Make These Comics and We Promise to Give You Our Money!*

Posted by: Maggie_C on: October 10, 2009

In: Fandom | Industry
Comment!

Licensed titles have traditionally sucked. They’re usually put out as big money grabs with crappy stories and half assed art. Notsomuch anymore. Dark Horse is built on well-executed licensed titles, and BOOM! has followed their, lead – though with much lighter fare.

Jurassic Park – Rob: A lot of people say that this franchise should have been laid to rest along side Michael Crichton, but hear me out. Granted, the third movie wasn’t all it could have been (or, frankly, all it should have been). But look at how open ended it was! Just like the other two movies, it ended with, “Island full of dinosaurs? Fuck this, let’s bail.” This means that Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna are STILL FULL OF DINOSAURS! Here’s what I thinking. Forget making a “Jurassic Park 4.” Nobody cares what happened to Lex, she was annoying anyways. There hasn’t been a Jurassic Park comic since Topps dropped them in 1997 and there hasn’t been a good Jurassic Park comic since, like, never. See what I’m getting at here? [For the record, I completely and utterly disagree with this. -Maggie]

Quantum Leap – Oh boy. So technically Quantum Leap got the comic book treatment once before, to the tune of about 13 issues back in the early nineties. But that was back when the show was still running and there weren’t tons of twenty-somethings with a loving nostalgia for the awesomeness that was Sam & Al. Plus, “Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home” my ass! A Quantum Leap title could never go on forever, but we could stand to see Dr. Beckett leap around a bit, and dammit! I want him to get home! Plus, just the prospect of characters resembling Dean Stockwell and Scott Bakula would pretty much guarantee some serious coinage from science fiction geeks.

Back to the Future – You know what was wrong with the Back to the Future Harvey comics from the nineties? Waaaay too much like the mediocre cartoon, not even close to the awesome movies. If we got some realistic art on this, it could be really, really good! There are a billion generations of Tannens to push around a billion generations of McFlys and as long as they all vaguely resemble Michael J. Fox and Crispin Glover, you’ve got yourself an ongoing title. I refuse to hold the cartoon canon and, dammit, I wanna know what Doc, Clara, and the kids really did after inventing steampunk and cruising around on the flux capacitor enhanced locomotive!!

Darkwing Duck – Let’s. Get. Dangerous. Darkwing Duck was himself an homage to pulp & noir comics heroes. He’s got his own rediculous rogues gallery, a stupid sidekick, and you can plug him into wider Duck-verse pretty much at-will. Seriously, co-feature D.W. in Uncle Scrooge (c’mon, get Launchpad all up in both!) and then move him to his own book. Get it on the rack at Borders so non-comics folks will buy it, put it on the direct market and all the twenty-something geeks already buying comics will FREAK OUT and fork over the $2.99. I really don’t see how this could possibly go wrong.

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. – Thematically descended from The Wild Wild West, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr became so much more than its ancestor. Short lived though it was, Brisco County established a rich, bigger than life, totally AWESOME universe. The quips! The fights! The gadgets! (Man, don’t the steampunk kids go nuts for that kind of thing?) The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr was tragically cancelled after just one season, thanks to being stuck in the “Friday Night Death Slot.” But is there anyone between the ages of, say, twenty and twenty seven, who didn’t love the hell out of this show? Hell, Brisco still had something like four more members of the John Bly Gang to wreak vengeance upon for his father’s murder! Just imagine, a big two page opening splash with Brisco carrying on a one-sided conversation with Comet! Bowler and Brisco skirting the edges of the law, hunting bounty! Brisco and Dixie squabbling! Socrates falling off his horse! Hell, someone give me a license and I’ll write the damn thing myself! How has this not happened yet? Carlton Cuse, quit dicking around with Lost and get on this!

Seriously, who do I send postcards to? Who owns the rights? HOW DO WE MAKE THIS HAPPEN?

*…unless they suck, in which case you’ll have ruined my childhood and I’ll never forgive you, ever. Ahem.

Licensed titles have traditionally sucked. They were usually put out as big money grabs with crappy stories and half assed art. Notsomuch anymore. Dark Horse is built on well-executed licensed titles, and BOOM! has followed their lead – though with much lighter fare for the most part. We got to thinkin’, what licensed titles would we lay out our hard earned cash for? This isn’t a top five by any means, but I’ll tell you right now that I want the last item on this list to come out NEXT FREAKING WEEK.

Jurassic Park – Rob: A lot of people say that this franchise should have been laid to rest along side Michael Crichton, but hear me out. Granted, the third movie wasn’t all it could have been (or, frankly, all it should have been). But look at how open ended it was! Just like the other two movies, it ended with, “Island full of dinosaurs? Fuck this, let’s bail.” This means that Isla Nublar and Isla Sorna are STILL FULL OF DINOSAURS! Here’s what I thinking. Forget making a Jurassic Park 4. Nobody cares what happened to Lex, she was annoying anyways. There hasn’t been a Jurassic Park comic since Topps dropped them in 1997 and there hasn’t been a good Jurassic Park comic since, like, never. See what I’m getting at here? [For the record, I completely and utterly disagree with this. -Maggie]

Quantum Leap – Oh boy. So technically Quantum Leap got the comic book treatment once before, to the tune of about 13 issues back in the early nineties. But that was back when the show was still running and there weren’t tons of twenty-somethings with a loving nostalgia for the awesomeness that was Sam & Al. Plus, “Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home” my ass! A Quantum Leap title could never go on forever, but we could stand to see Dr. Beckett leap around a bit, and dammit! I want him to get home! Plus, just the prospect of characters resembling Dean Stockwell and Scott Bakula would pretty much guarantee some serious coinage from science fiction geeks.

Back to the Future – You know what was wrong with the Back to the Future Harvey comics from the nineties? Waaaay too much like the mediocre cartoon, not even close to the awesome movies. If we got some realistic art on this, it could be really, really good! There are a billion generations of Tannens to push around a billion generations of McFlys and as long as they all vaguely resemble Michael J. Fox and Crispin Glover, you’ve got yourself an ongoing title. I refuse to hold the cartoon canon and, dammit, I wanna know what the Doctors Brown & Family really did (after inventing steampunk) while cruising around on their flux capacitor enhanced locomotive!!

Darkwing Duck – Let’s. Get. Dangerous. Darkwing Duck was himself an homage to pulp & noir comics heroes. He’s got his own ridiculous rogues gallery, a stupid sidekick, and you can plug him into wider Duck-verse pretty much at-will. Seriously, co-feature D.W. in Uncle Scrooge (c’mon, get Launchpad all up in both!) and then move him to his own book. Get it on the rack at Borders so non-comics folks will buy it, put it on the direct market and all the twenty-something geeks already buying comics will FREAK OUT and fork over the $2.99. I really don’t see how this could possibly go wrong.

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. – Thematically descended from The Wild Wild West, The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr became so much more than its ancestor. Short lived though it was, Brisco County established a rich, bigger than life, totally AWESOME universe. The quips! The fights! The gadgets! (Man, don’t the steampunk kids go nuts for that kind of thing?) The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr was tragically cancelled after just one season, thanks to being stuck in the “Friday Night Death Slot.” But is there anyone between the ages of, say, twenty and twenty seven, who didn’t love the hell out of this show? Hell, Brisco still had something like four more members of the John Bly Gang to wreak vengeance upon for his father’s murder! Just imagine, a big two page opening splash with Brisco carrying on a one-sided conversation with Comet! Bowler and Brisco skirting the edges of the law, hunting bounty! Brisco and Dixie squabbling! Socrates falling off his horse! Hell, someone give me a license and I’ll write the damn thing myself! How has this not happened yet? Carlton Cuse, quit dicking around with Lost and get on this!