Dream Teams (Comic Books, Not Basketball)

Media Outlet Comic Book Forum
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So I don’t know if I made a good thread title. By “Dream Teams,” I mean writer/artist teams, not whom you’d want to see join the New Avengers.

Here’s the game: which creative teams would you like to see on a character or series? I hope you who participate in this thread explain your answers. If people just posts lists and then peace out, this topic’s gonna age too fast.

I’ve been thinking about this lately and I think I have a few good ones.

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Peter Milligan and Paul Chadwick on Swamp Thing** - So I finally finished reading all of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run last week and was just in awe at what he did with it. It really just goes to show that no matter how hokey a character or concept is, a great writer can still kick ass. The artists on Moore’s run were fantastic, too, especially in drawing foliage and all that swamp stuff. The last volume of Swamp Thing ended prematurely a couple years ago, but when they bring it back, I would love to see Milligan and Chadwick do a run. Milligan because he’s got that distinctive British talent for the bizarre and macabre (and because he’s one of my fave writers) and Chadwick (of Concrete fame) because he’s amazing at drawing nature and trees and crap, and he’s an outstanding pictorial storyteller.

The Bru and John Cassaday on Top 10 - I just saw the latest DC solicitiations and Top 10 Season 2 is coming courtesy of Zander Cannon and Gene Ha, the original artists. Still, I think it’d be great to see the Bru write some Top 10. I mean, it’s a total police procedural series that taps into superhero mythology! Brubaker would friggin’ kill on this series. And Cassaday’s clean line and sheer skill at depicting superheroes and creatures of mythic proportion would be perfect for this.

Brian Azzarello and Michael Lark on Batman - Batman, Detective Comics, All-Star Batman, whatever. Shoot, just make launch a Vertigo title or something. I just wanna see Azzarello allowed to cut loose on Batman without having to worry about stupid crossovers or censorship. Who wouldn’t want to see Azz write a Batman as dark and as heavy as 100 Bullets? And Lark’s art, with its gritty realism and noirish tones would totally fit. I think these two guys could make a Batman comic as scary as The Dark Knight movie.

Priest and Olivier Coipel on The Black Panther - I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather see writing T’Challa. I wish they would bring Priest back. He doesn’t get enough respect. It’s hard to believe his Black Panther was canceled while Hudlin’s crapfest is being made into a cartoon that has a high chance of sucking. And ever since I read Geoff Johns’ run on Avengers, I always dreamed about seeing Coipel draw the Panther on a regular basis. That Panther vs. Red Skull fight he drew was killer… I can’t think of too much that’s cooler than seeing a black dude take his gloves off and literally punching the jaw off a Nazi.

I think I got some more, but I’ll write 'em up later. I wanna see what the Deadpool fanatics are gonna say. Also, I’m too lazy to continue writing and will go play my Xbox a bit.

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Chris Claremont and John Byrne (with Ann Nocenti editing) on eXiles
I think Chris Claremont is worthless without Nocenti and Byrne. This is a title he could go sick on and his long drawn out plots would work well across multiple dimensions because they don’t have to be bogged down by summer/winter Marvel events. Nocenti is there to remind him which storylines he still has open and Byrne is there because Byrne would change a lot of things he doesn’t like about the Claremont script anyway.

**Geoff Johns and Leinil Yu on Green Lantern **
When Leinil was with DC, how come this never came up? Sure he did Superman rebirth but the rest of his stuff was on Wildstorm. I’ve always thought he’d be awesome on Green Lantern because of his art style.

Peter Milligan and Mike Allred on Amazing Spider-man
I want that book to be fun, FUN, FUN. I know people are all over Stracynszki’s nuts but his run was too fuckin’ depressing (how fuckin’ hard is it really to take and improve over Howard Mackie and the Clone Saga?). I don’t want to be reminded how much of a loser Spider-man is when I read between the lines, and I don’t want Spider-man villains to be too zany for the sake of countering that previously emo run either. Peter Parker can’t get a break in life but he doesn’t dwell on it, let the book read through his “ignorant bliss” perspective instead of “woe is me, I’m a loser because everyone is against me and its their fault, its never mine” introspective. I’m pretty sure Mike Allred and Peter Milligan could come up with much better characters than Anti-venom and Jackpot or Gwen Stacy’s kids.

Brian Bendis and Greg Land on Marvel Swimsuit
Yeah, an on-going monthly issue not an annual. Anything that will keep Greg Land busy and away from main Marvel books. Bendis could do this because he does a dozen books a month anyway. I’m pretty sure this is right up Greg Land’s demographic anyway.

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Christopher Priest (or Mike Carey or Peter David) and Travis Charest on Deathlok (Michael Collins) I love Charest’s cyborg designs. Priest, Carey and David seem to have a knack for characters that are misunderstood or understated and use auxilliary characters well to develop the main character.

non-person-specific wishlist:
Black Panther writer who writes him as a KING and as an AFRICAN not as an AFRICAN-AMERICAN.
Doom as well (except Latverian of course). For god’s sake, these two guys are kings and there are things that are beneath them. They don’t throw snipey insults like a bunch of teenage girls nor do they have psychological hangups about racial issues that happened in North America. You could draw parallels between the issues but don’t make them a mouth piece of politics which don’t concern their characters at all.

Marvel editors should streamline the sciences and scientists.
Ironman and Forge are great Engineers. They shouldn’t just go in and be able to make viruses or master biotechnology. Hank Pym’s mastery is in Nano-technology and biosciences. Reed Richard’s expertise is in theoretical physics and most things physics related and a little biology (if he was a master biologist he probably would’ve cured Ben Grimm by now). Beast should really get board certified or at least study before he becomes the resident doctor of the X-men (Didn’t the X-men have a resident MD when Carey was writing it? Whatever happened to her?)

They just can’t interchange their expertise because there are many fields of science and you can’t master them all (unless you’re Superman I guess). SCIENCE DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY!!! This was like in Red Alert 2 when Einstein made Light tanks, Anti-weather devices and time-travel devices. HE WAS A THEORETICAL PHYSICIST FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!!

I would love to see Reed go to Pym for advice on nano-technology or Tony and Forge tackle an engineering problem. That’st just fuckin laziness on the writer’s part when the engineer suddenly is able to create an anti-virus from a biologist’s secure lab where he had no experience of doing so before and thus solve the problem.

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Speaking of Exiles (or eXiles, or whatever the frack it’s called), isn’t it wondrous the string of writers that series has fielded? It started with Winick, then there was Chuck Austen, and now we’ve got Claremont. That’s quite a lineup.

Anyway, I’m all for having projects for Claremont, Byrne, and Land where they can’t do any damage.

Also, for the Land Swimsuit comic, they could have a contest for readers to guess from which pornos he traced his pinups. How could that be anything less than a Diamond top ten book? That’s a cash machine right there. Marvel needs to make this book happen so that critically acclaimed C-List books like The Order can survive.

That’s a good point. All that crazy science fiction stuff, all the gadgetry and aliens and widescreen action, would be awesome if Yu drew it. Can’t believe they didn’t have him do that stuff while he was at DC. Silent Dragon from WildStorm was cool, but that should have been an ongoing series.

Milligan and Allred on anything together would be a blast. But if they ever got back together, I would probably just pray for more X-Statix.

Is it worth tracking down the Deathlok comics from the '90s? Who made those, like Dwayne Turner and Denys Cowan?

I’m with you on all of those. Isn’t Reed Richards supposed to be so smart that he’s mastered every scientific field ever, and even invented some of his own? Whatever, but those other smart characters shouldn’t all be as godly as Mr. Fantastic.

Here’s a couple other of my Dream Teams.

Joe Casey and Travis Charest on The Ultimates - Remember the good ol’ days when an issue of The Ultimates used to be good? Casey and Charest could bring back the heat. And, in the mighty Marvel manner, Charest could even spend extra time anally detailing his art, allowing the book to ship late on a consistent basis. Did you guys see that issue of Ultimates 2 Saga where Charest drew like 3 pages of art? They gotta make this happen. His art’s just insanely detailed, richly textured, and too dynamic not to let him draw this. I kind of suspect that Casey would prefer the actual Avengers rather than the Ultimates, but he’d do a great job nonetheless. Many of his comics in the past few years have been quietly subversive, and that’s exactly the sort of tone The Ultimates needs.

Neil Gaiman and Brian Bolland on Thor - Having Gaiman on Thor sounds like a no-brainer to me. In fact, I think it was supposed to happen, but he got too busy and handed the baton to JMS after coming up with a few initial ideas. Bolland hasn’t done a full-length comic since, what, The Killing Joke? Hey, it’s my dream, ain’t it? Sometimes I still go back and flip through Camelot 3000, and his fantasy art is just so convincing. It would be really something to see him draw crazy epic Gaiman stories about the Norse god of thunder.

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Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse with Mike Allred on Fantastic Four** - If there’s one Marvel title that Alan Moore should write, it’s gotta be the FF. The sheer imagination factor of the series, the pulpy roots, and the fact that it’s the epitome of the Silver Age shows that Moore is perfect for it. Well, Alan Moore can write anything and make it awesome… But he should write something that’s already an awesome concept and make it even more… uh, awesome. (I’m not very creative with my adjectives.) He and Sprouse made a top tier team on Supreme and Tom Strong, and I think Sprouse’s style would easily make the Fantastic Four look iconic. I’d also like to see Allred ink it, just for the heck of it, and to add that sweet old-school shine. Heck, they can even get Rick Veitch in to draw any Silver Age flashbacks.

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Wow I can’t believe I forgot Gaiman for Thor. That would be amazing. Maybe Kaluta could do the art as well (although his art might be too dark for Thor).

I think Reed mastering everything science reeks too much of fanboyism. It really sucks when fans become writers most of the time because they screw things up with their character bias. (JMS on Spider-man/Iron-man, etc). Having Reed be the best physicist in the Marvel universe is good enough for the character, plus the writers will have too much problems reconciling these different sciences when they write anyway.

I don’t really recommend old Deathlok books. He’s like Ironman too me. Great character potential but nothing worthy of the character has ever been written yet. IMO. A lot of it is just pedestrian superheroics that isn’t really catering to the character’s specific strengths.

Robert Kirkman + anyone on Amazing Spider-man:
Robert Kirkman should be writing Amazing Spider-man… nuff said. For the last few years, whenever I feel like reading a Spider-man book, I read Invincible.

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I don’t think I’d want anybody but Copiel doing Thor. His art captures the series perfectly. Then again, I don’t think I’d want anybody but JMS writing it either. The current direction is too much fun.

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Holy shit, yes.

Leinil Yu on Green Lantern would be amazing, I don’t know how I never thought of that before. All the gadgetry and stuff…it’d be like Silent Dragon…but GREEN. Too awesome.

The Bru and John Cassaday could work on like…Spawn or something, and it’d still be the greatest comic book ever crafted by human hands. Asking them to do a new Top 10 book just seems really gratuitous and like asking for too much. I would cry like a baby if they ever announced anything remotely close to this.

Neil Gaiman on Thor would be fantastic too. Has he done a Hellblazer stint yet? Wouldn’t that just be absolutely fantastic?

Here’s one of mine…

Jim Lee and Frank Miller on Batman
Got a big kick out of the art in Hush, so why not partner it with one of the greatest Batman writers of all time? There’s no way it can fail. …oh wait, nevermind.

Grant Morrison and Bryan Hitch on…anything, really
I wonder if it would be able to partner such a high concept writer with such a large scale artist. I just think of Quitely’s work in All-Star Superman and how well it works there, and imagine some of the spreads in The Filth as done by Hitch. That would literally break your brain. Can’t think of an existing property off the top of my head that would fit that though.

Jim Starlin and Ron Lim on Silver Surfer or Thanos
Bring-them-back! Bring-them-back! I just want Ron Lim drawing energy beams again. IS THAT SO WRONG!?!

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Gaiman wrote like one issue of Hellblazer, as far as I know. I think it was Hellblazer #27, entitled “Hold Me.” Dave McKean did the art for it. It’s a ridiculously rare and expensive back issue, but I think you can find it either in the Hellblazer: Rare Cuts TPB or in Gaiman’s Midnight Days TPB. Gaiman and McKean, baby… But I don’t know if it could possibly stand up to your high expectations now. It would be like spending your entire life searching for a copy of Batman: Ego and finally reading it last year.

Man, if they ask Ron Lim to draw more Silver Surfer, I hope they print it on crappy newsprint paper so we can see the dot-coloring. None of this modern, hi-tech computer paint junk.

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Gaiman and Mignola on Dr. Strange

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Godlike. If any of those teams would get on board I would have goosebumps for days.

that would be awesome too.

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Mignola drew Dr. Doom and Dr. Strange: Triumph and Torment, which was the fucking bomb, son. I’d honestly be happy with just Mignola writing and drawing a Dr. Strange book…to put Gaiman on it as well seems like overkill. Like as if the book should be printed on the parchment stripped from a 2,000 year olive tree as well, fitted with numerous rare jewls, and a 9.8 version available to be ordered through Wizard or something.

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Yeah, but would you rather have Mignola work on Dr. Strange or do more Hellboy?

Triumph and Torment is one of those comics you’d expect Marvel to reprint in one of those “Premiere Edition” HCs. Not only is it an iconic Strange story, it’s an iconic Doom story, as well as one of Mignola’s best works for Marvel. I put his artistic effort on that book right up there with that early issue of X-Force he guest-drew from Rob Liefeld’s brilliant plotting.

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No, you’re right; I’d rather just see another Hellboy story drawn by Mike Mignola. That’d be my dream team for Hellboy - I just want to see the original artist back again.

Speaking of which, another dream team idea - just put Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen back again on another Nextwave run. JUST DO IT, MARVEL. Failing that, I wouldn’t mind seeing them revive the old Justice League group with Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, and Guy Gardner…despite the canonical impossibility of such a cast. Whatev, DC.

I also got a big kick out of that Ghost Rider return with Clayton Crain and Garth Ennis, with all those Preacher-lite heaven and hell bits going on in there. Too bad it got watered down with mediocre art and Daniel Way in the monthly. That was a great team; Crain would be great for like a Hellblazer stint, and maybe put Gaiman or Mike Carey or something on Ghost Rider for a bit for a more interesting story.

LOL, Neil Gaiman on Ghost Rider. …yeah…not a big chance there.

I also want to see another kung-fu comic book epic. With Bronze Tiger, Richard Dragon, Shiva, and all those pranksters again. Richard Dragon by Chuck Dixon and Scott McDaniel was actually already one of my dream projects…but for some reason, it just wasn’t all that. Let’s do it again! Or maybe with Jeff Johnson from Way of the Rat, or Damion Scott again because his run on Batgirl was superb.

…I think I just want to see Kelley Pucket and Damion Scott on Batgirl again.

But a Bronze Tiger or a Connor Hawke story would be cool…even though that Suicide Squad run and that Dragon’s Blood mini were both pretty meh. That, or a cool Batman origin mini just concentrating on the kickass kung-fu parts, where he travels the world learning how to kick ass in different ways. Kind of like taking Daredevil’s Man Without Fear, subtracting all the Batman: Year One bits, and just keeping and concentrating the rest.

What about…Taskmaster, with Chuck Dixon and Damion Scott, Jeff Johnson, or Scott McDaniel? That’d be my dream book right there, the ultimate Carpet Lint fanboy project.

…with a Beta Ray Bill appearance as well.

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Haha - Ellis and Immonen on JLI-era Justice League would be flat out hilarious. If anyone could live up to that old Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire humor, and add a modern spin, it’d be the Nextwave team.

Neil Gaiman on Ghost Rider sounds like a joke, but I could imagine him writing some amazing stuff with that character. Ghost Rider’s like a poor man’s Spectre on a flaming motorbike, so Gaiman could work his fairy magic all over that concept.

My dream kung-fu comic book epic would definitely have to feature a minority in the lead role. I am tired of all these white people being the greatest martial artists of all time. I like Iron Fist just fine, but I want someone to do right by The Deadly Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu. That would also have to be the title, by the way, and under no circumstances would it ever be abbreviated or shortened. Everyone would always have to refer to it by its full name. The Deadly Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu. Scream that title out loud! You can almost feel the power of Grayskull coursing through your veins.

My dream team for The Deadly Hands of Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu would be Cliff Chiang. He can draw it. He’s Asian so that automatically qualifies him for being an expert on mystical Asian hoodoo and martial arts. It doesn’t really matter if a white guy writes it (as long as it’s not Claremont, Loeb, Winick, Austen, or Way).

My dream DC martial arts comic would be Bronze Tiger. Denys Cowan can draw it. Brian Wood can write it. You read their Fight for Tomorrow miniseries from Vertigo? That actually kicked pretty good ass.

I was just rereading that Damion Scott issue of Solo yesterday. I haven’t seen any of his work lately. He showed off some crazy hip-hop/graffiti-art-inspired drawing in Solo, though. It’d be crazy to imagine him drawing a new Batgirl series with that style.

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Geoff Johns and Bob Layton on Darkhawk
Garth Ennis and Chris Bachalo on Sleepwalker
Bendis and Maleev on Power Pack
Frank Miller and Carlos Pacheco on Robocop

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Actually take out coipel and replace him with almond or velluto. (the same squad from before)

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Sal Velluto did good work on Black Panther, but I would prefer a cleaner style than his. Velluto’s art was kind of scratchy and gritty, which worked out just fine, but I think I would have liked Priest’s stories even more with an artist who controlled his lines. Jim Calafiore did a few issues for Priest as well, and I thought those really stood out in contrast to the somewhat more abstract leanings of Velluto.

I just think Coipel would make Priest’s stories better than ever. Wishful thinking, of course.

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I tend to disagree his art in BP made the people actually look like they are of color. Now after looking at what Coipel did for House of M hmm you know what that would be an interesting choice. God rest his soul but you have to admit that Turner did an awesome BP and storm in one of the FF books. As for diamond it was really Bob Almond my bad.

But whomever this guy is marvel need to call him