GHOST WRITES

Tag: Comics

Amalgam-Tober Day 16: Phobia

Phobia is another obvious one, but that doesn’t make him any less fun. Mysterio and Scarecrow both teeter on being silly or incredibly menacing depending on the story, both characters who play with their enemies’ fear and cast visages to haunt them.

Quentin Crane is a washed up Horror movie director who has been relegated to making terrible B-Movies. Fed up with his life and career, Quentin decides it’s time for a change – not to himself, but to the horror movie industry. Using his love for special effects and a knack for chemistry (he’s been making smoke bombs ever since high school for his student films), Quentin makes a strange substance that, when inhaled, would create horrific hallucinations, instill a deathly sense of dread and send chills down the spine of everyone who as much as sniffed it.

One night, during the premiere of his latest schlocky slasher, Quentin pumps the substance through the cinema vents, hoping to create a new sort of horror experience. And horrific it is, perhaps the dosis was too high, perhaps the substance was faulty to begin with, but as the movie goes on the audience slowly loses their minds. Most of the moviegoers ended up not surviving the experience, clawing their eyes out of their heads or jumping from the balcony during the second act.

Quentin, now one of the biggest mass murderers of all time, goes on the run, and with half of the superhero community after him decides to don a killer outfit and become a real super villain: Phobia!

Obviously a Mysterio amalgamation needs the fishbowl, don’t do Mysterio if you don’t do the fishbowl I say! But I changed the usual smoke pattern inside into something more sinister and gave it those cool respirators that Scarecrow usually has attached to his mask. The costume is straight forward; taking inspiration from that raggedy old look usually associated with Scarecrow and kind of melding that with the Mysterio cape and gauntlets.

Thanks for checking out today’s post!

October 16, 2025
Amalgam-Tober Day 15: Eclipse

As I stated on day 2, the idea for this project started when I got to drawing The Polka-Spot Man and more ideas came flooding in soon thereafter – yet the idea to draw the Polka-Spot Man came from a different place; Comicpop. The youtube channel run by Sal has discussed the amalgam Universe many times but his episode of the Elseworlds exchange where they created their own Amalgam Characters was so much fun that I started doing it too. All of these have been original ideas from me so far, but to honor that original episode that started it all I bring you: Eclipse – an Amalgam of Moon Knight and Jason Todd’s Red Hood. Now before I get into everything I do need to explain that while the idea stems from Sal, the rest of this is solely my own doing, including design and backstory.

Naming these guys can either be the biggest pain in the ass or an absolute joy, and Eclipse turned out to be the latter. My brain literally just went: “Red Hood + Moon Knight= Red Moon? Red Moon = Lunar Eclipse, that’s too long so shorten it to Eclipse!”. It really is that simple. From there on the design followed, starting with the small logo on his chest. I inverted the usual crescent moon that Moon Knight usually sports and added an additional moon resembling the process of an eclipse.

Moon Knight has had a lot of different costumes over the years and I toyed with the idea of making this a look inspired by the Mr.Knight suit or a more mystical suit that would tie into his origins but decided that keeping that tactical aspect from the Red Hood costume would be the best way to go. That’s why I chose to go with that more tactical black and white Moon Knight suit often attributed to Jake Lockley, but replacing the pants with something more military looking and obviously recoloring that cape. He needed a Red Hood… Duh!

All of this ties back to his origin: Back in the day, Jason Spector was a young criminal often on the run from the law, yet it’s when he steals a certain someone’s tires his story really begins. The skills he puts on display during his criminal acts impresses the Caped Crusader so much that he takes him under his wing. Getting the training he needs to become a superhero sidekick, Jason manages to overcome some of his troubled upbringing and reshape the skills he learned on the streets into something more heroic. But being a hero comes with a lot of downsides, and suffering traumatic event after traumatic event his volatile side kicks back up again, culminating in a violent confrontation with his father’s biggest enemy – one he does not survive.

It’s then that his father’s oldest enemy, The Moon Demon Khon-Al-Ghul, retrieves Jason’s body for his most nefarious plan yet. Submerging Jason in the healing Lunar waters of Arabia, Khon-Al-Ghul thinks he’s reviving Jason to turn him into a soldier for his own League of Assassins. But out from the bubbling crystal blue water comes a man forever changed, not just Jason anymore. The emotional trauma of his past mixed with the physical trauma of his violent death and subsequent resurrection has split Jason’s psyche into bits and pieces, creating three distinct personalities inside his system, all fighting for control. His youthful spirit remains within the Alter I dub “The Boy”, always steering Jason into more problems and mischief – from causing random property damage in the streets of Gotham to purposely killing low-life thugs to teach them a lesson, this Alter doesn’t understand the gravity of his actions and is not concerned with consequences. The Sidekick, Jason’s second Alter, is the exact opposite. He’s trained to be better and serves as Jason’s moral compass for good. The sidekick makes sure to cause no damage to the innocent, always makes sure that apprehended drug money ends up in places where it’s needed and desperately resists whenever murder is on Jason’s mind. Usually though: it’s the Eclipse that takes the wheel, an Alter completely engulfed with rage and revenge. He’s the one that came out of the water, he’s the one who’s set off on this journey for revenge and he’s the one who’s going to kill whoever stands in his way.

For a while I wanted to design all three of the Alters for this post, but I quickly realized that would be too much work for one day. That said, the final piece does feature Khon-Al-Ghul, a mix of Khonshu and Ra’s-Al-Ghul, making day 15 a double Amalgam day!

October 15, 2025
Amalgam-Tober Day 14: The Great Catch-Up

Today is slightly different, since network issues prohibited me from posting two days in the past week, I hereby put the articles for those days here. Including today’s post of course.

Day 11: Spider-Man 2099

Some of these have been, with the risk of sounding cocky, very clever. Putting together unlikely pair-ups and coming up with clever names. Some of these are downright obvious though, this being one of those. Putting Spider-Man 2099 and Batman Beyond together is a no-brainer. Quite truthfully it’s a shame they’ve never done it before. The similarities don’t just boil down to being future versions of the biggest character of their respective publisher, it’s also about aesthetics, about that Blade Runner infused world building and about that similar standoffishness that both characters share. Terry and Miguel are both cool guys, hotheaded and maybe don’t start off as morally righteous as their counterparts did, but their stories are about them morphing into something better.

The big difference between Miguel and Terry is their training, more specifically a lack of a trainer. Terry has Bruce by his side on every adventure, Terry knows about Batman and his past while Miguel barely acknowledges Peter’s existence. He’s not doing this to step into Peter’s footsteps and live up to his legacy, he doesn’t even really have a legacy to live up to. That’s where my new origin for this version comes in: I want a Batman who has to basically figure out a completely new way of being Batman, no training from an old Bruce, he can only take from the myth of the Batman.

That’s how we start this out. Terry O’Hara, running from a group of crazed Mayhem crooks (who’ve dedicated their life to causing as much chaos as possible in honor of Mayhem, the leader of their old clown gang), tries to find a hiding spot among the old abandoned remnants of the Gotham Manor. But when he steps on a wrong wooden plank invested by Woodrot his entire body comes crashing down through the floor, tumbling all the way into a secret cave filled with old technology. That’s when he finds the last Batman suit made by his predecessor, waiting for him in a bright blue storage room. In an effort to protect himself from the goons still after him, Terry puts on the suit and becomes the Batman of 2099.

Terry knows of Batman, but it’s been so long since he’s last donned the suit (I imagine Batman retiring in the early 2000s to stay truthful to that original time gap from the 2099 comics) that there just isn’t that much record of him left. Barely any videos or images left and definitely no living heirs to tell the tale. Terry is forced to base his fighting style and overall demeanor as Batman on that off old tales from stuffy books and on real bats instead.

This version of Batman would be meaner and scarier, he’d live in the shadows and combined with his stealth suit and claws, people would think he’s a genuine monster for his first years as The Bat. But that’s what he has to overcome to become the greatest hero the Amalgam Universe has ever seen.

Day 12: The Bat Without Fear

A few days ago, when I first showed off my design for the Knight Without Fear, I talked about how much I wanted to amalgamate Daredevil and Batman in some form. The two just fit so well together that making 31 of these and ignoring such a solid idea would just be a waste. I finally found my angle when I did my version of Old Man Matt and Old Man Bruce together as one but that was not my first attempt… this is.

The Bat Without Fear is a combination of Batwoman and The Woman Without Fear, aka Elektra from Chip Zdarsky’s Daredevil run. The latter is one of my favorite recent additions to the Marvel Universe so I’m always contemplating putting her in projects like these and now I finally have a reason to do so.

Like Batman and Daredevil, Batwoman and this version of Elektra are two sides of the same coin. They are astoundingly similar in so many ways; from the simple fact that they’re both legacy characters to the fact that they’re both sporting a red and black color scheme with a big bush of hair sticking out of their masks, the more you think about the better these two fit.

The design ended up being pretty tough to nail but I feel I managed okay. Elements that I felt had to be incorporated were the Bat-Logo obviously as well as Elektra’s beautiful curls that seem to almost be alive if they’re drawn by Checchetto. The weaponry was also very fun to develop, with the Batsai being one of my favorite things I’ve thought of since starting this challenge. I’ve really been trying to differentiate each drawing and try new ways of getting my final look across and this one shows that off to a tee. Here I ditched the usual look of these posts with something more concept-Art like. Separating costume and head is a good shot for a design like this.

Day 14: Soldier Of Tomorrow

Drifting through the cosmos, surrounded by the rubble of a dead planet, Kara Zor-El breathes her last breaths. Her lungs filling with blood, her skin on fire and her ripped apart left arm aching as memories of her time on Krypton try to push away the pain and anguish, keeping her eyes from gazing at the dead floating relatives surrounding her. She closes her eyes knowing the inevitable is finally here… Brainiac.

Making an Amalgam oftentimes means finding characters that share similar aesthetics or gimmicks or powers or whatever, but a really good Amalgam looks past all that and finds characters that would never fit together but are still intrinsically the same: Supergirl and Winter Soldier are such characters. Most people would assume a character like Red Hood would pair well with Winter Soldier, rightfully so: they are very similar. And Supergirl might fit well with powerhouse characters like Captain Marvel and such. But when you think about it, their origin is so similar. They are old – familiar faces, returning from the past with a heap of emotional baggage. But where Kara’s story usually ends in her escaping from the Kryptonian wreckage and landing on Earth, mine goes into a different direction.

When Kara wakes up she doesn’t even remember her own name. She’s a husk of what’s been, overcome by Brainiac’s programming and turned into his personal attack dog. Her design is a mix of Winter Soldier’s tactical gear and samples of the super-aesthetic. The torn cape still has the mark of El scorched into the back while the one on her chest is replaced by Brainiac Particles (though still in that familiar Crest-Shape). The particles also help generate the necessary energy to sustain her cybernetically enhanced arm, One that has more blood on it then some small planets have culminated over their entire existence. She sports a domino mask to hide her red laser eyes and a face-guard to conceal her kryptonian heritage, especially now that Brainiac has sent her on her most dangerous mission. Go to Earth and kill the last remaining family she has…

I really think these two fit well together and I hope I’ve convinced you of the same. Thanks for reading and see you tomorrow.

October 15, 2025
Amalgam-Tober Day 6: The Knight Without Fear

I made a promise to myself when I started this project that I’d try to include as many “new” characters as possible in these amalgams. I wanted to focus on those that didn’t even exist yet when the original Amalgam Universe was born. What I didn’t realize was that I was going to include characters this new. But after reading the freshly released “One Cold Day In Hell” by Charles Soule and Steve Mcniven, the inspiration was hard to ignore.

I have been really struggling with Amalgamizing (is that a word? It is now!) Batman and Daredevil. The two just belong together, they just… fit. They are pieces of the same puzzle. You’ve probably seen the many posts comparing the two and how they should swap names since bats are blind and use echo location similar to Daredevil and Batman is just a guy jumping around rooftops so he should be a Daredevil yadda yadda yadda – and no matter how baseline that idea might be, it is kind of fun to explore. But it all just felt a little too obvious. I needed an angle, and after reading “One Cold Day In Hell”, I had my angle.

“CDIH” – as I will now be referring to it as – is a Dark Knight Returns pastiche. The old hero returns for a final outing, inspiring the next generation alongside a young girl. There is obviously more to either story but it boils down to the same thing and both books do it very well. So, as an homage to an homage, I pushed together two of the most iconic pieces of Frank Miller imagery and Steve McNiven’s tweaked Daredevil design and created today’s AmalgamTober entry.

I started off the design with a much more frail looking figure akin to Matt’s appearance in “CDIH” but quickly realized that I was just drawing Daredevil with a bat on his chest. Thus I switched to that more bulky and square Old Man Bruce design, it needed an extra element to drive home that this is Matt and Bruce together and not just a weird Daredevil design. An unintentional comparison that this color scheme and design evokes is that of the original Batman designs drawn up by Bob Kane, who shared a similar red suit and big belt. Now I’m not a big fan of Bob Kane, so don’t take this as an endorsement, but I did sort of lean into it as a fun nod.

Finally I also added the blindfold around his eyes. I always enjoy a Daredevil design that forgoes the eyes on his helmet, it adds to the whole blind justice angle that makes the character interesting as well as making him just generally stand out among his many, MANY, peers. It adds a level of fluidity to the piece that I like, not to mention that I couldn’t get the angle of the eyes right and just kind of gave up!

I hope you enjoy today’s piece and I hope you check out “Daredevil: Cold Day In Hell” – which I assume will be collected early next year in trade?

October 6, 2025
Amalgam-Tober Day 5: The Absolute Immortal Mindfucker

A rare three-way-multi-dimensional Amalgam, The Absolute Martian Mindfucker is an amalgamation of The Hulk, Martian Manhunter and his Absolute counterpart. When I started off this amalgam, I wasn’t planning on touching on the Absolute version of the character. I had originally started off just combining Bruce Banner and J’onn J’onzz; the transforming that both characters can do, while juxtaposing the involuntary and grotesque nature of The Hulk with the voluntary and often more “cool” nature of Martian Manhunter really attracted me to this combination but then when I started thinking about backstory more pieces fell into place and I realised just how perfectly this could work.

An alien, whose homeworld has been destroyed, is sent out into space as a last ditch effort of survival. On his search for a habitable world he finds Earth, a planet entirely similar to his original home world, including a little spot beaming with the exact radiation that made his home so fertile. Once landed, he finds a barren land of orange sand and dead shrubs, with the only signs of intelligent life being the man-made towers of steel, echoing a strange noise – a countdown. Confused by the new sounds and sights surrounding him, it takes the Martian a few moments to realize there’s a strange creature running at him. Bruce Banner, a human man who holds life sacred so much he’s willing to sacrifice himself to save this alien life-form . The man screams something in a language alien to the martian before pushing him down to the ground as a blast of green light and smoke rips past them. Both of their senses erupt, their bodies are torn to shreds and remade on the spot as gamma radiation courses through their bodies – they change.

This is where my original plan for this character started to diverge. I was planning on taking Martian Manhunter’s origin – Where J’onn meets a kind earth scientist who passes away due to shock from the whole ordeal – and sort of interject Bruce Banner’s origin in the middle of it. Bruce would save J’onn like he did Rick Jones in the original story but die in the process instead of turning into the Hulk. J’onn would then take his place and become Bruce Banner. But then why was there a Hulk? I tried out designs for a skinnier hulk that resembled a Martian (Heavily inspired by Darwyn Cooke’s Martian design from “New Frontier”) but they all came out looking incredibly dull. Not being an Amalgam of anyone but more-so an entirely new character in some iterations while looking too much like J’onn and not enough like Hulk in others.

That’s where Absolute Martian Manhunter comes in. I realized that literally merging the two characters, instead of one becoming the other, would work much better for what I wanted to do. The idea that this Martian would essentially take over Bruce’s body really appealed to me, but instead of being this mental presence guiding Bruce like the Absolute version does to John, my version actually physically takes over when he needs to. It also helps that the Absolute Martian Manhunter has a few physical characteristics that are much easier to smush together with the iconography of the Hulk.

Which brings me to the Immortal parts of this character. Beyond the body horror elements that I implemented, I also want to use some of the motivation from Al Ewing’s time on the character. Ewing imbued the mythos of the green giant with a thick layer of environmentalism – putting the character on a crusade against all those in power who oppose his mission to save the earth. This is the last piece of the puzzle that is the “Absolute Immortal Mindfucker”. With the entire death of his home planet burned in his psyche, the Martian inside Bruce grows increasingly angry at the state of humanity and how careless they are with their planet. Not only does this add a really interesting layer to this character, it also creates that similar tension between Bruce and his inner personality (being the Martian in this iteration instead of the Hulk) that has defined the Hulk mythos.

It took a lot of retrofitting but I’m really happy with the final result. Getting to adapt a more recent creation like Absolute Martian Manhunter is exactly why I so enjoy doing these and I highly recommend reading Deniz Camp’s and Javier Rodriguez’ book if you haven’t done so already! (as well as Immortal Hulk – duh!). Thank you for reading and I hope you check back here tomorrow!

October 5, 2025
Amalgam-Tober Day 4: Blue-Spider (Jaime Morales)

Now this is the real reason I combined Peter Parker and Ted Kord for yesterday’s Amalgam. While those two ultimately fit together very well, putting their legacies together fits even more perfectly. Jaime Reyes’ Blue Beetle and Miles Morales’ Spider-Man are incredibly similar characters. Both young men who stumble on their bug-related-powers by accident, both bilingual, who use their love for anime to make big awesome swords.

While this is a Miles and Jaime Amalgamation first, I do also want to take some parts of Peter Parker’s Spider-Man mythology and mix that into the history of the Blue Spider-Scarab. Mainly I want to take the whole Ezekiel Sims character and kind of turn him into this universe’s Dan Garrett (The Original – Original Blue Beetle). Here’s the mythical history of the Blue Spider-Scarab; Years prior to the first boom of meta-humans, an interstellar race of super-engineers created the Spider as a weapon – a suit that functions both for the Offensive side of combat as it does the Defensive. But when a battle sends the weapon hurdling towards earth, a man finds it and gains the powers of a spider. Battling lowlife thugs and gangsters in the shadows of his city, The Blue-Spider tries to do his best in his battle against evil, but in an age without supervillains, this first Blue-Spider’s career does not go on for long, going down in myth after removing the Spider-Scarab from his body. Yet, the myth is enough to inspire people years down the line; A group of scientists try to recreate the Spider using a synthetic formula injected into a real life spider. But when the Spider escapes and ends up biting a young Ted Parker, Ted reignites the Blue-Spider moniker and dons his very own blue suit.

Years down the line, Ted, now a mega successful inventor who runs Parker Industries to fund his superhero career, is visited by the original Blue-Spider, who tells him all about the original Spider. But Ted’s investigation is cut short when the Spider-Scarab is stolen from his office.

Cut to; Jaime Morales’ cousin gives him a strange, blue, glowing Spider “Paperweight” for his 15th birthday. Jaime’s cousin, Alfonso, works at Parker Industries as a technical consultant and being a little fed up with the job, took Ted’s Spider right from his desk, assuming it’s just some rich guy’s piece of junk. But that night, the spider grants Miles powers beyond his wildest imagination. Now, alongside Ted Parker, Jaime becomes the Blue-Spider!

The design was pretty easy. Miles’ suit is really quite simple, with the chest Spider and Webbing being the only two things that make it a “spider” suit. Taking into account the alien-origin of the suit I decided it’d be best to use Jaime’s suit as the base and put those aforementioned elements from Miles’ suit on top of it. I changed the thick scarab on Jaime’s chest into a spider, as well as the back scarab and had the legs wrap around his body from both sides. I enlarged the beetle eyes into something more akin to the big classic Spider-Man goggles and then added a webshooter to the suit.

While the idea and design were pretty easy, getting the final piece out was a struggle. I could not settle on a pose or style. I had him hanging, jumping, fighting and sticking to walls but all of those poses meant I had to sacrifice necessary details of the suit. That’s why I ended up with quite the boring pose at the end.

Thank you for reading all of this – it’s the longest character biography I’ve given these drawings thus far – and I hope you check out tomorrow’s post as well.

October 4, 2025
Amalgam-Tober Day 3: Blue-Spider (Ted Parker)

When I decided to put Peter Parker together with Ted Kord I did it for a few reasons; One has to remain a mystery till a later date, one is the general bug themed nature of both characters but the more interesting reason is Steve Ditko. Many know Ditko as the creator of Spider-Man, which is without a doubt his biggest creation at Marvel, but it’s lesser known that he is also the mind behind Ted Kord’s Blue Beetle (among other characters for Charlton Comics, who all migrated to the DC Universe after the latter bought the former). I’ve always been interested in putting these characters together beyond just “They’re both evil” or “They both wear red”, and getting to mix in the real life history of comics into these is always a plus.

Obviously today’s piece is based on Spidey’s first appearance on the cover of Amazing Fantasy #15 (drawn by Jack “The King” Kirby funnily enough – not Ditko himself) – an idea I had when I stumbled on the Marvel Redraw account on twitter (does that mean I also amalgamated two art challenges into one?). I combined the titles of “Amazing Fantasy” and “Mystery Men Comics” (in which the original Blue Beetle debuted) but kept most of the overall cover design the same.

The design really came out pretty quickly; I kept the overall color scheme of Ted Kord’s suit while shifting the usual Beetle design on his chest into something more spider-like and making the eye goggles visually similar to that of Spidey’s lenses. Obviously I had to keep a little bit of webbing on the chest because it can’t be a spidey design without webs.

Thanks for checking out today’s Amalgam and I hope you check back tomorrow for another!

October 3, 2025
Amalgam-Tober Day 1: Access

It’s Day One of AmalgamTober, with our first entry this month being ACCESS, the only Marvel and DC Co-Owned character that’s ever existed. Obviously it’s not ideal to start AMALGAM-tober with a character that is not an Amalgamation, but why not start my homage to the Amalgam Universe by honoring this little known anomaly!

When I started this drawing I expected to go with a more civilian outfit – I had imagined giving him this letterman jacket with a big A on the chest. Cheesy, I know, but felt fitting for his enormous cornball energy. But after finalising my rough sketch I realized there really wasn’t that much interesting going on so I tried something more striking instead. Another idea I started with that did make it to the final piece, although it’s all a little less clear because I decided to color the whole thing in red and blue and nothing else, was the fact that Axel has Heterochromia. One of his eyes is blue while the other one is red – not just because it’s aesthetically pleasing but I also imagined it as a sort of physical representation of him being able to see into both realities. Easily hopping between dimension whenever he’s needed.

Why did I decide to draw Axel to start this challenge? I don’t know. But I do know how vital he is to my pitch for a potential new DC / Marvel Crossover. This idea has fleshed itself out more and more as I’ve spent the last few weeks thinking, living, and breathing Marvel and DC crossovers – so why not just go ahead and post it. Now I won’t post all of it at once, I need a little more time to write it all out, but I will incrementally over the coming month drop more chapters to flesh the whole thing out.

Anyway thank you for checking out Day One of this challenge – Hope I get to see you tag along over the coming weeks because I have some really fun pieces coming up that I’m very proud of! See you tomorrow!

October 2, 2025
DC Studios’ Missing Piece – And How To Fix It!

The DCU has started. With the release of “Superman”, James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new cinematic DC Universe has finally and properly gotten off the ground (quite literally, Superman flies around – get it?). And as the future of the studio becomes clearer with each passing day – as more of these projects get the greenlight – it’s also quite apparent that one side of the DC universe seems to be largely ignored. Where is the magic? For a slate of films titled “Gods and Monsters” there is shockingly little magic to be found in the upcoming roster, even though it’s a force that bonds the gods and monsters together in a major way.

Magic has been a long time fixture in DC comics, spawning fan favorite characters, teams and books. DC’s magical side exploded into popularity under the Vertigo publishing line, putting out some of the most creative, critically acclaimed and successful books the company has ever seen and is to this day one of the most fertile grounds for groundbreaking storytelling. Magic bleeds into almost every facet of the DC universe; Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, hell even the Flash, they all deal with magic on a (semi) regular basis. But looking at the slate of projects currently worked on over at WB it seems that a magic focused project isn’t really at the forefront yet. Yes, Magical characters will show up in some of the projects announced to be in production so far, I’m sure of that – Updates on the project have been sparse since its announcement but James Mangold’s Swamp Thing surely deals with magic in some capacity, the Paradise Lost show (which will definitely morph into a Wonder Woman: Historia project by-the-way) has to feature heaps of magic if it wants to be faithful to its source material and Circe already showed magical prowess in Creature Commandos – yet none of those projects put the magicians in the lead. A weird phenomenon given how much excitement there is about these characters.

Many magical DC-characters could lend themselves well to a solo big-screen adventure or a big-budget-miniseries on HBO MAX; Constantine is a fan favorite, so is Zatanna, Dr. Fate is already a familiar face for audiences (that is, at least to all twelve people that saw Black Adam), Hell, you could even put them all together in a little team-up and you finally get yourself a nice Justice League Dark project. But while there are many cool and exciting possibilities we could talk about today, there is one DC book that would make for a perfect exploration to this side of DC’s mythos. The highly underrated 1990 miniseries “Books Of Magic”.

BOOKS OF MAGIC

Books of Magic is a 4 issue miniseries created by Neil Gaiman, John Bolton, Charles Vess, Paul Johnson, and Scott Hampton, that introduces Tim Hunter to the DC universe, a young boy destined to become a great and powerful wizard, but whose future is still left uncertain as forces of both good and evil pine for his soul. When evil mystic forces want to corrupt Tim and turn him over to the dark side of magic, a group of mystical detectives, referred to as the Trenchcoat Brigade, come together to guide Tim on a journey that will decide not just his future, but also that of the entire DC universe. The brigade, consisting of Doctor Occult, Mister E, Phantom Stranger and fan favorite John Constantine, take Tim on a journey that has him interact with almost every notable mystic in the DC universe. All of the characters that I mentioned as potential tv-and-movie-leads cross paths with Tim, as well as a bunch of others including The Endless and Madame Xanadu. This, to me, lends itself perfectly to a prestige 5 or 6 episode miniseries for HBO MAX.

This book is such a good choice for the start of this new universe for one reason; Tim. Tim is a perfect audience surrogate, he is learning all of these crazy new secrets about the world on his journey through the past, present and future, just like the audience is doing. We introduce this world through his eyes and we can organically explain and define what magic is in this universe without it feeling forced or boring. Things never get too big for Tim, so they don’t get too big for audiences either. This is even more fitting when you realize just how well established the DCU already is. There are all these things already going on, so many stories have already happened, and Tim learning about this whole new secret layer to all of that would be an identical position to the audience.

But the reasons why don’t end there.

Paired up with Tim is the aforementioned Trenchcoat Brigade, a collection of characters who lend themselves well to the story we want to tell here. One of them, John Constantine, is a fan favorite character that can pull in a large number of viewers, making this a good creative idea as well as a business strategy – and while the other three are admittedly much more niche, that has never been a problem for Gunn’s productions. If anything Gunn thrives using these characters, I’m sure a realized version of this idea would see these three characters slightly tweaked and morphed into perfect versions for this type of story at the hands of Gunn, Safran and whoever else they’d bring in to produce this story (Ideally that person would be me, they should bring in me, I will send you my phone number, James).

The original book sees Tim pair up with a new member of the brigade every issue, creating four distinct adventures over the course of four issues that explore the past, present and future of the DC universe as well as several adjacent realms. While this four part structure works perfectly for the original comic book, adapting it to a HBO-like-format would require an extra episode or two, Fleshing out the world, characters and mostly Tim with more detail compared to the original mini-series – Luckily for you, I also know just how to do that. Bring in Zatanna.

Those of you who happen to have read the original 4 issue run know that the second issue takes place in the present day – as Constantine takes Tim through the modern-day DC universe and has him interact with this large cast of familiar faces. Among that cast of characters is Zatanna, who second only to Constantine himself, is probably the most well known magic user DC has in their roster. In the book, right after meeting up with her, Constantine is suddenly called away to go do something else, leaving Tim behind in Zatanna’s home. The two characters then have their own little adventure which, while I think it works very well in the book, needs to be remodeled for an adaptation like this. This is the part of the book where the show needs to kind of diverge from its source material and make Zatanna and Tim’s journey an entire episode in-and-of-itself – compared to the last pages of a different story. This could be ideal for a few reasons: Zatanna is a big deal in the comics, she’s a lot of fun and people are very aware of her already – even if she’s never been featured in a live action film adaptation. Giving her this little moment in the spotlight would make fans very happy, plus it would give us a different angle to approach the whole Tim mentorship with. Zatanna isn’t like any of the other members of the trenchcoat brigade, she would bring a unique maturity and kindness to TIm’s journey that I feel could mean a lot for him and dictate which side of the coin the young boy ends up choosing. She, because of her heritage and who her father was, has also been thrust into the world without really having a say in it, which is a great point to explore between the two. Also, Most of those big players in DC’s magic world, those who we will want to see more of in the DCU going forward (Like Deadman, who’s already been teased by Gunn on Instagram) appear in that second issue, so giving that part of the book a little bit more time to breathe could benefit audiences greatly. This is what we want from an interconnected universe like this, getting to know this wide tapestry of characters bit by bit. Plus, and let’s be honest here, Constantine will be the main draw of the show, no matter how good every other aspect is, audiences will be drawn to him first, by splitting his story up into multiple parts and injecting Zatanna in between those, fans will get to see a lot more of this fan favorite character.

There is material for an additional sixth episode as well to be found in the last issue of the book. While I would in no way shape or form suggest that the ending to the original miniseries isn’t great, it’s one of the most unique and engaging endings of the Vertigo era, it might lack a little bit of flashiness for a big budget TV show. I don’t want to spoil what happens in the fourth issue (read Books of Magic if you haven’t) so this next bit might sound a little vague, but you could extend the material from the fourth issue into two episodes. Tim and Mister E travel through the future by foot until they arrive at the end of everything, the death of the universe and the death of Destiny. This climactic issue is filled with wild visuals and manages to surprise the reading audience by revealing a major twist right near the finish line. Using this twist to split this last issue in half would give this part of the story – one overflowing with lore, visuals and action – some much needed breathing room and help audiences stomach the insanity that is present in the final stretch of Tim’s journey.

If you’re curious about the book and want to delve deeper into it, I highly recommend checking it out. Though I must also address that, while the book is great and a LOT of writers and artists have left their fingerprint on it, it is a Neil Gaiman book – and that could be an issue for some people. I know it was a weird moment to be writing this article (I’d completed work on it several weeks before the Gaiman allegations came out but was waiting on a good moment to share this when that article was released about him), I just hope the book can still get its moment in the sun for those who worked on it that aren’t literal monsters. So fuck Neil Gaiman!

Do you have any future DCU projects you’d like to see? Put them in the comments because I’d love to hear it. And would you be interested to see more magic in the DCU? Make sure to follow Ghost-Writes for more articles about DC studios, DC comics and a whole lot more geeky topics!

July 25, 2025
Iron Man V Superman: Starting a Cinematic Universe

LOOK UP! It is finally upon us. The Summer of Superman is reaching new heights as audiences slowly but surely flock into theaters to watch James Gunn’s “Superman” film. A weirdly momentous moment for a whole platitude of reasons. Of course for starters: Hopefully it’ll turn the public’s perception of the blue boy scout around after a few years of middling wide-spread success – but, maybe more importantly, it’ll also kickstart a brand new Cinematic-Superhero-Universe, something DC, under the WB umbrella, has been trying to accomplish for a decade now. After their first attempt slowly fizzled out into increasingly confusing course corrections, leaving the entire brand tarnished in a ditch, James Gunn now holds the reins to the DC universe and his take on the “Man Of Tomorrow” is set to start it all off in a big way. But is “Superman” enough to get audiences back to the big screen for one of comics’ oldest and most iconic universes? Having seen it, I am not so sure…

Before I get into why, maybe we should look back to the past, back to where it all began. Back to 2008. Back to Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man”. The movie that started it all – the movie that launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a monumental achievement in blockbuster film-making that studios have tried – and failed – to replicate ever since. The MCU seems to be this unobtainable gem to these conglomerate studios, time and time again they try to launch their own universes, releasing spin-offs and remakes and big-budget-blockbusters to absolutely no success. Valiant comics tried to start up a universe with Vin Diesel’s “Bloodshot” film – an attempt so laughable I had to take a minute to recoup after finishing typing the previous sentence. Sony Pictures really did try their hardest to make the SPUMM universe work (Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Movies) – releasing a whole slate of critically, and often commercially, panned films for almost a decade – and Universal will always live in infamy over their Dark Universe announcement photo. Yet Marvel somehow managed to avoid that, they managed to create this incredible sprawling universe, surviving even after steadily releasing unimaginable levels of MID for half-a-decade.

DC does have a lot of good faith going for it at the moment, it seems like audiences are excited to see more of this universe and “Superman” is projected to do good; this is the closest I think we’ve ever gotten to a studio replicating that MCU formula for success. Yet it’s the general audiences that need to be onboard the most, and that’s where I’m afraid “Superman” will lose people.

Gunn’s “Superman” is a comic book movie. It is the silver age brought to life, not only in design and feel but also in story structure. The entire thing plays out like a series single issues played in rapid succession, you can almost see where each issue would end and the next would start if this were a 6 issue mini-series instead of a big Hollywood blockbuster; a quality the film both suffers from as it does excel in. Because yes, it’s so refreshing to see a movie actually respect this medium that is often only used to be gutted for parts and “inspiration” – giving us scenes that feel like their ripped straight out of a comic book – silliness and wackiness included, yet it can also feel out of place at times. All the wackiness takes up screen time that I would’ve personally much rather seen used on other more important things like… I don’t know… characterization maybe!

CHARACTERIZATION

See, when a comic book consistently throws characters at me like Guy Gardner, Hawkgirl, Mr Terrific or even Jimmy Olsen, I’m totally down to roll with that. I know what I can and need to expect in a big-two/canon comic book – them’s the rules and I love the medium for it – but that is a completely different way of storytelling, the medium makes that work, when you apply that same story-structure to the first movie of your big franchise it becomes convoluted, stuffed to the brim with characters that I cannot imagine general audiences would be into at first glance. I’ve seen many people compare the films narrative to that of a random single issue in a 30+ issue comic book run and I totally get that, there’s so much lore and story that is only being hinted at or referred to but never actually shown that it can become convoluted – even for someone like me, who is aware of all this stuff on a not-so-normal level.

Here’s where Iron Man comes in. Iron Man is a comic book film, yes; it has most of the things that make Iron Man who he is and is as faithful as I think time allowed it to be. But it is also a movie. It’s a film that uses the language and structure of said medium to adapt the comics – and I don’t think “Superman” does the same. “Superman” is so faithful to the comic book medium that, at times, it ends up feeling like less of a movie because of it. At times it can feel more like a series of Rick and Morty episodes strung together, with all the characters and all the different settings pulling the movie in so many different directions making the entire thing feel messy and detached from one-another.

Imagine a version of Iron Man 2008, with the same cast and the same runtime, but it also includes Whiplash and The Crimson Dynamo as henchmen for Obadiah Stane. That’d already be a pretty stacked film right? But then, when Iron Man keeps running into the West Coast Avengers for some reason, things become even more convoluted. Instead of the great moments between Tony and Rhodey, you’d instead get a scene where Tigra rips apart bad guys or instead of getting the cheeseburger scene with Happy and Tony, Hawkeye shows up instead to get made fun of for his bow and arrow skills. Yeah it’s fun on paper but when you think of what you get instead – what these characters are replacing in the runtime – you realize it might not make for a more satisfying final product. “Superman” is that film.

Take the Daily Planet. A staple of the Superman mythos attached to a plethora of iconic side characters to the Superman expanded cast and vital to understanding the character of Clark Kent. I was so excited to see what Gunn was cooking with the Daily Planet. All the casting was great, I know Gunn can handle a group of big colorful characters like the Daily Planet crew and we’ve been sorely lacking a nice faithful adaptation of this side of the DC world for decades now. Yet, in the final film, they’re kind of… absent. Sure yeah they’re in the film and they have like a funny scene… but that is it. They have a scene. One maybe two scenes dedicated to the entire group. They are not in it nearly enough for how important their subplot is to the main story. Most egregious of all, one member of the Daily Planet, maybe the most vital member, is only in the film for about 2 minutes total (if not less)… and that is Clark Kent.

Yes, Clark Kent is in the film for mere moments. The rest of the film is entirely dedicated to Superman. In a way I can appreciate that the film doesn’t ever make the audience believe Clark and Superman are different characters – Clark is Clark, no matter if he wears the costume or the glasses – yet characters in the film don’t know that obviously. There is an entire investigation in the film led by Lois and Jimmy that then directly ties into the final act of the film and guess what! Clark does not help a single bit. He’s so absent from the Daily Planet no one is even really concerned about him not being there. The entirety of Metropolis is evacuated in the third act, the whole crew evacuate the Daily Planet building together (that’s the only scene in the film that features them all interacting by the way) and no one is like… “Where’s Clark?”. Not a funny remark from Steve calling Clark a wuss for sitting this out or Perry White yelling out for him during the commotion. No, Kent’s presence is barely acknowledged throughout the whole film? WHY? Because instead I’m watching this weird alien creature Lex Luthor created for some reason. There’s a huge disconnect between plotline: Superman and plotline: Daily Planet – which makes the latter feel weirdly inconsequential given how much it ties into the third act.

And it’s not like the Justice Gang gets enough shine because of it. The exact same issues I have with the Daily Planet arise with the Justice Gang. I know nothing about these characters, about what makes them tick, what they’re like and what having them here adds to the final story beyond what I already knew about them going in. Yes, Mr. Terrific leaves a lasting impression sure, but I wouldn’t say he’s a really fleshed put character. Again, general audiences don’t have the luxury of having comic-book-brain-worms that make you store useless capeshit information in your head like some of us do. They will just be left wondering who they just saw flying around the film without ever getting an answer (until some of these guys ultimately get their own HBO miniseries or whatever).

It’s an even bigger shame because Gunn is clearly gifted at characterization. He made audiences fall in love with Rocket Raccoon of all characters and even in this film it’s obvious just how good he is at it. Jimmy is really fun, he might be the only supporting character that actually works in the entire film. There’s also a really nice moment where Perry White listens to Lois’ story as the entire office melts down in a panic. Character beats like that work so well but the movie just doesn’t have enough of those moments to engage you fully.

INTENT V EXPECTATION

But where I think Iron Man and Superman differ the most, where I think these films’ paths leading to Cinematic Universes diverge most is with Intent and with Expectation. Superman is being released in a completely different cultural landscape compared to Iron man. The movie industry, fandom, culture as a whole has so drastically changed since 2008 (a lot of that stemming from the existence of the MCU) and audiences expectations have shifted alongside that change. “Iron Man”, unlike all the other attempts we’ve touched on so far – including “Superman” – didn’t know what it was capable of doing. Not Feige, Not the studios’, not even the audience knew what this could grow into (I’m sure there were hopes and dreams of course, but no one could’ve expected what happened). That’s the difference. Now everyone knows what Superman is gonna become, they know they can expect more – as do the studios and filmmakers. They’re launching a cinematic-universe knowing full well that, post “Guardians Of The Galaxy”, you can get away with putting a bunch of colorful stuff in your film. But I don’t think you wanna start by going at a 100 percent, “Iron Man” barely started at ten and the MCU didn’t go to one-hundred until like 5 years later.

You need to set that foundation first. You need to grow your world from the characters, not the behind the scenes chitter-chat and background easter eggs – audiences want fully realized main characters and side characters they can really sink their teeth into, that’s how you get them onboard, that is how you get them to come back. Think of that first wave of MCU films and how those side-characters, still to this moment in the MCU, are relevant and fan favorites. Bucky, Pepper, Happy, Loki, Rhodey – these characters are the backbone of the universe and I just don’t think the DC Studios universe is starting off strong in that regard.

I’m not just saying this about the DC universe to be a prick, Marvel is suffering from the exact same thing at the moment (fans had to patiently wait on Karen Page to return in the Born Again finally before they could finally get some engaging characters back, for instance). Fact of the matter is I want all of this to succeed. I want to see more DC projects get the greenlight, I wanna see The Justice League finally form in a meaningful way, I want Batman and Superman to team-up for once, I want more deep-cut characters to get solo projects. But it needs to be engaging first which is why I think this start is a little bit rocky. Luckily rocky isn’t disastrous – I’m not trying to bait people and say “JAMES GUNN FAILED, THE DC UNIVERSE IS DEAD, LONG LIVE DADDY FEIGE!!!” – far from it. Like I said, I think the cinematic future of DC is looking incredibly bright and i’m so excited to see more of it, I’ve just been burned so many times – I’ve seen so many off these films underperform and get destroyed by the general public that I really hope Superman comes out of this blockbuster-summer unscathed.

What do you think? Did you like Superman? And what’re you hoping to see from the future of DC movies? Let me know in the comments and follow Ghost-Writes wherever you can for more ramblings about DC, Marvel and the rest of the comic book industry.

July 15, 2025