Double Articulation Digest: Wish List 2007: CrossGening DC’s Science Fiction Titles

Many moons ago, I fantasized about repairing The Outsiders. This year, I fantasize about the science fiction titles I’d love to see from creators whose work I enjoy more than a little. Sure, the Green Lantern Corps is back in deep space action in a (mostly) nifty book by Gibbons, Champagne, and Gleason, and DC’s reinvestment in its other space characters is heartening. But imagine how good these ongoing titles would be:

The Omega Men
Written by Tony Bedard / Art by Paul Pelletier

Yeah, so, they work for Marvel now. That’s what contractual loopholes are for. It’s a crime that they didn’t get a chance to finish Negation, CrossGen’s superior space adventure, but at least that series gave a sense of what this duo can do with a space-faring group of misfits. An Omega Men book with a (resurrected) classic cast written by Bedard and drawn by Pelletier would be a grand slam. Bedard knows how to have fun with space-faring teams and Pelletier’s visual imagination is ideally suited to the kind of universe-spanning adventure and interplanetary intrigue that the Omega Men are all about. In the hands of this cult creative team, the book would sell better than it ever has before and it would provide a roving camera for exploring both the familiar worlds of the original series as well as the weirder pockets of the DC universe.

Captain Comet
Written by Chuck Dixon / Art by Scott Eaton

Hmm… This creative team seems familiar too. Are you sensing a theme here? The thing is, CrossGen had it largely right: their books had incredible established and up-and-coming creators working on classic genres in a thinly-veiled superheroic mold. Dixon and Eaton’s Sigil was a great-looking space opera bursting with potential, but it (like most of CrossGen’s books) was held back by the dead hand of the corporate metastory that ended up killing the entire line. Put this pair on Captain Comet, age the protagonist back to his grey-templed glory, and turn it into the science-adventure it was meant to be. Eaton grew enormously as an artist at CrossGen—and he can draw spaceships like nobody else. Give the man some work!

Legion of Superheroes
Written by Keith Giffen / Art by Andrea DiVito

I seem to be in a minority, but I just don’t like Waid and Kriston’s Legion. Kriston’s art doesn’t do it for me, the kids are annoying, and the whole enterprise is just a little too knowing for its own good. Give me the young adults, the low concept, and the pure soap operatic melodrama of the Levitz/Giffen LOSH any day. And who better to restore the Legion to its roots than Legion alum Giffen and on-the-rise penciller DiVito? In fact, DiVito’s pencils even have an early-Giffenesque feel to them and between Marvel’s Annihilation and CrossGen’s The First he’s already proven that he’s adept at drawing both space sagas and books with outrageously overpopulated casts. Please, Dan Didio, I don’t WANT to beg, but I’m not above it. I’d even settle for an out-of-continuity Tales of the Legion or Legion: Classified sort of thing. What do you say, huh?