If you could remake a character, a team, a whole series, what would you remake? How would you redo it? Of course to keep the character the same in the concept I would say you should probably keep their abilities, I feel like it’s what makes them who they are. So I guess what I mean is, would you change anything in your favorite story?
Now that I think about it, it’s really hard to do because they’ve already made every story imaginable and even stories you wouldn’t expect. But, if you can think of a way to remake a hero or a team, what would you make?
I would probably make a Flashpoint paradox of popular villains like the joker, Lex, Bane etc that become heroes? I feel like that’s already been made, I vaguely remember that happening already.
I love the idea of Red Hood, but I feel the story was sloppily executed. I mean, Todd dies, Batman shows up, buries the body and then at some point later Superboy punches time and now he’s alive? And somehow the Al Ghuls’ get a hold of him and then he finally makes it back to Bruce?
I think it would be a stronger story if Batman found Todd’s body and in that moment of extreme need realizes (world’s greatest detective and all that) that the Lazarus Pit might help (and what does he have to lose?). Driven by grief and rage he actually makes it to the Pit and manages to dump his son’s body in there. Then we can have the whole Red Hood story. But now it’s a story about difficult choices and how far into insanity and risk Batman is willing to go.
I know that Todd was dead for 20 years, but they could just rewrite it now.
Easy, I’d change the Eternal books to be just another adventure for the likes of Cassandra and Stephanie, not new origins since they’d be untouched by the Flashpoint reboot (good riddance to bad retcons), I’d leave their Dads alive, and Harper Row would either be an actual, fleshed out character that everyone else would call out when she got uppity, or she wouldn’t be around at all. No one would just adore her because that’s what the fanfic writer wants.
Trim Tom King’s Batman down to at most 50 issues (preferably less), fix the dialogue, change some plot points to be more sensical, and provide stronger explanation for some plot points.
Redemption of lex luthor. It’s discovered that luthor has had a brain tumor that has caused the most hateful of his behaviors, he gets cured of it and becomes a true hero, he and Kara fall in love and get married. If that doesn’t work for you, how about none of the girl in a fridge stories ever happen. I’m ok with villians that get up to some badness, but some stuff is excessive. One of the most disturbing reveals was the Jean loring reveal some yrs ago that elongated man discovered. I shouldn’t get too caught up in it, I suppose it’s a kind of compliment to the team when they create stories or art that causes such a reaction…
OK, so I’d pick Flashpoint, but I suppose “never happened” doesn’t count as changing the story.
So instead, I’d overhaul the ending of Countdown to Infinite Crisis such that Max is being puppeteered by Brother Eye rather than having been evil all along, and Ted’s fate is left more ambiguous so he could come back later.
Saving Ted is just kind of wishful thinking (though it was a very ugly death), but making Max evil was a really stupid retcon that created plot holes like his lying in his thought bubbles or fooling a psychic probe by Martian Manhunter before he had any psychic powers of his own. You could even say that Brother Eye was actually based on the Kilg%re’s design and exploited the existing link created by the original.
Flashpoint ends with Barry accidentally ending up in the recently-established Earth One (which then becomes the featured universe for half of DC’s books in a semi-reboot of the line), while New Earth sticks to business as usual in half of the company’s titles.
I would remake the series Gotham, instead of a serialized prequel, or elseworlds, or whatever it was. I would make it similar to Ed brubaker’s Gotham Central and have it take place in the middle of current Gotham . The show would be a procedural following the GCPD as they deal with meta humans, monsters, psychopaths, and general fallout from a typical Batman case.
Go all the way back to Shazam/Captain Marvel’s New-52 debut…and remove that stupid hood!
And maybe replace Johns and Frank with Tomasi and Gleason. The end.