Current mood:	pleased
Entry tags:	comics, image, tangents, wildstorm

Tangents, part 2
Continueing with the non-Marvel concepts:
Image
So even for a fanfic concept like this I still end up thinking, whats the setting like? We've established its got a post-attempted rebellion thing going on like Bab5 or Firefly. So I decided that 1. No FTL ships. They have SOMETHING that can go FTL but the mass it works on is negligible, allowing it to create a system wide information/communication network. And the tech is advanced enough so that if the gravity doesn't squish everything, humans can colonize any of the planets and moons with varying degrees of difficulty...



In the year 2080 the world of music has become ever more violently competitive. Last year, John "Shaft" Singleton led his band, Youngblood, to victory at the Interplanetary Battle of the Bands with his joint mastery of archery and mad rhymes. But can he and bandmates Antonia "Vogue" Bird (knives and lead guitar), Chris "Badrock" Gans (percussion and Savate) and John "Diehard" McTiernan (ex-cage fighter and saxophone) repeat for a second year? Especially with arch-rivals and Martian native sons Brigade out to bring them down and take their place?


Savage's Dragoons; Captain John Savage is one of the few, the proud, a United Planet's Dragoon. Dragoons: one-man killing machines. Each is augmented with advanced cybernetics, equipped with deadly powered armor and the finest killing devices known to man. The Dragoon's were the heroes of the Colony Wars. Dropping from high altitude insertions, each with the power of a tank, they swiftly and surely broke the back of the rebel worlds. But the Colony Wars are 15 years in the past and the U.P. government doesn't see the need to maintain the expensive super-soldiers. Unit after unit is decommissioned and sent out into the civilian world, with heads full of violence and bodies designed to kill. Savage won't let that happen to his unit. Whatever mission is asked of them, he'll make sure they succeed. Whatever its costs to keep showing his troop's value he'll do...


Major Morgan Stryker is the head of Mars' Cyberforce Division. Elite police tasked with dealing with dangerous cyborgs. Rogue corporate drones, bitter and decommissioned war veterans or the product of black market chop shops. Its all the same for Cyberforce...



First up is The Wildcat. When you're flying a pirate ship against a military just HOPING for an enemy you'd best be quick, quiet and clever. Captain Jack Spartan certainly thinks he and his people are. And with the Colonial Rebellion long dead, the days of easy pickings are over. But he's got a good crew Grifter Cash can slice any data free to find their targets. Sata "Zealot" Kagi was one of the Rebellion's best pilots and will do anything that lets her hurt the establishment. And ex-military cyborgs Voodoo, Maul and Warblade provide him with all the muscle he should need to intimidate their targets. But every day the shadows get brighter and it gets harder for a crook to make a dishonest buck...



The SolNet communications network extends instant communication across the system. And within it is the EtherNet, a virtual world where data slicers and wannabes play and work. And out of the super-dense data pit that is Pitt Industries something new has emerged. Spawn is a self-aware construct. The first true A.I. Or at least that what "he" thought. But while exploring the EtherNet as Al, Spawn keeps getting cryptic hints of earlier A.Is. And of stranger things hidden in the depths of the 'Net...


The Pitt Corporation. The leading edge in colonial habitats. And in the slow work of terraforming dead worlds into eventual living ones. But the Pitt Corporation has a secret. Well working on the Io colony their workers discovered a crashed alien craft. The only evidence of non-human extra-terrestrial intelligence. And for the last 10 years their scientists have been studying it in secret. The remains of the avian aliens offered few answers, but lead researcher Ben Johnstone dedicated himself to unlocking their secrets. And finally he got the breakthrough he'd been wanting, though not how he expected...

While running one of the alien artifacts through a battery of tests involving exposure to various kinds of radiation Something Happened. Ben found himself fused with the essence of the alien pilot. This fusion caused him to black out. When he woke "they" found they could listen in on the thoughts of his fellow scientists. Where he learned that his "friends" planned his eventual dissection after extensive and painful tests. Panicking Ben and The Other somehow d-shifted. Together they folded space moving them from the Venusian laboratory to Ben's childhood home on Mars...

Now Ben is on the run across the System from Pitt wetworks teams. His former employers will do anything to both capture and keep Target: Shadowhawk a secret. As for Ben/The Other. They just want to understand how the fusion happened and what caused the alien crash...

---

Wildstorm

Still the idea I had for a version of The Authority who AREN'T A GIANT PACK OF ASSHOLES was to good in my mind to pass up. So away from from Marvel for the week. Even if I did have an interesting concept for The Prowler & Rocket Racer based on a comment by Willow about No More Black Heroes From the Ghetto as an origin...

But how to make the world's most proactive jerks into non-jerks. One. Change the era. I decided to make them a team of pulp action heros. Two. Gender-swap! Yes, thats right, boys become girls! Girls become boys! Someone becomes a robot!

The League of Secret Authority was originally founded in the 1870s by genius Nikola Tesla and Emperor Joshua Norton dedicated to protecting humanity and exploring the edges of understanding. Over the years various figures have been rumored to be attached the group. The former lawman John Reid and his Indian partner. Don Diego de la Vega. The master markswoman Annie Oakley. Even Thomas Edison confidant and master magician Harry Houdini...

But in the 1920s Tesla had retreated to his researches, turning the group over to one of his many students, the African-American engineer and inventor Adam Spicer. Spicer, a native of New Orleans, was also known by the name of his best invention, the one-man "tank" called the Great Engine. Spicer would also build and maintain the League's strange and advanced weaponry and vehicles...

Other members of the League during the 20s include:
- Lady Jane Hawkmore. British noblewoman and social chameleon. A master of disguise and capable of blending in with any gathering of people.

- The female pirate Captain Midnight and her lover the blind seer known only as the Delphine.

- Ex-military scout and tracker, the Cherokee war leader Shane Swift.

- Tesla's masterwork. The artificial man; Jack Sparks.

- The mysterious Chinese healer, sorceress and martial artist known as Doctor Qi.