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OK, I've got one. It's rough, and there's a lot I'd like to work/flesh out. but I'm jazzed about the idea and wanted to toss it out to the community:
All-Star Question
There's a bit of a minefield to walk with this, because in a way, All-Star Question already exists; we call him Rorschach. So my version moves in the opposite direction from the Rorschach template, because A) I'm not about to compete with Alan Moore on his own turf and B) a Rorschach ongoing would get overgrim pretty fast.
The other definitive Question is, of course, Ditko's original Charlton. Those stories are awesome and compelling, but a little bit limited. Vic Sage's scope needs to expand beyond 8-page dust-ups with small-time grifters and vandals.
Awesomely, the new dimension that the character needs is sitting right there, just underneath the source material: Objectivism. No, I don't think it's a workable (or even admirable) philosophy in the real world, but it's got tons of potential as a skeleton to sit underneath The Question. Vic Sage is a fiery, true-believing Randroid, and the Question is his expression of that—fed up when a former friend betrayed him and stole an idea (a static electricity generator, like the Galt generator in Atlas Shrugged; the way I see it, one of the fringe benefits here is the opportunity for Rand jokes/references all over the place. Sage lives in an apartment in a Howard Roark building, for example), Vic dresses up as the Question to take it to the streets against the people he thinks are destroying society with their looting and mooching and so on.
And that's what makes him interesting. he views the world through a strict black/white lens, but his B-W axis is totally foreign to most of the world, so no one really know what to make of him. The left adores him when he takes down a Jim Taggart-style corrupt, empty-suit businessman (speaking of which, Vic Sage detests the Bush Administration for being corrupt, incompetent profiteers); but they abhor him (and the right loves him) when he busts up on hippies (another note: although he's an Objectivist who beats people up, it's important that Vic be written sympathetically. He's drawn by the pro-Individual and non-exploitive capitalism sides of Objectivism; and he has a sense of humor, similar to Ditko-era Spidey).
Bowing both to his code-name and to his JLU portrayal, Vic Sage is an information junkie. He spends immense amounts of time online trying to piece things together, both at his day job (he's an engineer, not a broadcaster, and more on that in a minute) and at home. Actually, he has a fairly high-profile blog (Ditko's TV broadcaster was too much of an insider; a sort of fringe-y blogger gives more of a marginalized, claustrophobic feeling; this way, the Question's more clearly fighting an uphill battle) where he writes as the Question about what he does and why he does it.
So, then. Vic's overall arc is to learn about shades of gray. At the end, he still has his Objectivist POV, but he's more attuned to gray areas and subtleties.
So who does he fight/oppose? Well, at first at least, traditional Question-style opponents: grifters, fakes, looters. As Darwyn Cooke pointed out, he would probably be rather active against terrorists (or at least those he thinks are terrorists).
But there's a possible escalation to this, which I'll admit is dicey, but seems pretty interesting to me. The Question is generally a street-level character, but let's face it, he lives in the DCU. The Question hates altruists. Who's the DCU's biggest altruist? Superman. Vic Sage may not necessarily hate Superman, but he certainly doesn't think much of him— he sees Superman as a fool who wastes his enormous potential trying to solve other people's problems. Now, a properly-formulated Luthor (IE, the Luthor who wants to kill Superman because Big Blue stifles human potential) would be singing a tune that Vic Sage would love to hear.
So maybe you have a final arc where Luthor approaches the Question and suggests a collaboration to bring down Superman. Vic rocks his information sources and, Batman-style (he reveres Batman, by the way) figures out Superman's vulnerability. He gets Superman on the ropes and then either (I haven't worked this all out yet) A)pulls back at the last minute, recognizing that he and Superman actually aren't that different, just making sacrifices to serve different ideals; or, more likely, B) doesn't plan on Superman's sheer awesomeness and winds up getting a beatdown and then a Super-lecture on individualism vs. no-man-is-an-island.
OK. That's what I've got so far. Lots of rough edges and things that need to be worked out (including what happens with the supporting cast; I see most of the Ditko supporting cast appearing, although with somewhat different roles. No Professor Rodor, for one thing), but I like the broad outlines. |
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