Your Dream Comics

Grant Morrison and Brendan McCarthy on Superman.

Noam Chomsky and Darwyn Cooke on Captain America.

Me and Boo Cook get our hands on Inferior Five.

Grant Morrison and Steve Dillon on anything.

Grant Morrison and John Cassaday on anything.

Ted Naifeh (writing) and Mike Mignola (drawing) on something.

Philip Bond drawing everything else.

Also, Alan Moore and whatsisname doing Top 10 - vol. 3.

The rest of Halo Jones, obv.

Grant Morrison to write everything everywhere (though, after JLA and X-Men, there isn't really much left (go on, say the Avengers, I could do with laughing practice)).

The rest of Miracleman!

Won't Moore & Ha have to write Top 10 season 2 first?

Morrison and Mignola to write an ongoing Batman.

Oh, I just considered Top 10 to be in two seasons because there are two trades.

The day a comic has "BUT GOOD" in its title, I'll be the happiest boy on earth.

Morrison & Milligan - Bizarre Boys! (this may never have existed except as a vague concept).

I can't imagine Grant Morrison getting a deal he wanted on Batman or Superman, to be honest.

True. Oh! I wish that they would redo the last couple issues of the Invisibles with decent art.

They redid the worst few pages for the collection!

Also you're not talking about the last issue are you?

I wish Frank Quitely had superspeed powers.

I wish Herge had lived to do a handfull more Tintin books.

Do you want to torture Herge?

Did they really? I think my girlfriend has the trade, I'll have to check it out.

I can't remember if it was the last or second-to-last that was so awful.

I wish more unauthorised Tintin books like BREAKING FREE had appeared!

Do you want to torture Herge?

-- Vic Fluro (vicxdg...), September 8th, 2004 4:14 PM.

If it meant more Tintin I'd torture a thousand kittens.

My dreams are all lame.

How many kittens is The Castafiore Emerald worth?

No quality control! Let loose the hounds of Huk-L!

I'd probably value the Castifiore Emerald in magpies.

Okay, SEVERE DORKNESS ALERT:

I'd like to see a mini-series, drawn by, hmmm, Joe Staton, written by, ummm, Kurt Busiek, chronicling the time Ollie (Green Arrow) Queen spent in Heaven previous to Quiver hanging around with Barry (Flash) Allen, with frequent guest appearances by Hal (The Spectre/Green Lantern) Jordan, Boston (Deadman) Brand, and Aquagirl. Sort of like a Dead Superhero Version of Grumpy Old Men. No, written by Carl Hiaasen (who, now that I think of it, would be a natch to write Green Arrow).

Huck, that's a killer idea.

- Grant Morrison & Cameron Stewart (or Frank Quitely, I can settle) on Green Lantern
- the supposed Morrison / Millar / Peyer / whomever (Waid?) quadrangular on the Superman titles back in The Day
- David Lapham & Bill Sienkiewicz on Batman (DAMN IT!)
- Dan Slott & Juan Bobillo (yeah, that's right) on Spidey
- Jimmy Corrigan & Jason Lutes on Ultimate Willie Lumpkin
- Michael Chabon & Rotate-A-Team on Challengers of the Unknown
- Christopher Priest & JG Jones on S.H.I.E.L.D.

John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra on Spiderman.

Wagner would be rub on Spiderman - Wagner on CAPTAIN AMERICA however...

Steranko on Dr Strange, and I have no idea why.

Morrison on Superman, definitely, especially if it were a mostly ground-up sort of deal like Marvel's Ultimate thing, or the potential in the post-Crisis reinventions -- without going as far as the Silver Age redos or the implied "what if Superman were a raccoon" type shit in Elseworlds. (I think I have lost faith in the current version of Superman being interesting for more than an occasional one-shot or as a supporting character in an ensemble.)

Ellis on Silver Surfer?

Englehart co-writing a Defenders revival, but I'm not sure with whom.

Is Batman/Superman/Spiderman still doing one story over four books, or did they deservedly knock that on the head?

Spidey still has multiple titles, but I don't think they overlap anymore -- I pick up JMS's Amazing Spider-Man sometimes, and it doesn't seem to do any "to be continued in Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man" type stuff.

I actually wrote a letter to Jim'll Fix It, asking if I could meet Herge.

Sadly, Herge had died two years earlier.

YHWH writing the Old Testament. Dave McKean can draw it. Dave Sim outside the store window, gazing intently at it with hangdog expression.

A Kobra ongoing series drawn by Simon Coleby, Dracula by Dom Reardon, Nick Fury drawn by Boo Cook. I'd write them all, if we're dreaming.

Ellis on Silver Surfer? I don't think so. Stan Lee is the only writer to have gotten him right so far. Morrison might be able to, but I don't think Ellis could pull it off.

Morrison on Superman with Cameron Stewart would be great. As would that team be on just about any DC icon, really.

I'd like so see Alan Moore's TWILIGHT finished (or even started.) Preferably with Dave Gibbons or Brian Bolland or Craig Russell on the artwork.

Steve Ditko back on Dr. Strange. That'd be nice.

It's a bit late for Twilight - it'd smack of Identity Crisis style shockeroos, to be honest.

Well, I'm not sure of Ellis -- David (R) and I were talking about the Silver Surfer Problem at one point, and Ellis was the first name to come to mind for being appropriate for out of control cosmic stuff instead of the lukewarm or out of character treatments we've had post-Stan.

I don't know why we didn't think of Morrison, though. I mean, his JLA stuff, that's exactly what I mean by the kind of thing I want to see Norrin Radd dealing with.

When I still wrote fanfic, I tried very hard to get a group of fanfic writers interested in doing their/our take on Twilight of the Superheroes -- no dice. (Trying to do stuff like that is why I was writing fanfic, pretty much; to get those ideas out of my system so I didn't "cloak" them for market stuff.)

I don't know that TWILIGHT would, Vic. IDENTITY CRISIS seems be shockeroo and not shocking. I don't know that it'll ever transcend shockeroo. Moore's other work could have easily fallen into the realms of self-parody if not handled deftly, which he's eminently capable of doing. My read of the TWILIGHT materials was that it was a quite thorough reworking of the DCU, and still within the realm of "okay, I can see these characters doing that thirty years down the road". It would have been a magnificent capstone for the DCU, which is probably why it wasn't ever going to happen.

Ellis might be able to do hard SF (though really, he does hard SF street level stuff well enough), but I don't think he can do the cosmic thing real well. Just my take on him, you understand.

Matt, have you read the last few issues of _Planetary_? If that ain't cosmic, I don't know what is. Granted, it's grounded cosmic stuff (since the focus is more on the Earth characters than the aliens), but it's still out there.

Sure, GM would be a decent choice (UNDERSTATEMENT ALERT), but I'm sticking with my WE pick.

I agree it would have been a good capstone of the DCU then, but I think things have changed to the point where a strict adherence to the plot of 'Twilight' wouldn't really work. I think what we're seeing in Promethea is closer to how Twilight would be today.

That said, it'd be interesting to see Moore or Morrison do an 'end of the universe' story for one of the big two.

In summary then: we are each and every one of us Grant Morrison's bitch.

DC: The End might be good. Particularly Batman: The End. Superman: The End would be strange (though Moore sorta kinda wrote that in his Majestic At The End of The Universe story)

Not that any of them are going to beat Sergio Aragones Kills the Marvel/DC Universe.

I'm reading PLANETARY in trades. Haven't been swept up enough by it to get the floppies.

Am I the only one finding PROMETHEA underwhelming from a story point of view? It's great in terms of spiritual/mental/mentalist content, but storywise, not doing so much for me.

I'll fully fess up to being Grant's bitch. More so than Moore at this point (though Moore is still a better writer, for what that's worth.)

Promethea's my least favorite of Moore's recent stuff, but I've only read the first trade -- it didn't seem bad, but yeah, underwhelming's a good word for it. It seemed like one of those things where if you'd told me a few of the basic bits and "Alan Moore's writing it," I could have done the rest on my own.

Prometha's frustrating as fuck. I loved the first ten issues or so, in which the balance between the spiritual/metal/mentalist content and the storyline was pretty spot on, in my opinion. Since then though, Moore's just been reiterating the same point over and over again with nothing but gorgeous art and the occaisional amazing concept to keep me reading. How many issues can you have of two people walking through trippy landscapes discussing the kabbalah or whatever?

Still, the cliffhanger a few months ago with the army of Painted Dolls almost made the whole thing worthwhile.

I thought the whole Kaballah quest was always readable and mostly excellent - that said, Morrison's had more of a 'wow' factor recently. Seaguy was inspired.

Milligan's the other 'best writer in comics' at the moment...

Spoilers for PROMETHEA follow.

The big change being that there is no Big Change is kinda neat from a conceptual standpoint, but it doesn't feel like that really played out effectively in the story. The art and prose is beautiful and moving, but the story simply isn't.

I thought the Kaballah stuff was mostly readable, but it still felt like "How to do Magick the Alan Moore way" and not a story proper (whereas the first storyline with Sophie encountering the previous incarnations of Promethea felt more like a story.

I totally predicted the whole 'big change being that there is no Big Change' thing, largely because Moore used exactly the same trick twenty years ago at the end of American Gothic.

I really like Promethea - I like the hippy nonsense, and I've always been a sucker for Alan Moore's Clockwork Comix. He is repeating himself, but he's hardly J.M. DeMatteis.

I guess he did use the same resolution at the end of American Gothic, but back then it was a great big wow, whereas now it just didn't feel the same. Wonder if the fact that I'd read it before was part of that.

Definitely yes to Grant Morrison on Superman, my favourite character and one in need of a refresh. My favourite Superman artist was probably Garcia-Lopez, but I'm not sure if he is still alive even.

Batman could do with something too, and I think maybe Bendis could supply it, maybe with the DD artist, Mack or whatever his name is. Bendis does detective stuff very well. Keep Bendis on the Avengers too, since I've really enjoyed the two issues so far.

My minor-favourite team was always the Inhumans, especially Black Bolt, and I'd like someone with some weird imagination on that - leaving aside the point that Morrison on EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE is ideal, I'll go for Mark Millar. I want Jack Kirby to draw it, of course, but besides the fact that he hardly needed a writer, he's a big dead, so maybe Steve Rude.

I want Alan Moore on something, and I always liked Dr Strange, and Alan is very into magic, so he can go there. I want Ditko on it, but I don't know if he can do what he used to, really.

If I could get some time travel going, one big regret is that there were only two, I think, EC war stories written by Kurtzman and drawn by Toth. One of them, a story of jet plane pilots losing their orientation when in clouds (the speed means they can't tell up and down and so on) is a towering masterpiece. I wish they'd done more. Also a humor comic by Kurtzman, him writing it all and sharing the art chores with Peter Bagge.

Martin, Garcia-Lopez is still alive AND he's working on / has finished work (I think?) on a JLA arc (written by Gail Simone) that should see the light of day as part of the new _JLA: Classified_ series.

And speaking of the Inhumans - I think the ideal artist for that (following Martin's Kirby invocation) would be Paul Rivoche or Ladronn. Maybe drag Abnett & Lanning over to offer the title some of the magic they brought to their much-missed _Legion_ run. (oooo, magic!)

Speaking of, in the back of whatever DC comic I bought last was a blurb for Grant Morrison's upcoming JLA mini!