Thursday, October 18, 2012

The Big Blog Book of the Baileyverse, Part One: The Big League

So I have this thing. Okay, it's not so much a thing as it is a massive, complex, interweaving model for an original comic book universe encompassing multiple titles, characters. settings and events falling along a central timeline, broken up into several different ages roughly corresponding to the last eight decades of real world history. When I say this, what may initially sound like an impressive claim is somewhat hampered by the fact that none of the ideas making up this fictional universe have ever actually been put to paper, let alone published, and currently exist only inside my head, and a rather lengthy Wordpad document on my computer. The shorter version of all this is that I have nothing, which is to say that I have not accomplished anything in my life, leaving me a sad, bitter blogger of broken dreams.

But that's really depressing, so I'm saying I have a comic book universe.

Since my artistic abilities are limited and I have no other outlet available for expressing this aspect of myself to the rest of the world, I thought I would introduce a regular segment on my new blog to distilling some of the weirder ideas and presenting them here in simple text form, which is, you know, probably just as good. Rather than do the logical thing and start from the beginning, I've deciding to publish these articles at random, filling in the context as I go, so as to create the effect of an elaborate mosaic filling itself out over time, until finally, when complete, you can step back and see the vast final project, breathe in the glory of it all, and then wonder why you wasted any time on this bullshit in the first place. Of course by then I will have made my way to Mexico with the money.

First Up: A superhero team of giant monsters controlled by a cadre of superheroes and reformed supervillains, who are themselves controlled by the government. Collectively, they are called The Big League.

To talk about The Big League, I first have to talk about another, similar team of giant characters called The Next Big Thing that immediately preceded them, but in order to talk about that team, I need to talk about yet another team, The Mighty Men West Coast. Coincidentally, in order to talk about them, I do not really need to go into The New Mighty Men, their east coast based sister team, or the original Mighty Men, for which The New Mighty Men are a second incarnation, so assuming you haven't already wisely stopped reading at this point, you'll have to wait to hear about them some other time.

The relevant thing about The Mighty Men West Coast is that, based in Hollywood, they would become known more for celebrity gossip and tabloid scandal than any actual crimefighting. A few examples.

-The Fraction, a hero capable of splitting himself into increasingly smaller duplicate halves, would find himself caught in what the press would describe as a massive midget orgy of himself.

-The cybernetic super-scientist Extendoclops discovers that his daughter is developing a spontaneous supernatural ability to disrupt technology (later growing up to be the teenage superheroine known as Glitch). This forces the two apart, as her power uncontrolled could kill him, but it also reveals that she is not in fact his biological daughter, but rather the product of an illicit affair between his wife and his arch-nemisis, Major Malfunction, who bears a similar ability. Extendoclops would go on to very publicly beat Major Malfunction to within an inch of his life, then "save his life" by fitting him with cybernetic attachments that put his health at risk every time he uses his powers. 

-Battle Beard and War Chest, two time displaced Vikings who operate complex weapons platforms inside high-tech armored suits using thier manly beard and ample bosom respectively, would often be found proudly engaging in bizarre exhibitionist sex in public places, citing ancient tradition and a lack of understanding of modern Puritanical attitudes.

The important example is Vertical Man, a giant superhero, and his wife The Little Woman, a microscopic superheroine. Their marriage was seen as the lone positive moral example in the group, until The Little Woman was found to be cheating on her husband with Guynormus, a similarly giant hero who happened to be a few inches taller than Vertical Man in giant form. The very public reveal of their relationship would push Vertical Man over the edge. He would go on the bender to end all benders, drinking an entire Budweiser plant, and end his night of drunken stupidity by masturbating publicly to a sexy billboard ad in full view of a suburban neighborhood.

The resulting flood would cause, among other very unfortunate things, several unintended pregnancies. Nine months later, a new generation of giant heroes was born, recruited by the government years later as a teenage fighting force called The Next Big Thing. They would be tasked with protecting the Earth from giant monsters and other large scale threats, operating for several years before being summarily killed by a race of giant alien insects called The Hierarchy. 

The standard operating procedure of The Next Big Thing was to capture their targets rather than kill them, so that their physiology could be studied. This resulted in a backlog of giant monsters being kept sedated or otherwise trapped in a massive underground installation called The Pen. With the death of The Next Big Thing, the government would turn to their collection, beginning a project to try and control the beasts they had captured and use them as living weapons against continued monstrous incursions.

The project would eventually recruit a team of super beings, some current and former heroes, others relatively non-violent villains offered the chance at a reduced sentence for their crimes, all of whom possessing powers that would allow them to control one of the creatures, riding them into battle like living mechs.

The team would consist of six pairs, three heroes and three villains, all of whom would have appeared prior to this in different titles, being brought together as part of a crossover. The team roster includes:

Dragonface, a human with an ancient magical mask forcibly bonded to his face containing an infinitely long Chinese dragon that bursts out and is compelled to do his bidding. The dragon itself is a thinly veiled parody of the Marvel villain Fing Fang Foom, called Wam Bam Thankumam, who would much rather be destroying cities, but reluctantly protects them due to the curse trapping him inside the mask.

Psilopsycho, a mutant supervillainess able to secrete hallucinogenic vapor from her pours, rendering her akin to a walking magic mushroom, is able to use her pheromones to control the actions of an actual giant magic mushroom, the massive mycan Hufungus.

Hodgepodge, a spectral superhero who constructs a physical body using whatever inanimate objects are nearby wherever he chooses to manifest himself, uses the same ability to control The Wad, a massive inanimate object golem that grows by collecting things it walks through, like a giant bipedal version of the Katamari Damacy ball.

Biomaster, an arrogant though often ineffectual former supervillain able to control biological material with his mind. He uses this power to command Orga the Man Monster, a golem that grows in a manner similar to The Wad, except using living beings (in most cases, people) instead of inanimate objects.

Wildside, a superheroine able to merge her consciousness with animals, would control Enormouse! (always spelled with an exclamation point), a giant laboratory mouse, often considered the lamest giant monster ever to threaten the Earth.

And finally Grand Guignol, a sadistic supervillain who becomes more powerful through his exposure to blood, would find a sense of communion with Goremungus, a giant liquid lifeform composed entirely of sentient blood.

The team would be led by Haywire, a hero whose body contains a seemingly infinite mass of metal wiring that can be expelled and controlled like tendrils, who is his own giant monster, struggling with a Hulk-esque alter ego when his powers go out of control, turning him into the giant wireframe monster High Wire.

The team would fight mainly against The Hierarchy, and through them uncover a pattern in which giant monsters are being sent to Earth to attempt to conquer the planet as part of a contest between competing alien empires, a game in which the Hierarchy are the referees. 

That's all I've got so far. It's long, drawn out, incredibly esoteric, and considering none of it has actually happened, and will most likely never happen, very, very self indulgent. But there you go.

I feel like I've just been through a fake comics enema. Have fun with that image.

Anyway, enjoy, and stay tuned for more!

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