My Epic Comics Proposals

I've been asked several times what I'm doing. Well, no one ever said I was good at following my own advice. {smile} I submitted proposals in the two of the "least likely to get approved" categories: an all-original series, and a story featuring one of Marvel's headlining properties. And sure enough: both were rejected (after 8 weeks of waiting). I'm also thinking about a couple other Marvel-U proposals, but since I seem to be way off from what Epic is looking for in a script (the rejection letters were pretty clear about that), I'm not sure if it's worth the bother. I don't want the ideas to be shared only between me and some editor at Epic, so I'm saying a little about them here. (If a script falls in the forest, and no one draws it, does it make a sound effect?)

I'm not going to say anything about the all-original limited series I proposed, because I decided (even before they turned it down) to publish it myself or shop it around, and I don't want to unveil something that's probably going to take me a few years to do on my own (i.e. doing all the work in my spare time, since I won't be getting checks from Marvel). It was a huge long-shot to begin with, and the more I found out about what the Epic editors were looking for (and trying to avoid) the more sure I was that they wouldn't publish it: too long, too controversial, and the "Ultimate" tag I'd put on it didn't help either. I may develop it more (or one of the other all-original ideas I'm kicking around) and submit it to Dark Horse's "New Recruits" program. Most of my ideas will eventually be showing up online via Zero Mass Media. But we were talking about Epic...

My existing-headliners-in-the-Marvel-Universe proposal was a self-contained "What If...?" story featuring the Fantastic Four. Why did I think Marvel would let me do a book featuring valuable, soon-to-be-a-household-name characters? I didn't, really. But I figured they might go for it, because it's definitely different from what they've been doing with them, it's only one issue, and it wouldn't harm the Marvel Universe in any way because it was "out of continuity". And because it featured the FF as gay, bi, lesbian, and transgender characters, it'd probably get some press coverage and decent sales, which might interest them. But I didn't set out to write a FF story; I set out to write a certain kind of story and the FF just happened to be the best vehicle for it. Doing queer versions of Blastaar, Omega the Unknown, Jack of Hearts, and Rocket Raccoon wouldn't have worked; they had to be like a family, they had to be familiar or self-evident enough to not require an origin story, and like Bill Jemas says in his advice: the powers had to be clear metaphors for the characters' identities. Plus the names were all so perfect: Mr. Fabulous, the Human Flame, the Invisible Lesbian, and Miss Thing. I wrote this story mostly for the fun of it, and having done that, I have no place else to take it but Epic, because it's tied so completely to Marvel's characters. (Which is why I generally encourage creators to focus their efforts on stories and characters they have control over. Think about this: I've already done my whole job as a writer with this issue (except possible revisions), and I'll never get paid for it.) If you're curious, you can read it (for a limited time only) here.

What follows are ideas I'm currently working on or planning. (Any Epic editors either click "Back" now, or take a copy of my Idea Submission Form from your files and apply it to this page.) You'll quickly notice a common theme. Before you write if off as an obsession, a creative limitation, or (worse) a "political agenda", allow me to explain: First, the one thing that really inspired me to want to play with Marvel's toys was the thought of doing something different and interesting with them. Second, gay superheroes are a niche that hardly anyone seems to be working in at the major publishers, and one that I feel I can do pretty well. My ideas for other projects generally have nothing to do with either rainbows or spandex.

For the most part, the idea of doing a series reviving a minor character leaves me cold, but someone recently pointed out to me that no one has really dealt with Northstar's sexuality since he came out a whole decade ago, which intrigues me. The original Alpha Flight series didn't do anything with it after the infamous #106, and got cancelled a couple years later, and since then his sexuality has either been shoved under the rug (in his solo mini-series), or just received a sympathetic scene here and there (recent X-Men stories). A story which really dealt with it could be interesting. The tricky part would be not treating it as a "Whatever happened to Northstar?" story, which Epic does not want... or rehashing a bunch of old Alpha Flight subplots. An encouraging omen (if you believe in such things) is that a title occurs to me which fits the character like a latex, er, glove, and also suggests a theme: Northstar: Orientation, the story of his lifelong effort to "find his way" in the world. And I'd love a chance to give him an actual boyfriend; dude needs to get laid. {grin} I know I have the gay aspect covered, I think I can deal with the Canadian angle (I'm from Michigan, where it snows half the year, and Canadian coins are accepted everywhere except vending machines), and the Quebecois Separatist part is somewhat familiar (I lived briefly in Scotland where I had a few Nationalist-leaning friends), but my self-taught tourist French is limited to conversational tidbits like, "Voulez vous coucher avec moi, garçon?" and "Je voudrais un bouteille de vin blanc, deux fromage-burgers, et pommes frites de freedom, sil vous plait", so I may need a dialog coach. {smile}

An ongoing-series idea I have is based on a couple pages in the original draft of my Fab4 story... a conceptual spin-off of sorts. It would feature a group of gay male mutants (new characters) living in a mid-sized city in the Midwest, an approach that involves a different take on a popular franchise. I could probably use these individual characters elsewhere without changing them too much (most superhero character concepts are fairly portable like that), but I've been dreaming them up with this proposal in mind, and I'm really not interested in owning superhero characters for their own sake, so I probably wouldn't mind giving them up. They're very nearly "work made for hire" (i.e. created for a specific project for a specific publisher) in the first place. The other factor that might persuade me to sell them to Marvel is my interest in seeing this series (or something like it) done by them, and done well (read: "by me or someone with my approach to it"). Revamping existing mutants to "reveal" that they're gay would be a cheat (and exactly the sort of thing that makes creators hate corporate ownership of their characters), so if there are going to be gay mutants in the Marvel Universe (and there should be more than just the few there are), someone's going to have to create them and "give" them to Marvel. Might as well be me. Got a dozen of them made up so far....

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