I’m going to pretend for a moment that I’m Stan Lee around the time Marvel was just starting out. What did Lee do back in those days? He came up with an idea, a general premise for a story, and handed it to an artiest who put a preliminary product together and then Lee inserted the dialogue. So, I’m going to do the first part of that – collect some random story elements and post them. Here are a few –
- Parallel to our world, a world of magic exists. A secret, international body called the “Council of Wizardry” has been helping to hide the world of magic from the non-magical world for centuries. Merlin, in 1990, had taken up an apprentice in secret by the name of Jonathan Modus. Why Modus? Modus has the highest magical potential that the world had ever seen. Merlin passes of natural causes in 1996. After a year or so, fending for himself and avoiding being conscripted by the Council, Modus changes magical history forever…by coming public with his magical powers.
- America elected Ross Perot in 1992. Vice President Stockdale passes away in 1995 from the strains of the position, putting the sick war hero to bed earlier than he anticipated. Perot enters into 1996 after four years of relative peace and economic prosperity as the lead in all the polls. His Reform Party is being built nationally thanks to Pat Choate. And then…Perot is assassinated. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is thrust into the Presidency in March of 1996, throwing off the entire GOP primary and shaking up the entire world. This follows the story of three men, Newt Gingrich, Pat Choate, and Caleb Tollin. Newt, from the perspective of a man who just became Speaker of the House and is now dealing suddenly with the Presidency and an internal battle with his party to figure out what to do with the election. Pat Choate, who saw the vision of Ross Perot work from coast to coast and saw an emergence of a new party, now scrambling to organize his own national campaign for the Presidency as the party chairman and one of the few national figures in the party besides New York State Governor Tom Golisano (who barely won the Governor’s mansion of New York in 1994 with a stronger national Reform Party). And Caleb Tollin is an average voter in Virginia whose life is shaken by the assassination of the President and what happens to the economy and his life as this all happens to him in the background. It also chronicles how he votes in the end.
- Create a musical that combines in a logical fashion the storyline and music of both Wicked and The Wizard of Oz (the 1939 musical movie edition). Some ideas include…the changing of Boq back to his novel persona and creating a new/picking a different Munchkin boy to be transformed into the Tin Woodsman; or show Fieyro and Elphaba reuniting in the Emerald City where the Scarecrow was reportedly made to replace the Wizard (according to the books) OR…perhaps have another Scarecrow in Fieyro’s place that Elphaba raises to follow Dorothy.
- Confederate Zion story. For the background of this “alternate history” world setting, check here. The idea? Tell the story of the end of secession of New England from the perspective of a Confederate Ambassador to the US or UN and a Boston citizen who’s all in favor…perhaps a newspaper writer from the time period.
- A Modern Templar story. The Templar leader dies of natural causes at the age of 75. Sir Caleb is asked by the new leader of the Templar Knights, Sir Ishmael, to go on a secret mission into Saudi Arabia to protect a small, Christian church from some bombing attempts. He arrives to find the church emptied with no one there. Caleb is then attacked from all sides by people who fight like Templar Knights. He fends the five attackers off and finds in the basement of the Church a shrine to Moloch. What Caleb uncovers is that Sir Ishmael is not what he seems; he had been using the power of the ancient deity Moloch to rise up in the Templar order and had sent those loyal to the late Sir Peter to their deaths. Caleb then seeks out proof to stop Ishmael from warping the Templar organization and perhaps to find a way to destroy the demonic source of Ishmael’s power.
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