha dudes to kill for your Immortality Potion, Faynor.
It does seem like the concept lends itself well to the idea. I mean, if someone told me I could get temporary superpowers if I happened to stand near a supervillain while he was tearing shit up, I'd have a hard time resisting the urge to give it a shot. You only live once and all that.
Tumblr Twitter
and jordyn you better do this
you better.
see, the picking a power as you register was an idea I toyed with originally, but I think people being dumb on the fly just lends itself to serving the characters more.
unless they are really good and I can steal them and say they were my own
and i am short so it will be extra embarrassing if I do
your deadline is tuesday
do it
give me your money and your tiny titans sketches and you won't get hurt
oh no my one weakness
I had a similar idea, but it involved a guy creating accidents in order to be given powers. It wouldn't work the first few times because better candidates were in the area.
I think it would end with him driving a bus full of kids off a cliff, and then all the kids gain powers and fly away and he ends up crashing.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Mr. Glass, minus the crippling infirmity?
Anyway, I'm going to try to think of something else, but after I'm done hashing out the details of my Silver Age hero entry of course.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation