And mostly, those submissions are going to suck rocks.
This is because the best stories grow out of the characters, instead of being all-purpose plots with interchangeable characters shoehorned in.
In other words: if you can effectively tell your John Constantine story without John Constantine, it's probably not a very good John Constantine story. And it wouldn't make a very good Pete Wisdom story, either.
My advice, if you really want to do this: pick a character, and start from there.
You know, I've been thinking about this overnight, and I'm not sure I agree with it.
My objection has something to do with the way mainstream comic book characters have continuity across many writers... and they way that superheroes (and that ilk) are big, goofy "wish fulfillment" stand-ins.
Like, if I had a story about this magic-using guy who knew the streets and knew arcane secrets, what I'd be writing would be about my projection of those qualities, or that pose... that fantasy. The name tagged on that character might inflect it in different ways, but it'd still be *my* story, more than a John Constantine story or a Pete Wisdom story. The backstory might shift a little, but still... so much of that comes from what's right there in the script rather than what's in the fanboys' heads. (Or it should, anyway.)
Like, according to this Cheeks the Toy Wonder mirror site, Peter Wisdom was originally written as a version of John Steed (from TV's "Avengers"), with Kitty Pryde as his Emma Peel. I haven't read any of those books, but the thought of taking the Kitty Pryde I knew (bumbling, goofy "kid sister" type) and morphing her into something as cool and capable as Emma Peel is pretty odd... but that's what the writer does. If the character is written well enough, the name becomes immaterial, really. Just another descriptive element. |
