It's stream of consciousness. I start writing and don't really stop. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 20; however long it takes. No real formatting or whatever else. I think it helps in forums because it's more of a laid back conversation style and you just go along with it. Even if you skip some parts which are usually repeated in such long posts, you're not missing anything important, so if you're in the mood it's like listening to your local weirdo rant. I find it comfy.
In all honesty I don't know that much compared to some real "pros". There are others who can remember each issue, which editor left at what point which in turn caused this and that and bla bla bla. I've been in forums with Hyper-Crisis threads (basically stemming from Morrison's books in which everything in comics is connected in some Meta way) which had people finding links between some random Captain Marvel issue from the 40s, a Doctor Who magazine and then some modern comic with all of them being similar to some real world editor swap or something. It's usually just coincidences and number pairing, but it's fun and requires a lot of knowledge in the entire medium to come up with such "theories". Compared to them, I'm rather mid-tier.
Alas, I shall never be named Keyholder of the Cape Library...
Brevity
is the soul of wit. In my case, well...
I've often said that I've written fanfics and so on which is
technically true but not really. I've always found these giant shared universes rather limiting for storytelling, and thought that while a lot of titles and characters had great concepts, the nature of the Big 2 meant that they never lived up to it. So I'd choose a single title, keep it in its self-contained universe, pick and choose what I wanted from the wider Marvel/DC Us, and then take it as far as it'd go. I never really sat down to write proper fanfics like other, more creative teenage, geeky losers such as myself, but I created timelines and sort of "bibles" for each mini-U.
For example Iron Man. I kept him, his rogues, a version of SHIELD, and an assortment of various street/low lever characters, plus reworked takes on some of the FF and Avengers. When you have a supergenius billionaire around, he alone is going to completely change the world. So I took that and run with it. How does the world really change when such a person exists? We don't need hulked-out gamma monsters or alien gods, just that level of tech coming out of the blue would have unforseen consequences. But it's still a cape character so of course you had Not!Iron Men enemies, the femme fatale Black Widow, and so on. Stark wouldn't be cyclically losing his company, we wouldn't have the yearly event of a galactic threat that has no impact, there'd be clear progression. Tony had literally magic liquid metal nanites and technopathy, and now he's back to getting his arms broken in a metal suit. Come on. I wanted it all to gradualy escalate from the Iron Man tech to a new kind of Arms Race to these things entering the world of everyday tech commodities to the far future where a Stark descendant is ruling his own planet, and another is captain of some explorative vessel. I just wanted to show that a single character in capebooks had enough potential to not only radically change the "real world" but also produce spin-offs, unecessary as they might have been, simply by virtue of being such a game changer in-universe when not beholden by the "status quo is god" mentality.
I had another such take for an FF-centric series. It'd be set in a more advanced world, kinda like Mass Effect level, and we'd then have "realistic" (read; not at all, I just mean without comic book sci-fi where a single gene makes you control the weather) Sci-Fi get infused with super-powers and have to go against comic book-y cosmic beings. Half Star Trek exploration one-offs, half mytharc stuff and so on. Same as Iron Man, we'd explore the impact on a society, especially since we're now on a much larger scale and are dealing with various alien races and whatever else. You can't have Reed Richards and still live in the same exact world. Give me an FF x Star Trek mix and I'll keep it going more than Claremont spent on the X-Men.
I had more. A Doom solo which was a House Of Cards deal. Very low-key, just some more comic book-y tech. It was basically just a story of a nobody rising the ranks and trying to wrestle power in the "real world" while still infused with the usual Doom lore. Derivative, but fun I thought. Another Doom solo with mad science which leaned more on cosmic magic, with Strange as a deuteragonist and characters like the FF being radically different. A proper X-Men series that wasn't downright ********. You get the point. I'd choose a thing and then run with it to its conclusion. CyberPunk Iron Man dystopia having the same continuity after 100 issues of the same guy who first created the very first armour. They were never well-written or unique stories, but I found it sad just how many great concepts were wasted, and wanted to see how far I could take them, keeping the core intact but reaching a definitive end point or at least taking them to their zenith. I didn't write 30K word fanfics, but I wrote down enough in the little books I had for each one. They each had their own sketches and so on. It was fun.
I tried turning some into "screenplays" when I attempted my hand at brickfilms, but after spending ~1K on Lego bricks and being unable to make any of the sets I'd imagined, while spending an entire summer shooting, doing voice acting, and so on, just for a few minutes of (bad) footage, I gave up and focused on the real world (read; studies). I still wish I had made them but as with many things in (my) life, "what ifs" are all that remain. I did keep a few of those "fanfic" ideas that I feel deviated too much from the core, but were still kind of nifty, in the back of my head. Who knows, if I fail thoroughly at my chosen profession I may try my hand at writing (and probably fail there too). I'm not really good at it, but I find it fun. I don't feel as if I have a voice. And my well of ideas went dry a long time ago. Some days I feel as if a perpetual descent is all that's left...
Bah, real super-villains never give up! They lick their (numerous) wounds and come back with another crazy plan which will inevitably fail. But like Camus said, one must imagine Sisyphus happy!
PS: Analyzing capes is all about reading a vast amount of them, then creating your own headcanons and twisting the existing canon in order to fit them there. It should be no surprise that the lesser known characters are the ones with really hardcore fans. They don't get new stuff on the regular, so they obsess on the existing material and in a way take it upon themselves to build up the character. The Namor circles especially are very enthusiastic, so to speak. They remember random one-offs from 40 years ago, have their own reworkings of one-and-done foes, the whole shebang. They comission expensive art and everything. The more popular Iron Man became, the less passion I saw in the forums. But to be fair, all the old faces went away as the years went on. Banned posters, abandoned accounts, new managements. The majority are newcomers who don't know anything and are sharing tweets from random accounts. It's another era. I sometimes read posts from 90s or early 00s forums about comics and it's such a whiplash. It all could've been so different...
The feet and lack of clothing ruin it, otherwise I'd have tried to buy it. For my money, the concept art of the 2005 movie was a really great modernisation of Doom.
That to me is a near perfect design. Maybe I'd add a crown instead of a hood. But it's regal, modern/advanced and old-school at the same time. There's this one too:
There were some other designs done when Nic Cage was attached which were... yeah...
I think Cage would be a near perfect Doom, and he's still in my shortlist for the MCU, even though he's gotten up there in age.
Also, there's this random piece from the same movie, regardless of Cage. I don't know what they were thinking.
Looking at concept art from the 00s movies, they really were close, but ended up fumbling it in the end. The money and the needed suspension of belief just wasn't there I suppose.
We eventually got just a cloud, but man, these pieces were oozing with atmosphere. Say what you will, but the MCU Celestials didn't inspire a lick of awe or fear in me. They were just generic robotic giants. I don't trust them to pull off Galactus, but I hope I'll be proven wrong.
I said it above, but I've always wanted to take a crack at FF and write it my way. Yeah yeah, I could write my trite fanfics of my own OCs, but it wouldn't be the same. Pulled off properly the threats the FF face are downright terrifying, the kind that make Batman's endless chase of the Joker seem juvenile. I'd always wanted to crank up the fear of the unknown factor in a Trek-like FF series. That's how I'd have done it in that afformentioned "pitch" in my previous paragraphs. And I don't know if it's my age, but I always felt as if that late 90s/early-mid 00s aesthetic really worked for them. The sleek, streamlined type of tech mixed with the bright lights and vibrant colours. To my mind it looked like a revival of the 50s Sci-Fi comics, and it just worked for the FF.
I feel that as an aesthetic it was abandoned too soon, when it still had more to give. Maybe one day...
) a while back, and it was even available in 3 different shades. 
