I absolutely love the supernatural spin you put on things, as well as what you bring to the table with secret societies and the like. Also, Black Monday Murders is awesome. I dig the world building he does with each issue and it's a truly fascinating read. I kind of wish it was back from hiatus, but, at the same time, I have so many books coming in right now.
Thanks! As for BMM, I just added it to my pull, so I still ned to get the first 4 issues. I just like Hickman and the subject matter, thus I pulled the trigger.
The problem I've always had with horror flicks was that for the most part, they rarely are truly original. They just add jump scares, guts, creepy imagery which yes, scare the hell out of me, but after a while you forget about them and nothing sticks with you. Which is a shame, since there's a whole lot of things to do with such aspects. I mean, why not explore the possibillity that all the cults, sacrifices and whatnot are ultimately useless, since these beings don't care?
I've heard a lot about the VVitch, and I may see it one day, but for me, it'd be better if in the end, the supernatural didn't exist. The witches were crazy old ladies, and Tomasin just went nuts. Have her "talk" with Black Phillip in the barn, but as she walks out and drops her clothes, the goat just goes back to doing... goat things. She joins the other crazy ladies and they all dance around the fire, nobody rising. There's no devil, there's no inherent evil, just a couple of wackos finding solace in madness and seeking refuge in an imaginary Lord's arms, who grants them power.
For me, to make the devil a singular entity that seeks to corrupt humans makes for an uneventful story. I much prefer a case where the various Angels that followed Lucifer's coup became a personification of each one of the Seven Deadly Sins, whereas Lucifer himself is a more "tragic" figure, akin to Milton's version. In the end, it wouldn't really be their motive to tempt the puny humans, that'd be their eternal punishment. Eventually they'd grow into their role, but I'd rather tackle them as 3-Dimensional characters and not as simply "Horned Humanoid Animals".
As for the various societies, what I dislike about comic books is that every time one of them gets destroyed, another, even more secret takes its place. Just decide on one (Illuminati/Cabal/New World Order) and make all the others offshoot organizations.
Yeah, though; I've never been a huge FF fan nor had much exposure to Doom, but that sounds right up my alley.
Like the X-Men, I like the idea of the F4 more than the actual execution. Which is why I loved Ultimate F4, as it just had 4 young explorers travelling the cosmos, and didnt mesh with any super-high-end-JRP boss battles. Ellis' Gah-Lak-Tus remains one of my favourite and utterly terrifying creations in comics. The best thing about that story was how they defeated him: Reed comes up with a plan, the Ultimates, the X-Men, everyone gathers, they do some damage, and then it's revealed that the Engine is still going. So what does the A.I. do? It deems the human race far too primitive, since the best they could do damaged about 1% of the fleet, and it just... goes away. The heroes don't win, the cosmic judge just ignores them. And that's far more terrifying than anything.
As for Doom, despite his rivalry with Reed, he doesn't have anything to add to such a franchise. He makes a much better antagonist to Iron Man, as they are both reflections of each other. Tony is what Victor could've been, had he been born in the US, to wealthy parents, and Doom is what Stark could've been had he not found his purpose in life. But even then, Tony had mostly negletful parents, leading to his depression and alcoholism, whereas Vic had loving parents, whose deaths scarred him, but left him with a drive. There are tons of paralels between the two, and it'd make for great clashes.
The thing with Doom is that he's fearless to an absurd degree. He'll do anything, within certain parameters, to get what he wants, even if that means performing rituals, contacting demons and hellhounds, bargaining with devils, all of that. Stark might have some sort of "devil may care" attitude, but he's not that much of a headstrong guy. I mean, you just have to see their interactions with a pissed off Thor. Doom straight up throws his cousin's corpse in front of him, taunts him and tries to kill him, whereas Tony tries to bargain and gets scared ****less.
Another thing that'd be nice, is to explore the varying degrees of spirituality between the two. See, it's become a recent trend in Marvel to turn every scientist they have into an atheist, which is pretty ignorant if you ask me. Ever since, what, 2014 or so, every "introduction" to them has a little narration box going "I was 6 when the idea of God became absurd"/"I never had much use for such things" and it just reeks of "hurr durr, me smart, that's how smart folks talk". I get the why, considering the leaps science has made, but it's a tad pretentious to pretend that all smart people completely disregard anything that's not material. So far, they've made this change to: Reed, Pym, Stark & Spider-Man. Reed and Peter literally shook hands with God, Pym played with Magic, and Tony weilded Excalibur, met Merlin and has seen excorcisms and tangled with Ghost Rider. After a while, it gets silly to pretend they live in our world where such things are up to debate.
I'm not asking for all of them to be going to church on Sundays, but a little variety wouldn't hurt. Explore deism, panetheism, pantheism, all these could be considered philosopical movements if the religious aspect is too much. Just... try something different. Currently they read as carbon copies of each other, just with a single trait. Pym is a depressed crazy person, Tony is RDJ-lite & Reed is automaton-two-point-oh. They have no unique characteristics. The moments when Tony breaks down and prays or just looks for salvation and can't find it are among my favourites, and I'd really like to play with that contrast between him and Doom, as Victor would never seek anything from anyone. He could be staring God in the eye and just tell him to **** off 'cause his experiment was a disaster.
I'd like to take Ra's Al Ghul in that direction, personally. Ancient Mesopotamia; city's being sacked, his family's dead; he gets on his horse and rides off into the desert. Eventually, the horse dies, then he runs out of water, and then he falls through a pit and discovers a Lazarus pit. I always thought it'd be kind of cool if, maybe, there was one Lazarus Pit and it was comprised of residual nutrients from Eden or some variation of a pointof creation, though, I think thematically, the former could work well, as you have that ability to grant life, as well as the corrupting influence.
From there, he'd gather disciples. People he could trust who would share the power with him. He saves them, and, should he fall in battle, they save him. That's how he's able to gather such loyal acolytes; immortality is a very strong incentive for one. Basically, he takes advantage of the time he has, learning, training, dying, being reborn, and he becomes a conqueror. I thought it'd be cool to kind of tie him in with Azrael and the Order of St. Dumas by having Ra's as a sort of legendary figure to the Christian Knights, who they feared; a man who could fight their forces like no one else, but would, nevertheless, fall in battle, only to return and kill some more after being resurrected.
To my mind, he should be the man with his fingers in everybody's pies. After centuries becoming a master of every facet of human culture; the greatest warrior, the greatest philosopher; he has countless bloodlines running throughout the world, heirs he uses to do his bidding, and, mostly, his bidding involves guiding humanity to its eventual damnation. His son might be the old man in the mountains of Afghanistan preaching about the Western devils, while his great-great granddaughter might be a US Senator voting for war. People are tools to him, and he thinks they need to be kept in check, lest they destroy all he's worked towards.
You could introduce a sort of illuminati aspect, where elites work in service of The Demon with the ultimate goal of becoming immortal, as he is.
That's damn great. It could easily be the basis of a solo. Give him Vandal Savage as a nemesis, and go from there.
Spoiler:
