I Should Never Write Comics Ever.

Okay, I think this amounts to reason number #872 why I should never be allowed to write comics:

See, remember way back when (or maybe just a week or two ago) I posted about how there really ought to be Apollo and Midnighter type analogues for Captain America and Iron Man.

God help me, I actually started thinking about it.

Specifically I started to think about a Wildstorm-esque Multiverse Earth for Marvel. With a dark funhouse mirror version of the Avengers in the same way the Authority is a dark funhouse mirror of the JLA. ...I'm not counting the scary evil rapist sorts that already showed up in the Authority.

I should warn, I'm not actually a huge fan of the Authority. I'm fond of quite a few of the characters in and of themselves, and I think Apollo and Midnighter's relationship is adorable. But in the end, I find the Authority to be a little too enamored with its own hardcore edginess.

Of course being a DC girl at heart, I've always had the impression that Marvel goes for a bit more of the edginess than DC. So a Wildstorm-esque AU, as a hardcore self-satisfyingly edgy version of the "edgier" of the Big Two companies makes me giggle.

Because honestly, if we're working on a scale ratio relation here. If this Marvel!Wildstorm is the same percentage of faux-edginess to regular Marvel as the Authority is to DC...there's no way that won't end up completely insane.

All-Star Batman level insane. At least! The lunacy would be glorious.

Of course, this pretty much means that this equivalent of Tony Stark is going to end up worse than Hank Pym in the Ultimate Universe. Because that's how this sort of thing rolls. (Marvel hates happy couples, y'know. :-P)

Anyway, figuring out an analogue for Cap was hard. Because, just as Apollo and Midnighter are pretty clearly Superman and Batman derived, they're not really parody so much as satire, and thus are fully realized in their own right. So the trick is making a Cap that is still clearly derived from Captain America, but still clearly NOT Captain America and really doesn't have all that much in common with him aside from a few scattered surface traits.

Fortunately my friend Flidget was around for my over-caffeinated, sleep deprived babbling and figured out a solution. See, I was all about cutting out the nationalistic element all together, since I didn't see a way to go about it without making it too obvious. She had the brilliant suggestion of making him a patriotic symbol for a fictional country with some similarities to Costa Rica instead.

Which opens so many doors for clumsy political satire. I'm particularly fond of the idea of this nameless hero as an allegory for well-meaning but incredibly clueless American colonial mindset. In my head, he's a very stereotypical blond, blue-eyed, white American WASP sort that ends up being handed over to the country all: "Here, we know you don't have an army, so here's a superhero to protect you!"

So you get some poor guy shipped off to a country that isn't particularly sure they want him. I mean, sure, superheroes are useful, but they didn't ask for him, didn't really need him, and he probably brings a lot more problems than he'd solve.

Fortunately, he's got no intention to become a dictator, but THEY don't know that. So there's all sorts of problems while he bumbles around all well meaning and crap, while destabilizing everything with his mere presence.

Naturally, this would extend to Tony's analogue becoming the symbolic face of cruel, soulless corporate America.

Hey, what's the point of a faux-edgy universe, if you're not going to use it to make incredibly clumsy, one-sided, and over simplified political statements that'll manage to annoy even people who share your political affiliation.

But anyway, yeah, the entire relationship would be an incredibly heavy-handed, incoherent attack on globalization policies. Tony's analogue would naturally be cartoonishly cruel, abusive, and use his poor downtrodden though truly heroic husband!

The poor Costa Rica Captain's in denial. He keeps insisting it's perfectly fine. They're just a little kinky that's all. They have safewords! It's not evil Corporate America's fault that he's sometimes too enthusiastic to hear them, or remember what they mean!

Eventually of course, the evil Corporate America's character will be inevitably disgraced/killed and replaced by a kinder, gentler liberal or more likely moderate conservative (the better for cheerful political debate) successor. And things will gradually work themselves out in a somewhat healthier way...eventually.

I ought to be really nervous about how easy it is to think of incredibly ham-handed political allegories, shouldn't I?

Of course, Apollo and Midnighter are only part of the Authority, so these two would also be a part of a team as well.

But fortunately, when I try to conceive of an allegory for Spider-Man or the Hulk in this universe, my brain completely stalls. It proves I have some sanity left. Maybe.

...

...

Damnit. The ideas are starting to hit. Fuck it, I'm going to bed. :-)