Superman: I would make him a socialist ass-kicker who solves the little guy's problems with violence. Throw out the space gods and cackling maniacs and nigh-endless origin rewrites and obsessing over this or that power level and just have a bunch of crooked-ass politicians and robber barons and bankers and media magnates and general Mister Potter motherfuckers dicking over average shnooks and then Supes shows up and punches them in the face.

In keeping with this I'd cut him out of this Superman - Wonder Woman - Batman - Aquaman All Super All The Time fuckfest they've been running for the, like, last twenty fucking years where the only people you see in a given comic are lightning-powered ultra-beings who rewrite spacetime for lulz and put him back in a universe where a guy being able to jump really high and run really fast and punch things super-hard actually seems like sort of a unique and incredible thing.

Fantastic Four: I would let them do some adventuring again. When was the last time you saw the Fantastic Four do some adventuring? Every Fantastic Four comic I can remember reading in the last ten years features some given combination of 1. Doctor Doom 2. Namor 3. Galactus 4. the fucking Mole Man 5. the oh what are they called, Black Bolt and Crystal and those fuckers 6. Reed being a dick to his kids. Which is balls-ass retarded because if the Fantastic Four is one thing it is a license to come up with whatever ridiculous bullshit you like and then put that into a comic. Send Reed and Valeria to the seventh dimension, have Sue and Johnny go somewhere in the 99.99999% of the ocean that isn't Atlantis, have Ben Grimm visit San Francisco and get thrown into the Kurt Russel role inMarvel Comics' remake of Big Trouble in Little China, have the whole family hop into the Fantasticar and go visit the universe next door to ours. Whatever, go nuts.

The Flash: I would find a way to turn him into a parable for modernism. Though I've never really worked out the particulars of what the preceding sentence means.

I'm not a great big comic reader, so I can only speak about the only character I actually know from my brief foray. However, I really can't see what's wrong with bringing back Speed Ball. From what I understand DC is in dire need of fun characters, so if they just quietly pretended like they never discontinued the guy, have him still looking for that bouncing cat and fighting evil glue guys and trying to figure out if the benefits of bounding around wildly at the slightest touch are worth, ya know, bounding around wildly if you caress him too hard.

Of course, I think it'd be cool if he got handed over Gaiman or somebody who can totally retool the concept into something epic, like he finally catches the cat and you discover that the preceding was just his subconscious, then the comic whiplashes into some god v. god warzone where Speed Ball represents Hope (cuz he always bounces back?) and the glue guy is like Despair(?) and see what you can do from there.

Really, I just think more superheroes motivations should be as simple as "Catch that damn cat so I can be normal."

Oh fuck, someone's going to have to tell him.

123notit!

I firmly believe this is why I love Superman/Batman so much, and hell yes I agree so hard.
Well the point is I'd make someone pay for what they did.
And, that, in fact, is why I like YouTube. They even got a great (ahem) 'actress' for her, all hair dyeing aside. Now tell me you wouldn't buy that comic. Just try.

Anyway getting back on subject Stephen Strange irks the crap out of me, especially lately. He steps aside for the SHRA and lets them sort out their differences, then he comes back and helps out by giving the underground a place in his fortress, then later burns up so much magic energy he's like "Oh noes! I'm turning evil and have to leave!" then totally screwing over the underground movement.

It's like, christ, he's a cool character. Give him some firm parameters on what his magic can do and then just in case he needs a Deus Ex Machinae hey, you know, I heard there's this relic of power in a (blank) hidden deep in (blank), and boom, you've got a new sub-quest.

I live on broken dreams.

Behold the example of Speedball Penance!

Yes, that is a thing that happened.

It reminds me - I read a little She-Hulk and it was all super lawyerly antics and somehow being a space lawyer involves boxing for rulership of a planet and it was good. Then suddenly they had some time skip and bad things had happened and she'd killed some guy while brainwashed or something and I was all "When the hell did all this happen? Get back to convincing the Scorpion not to attack JJJ's trial because otherwise he'll claim a mistrial!"

I guess it was one of the big crossover events at work.

That's more plot rehab I guess. Its annoying to have that sort of character development happen 'offscreen' though. I don't want to have to read eleventy one books to know what's going on.

Also Speed Ball's Marvel.

Ok then, fuck comics.

I knooowww! Why they had to take a solid gold concept like Single (Green) Female Lawyer and crap it up with tired melodrama is beyond me, but I blame the same forces that tried to get Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane canceled alla time.

This is my favorite response so far. They would never ever actually do it, of course -- dead characters can't flog merchandise -- but allowing a major character to seriously no-foolin' permanently die would be a great thing for any of the big-name publishers (and for comics nerds in general, but that's another subject altogether). How is anyone supposed to take a "major event" like, say, the death of Captain America seriously when A. they already brought Bucky back after about a million years of saying they wouldn't and B. we know they'll just pop him out of the hole as soon as his movie comes out and they need to sell lunchboxes?

Anyway, I'm really loving all the different proposals y'all have come up with. Keep 'em coming!

Being totally fair, Captain America's recent death was pretty incredible, as they ended up killing my favorite character in his own series and yet everything they've done since then has still kept it as my favorite comic book. I hope they keep Rogers dead but it says something about comic books that I totally expect them not to.

There's lots of things I would suggest doing to Marvel but they gave me Wiccan, whom is easily my favorite character so I really can't complain. We have a splintered fragment of Scarlet Witch's dream-world children whom possesses powers unique and powerful but a fraction of the reality-warping stuff she could do, plus he's gay with the Hulkling and part of the Young Avengers. Ask for an original character and you sure as hell get one.

!!!???

Wait, they're trying to get it canceled?

The Joker: In the hands of most writers it seems that the only thing he's good for these days is serving as this stand-in for the "bad-ass, no foolin' psycho killer" spot and making everybody else in Gotham City look bad by failing to be mysteriously killed every time he fails to get away (which must be nearly every time he appears.)

Something's got to give: either the logical conclusion of Joker's career happens (he gets killed), Gotham's institutions get more competent (or the Joker does*) or the Joker begins to follow a policy of "less killing, more joking" to get him out of being a something-path with no taste and no reason not to be in a prison instead of Arkham.

The Joker should be perfectly capable of killing without blinking, but it should only be one of the possible punchlines of his outings, so it would look again like a form of comedy or art is his goal rather than just depopulation. He's been that way before.

Somehow, the animated Joker didn't have this problem.

Superman: That's another character I don't especially like, so my suggestion is sort of parallel. I agree that the best thing to do would have been to let him stay dead, but it wouldn't have hurt either if the attempts at revamping him had stuck and/or had been well executed.

Actually going onward with Supermen as sort of legacy characters after the death of Superman might have allowed for clashing elements in the character concept to be separated and sort of refined into new, more balanced characters. Then, even if the Clark Kent character had still come back he wouldn't have been the same mess.

The "energy" Red/Blue Supermen is also something I think contained a solution; simply rationalizing Superman powers more deeply, altough I don't vouch for the execution. There's just so many avenues of revamping.

I'm not sure why only characters I have no great love for come to mind.

*The Joker actually having an edge is often something that seems like an informed attribute: when he goes up against villains, it's often implied that the only reason he gets the drop on them is because they don't "see it coming", which is kind of ludicrous with a Joker that's only renowned for being an unpredictable killer.