Changearound Again
Following on from Wednesday, and good Lord do the post tags get long when I write about comic characters and creators.
Geoff Johns on X-Men: One: Johns has a solid history with team/squad titles. Two: He’s really good at delving into a character’s backstory, and not only coming up with a different spin on things but also in streamlining and simplifying what can sometimes be pretty confusing and contradictory stuff. Three: Isn’t this exactly what the X titles need?
John Romita, Jr on Wonder Woman: One of the best, most consistant pencillers of the last twenty-five (if not more) years, yet never worked on a mainstream DC title. While he’s be an awesome fit on damn near anything, I suspect the title that would benefit the most would be Wonder Woman.
Grant Morrison on Daredevil: And everyone just starts looking at me funny. No, honestly, I’m serious. The fact that it’s not the kind of thing anyone would expect would work in its favour, because any way the coin falls would benefit the reader. Either Morrison would channel the best of his Batman work into a crime title (it’s not all sci-fi closet flying saucers; think Gothic), or he’d get odd (as it were) with Daredevil, and give us a fresh take. I mean, how much grim and gritty crime drama can the character really bear? Well, loads more. But you get my point.
Mike Mignola on Aquaman: Widening the net to outside the Big Two, and I reckon a Lovecraft-style horror spin on Arthur Curry/Orin/Whomever would be a great direction to take the character in. Not as a permanent status-quo change, but just for a year or so. Because we never really get a feeling of how cold and dark it is in the deep sea, or of all the squiddy-headed nasties that are down there. Half the time it looks like the Little Fucking Mermaid in Poseidonis. The Dweller in the Deep was practically Cthulhu in an orange shirt, after all.
James Robinson and Marcos Martin on Silver Surfer: He proved he could do cosmic stuff with Starman, and I think a long term 60-odd issue run in that kind of vein would be the perfect way to explore a great (but famously tricky) character. As for Marcos Martin, the last work of his I saw was for Marvel, on the excellent Doctor Strange: The Oath, although the first place I saw his extraordinary art was on DC’s Breach. He’d fit the Surfer book perfectly.
Matt Fraction on The Flash: Another writer who, as far as I know, hasn’t done any work for DC. As per the other posts about the Flash this month, the title should be (a) about big, crazy ideas, (b) have a lot of heart, (c) be electrifying and/or hyperkinetic, and (d) always seems to benefit from fresh perspectives and very individual writers. Fraction’s one of the few comic writers working today that ticks all those boxes.
Michael Alan Nelson on Doctor Strange: Great on BOOM! Studios’ Fall of Cthulhu, can’t imagine he’d do a bad job on the sorceror.
