Tag: Pitchmas 2020

We start in on  Duckman – I mean Howard the Duck- during his stint as a PI. He’s narrating, and the dame that waltzes in is Black Cat (though we can always sub someone else in, if her rights are tied up with Sony… maybe Madame Hydra or Elektra?). She’s looking for someone who stole something dangerous from her, but before she did that, this previously unknown and clearly unhinged person dropped a safe on her inside man in the NYPD. We get a flashback, on top of an NYC roof over Black Cat’s shoulder. She’s conducting some shady midnight business with three robed figures, when Gwenpool drives a big bike up a flight of stairs, stabbing Black Cat’s triggerman through the hand and taking his gun, and firing wildly, before snatching what Cat was offering to the robed figures. Gwenpool drives off the other side of the roof, and the camera follows her down. She wonders aloud how she’ll survive this, before landing in the back of a truck, sending feathers flying. “A pillow truck,” she says with a laugh, “Classic!” We hear quacking and the driver yelling about his ducks as we cut back to Howard’s office.

The Black Cat tells him the assailant wasn’t finished with her henchman, that the next day she stopped him on the street, standing over a big chalk X. She wanted to make sure he was who she thought, before dropping the safe on him. We cut back to Howard’s office, and can see he’s anxious, and we pan down and can see why- he’s got a pistol pointed at his crotch. The rest of the scene plays differently; now that we understand Howard is compromised, his questions of his femme fatale have a different spin, and we recognize his loyalties are at least somewhat up in the air until she exits. That’s when Howard rolls back his chair and Gwenpool stands up.

She tells him she figured the femme fatale would pursue her to get the item back, which is why she attacked her henchman- and figured that attack would send her looking for a less likely option, which she pegged as being Howard. He was, until that moment, pacing, doing the noir detective thing, but spins around, as he realizes what she means. He sees she’s aiming her gun at him, and dives for the window, making it out as shots hit the frame.

Howard lands hard in a puddle, flopping around before scrambling to his feet and running, as gunfire rains down around him. Gwen lands impressively in the puddle, before yelling to him, while firing, “No one stays dead for long in the comics; comic movies are the same. Even Bucky wasn’t dead for more than half a movie. And maybe you’ll get your own adult cartoon on Hulu like M.O.D.O.K.”

Gwen’s going to begin to narrate, so we barely hear Howard squawk, “Why would anyone want to watch cartoon M.O.D.O.K. screw?”

“Okay, so… I’m not from around here. I’m from…” we fade to black, and do “Five years earlier.” And after a beat, add, “And in our world.” Gwen narrates, “Yeah, the real world, the one where the MCU is something we watch on the big screen.”

Gwen is nerding out with her friend in a movie theater. They’re psyched they’ve got good seats for the midnight opening of End Game as they make their way to their seats. Gwen is excited to have resolution for Peter, and gushes over Tom Holland. Her friend thinks she has a crush. She says it isn’t sexual; he’s almost a teddy bear, that you want to hold him and tell him the Spider-Man thing will totally work out. Of course, the friend points out, it doesn’t. Gwen says still, she’ll track down Kevin Fiege if he lets anything happen to her precious Spider-Tom.

We cut a little later in the movie. Gwen is shifting uncomfortably in her seat, and tries to take a drink from her soda, which is almost as big as she is, and realizes it’s empty… and then realizes where all of that fluid went. She runs, full-speed, to the bathroom. We see her kick her way triumphantly out of a stall, glance at the sinks, and run out, again at full speed, and her hear saying Captain America would understand this is no time for hand-washing. She runs at full-speed into the theater, which is engulfed in light, only to come skidding out of the portal Captain America disappeared in.

She hides, and sees an older Captain America give Sam the shield, nerding harder still.

We cut back to the alley, where Gwen is chasing after Howard. She tackles him, and they talk for a moment, him mocking her outfit. She tells him she needs the outfit.

We see another flashback, her wearing what she was in the theater, as she’s walking through New York. The Fantastic Four fly overhead, and she grins, big and wide. She makes eye contact with a cute guy who’s also staring adoringly up. A Doombot lands on him, splattering him. Gwen’s mouth drops open, and she runs, full-speed, into a costume shop, specifically Big Ronnie’s Custom Battle Spandex. She explains that she needs a costume, that if you have one, you’re a character, but if you’re not wearing one, you’re collateral. A stone gargoyle lands on a taxi driving by outside, crushing the driver and his fair. The seamstress, who seems mad in her own way, sews her something ridiculous (but also kind of rad).

We cut back to Howard and her talking in the alley, or, rather, Howard has slunk away while she’s remembering, and is more convinced than every she’s out of her gourd. Gwen reveals that she sold the bioweapon to Hydra, which seemed the thing to do with it, but it’s no big, because they Avengers will handle it.

Howard dials the Avengers hotline to find that the Avengers are currently in space aiding the Guardians of the Galaxy. Then he convinces Gwen they’ll have to get it back. She takes him to her tailor, who sews him a black variant of her costume; she continues to refer to him as her sidekick, to his chagrin. Inside, Gwen’s knowledge fails, when she misidentifies the bad guy running the lab. She’s unable to beat her in hand to hand combat, but as a last-ditch effort injects herself with the virus, knowing there’s an antidote. The villainess gives it to her, before she kills them all.

Howard gives her a little pep-talk, which makes her feel good, until she realizes she’s broke and homeless as she walks the streets of New York. So she goes to the only other person in the city she knows, her tailor. Ronnie likes her insanity- likening it to some of the biggest mad villains around, like “the Green Gob-” Gwen interrupts her to tell her they don’t have the rights to Norman Osborne, unless Disney bought Sony since she fell into the MCU. Ronnie laughs- she has no idea what Gwen’s saying most of the time, but she has the stuff of greatness. Gwen says she lacks the stuff of hot dugs and bedsheets. Ronnie offers an advance on her first job, including a line on an apartment.

Gwen ends up going to a bank. She figures there’s got to be a reasonable loan program in the MCU to help up-and-coming heroes build their first set of rocket boots, or at least afford a kebab. Things aren’t going well when a five men in ridiculous animal masks come in to rob the place. Using the remains of the guns Ronnie loaned her, Gwen stops the robbers. However, the cops start shooting at her, and she manages to scramble out the back door, and finds the car the cops arrived in still running out front, with one of the perps, Cecil, handcuffed in the backseat. Gwen steals the car and drives off. The terrified perp and her talk as she flees. They agree to help each other- him as her logistical support. He agrees to introduce her to the person who set him up with his last job- which had not mentioned it involved five morons robbing a bank.

It turns out his contact is Gwenpool’s seamstress, Ronnie, who has a side-hustle in farming out merc jobs. She tries to set Gwen up on a cake walk job, since she’s learning the ropes. Gwen insists on taking the hard case, the one Ronnie won’t even show her, it’s so dangerous. Gwen tries to convince her that the only way she stays alive is if she stays interesting- the moment she stops putting butts in seats- or asks Disney for too much money- she might as well walk into New York traffic. Reluctantly, Gwen agrees to a compromise, middle-tier job, and Ronnie offers to make her tea to cheer her up. She returns a moment later (she’s got an insta-hot, because we don’t have all the time in the world to wait for boiling water, damnit), and her smile drops- as does her tea cup. Gwen is gone, as is the fancy hard job Ronnie denied her. Ronnie mumbles that the girl is going to get all of them both killed.

We cut to an alien-looking ship on the harbor. We pan past terrifyingly looking alien squid men, before realizing they’re corpses, a liberal amount of black-green alien blood spattered around the walls. Gwen is sneaking through the bowels of the dark ship, and momentarily we think, “Maybe she did this.” She hears something behind her in the shadows, and spins, slicing at the darkness with a sword. It’s subtle, but it was already dying when she slashed it, but it falls, too.

She continues talking to Cecil as she walks through the carnage, and we start to realize she’s not the reason for all the dead aliens, and is in way over her head- something Cecil grasps and is trying to talk her into running, but which she’s certain she can’t accept. She comes upon an A.I.M. assassin interrogating one of the squid monsters in front of a big open burner. Eventually, he thanks the Teuthidan for the price on his head, as well as all of the fabulous alien tech he’ll be claiming, and cuts his head off.

Gwen tells Cecil she’s about to handle it. She runs up to the assassin and shoves him into the furnace, before saying, “I wonder who he was.” We cut to Ronnie, bent over her sewing machine. She gets a text from Gwen, a selfie of her with the decapitated head of the Teuthidan with a sword sticking out of it.

We cut to Gwen in soaking in a tub in her costume (too be fair, it probably reeks of dead space calamari). Cecil is in the adjoined room, talking to her about the news- that the calamari were apparently intergalactic arms dealers. She tells him they’re blowing up as her phone rings once again. Cecil worries that will change when they find out she didn’t take out the Teuthidans- and he worries that if she had remote support, the assassin could have, too.

The news broadcast cuts to a harangued and angry Captain Samerica. Sam’s annoyed, and barks back, “We were in space, making sure the Shiar didn’t send their Imperial Guard to scour Earth looking for a Phoenix Egg. They don’t search the haystack, the burn it and sift through the ashes.”  

Gwen talks out loud about whether or not she should try and join the Avengers, how Captain Oldmerica wouldn’t work with a merc, but Sam’s from the modern military- contractors are integrated into the service. Come on,” she says, ribbing Cecil, “Gwenpool, Avenger”.

The wall the TV as hung on disappears in a fiery explosion. M.O.D.O.K. arrives (I’d have Patton Oswalt do the role in live action/CG, because that casting is about perfect). He tells her she killed his best henchman, and that means she’s better- and will take his place, otherwise there will be consequences. Gwen actually laughs out loud, because he’s M.O.D.O.K.- M.O.D.O.K. is threatening her. M.O.D.O.K. vaporizes Cecil, and she collapses to the ground, defeated. She narrates, that she thought she was a hero, but it turns out, she’s just a henchman.

The rest of the series is Gwen working with M.O.D.O.K.’s elite team, while trying to figure out a way out. In the books Batroc the Leaper is the putative leader of the team, and also becomes her trainer after figuring out she has absolutely no useful skills whatsoever; you could just as easily replace him with any number of mid-tier merc/villain characters- Taskmaster’s a good option, if he survives the Black Widow movie.

She doesn’t exist in the MCU, on paper, so she can’t be put on M.O.D.O.K.’s payroll, which leads her to track down Dr. Strange and try to get his help. He’s annoyed to be interrupted, but intrigued when at a glance he can tell she truly doesn’t belong there. He’s able to pull her existence out of our Earth, and put it in theirs, creating the trail she needs to live there. He also helps her be able to contact Cecil.

Shortly thereafter, M.O.D.O.K. does the predictable and tries to kill Gwen. By now she’s bought enough high-tech doodads, including a shield, to survive the fight, even give him a brief run for his money. In desperation, she uses Cecil’s skull, which brings him back as a ghost, and he’s able to use the fact that he’s a ghost but also a tech wizard to compromise M.O.D.O.K.’s systems and send him into the atmosphere, before making him eject his fuel, leaving him floating in orbit. It… probably would make more sense to have Gwen’s team aid in defeating M.O.D.O.K., even though they’re sidelined early, since the resolution is all of them deciding to leave A.I.M. and strike out as a for-hire merc team.

This is it, the season finale of Pitchmas 2020. I’ll still be working on Old Ventures, and Pitchgiving 2021 will likely start September 24th. I’ve been going back and forth on other projects, and what specifically I’ll be pitching then, though the crashing and burning of the Snyder Cut likely means that projects pitched at continuing that continuity are likely out of the running.

The Sentry

This is a big one, like, you could and should hype this as the biggest Marvel TV project, ever. It would cost a fortune, but done right I think would meld prestige TV with superhero cinema.

1. “All That’s Gold Is Gone” or perhaps “Whatever Happened To The Golden Guardian?”:  We start on Robert Reynolds, in bed with his wife, startled awake by a storm- but he doesn’t buy that it’s a freak storm, it drives a terror through him that at first he can’t put his finger on. The episode should be filled with building dread. The tension becomes too great, and Bob reaches for a bottle in its hiding place. There are two, and as he reaches for the one, his hand shakes violently. So he takes a swig from the other, normal booze. He pours a little into the cap of the bottle for his faithful dog to lap up, then tries to polish off the rest, but the bottle’s empty. He returns to the other bottle, and this time he powers through the shakes, and an image of him in a cheap, hand-sewn costume flashes in his mind and over the screen just as lightning strikes outside.

This time he isn’t consumed with nameless worry, this time he knows. He calls his dog Watchdog, and scans the horizon as lightning strikes again, and says they must be vigilant, because they’re humanity’s only hope if the Void returns. Bob’s hand shakes violently as he uncorks the bottle, but then recorks it, and tells the dog they have to be vigilant.

Only this time the dog talks back, and mocks his “vigilance.” We see the dog engulfed in shadow, with black tendrils snaking out from them and snapping at the air like a scorpion’s stinger. Throughout this first episode even Robert can’t be sure if he’s nuts or not, even as he fights his dog, who he thinks is being controlled by the Void to attack him, then has to explain to his wife why he hurt the dog, when its yelp jars her from her sleep.

She sees the bottle on the floor, and scolds him for drinking, and for taking his frustration out on the dog. She says she’s been thinking, for a while, now, about staying at her sister’s, and says she’s going to take the dog. “Okay” is the only answer he can mumble. He talks to himself after she’s gone, trying to make sense of the fact that no one- not even his wife – remembers the Sentry. But he knows he isn’t crazy. He can’t be. He reaches deep into the back of their closet, and for a moment he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, and doubts, but then his hand alights on and pushes aside a panel, and retrieves the costume we saw in the flash earlier.

I think we spend the first episode gaslighting Robert and, vicariously, the audience, trying to convince him that there is no Sentry, there never was a Sentry, and it’s crazy to think there ever could have been a hero who knew and was loved by the entire hero community, who had the power of a million exploding suns and saved the world as many times.

Subtly, his costume shifts over the course of the next few episodes, from the clearly home-made one he first digs out of his closet, until it’s the impressive comics-accurate one he’ll wear for the rest of the series. It still looks like a piece of crap, however, when we see Robert climbing up to the top of a crane on top of high building in New York City, his cape billowed by the wind. As we pan out, we can see a gigantic “4” atop the tower- that’s right, Bob is pretending to fly on top of the Baxter Building. A strong wind kicks up, and he rocks a little bit, but is able to hold his balance- until a pigeon flies into his face, flapping its wings, and he starts to fall, and we cut to credits.  

2. After the first episode, we take a kind of a hybrid approach, as Robert begins to remember his previous exploits with the heroes and confront them, and they start to question whether or not they really do know him, and if they do why they forced themselves to forget; each would combine elements from the mainline Sentry miniseries with the spin-off books. The episodes would be titled to foreshadow who was going to be featured, so the first guest episode, would be “Fantastic Friends,” where Robert confronts Reed. It picks up right where we left off, with Robert catching the crane, then pulling himself back up. Reed is there an instant later, curious how he got past his security.

Bob tells Reed that Reed was at his wedding, and Reed finds the unicorn Bob mentioned that he gave him, as well as a tape from the wedding. Meanwhile, Robert, still unsure whether or not he’s nuts, reminisces about his exploits with the Four, and how Reed really was his best friend… until he betrayed him. Reed is confronted by Dr. Strange, who tries to convince him not to tug at the thread, that the unraveling could very well end the world. But Reed is a man of science, and an unknown is irresistible; Stephen even shows him their shared past, when he begged Stephen to intervene in just this event.

With each subsequent episode, the Sentry becomes more certain of who he is, and also more determined that he must make them all remember the truth, or he won’t be able to rally them against the Void- and he’s going to need everyone to stop the Void. Also, building in the background, are these storms and natural disasters- hundreds, eventually thousands dying in what the world initially writes off as freak storms, but the heroes slowly recognize as the growing influence and power of the Void.

3. Incredible Heroes: Sentry tracks down the Hulk. It’s a time when Banner wasn’t with the Avengers, but was off smashing on his own. He’s a timid, even pitiful creature, smashing not because he’s angry, but because he’s scared, and he hides behind his anger, puffing out his chest- we learn, over the course of the episode, it’s because of how badly thrashed he was by the Void (note: this is basically the state Hulk returns to after his whupping by Thanos). Hulk has a rapport with the Sentry- he helps him not be afraid, helps him not take his anger out on other people. Their reunion should be a really tender moment- and also a terrifying one, because whatever makes he Hulk afraid, should scare the crap out of everyone else. It should also show a pattern: the heroes all lost something important, even vital, to their lives, when the Sentry was erased, something that would have spared them a lot of personal anguish over the intervening years; this was personal for all of them.

4. Amazing Adventurers: Okay… this one would depend entirely on whether or not Spider-Man is part of the Sony deal or not. It’s also probably the most superfluous of these episodes; Sentry’s big contribution to Peter’s life was that he let him take the first picture of the Sentry, a photo which was monetized to a degree that he didn’t have the same kinds of money troubles as he used to- and forgetting him cost him his safety net. But it was also the Sentry’s coming out party- when the character went from blur and urban legend to the Superman of the Marvel Universe (with about as much baggage as that entails).

5. Uncanny Exemplars: This one would basically be a cross-over with the X-Men: The Beginning crew. I’d probably make it more of an ensemble piece, than the book, which was very Angel-centric; in fact, I’d probably focus it more on Xavier/Jean, since they’re going to play a bigger role later, as the MCU’s telepaths have to try and give him the equivalent of telepathic brain surgery to help save him; they also, subtly, share a powerset, so I could see Sentry being able to bridge the gap between the stoic, stern mentor figure who mostly says, “Do as I say, because I don’t do,” and a scared kid trying her darnedest to invent a whole new branch of heroic ethics while trying not to get herself and her friends killed.

6. The Void: The heroes, in particular those we’ve focused on, are gathered at the Empire State building, waiting to war with the Void under the Sentry’s command. This includes Sentry’s old sidekick, Scout, who lost an arm and an eye in one of their adventures, and has since lived without suspecting he was once superpowered, and is ecstatic to be reunited with his mentor.

Only something doesn’t sit right with Reed… and he and Stephen Strange put together the truth. Now, the book is good, so if you haven’t read it before, I’d suggest you go read the Sentry series by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee. But if you want the spoiler, here goes: the Void isn’t a separate person. The Void is manifested by the Sentry’s powers- a kind of evil version of him. Realizing this, the heroes realize why they forgot the Sentry- they did it to stop the Void- and that they’ll have to forget him all over again. Played right, the energy of the episode goes from heroic determination to tragedy- even the Sentry grasps immediately that their only choice is to put them all back under the same hypnotics that hid him away, and hope that this time it holds.   

7+: I think the back-half will be the Sentry arc from New Avengers, where he joins the MCU proper, now.

First, not because we’re exploiting the joke but because the time-skip actually kind of matters here, we do the five years later thing again. After a break-out of prisoners from the Raft, Sentry is discovered inside, having turned himself in for the murder of his wife. The other heroes dutifully locked him away, because if  Superman  Sentry insists he’s dangerous and should be locked up, you don’t ask questions, you just do it. He assists with containing some of the damage of the break-out, before disappearing. The Avengers then track him down. He’s suppressed who he is, again, and is back with his wife, neither of them the wiser.

Everyone shows up (or, since it’s a TV show, a hitter or two from all of the bigger franchises- preferably at least the characters from the feature episodes earlier in the season). The telepaths engage him, while the other heroes fend off the Void, who appears and attacks them (this time surprising no one). We see some more of Sentry’s past exploits. I think it might be fun to do a flashback of the 80s Avengers banding together to stop the Void, and the Ancient One using her abilities to make the rest of them forget their team-up, foreshadowing what happened shortly before the arrival of Thanos (which is when the Sentry disappeared in our story). 80s Avengers: T’Chaka (Black Panther), Ancient One (Sorcerer Supreme), Howard Stark providing access to his Bad Babies, Odin, a previous Ghost Rider, the previous Iron Fist.

After a fairly epic battle, the telepaths find it, hidden fairly expertly- the memory of his unmaking. Apparently, Sentry gets captured by a villain. The book doesn’t explain, but since Mastermind is involved, I’ll say that he was secreted to the Sentry’s home, where he convinced the Sentry’s mind to keep him asleep even as he was carried away. In the original telling, it was ‘The General,’ one of Sentry’s own arch villains, pulling Mastermind’s strings, but I’d probably instead swap in one of the better-known characters who are actively against super-powers, like Zemo or General Ross (or in the event that Disney buys Sony, Norman Osborne). They used an X-Men villain (and mutant) named Mastermind to convince the Sentry to subconsciously create the Void any time he used his powers, a nemesis he could never defeat, who created atrocity in equal to whatever measure of good the Sentry could do, and then erase his tracks. If we did use Ross or Zemo, we could go a step further with it- that Mastermind was trying to convince all heroes they were just normal people without powers, but that the Sentry fought his influence enough to preserve the other heroes, while losing himself.

The telepaths are able to hold the mind-control at bay long enough for Robert to become the Sentry, enter the memory of his brain-washing and destroy it (I’d say when he does, that’s when he learns who it was who captured him- that while we can hear them and see them in silhouette, they aren’t clear until he invades the memory and symbolically destroys its influence). In an instant, the Void disappears, and the Sentry flies away, leaving everyone else uncertain whether they won. Sentry reappears a moment later, his manipulator grasped in one hand, and Mastermind in the other, and he drops them to the ground, where they vomit profusely. He says he must have flown too fast for them. Captain Samerica offers his hand, and a slot on the Avengers, which he declines. He says he has a lot to process, scoops up his wife, and adds that he’s got a lot of lost time to make up for, too. Captain Falcon asks if they can call him if something happens, and he says, of course, and nods at the sky, at his Watchtower floating above them, and adds he’ll be watching, and flies away. Fade to black. White text: The Sentry will return… when we need him most. Then roll credits.

This show is kind of New Mutants for everyone else, letting us seed in characters that will make up the Runaways, more Young Avengers, maybe the Champions, if we’re feeling squirrely, New Warriors, Defenders, and of course there’s likely to be churn amongst the main Avengers team, too. And really, there are so damned many X-Men we probably can’t cover all of them in New Mutants, or maybe some who don’t want to be X-Men or join Magneto’s Brotherhood.

But honestly, it’s also so we can have the dark sequel series, where we feed them all into a woodchipper, Avengers Arena. Because that series is basically Battle Royale meets a world full of teenage sidekicks. It is darkly addictive fun.

In the books, the Avengers Academy is a reaction to Civil War, specifically that now that heroes have been drafted, there’s an Avengers Initiative to have a team in all 50 states, which means they need a hell of a lot more heroes, and they need them trained and not just winging it.

I don’t know that I was ever sold on that set-up, and it’s not available to us, anyhow. Possibly we could build something with the New Warriors, and a disaster like the Stamford one that precipitated Civil War in the books. But there’s lower-hanging fruit, since I set up in last year’s Pitchmas (and Marvel have been following a similar plan in everything they’ve been releasing) setting up Young Avengers.

The existence of untrained knock-off characters would likely prompt the Old Avengers to want to make sure a whole new generation of untrained heroes weren’t suddenly joining the fight, and start off a training program.

In lieu of getting into the weeds on the set up I’d want to see, I’d probably set up a core of characters that would be with us for a five season arc. The first three would cover their training and origins; we’d probably Lost it up a bit, with entire episodes basically being where characters came from, so we could show some of Bloodstone from Cullen’s perspective, do some of Runaways as told by Nico Minoru, an episode telling about X-23’s origins (presumably her having become something of a character in her own right on New Mutants by then- maybe even with Dafne Keen reprising, if the timelines worked out all right) that kind of thing- and yes, the clever amongst you see how it’s basically a series of backdoor pilots intermingled with the hero academy storyline.

I think in the books the Academy was largely the brain-child of Hank Pym, but I imagine that might be a tall order, getting Michael Douglas to commit to. Paul Rudd would probably be a fun alternative, and you could get him interacting with his daughter, Stature, again, and try to rebuild that rapport with the now adult(ish) version of his daughter. Better if you could get both (and/or with a Wasp or 2), since I think the Ant Man family already have a pretty solid family feel and training capabilities.

The first three seasons would be a beginning, middle and end for the Academy, season 4 maybe technically being a spin-off as the characters are captured by a powered-up Arcade and forced to fight for survival, and season 5 being a revenge arc, as those who survived 4 delve into the world of anti-heroics in a bid to hunt Arcade for what he done did, while also being secretly groomed by Zemo to do his bidding.

Season outlines

1. This functions similarly to the way New X-Men series does for mutants, but pulls from all groups, including borrowing some characters from that show (if Wolverine can be an Avenger and an X-Man, I don’t see why we can’t put his clone in both shows)- especially for characters who will go on to be part of the government-run X-Factor. It’s a training program for everyone else, and borrows adult characters when/wherever possible. It might be hard to have too many of the important characters pop up, beyond maybe the Ant Man crew, but we can bring in really anyone; need a magical character, draft Agatha Harkness. Or Damian Hellstrom (actually- I’d suggest Hellstrom, since his character features into the story in 5). 

2. It becomes clear that the Academy is more of a daycare than a training facility; the kids aren’t allowed to hero outside of their bases, and are forbidden from joining other teams during that time. It’s only when they reach 18 that they’re allowed to join the big boy leagues. But that doesn’t stop an old Avengers Threat (I’m going to say Zemo, since he’d see this as an Ubermensch program and want to dismantle it) manipulates a team of villains into attacking as a way to gut the hero community and get their collective revenge, but to everyone’s surprise, the kids are able, Red Dawn style, to beat back the villains long enough for the grown-ups to arrive (or maybe just some clever smoke and mirrors by the kids).  

3. Realizing that they can’t child-proof the world, Hank hires on a nerd nicknamed Arcade; basically, he wants something like the X-Men’s Danger Room, but encompassing an entire city and suburb, a place to simulate combat as these kids will meet it in the outside world. Arcade feels mistreated, and eventually takes all of the teachers hostage, forcing them to watch as their students run a life and death version of the obstacle courses he was supposed to build. They’re eventually able to help free the heroes, who stop Arcade. Losing control of the school and training that way gets the school shuttered for good, with the government pulling its support and the kids all getting sent home.  

4. A powered up Arcade, snotty about his humiliation the year before, starts kidnapping the children who were returned home, and pits them against one another, Battle Royale style, on a remote island. It’s all an elaborate revenge for foiling his plans in the previous season. The meddling kids, however, manage to disrupt his plans yet again- though not all of them survive the experience.

5. Angry that Arcade escaped, the survivors go underground, and start running with a bad crowd, because they’re the only ones who know where Arcade is hiding. The remaining instructors basically fall into two camps- one trying to find the kids and save them from themselves, and the other hunting Arcade to bring him to justice themselves. But that’s all background noise. The main attraction is the kids being set up by Zemo to do something so publically villainous it will taint the kids, their teachers, and all of the superhumans- with Arcade’s fate hanging in the balance. But will the kids realize in time that they’ll be destroying their world if they win? Or will Zemo finally manage to deal the Marvel heroes a death blow?

What? You think I’d spoil the answer here? Think again, True Believers.

Pitchmas this year is a weekly pitch for a new Disney + series set in the MCU, lasting 12 weeks.

10. X-Men: The Beginning

This is basically X-Men Evolution, but in live action, featuring the first five students (maybe eventually introducing younger versions of those who were teachers at the beginning of New Mutants, too, and the rest of the Giant Size X-Men crew). Could probably even use the same sets as New Mutants on a rotating schedule, too, to get double the value out of them.

I think to make this not perfunctory, we’ll need to really make it sizzle. The pitch is basically the first class of X-Men by way of Stranger Things.

I think the first half of the season would be assembling the team, which in our case means them being found by Xavier. I want to tell the stories from the perspective of the teens, and only briefly touch on Charles- at least for the first half. The second half of the season is entirely Xavier-based, his friendship (and its fallout) with Magneto, and his strained relationship with his brother, Cain Marko.

1. Phoenix: Jean is a special girl. Everyone knows it, and they all tell her so. Every one does. We spend a day with her, at first, and slowly, subtly, the creepiness sets in- they all have the same wooden expression, say the words exactly the same way. Everyone except her parcel carrier (not USPS- a private label). He speaks candidly with her, a little too candidly for someone of her age, and we think his eyes start to glow, and his teeth look too sharp. The young Jean screams out, and every neighbor on the block comes outside in lock step, and he doffs his cap and leaves. A SHIELD touchstone (Fury is always the preference, but Samuel L. Jackson can only be in so many places at once, so it could be a Coulson, Hill or someone else) delivers Professor Xavier to the town. Xavier knocks on the Grey residence’s front door, and is greeted by her father. He says that she’s studying, because she’s an extraordinary girl and can’t squander those gifts. Xavier smiles, and says those are his sentiments exactly. Mr. Grey’s eyes glow, and he shakes off the manipulation. Xavier explains that he’s come at the request of SHIELD because their daughter has formed a psychic cocoon around herself; everyone in its radius gets drafted into her army. Her father laughs off the idea, because the things that feel frightening to girls her age include boys and algebra tests. But Xavier doesn’t hear it, because his attention is drawn by the parcel carrier. Xavier sees him clearly, surrounded by a purple psychic flame as his eyes glow red; his teeth appear too sharp. Xavier tells him his daughter’s instincts are sharper than he realizes, and asks to see the girl. The parcel carrier tries to ring the doorbell, but it doesn’t sound. Xavier turns to look at him through one of the windows in the front door, and he glares as Xavier regards him coolly. Mr. Grey brings Jean down. Xavier explains mutants, and their gifts, and tells her she’s one of the strongest people he’s ever met- that the danger she sensed was drawn to her because of that power- he is a monstrous being known as the Shadow King. Xavier encountered him before- but managed to pierce the veil of his thoughts, and discovered that the Shadow King wished to use him as a host to regain access to the physical realm. Jean accuses Xavier of trying to manipulate her, the way the Shadow King had tried to manipulate her, the way her parents had. She demands that he leave, and he does. The Shadow King, in the form of the delivery man, blasts through her front door. Suddenly, Jean is in her home in the psychic realm. The Shadow King stalks through, and as she tries to defend herself with very limited control, he’s clearly able to shape this realm with a whim. It’s terrifying, looking like he’s won, towering over a terrified Jean, before he drops to his knees. Xavier is behind him, with his fingers outstretched, and yellow tendrils burrowing into the Shadow King’s head. We flash back. The moment Shadow King blasted through the door, Xavier was there, behind him, tendrils piercing his skull. Jean stops cowering and stands, triumphant. Xavier tells him he’s going to be furious, but it was the little girl’s plan- the second he walked through the door; he told her what mutants were as they traded details of her plan. She let him think he was in control, that he was winning, as she systematically took away every element of his power. They’re both fairly certain he’ll be trapped on the psychic plane forever; psychics may stumble upon him from time to time, but he’s lost most of the gimmicks that allowed him to trick his unwitting victims. They leave him, chained, on that plane, and return to Jean’s room. She admits to Xavier that she didn’t mean to manipulate people around her, but she couldn’t control it. She asks if he could teach her how, and he smiles, and says of course.

2. Cyclops: Scott Summers as a child is on a plane flying over Alaska. The plane shimmies, and his father, the pilot, tasks him with checking to make sure his younger brother Alex is fastened tight, then check the cargo. Out of one of the windows, he sees the engine start to smoke, burst into flame, and is completely torn from the plane, taking some of the wing and the door nearest it, sucking out the parachutes. Scott runs back to the cockpit to tell his father. He looks at his boys and smiles. “Lucky I always bring a spare,” he says, and pulls one out from behind his seat. “You two’re small, so it should work for the both of you.” Scott asks about him, and he tells him he should still be able to land it, but he’s not putting all of their mom’s eggs in one basket- “especially since this world is out of perfect eggs.” He helps Scott get Alex clamped into the chute, then tells him to hold on, tight. His father helps him out of the plane. One of the chute straps breaks, and they start to fall, too fast. Scott wraps himself around Alex, to shield him from the landing, and we cut as they hit the mountain. We pull back, to see their father’s plane overhead, a moment before it smashes into the mountain.

We cut later, as Scott, blood dried along the side of his face from a nasty impact with the ground, drags his brother, whose leg is splinted, in the remains of the parachute, towards the nearby town. At the edge of town, Scott collapses beside a chain link fence surrounding a dour-looking building (it was an attempt by a priest to capture the majesty of a cathedral, but scaled to this remote community- the effect is more sinister than anything). We see a sign on the fence, too, “Essex Home For Special Boys.” A man with sharply-defined facial hair is standing with a gloved hand threaded through the fence, just on the other side of the two boys. We pan up his arm, and stop when we reach his jaw, as a thin smile spreads over his lips.

Scott plays with Alex, who can’t really join in the other reindeer games because of his leg (now in a cast). That is, until another boy, a burly one, with big hands and feet and a toothy grin, tells him they need another to even out teams for a game of touch football. Scott’s reluctant at first, but Alex snaps at him, like he wants his pity attention. Scott’s hurt by that, and goes off with Hank. We linger on Alex, reversing the shot as Scott starts to play (he quarterbacks, because he’s got a good eye, a good arm, and talent for leadership; Hank, meanwhile, is a natural catcher with those hands, and is agile to boot), and we watch a knowing smile spread across Alex’s lips.

Scott tries to loop Alex back in, but Hank and his friends are slightly older, and especially having been wounded, Alex is extra socially handicapped. At lights out, Hank nervously confesses to Scott that he’s anxious about an upcoming dance- that there’s a dance with the “Frost Academy for Talented Ladies.” He’s worried no one will want to dance with him. Scott thinks a moment, before telling him that women like to be held- his mom told him that- and with his hands he figures Hank would make any woman feel extra safe and secure. The moment is sweet enough Hank gets quieter, more conspiratorial. He tells Scott he’s not sure it’s safe there, that he isn’t an orphan- that his parents are still alive and he was taken– that they need to get out of there, and Scott’s eyes go wide- so wide we know what’s coming next as ruby red energy bursts from his eyes, shattering through a window. Hank hits him from behind, as Essex appears behind him. Hank explains that he didn’t know what else to do- that Scott might have hurt someone. Essex pats his shoulder gently, telling him he did the right thing.

3. Beast: The episode opens largely as the last ended, only Hank and Scott are asleep on their cots. Mr. Essex, the smiling man who put a gloved hand through the fence in the last episode, preps a syringe. He slides it into Scott’s arm with inhuman precision, then twirls in his heavy dark blue coat (that’s almost a big cape). Essex opens a secret panel into a small lab behind his study. He feeds Scott’s blood into a machine, and lights come up on the room, showing a host of gene-sequencing machines.

We go back to Hank, sleeping fitfully. We hear a voice, Essex’s, but I want it to be supremely subtle, almost subliminal, where some portion of the audience won’t catch it during the first viewing. His eyes open manically, and he yawns, before stumbling out of bed. He uses the same secret entrance to Essex’s lab, and clearly knows his way to Essex once inside. Essex calls him, “Young Mr. McCoy” and claims he was quite the discovery. Hank pouts, and Essex chides him; he says his gift would have been wasted living with his parents- that Hank is free to hate him, if need be, but his education is paramount.

Indeed, once Essex begins speaking to him about Scott’s DNA, he comes alive. While the testing is ongoing, it seems that Scott is one of the catalysts he’s been searching for, that his ability allows him to harness great amounts of energy- possibly enough to finally finish his work. They work together through the night, testing the sampled blood, until Hank falls asleep, and Essex gingerly carries him back to bed.

The next morning Scott wakes slowly. He’s attached to an IV, keeping him partially sedated. Hank tells him that most so-called mutant powers are controlled via the brain- which would explain the catastrophic damage caused by his head injury, preventing him from being able to control it. He segues awkwardly via a joke about controlling himself that evening, when they go to the Frost Academy for the dance, and notes it’s good they aren’t having it there, because of the hole Scott blasted in the wall.

We have a scene where they boys dress. Despite the short notice, Essex was able to have the seamstress in town customize clothes for both Summers boys. Alex doesn’t want to go, especially since he can’t dance on his leg, but Scott convinces him to try and have fun.

At the dance, Essex greets Ms. Frost as Hazel, and tells her it’s lovely to see her, and kisses her hand. She’s a wealthy socialite, her family money coming at least partially from Alaskan oil, hence her interest in giving back to that community. With her is her daughter, Emma; she wears white with furs, not as revealing as the outfits adult her will wear, obviously, but just as sharply stylish. Hank asks if she wants to dance, and she stares at his big hands and says she wears the fur of beasts, she doesn’t dance with them.” He says something cutting in reply, and they both stomp off. Scott follows Hank, and consoles him, and tells him he’s a sweet guy, and he’s going to find someone who loves him for who he is, not the size of glove he wears. Scott convinces him to try again, with another girl, this one staring at him. Scott watches as she smiles, nods, and follows him to the dance floor.

Scott starts looking for Alex when he hears sobbing, and follows it back to Emma. She insists she wasn’t crying. He smiles, and says that doesn’t mean she isn’t upset, and if talking would help, he’s there. She’s stand-offish, and rude, but it also becomes clear that she’s lonely, and scared, and doesn’t really know how to handle people at all. He explains that she sounds like Hank; he was worried no one would dance if he asked them, but that he found someone who said yes, that sometimes to really get to know the best side of people, you have to give them a second chance. He asks if she’d like to dance, and she says yes. We follow them to the dance floor, but as we pan past Essex chatting with her mother, we stay on them.

Essex is boring her, it’s plain. He’s chatting her up because he’d like more funding, and mentions that his work is focused on helping people just like her daughter, that he isn’t looking for a hand-out. She isn’t paying attention to him, because a late guest has arrived. She tells Nathan she has to introduce him to a dear friend of hers, a fellow philanthropist, Charles Xavier. Essex goes white, as we pan to see Xavier. He’s also brought along Jean Grey, as well, both dressed appropriately for the occasion. Xavier peers at him curiously; he can’t seem to read Essex’s mind, which is peculiar. 

Back with Scott and Emma, she tells him she knows he’s scared. He tells her he’s not; his mom taught him how to dance before she died (though he trails off before saying the word “died”). She says not about that. About last night, what happened with his eyes. He stops, and she tells him it’s okay, she’s special, too. That his secret’s safe with her, just like she feels safe with him, she says, nuzzling into his shoulder. As the music fades, Emma leans in and kisses him, and Scott’s eyes go wide. “Oh, no,” she says, realizing her mistake. Scott’s eyebeams blast through the wall and the ceiling.

Ms. Frost screams for her daughter, and runs to protect her; Emma protests that she’s fine, she’s safe, Scott would never hurt her. Essex moves towards Scott, but Charles grabs his wrist, and tells him he doesn’t know who he is, or what his designs on the boy are, but it ends tonight. He calls him a “Sinister” man, and tells him to leave all of the children behind, that he and Emma have contacts that will get them situated in proper homes- we see an overlay of Hank, as he says he was taken, and rage spreads over Xavier’s face. Essex shoves Xavier, knocking him into the wall hard enough he dents it, as his eyes begin to glow red, and we think this is going to go downhill quickly, only Essex’s eyes roll back in his head and he falls over.

Jean tells Xavier she turned him off, like a light switch, and asked if she did good, and he says she did very good. We stay on Essex, who watches a single hair fall from Jean’s shoulder. He can barely move, but with great effort manages to grab the hair as it falls.

Later, we pan through the now empty orphanage, into the no longer shut lab. Essex is extracting DNA from the hair, and that same sinister smile spreads over his lips.

I’m going to be a little less thorough with the remaining episodes, but to give you a taste of what we’re looking at.

4. Angel: Angel flies. Depending on budget, this can be POV, and just be some drone footage, or it could be fairly elaborate. But then Warren wakes to his father knocking on his door. He’s low-key abusive about hiding his son’s shame, binding his wings and tying them down in a way that’s painful. When Warren cries, he shames him for that, too.

Warren goes to his school, something private and high-end. His father shoves him along, past students picking on a girl there on a scholarship, her uniforms second-hand, her supplies in some disrepair. Warren tries to direct his father’s wrath in their direction, only for him to state that she’s “beneath” them, and Warren stares daggers back at him for that.

We recognize one of the boys picking on the girl when he slides into a seat next to Warren; he acts friendly towards him, but Warren doesn’t return the warmth. Cameron asks what’s up, says their families have been friends for generations- that the Worthingtons and Hodges have been thick as thieves since before either family bought their way into respectability. Warren complains about his treatment of the girl, and he says they were only having fun- that they wouldn’t hurt her. Warren isn’t interested. Cameron says this is a lousy way to end a friendship, and Warren spits back that they were never friends, that he was a jerk his father made him be nice to- but he’s tired of being a cog in a machine of jerks that only mints fresh jerks and money. Warren leaves, tells the teacher he needs to use the bathroom.

We linger a bit on Cameron’s day, as he stews.

At lunch outside, Cameron and his buddies make fun of Warren. They intimate that he’s got a thing for the girl, that that’s why he’s being such a girl about it. And he shrugs. He doesn’t care if they think that, because what would be so wrong about it. Not getting what they want, they leave, and Warren watches a bird fly by, and we intercut with his dream from earlier, until a dropped lunch try stirs him from his daydreaming.

It’s Cameron and his buddies, surrounding the girl again. Only Cameron shoved her. His friends are half-shocked, half drooling for more. Cameron’s clearly agitated, realizing he’s probably gone too far, and at the same time feeding off the energy his friends are putting off. He reels back to hit her, and his hand comes down on Warren’s back. That’s enough invitation for all of his friends to start attacking. For a moment Warren hunkers over her to protect her from their fists and feet, until…

Warren tears through his harness, and his school blazer in one motion, then spins, knocking Cameron and his flunkies back with his spread wings. Warren pulls the girl to him, and kicks off the ground, taking flight. We linger a moment on Cameron, as someone approaches, and offers him a hand up. He calls Warren a filthy “mutie,” and says they’re no “friends of humanity.” Then introduces himself as Graydon Creed.

We join Warren and the girl in the clouds, as her scream turns to excitement. He flies them down to a picturesque spot on top of a hill. She tells him he didn’t have to do that. He says he couldn’t stand idly by. They have a cute, flirty sort of thing, and she is very gentle and understanding about his, er, coming out. She asks if she can kiss him; she wants to, but she doesn’t want to make something really powerful and brave about her. He kisses her, and tells her it was about her, that he would have been too scared to do it if it wasn’t for her. She kisses him back, and we linger on that happy moment, because we’re going to need that to power through what comes next.

Warren’s dad berates him on the way to school, treats it like something Warren did to shame him, and the family name, and legacy. He protests, that they were going to hurt her, to which he says, “So?” They pull up at the school. Angry parents have formed a human chain outside, and are wearing, “FoH” arm bands, standing beneath a banner that says something to the effect of “Mutants Stay Out.” The Elder Worthington slides lower in his seat, when there’s a knock on the car window.

It’s Charles Xavier. He offers his help. Worthington asks if he’s a lawyer, and Charles smiles that no, he is not. Xavier walks inside, past the crowd, who murmur. One, who recognizes him, steps to him, and he smiles, and the person steps back, cowed.

Warren watches a bird fly by, and his dad snaps at him, telling him he’s never flying again. Xavier emerges, walking lightly. Behind him comes the principal, who tears down the banner. Xavier says he was glad he could change his mind, before turning to walk away. The protestors howl at the principal as he balls up their banner, and points to their cars. If we can hear him, he’s telling them they have to disperse, and if they don’t, he’ll be forced to call the police.

Worthington asks if his son can go inside. Xavier says that he can- but that he shouldn’t- that this school isn’t good enough for him. He deserves a school where he can be who he wants to be, and where he doesn’t have to threaten legal action or use of the ADA to keep the wolves at bay. He hands Worthington a card, saying he happens to run just such a school, a school designed for special people just like his son. Worthington is skeptical, downright hostile, until he says that it’s remote, far away from prying eyes and ears, from society gossip or any of the other arenas where they might look down on his son’s gifts. Worthington stops himself, and in an uncharacteristic moment of humanity, says that it should be up to his son to decide.

Charles opens Warren’s door, and says that nature has given Warren wings, that it would be his honor to give him a chance to fly.

5. Iceman: Bobby Drake is a pain in the butt. He can’t stop complaining about his mom’s traditions, about her weird smelling fish, or the fact that their “Christmas” presents are wooden and from another century; specifically, they’re getting ready for Purim. She’s hurt by the assertion, but hides it, and tells him it’s important for him to know their heritage. People died for that heritage. Carrying it was honoring their sacrifice, and their strength, and the determination that carried them through centuries of oppression and discrimination. For a moment, it seems like she’s getting through to him, before he says, “Yeah, but my bringing stink-fish on wrye for lunch is ensuring further centuries of oppression.” She glares comically at him. He clarifies that he’s not saying they have to 86 all the Jewish stuff, but dad’s Christian, so can’t this be the half of their heritage they don’t talk about, like how he’s not supposed to talk about anything covered by his jeans when they have company. She glares again, before breaking into a smile, making it clear that she loves him, despite his being a pain in the butt.

There’s a knock on the door, and we see a man we assume is her husband. She greets him as Erik, and he asks if he’s late for the kiddush, and she says they waited for him. They all sit at the table, and she lights two candles, and says a blessing. Then they have a meal, during which Erik asks about her husband, who works swings and isn’t ever there that time. She asks after his work; he does aid work for Jewish charities and the like, and is planning another trip to Israel soon. She tells him she’s struggling to get Bobby interested in his heritage. I think he tells a story from Jewish history, showcasing one of their many struggles just to survive (I’m not sure which would be more on point).

Erik mentions that his parents were both children during the Holocaust, each was the sole survivor from their families- entire lines wiped out but for those single branches. I’m kind of assuming that for this generation of Magneto, he won’t be a Holocaust survivor himself, but have been conceived by two people who lived through it, who were scarred by it, who were orphans of it, that it colored every aspect of his growing up, that everywhere his family ever lived they had contingency plans for escape, not just from the house, but from the city, from the country, from the continent, that it wasn’t until they finally settled in Israel that they found a home they weren’t looking to escape from.

Bobby attends a Purim carnival with his mom. He eats some hamantaschen, and goofs off to impress a girl. He also draws the ire of a bully, who follows them to the Ferris wheel. He shoves Bobby into the cart, elbowing the girl out of the way; the not-paying-attention operator starts the wheel with the two of them on it. The bully is fuming; he doesn’t like the way Bobby was looking at the girl. He says she’s okay, but there’s someone else, someone who he sees when he closes his eyes, when he thinks about sharing his first kiss. The scene is, essentially, Bobby coming out as bi, the dialog reading ambiguously, and thinking the bully shares his feelings (because he’s a dumb, inexperienced kid). He takes the bully’s hand, squeezes, and kisses him. And… it goes okay. The bully was jealous of the girl and not him. Except…  when he took his hand, Bobby accidentally froze it- froze their hands together in a block of ice. That freaks him out. He tries to get away, even trying to climb out of the Ferris Wheel enclosure as Bobby fights him. As the car reaches the ground the Bully punches him in the eye and stumbles backward, shattering the ice, and running. The commotion catches the attention of others at the carnival that a crowd has gathered, who look like an angry mob.

Next shot is Bobby getting locked in a cell. He uses the block of ice still around his hand to ice his black eye, and tells the Sheriff it helps. The Sheriff explains that he had to take him into protective custody; he’d seen that look before, and didn’t want to have to try and ward off a lynch mob at gun point. He says he can release him once the mob disperses and his parents can come for him.

Bobby notices another young kid in the cell beside his, and asks what he’s in for. He says it’s arson- though he didn’t do it, before using flame from a lighter to create a small dragon that melts the ice around his hand. Bobby thanks him, just as the wall behind them collapses, and in walks Magneto. From inside, a door opens, and a bald man in a nice suit strolls in. “Erik, I see you’re still tearing down walls.”

“I prefer to think of it as removing barriers to our people, Charles,” Magneto replies.  

Xavier tells Bobby that he’s secured his release and return to his mother, and can escort him safely out of the building. Magneto tries to coax him to go with him- that he needn’t fear those weaker. Xavier appeals to the bonds of family- to his mother, who is scared, and wants nothing more than to hold her precious child in her arms and tell him everything will be okay. The Sheriff returns, and his eyes go wide. Xavier tells him not to notice Magento until they’re gone, and he unlocks Bobby’s cell. Bobby glances back at Magneto, before leaving with Charles.

We cut to later, Bobby at home. She’s reading the Purim story, and mentions Hamen, and he uses his noisemaker, but peters out. He says he has to tell her something, that he’s different. She corrects him- that he’s special, and she’s known he was special from the moment she first held him in the hospital. He tells her he kissed his first boy today. And accidentally froze their hands together. She asks how it was. “Cold,” he says, then, “not bad, though. Moister than expected. But pretty good, until I got hit in the face.” She smiles, and tells him it took her a while to get the hang of kissing, too, but it was all worth it, because that’s how she got him. He groans. “Mom, you’re going to warp me.” She tells him she’s pretty sure that ship has sailed.

6-10: Now we focus on the X behind the Men. 6 starts with a young, even arrogant Charles Xavier. I think the framing story is the 5 original X-men talking, coming to realize that while they’re grateful for his help, they don’t really understand why he does what he’s done. He finds them, and Jean asks. Now it’s flashback time.

He’s kind of an obnoxious, arrogant prep school jerk. His mother calls him away from his prep school to return home because his father is dying of cancer, presumably related to his work in nuclear physics. Charles decides to stay home with his grieving mother after his father’s death, and witnesses her seduction at the hands of Kurt Marko, a family friend who provides a shoulder for her to cry on. Kurt’s son from a prior marriage, Cain, is in tow; he’s resentful of Charles and bullies him relentlessly. Eventually Charles’ mother and Marko marry. Large portions of the Xavier fortune are put into a trust for Charles, including the mansion where the new family live. Xavier’s telepathy develops, and he discovers, too late, that Kurt is only interested in his family’s money, and doesn’t care for either he or his mother. He tries to convince his mother to leave the emotionally neglectful Kurt, but she refuses, so he seeks refuge by returning to school.

At school, Xavier met and fell in love with Moira. The two had a whirlwind romance, until Xavier received a call from his step-brother. Cain was struggling with a deal going south in Cairo, and needed Charles to bail him out, literally, from prison. Charles, however, isn’t about to unleash Marko on the populace, and follows him. That’s where he bumps into a young thief named Ororo Munroe, being forced to work by a man she knows only by the name Shadow King.

But Xavier’s first concern is limiting the damage his step-brother can do, so he follows Marco. Cain was using their family’s resources and connections to fund an archeological dig. However, the Egyptian government got wind of the unsanctioned archeology, and seized his prize, including a crimson gem, that had ensorcelled Cain on sight. Because of his control over the family fortune, Charles is able to cut off most of his resources; Cain uses the last of his cash on hand to purchase a group of mercenaries to help him fight past the Egyptian authorities. Charles is too late to stop them from penetrating the chamber, and when he attempts to stop Cain’s mercenaries telepathically he finds they’re dead, save one, who is merely dying, all murdered by the vicious Juggernaut his brother has become. Charles tries to stop him mentally, but is unable to so much as speak telepathically to his brother.

Ashamed of his failure, Xavier falls into a depression. He starts drinking, though isn’t too deep in the bag when he senses the presence once again of Ororo Munroe. He feels her fear even more acutely than the last time, and goes to her. This time he listens as she tells him the full story of the Shadow King, how he can control people with his mind, how he uses innocent people as his hostages, threatening to harm them if she doesn’t steal for him. In that way he’s become the premier underworld figure in all of Cairo, and is well on his way to controlling all of the levers of government.

Xavier promises Munroe he will free her. He doesn’t get far, before he’s accosted by local police, but sensing a presence behind them, he severs it, and they crumple to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. Ororo leads him to the Shadow King, still a human at this point. His guards attack, only for them to freeze. Ororo turns, her eyes flashing white and subtly crackling with electricity, before she freezes. Xavier leaps over Shadow King’s desk, and they start to fight, before Shadow King tears him onto the psychic plane.

They battle for a time, before Xavier reveals that he’s sealed Shadow King off from his own body. They both race for a door out, each hoping to take control of Xavier, instead. When they reach the door at the same moment, we cut back to Xavier, probably a close-up on his eye, zooming out, before he starts to move. Everyone in the room resumes moving. Charles directs Ororo away from the desk; on instinct she wanted to make sure the Shadow King was really gone, like checking for a monster under the bed, but he doesn’t want her to see the catatonic body of the Shadow King. We zoom in on his pupil, and inside, in the psychic realm, we see Shadow King banging on an invisible wall, unable to escape.

Through his contacts, Xavier is able to find someone to help rehome Ororo- to take her back to her original home, really. And this is where he meets Erik for the first time. Typically, he works with Jewish charities, and, more secretively, for underground mutant-supporting ones, but he happens to be in the area, and is happy to help the child find her home. He says something to the effect that aren’t we all just searching for a place, to be happy and safe?

Their meeting, and his time in Cairo changes Xavier. He tries to go back to school, but Moira has moved on, and he realizes that academia isn’t for him, that his calling lies in helping. So it’s no surprise that the next episode finds him working in Palestine. We see him doing the hard aid work within the Gaza Strip, sweating through his suit out doors, helping to soothe angry refugees. There is a conflict at the border; it seems an NGO has accidentally promised the same supplies to both groups on the Israeli side as well as those on the Palestinian one. Feeling that the Palestinian need was more urgent, they tried to direct the supplies to Gaza, but were stopped at the border. Word of what was happening got back to some Palestinians, and a protest ensued, that threatened to spill over into violence with the addition of Israeli security forces. Peace is finally brokered at the arrival of Xavier on one side, and Erik on the other, each subtly influencing their sides towards piece, Xavier by calming the crowd somewhat, Erik by causing tanks and trucks to break down before they can reinforce the troops there. The two of them are able to build a compromise, though it’s to stop bloodshed, not for ideological reasons.

That comes later, when the two men share a drink on the Israeli side of the border. They talk well into the night, Charles learning of Erik’s parents surviving the Holocaust, and then dying in a terrorist attack in Israel in front of him. Charles argues that in this scenario, the Palestinians are the ones in camps- that to protect itself Israel is perpetrating something like the worst sin committed against them on another people. Erik is horrified, even angry, but he also recognizes there’s some truth there, too… that maybe the way to protect his people isn’t with a closed fist.

Author’s Editorial Note: After concerns were raised about this passage, I am adding this clarification of the purpose of this passage: Xavier, without using the word mutant, is able to convince Erik that Jews were the mutants of World War II, just as Palestinians are the mutants of that moment in the Middle East- that they deserve to be sheltered from the storm just as he wished his family was, just as he’s dedicated his life to doing for mutantkind. Xavier’s true power, to me, has always been his deep well of empathy; he doesn’t need to manipulate anyone, because he’s seen so deeply into the human soul- including his own- that the pain of others is his pain, and briefly, he’s able to share that gift with Erik in words.

Erik is still proudly Jewish, and I don’t believe he would be able to be completely won over- but that wasn’t ever Xavier’s hope- he views any dichotomy as a false one, any splitting of people into the deserving and the damned to be ceding the solution to the worst of human instincts. So for a time, he convinces Erik that there can be that fragile peace; Erik doesn’t stop believing Israel has a right to exist and protect itself, but he’s more easily able to see the humanity of those who get caught in that crossfire, too, regardless of which side of a border they’re on. -Nic

They work together for a time, building aid agencies that aren’t for either Israel or Palestine, but that coordinate aid between them, and build greater ties between both groups. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship… until it ended.

Gabrielle Haller was a fellow aid worker. She mostly worked on the Arabian Peninsula, but was moving medical supplies through Egypt because of an outbreak. While making their way through some largely overgrown roads, their caravan was caught in an earthquake. Their vehicles were swallowed up, as the quake broke open an underground chamber that had been covered for centuries with sand. The rest of the caravan were lost, supplies, vehicles, everything. Gabrielle was able to crawl from the hole, but had been rendered speechless by her ordeal, and sunk into a catatonic state once she reached help.

She was brought back to the camp used by Xavier and Erik. Not only did it have some fairly advanced equipment, but it was where her friends and coworkers were. There didn’t seem to be anything medically wrong with her, but she remained catatonic. Using telepathy, Xavier was able to help her push past her trauma, and regain consciousness. She was still traumatized, and still feared the evil stench of the thing in the hole, but with time she was able to go back to work helping people, which seemed to be the best medicine for her. It was only at night, when her mind was unguarded, that she succumbed to the fears, and would often wake up screaming. Because of their proximity, because of how much he’d helped her, because they were both going through something of an existential crisis, Xavier and Gabrielle cleaved to one another. Sleeping in his arms the terrors finally began to fade. For her. Unconsciously, Xavier finally felt the full brunt of her terror, and just as unconsciously, reached out telepathically to the place where her horror lied… and discovered that it was real.

Charles woke in a sweat, and got up, to find Erik pacing. He had a problem he didn’t think he could bring to Xavier. Xavier, exasperated, tells Erik they both know they’re both mutants, and that Erik’s untenable problem involves them- and that he’s happy to help. But perhaps more importantly, there is a graver threat to humanity, one hidden beneath the sands for millennia, an evil so unspeakable history scoured its existence from all record, a doom sleeping in an ancient tomb, waiting for the ripest moment to spark an Armageddon that would make the Holocaust look quaint by comparison- a living Apocalypse.

Magneto tells him to shut up. Xavier, thinking he sounds like a raving lunatic, persists, only for Erik to silence him more forcefully with a shout. Then he hears it, too: gunfire. They rush through the camp as people run in the other direction. But the sounds of gunfire are becoming further, and they find Xavier’s tent has been shredded, the bedding he shared with Gabrielle empty and torn. Xavier reaches out with his mind and tells Erik they have her, and he needs his help… and that Gabrielle is pregnant. And that the child will be like them. Magneto tells him “Mazel tov, Charles,” but protests that he didn’t need further motivation than rescuing Gabrielle.

Xavier tells him he needed Erik to understand what was at stake for him- and that she doesn’t know yet. Xavier is able to track them to the place we saw in Gabrielle’s flashback, the sinkhole where her caravan disappeared.

When they arrive, they find a decent size encampment of Hydra soldiers. Magneto is incensed at this, seeing them as little better than Nazis. Xavier tries to argue him down, reasoning that they can get to Gabrielle with no loss of life. Magneto’s having none of it, that Charles’ solution leaves them alive to keep spreading their poison. Xavier does what he can to stem the loss of life, but Magneto rampages. It all comes to a head when they find the officer holding Gabrielle, Baron Strucker. Magneto uses his powers to rip the rifles from the arms of Strucker’s guards, turns them on the Hydras, and fires. Xavier yells out in protest.

Strucker calls them “Ubermensch” and explains to them that the most fervent search Hydra undertook was looking for this buried messiah. “He was waiting for the rise of mankind’s superiors;” Strucker sees mutants and Hydra as natural allies, both representing the pinnacle of human achievement. Magneto is bemused at his arrogance, and sees Strucker as far beneath him, and tries to kill him. Only he can’t. Xavier has restrained him telepathically. It’s hard to put into words the depth of this betrayal to Erik; they’re friends, and Xavier has violated his mind- all to protect a man no better than a Nazi.

Xavier knows what he’s done, but he’s consumed by the evil thing pulsating beneath them. He shares its thoughts with Magneto, in an attempt to persuade him to stay and help. Only Magneto sees the creature differently; he feels that if Strucker’s right, then it was waiting for them- it is doom merely for the humans. “I now see which side you’ve always been on, Charles,” he sneers, before flying away.

Xavier telepathically flattens Strucker, then gets Gabrielle into a truck so she can drive herself back to safety; she says she knows the way, but she wants him to come with her. He says he can’t; he’s seen the thing in her nightmares, felt its rancid breath on his face. He can’t sleep, knowing it draws breathe still- he has to face down this demon. She’s heartbroken, because they both understand, on some level, this is him leaving her, him deciding to go down a dangerous path she cannot possibly follow, that even if by some miracle he survives the ordeal, their love is over.

Alone, now, Xavier descends into the sinkhole. The architecture is Egyptian-esque, think pyramids mixed with alien tech (Celestial, if memory serves). In the center of the chamber is a black cocoon that is nearly an obelisk. As Charles approaches it, it begins to send out pulses of force that nearly knock him over. But he continues forward, struggling against the tide, before eventually touching the obelisk. I think from this point forward we go to a battle on a psychic plane. Probably to preserve long-term casting possibilities, Apocalypse appears as a young Egyptian boy. He tells Xavier that only the strongest should survive, so he welcomes his challenge. Then the boy grows in size, until he’s replaced by a giant blue boot trying to stomp on Xavier. Charles tackles through the foot, ripping the boy out of the construct, grabbing hold of his head. Xavier’s eyes glow, then his hands, then the boy’s eyes, then everything is engulfed in light.

The psychic feedback sends out a bigger pulse, throwing Xavier into the wall, and causing a second cave-in. Most of the architecture collapses inwards as sand rushes in. We cut to the remains of the Hydra camp. The soldiers fled, taking everything they could quickly grab. Out of the sand Xavier thrusts a hand. He crawls out of the hole. And keeps crawling, his legs pulled limply behind him. He manages to pull himself by morning to a small village, and he’s airlifted back to Cairo for medical treatment.

I’ll be honest, I hadn’t anticipated seeding Apocalypse like this, and so hadn’t expected to injure Xavier… but I’m toying with 6^th Sensing it. So characters who can see through telepathic manipulation talk to him as he is- a man in a wheelchair (off the top of my head, Jean, Essex, Shadow King, Emma). And everyone else sees him walking- that he admits at the end here that it was a crutch, that he felt he needed to project strength- but he understands now, having gotten to know all of them, that true strength comes from being who you really are, not projecting what you think others need to see.

The finale of the season is Cain Marko, now the Juggernaut, attacking the school as Xavier wraps up his tale. His young X-Men have to deal with the Juggernaut, showcasing their new attempts to work cohesively as a team. Iceman freezes the ground, Cyclops knocks him over with an optic blast, Beast grabs him by the ankles and spins him to keep him disoriented while Jean Grey telekinetically unbuckles his helmet, which Angel flies off with, leaving Cain vulnerable to his brother’s psychic assault.

Bonus Pitch: I could absolutely see a spin-off out of this being Magneto: Hydra Hunter, covering the time from after he and Xavier part ways, until he graduates to Supervillainy, basically him going after Nazis/Hydra and doing a riff on Munich (the Spielberg movie) as he tries to wrangle with his own demons; because I don’t think he’s quite there, yet, as a villain. I think what would probably get him there is him trying to focus on just killing the worst of the worst, in the hopes that without the Nazis and Hydra, humanity could learn to get along with mutants, and then with the rise of the Friends of Humanity movement, with the return to the public square of Nazis- it all just becomes too much for him to bear- he starts to think it isn’t a few bad apples, that the whole damn orchard is the problem.  

Even still, I could see needing a third series for Magneto to really gel as a villain. I’d probably go for an Asteroid M storyline, him trying to have his own mutant Israel, only learning that if they displaced anybody they could never have peace so he builds an asteroid out of metallic space debris for his people to live on. And of course, when human governments can’t abide what is basically a weapons platform floating above their heads and attack what was meant as a peaceful gesture, that seals things for him. That is a Magneto you probably could get away with selling shirts saying, “Magneto Was Right.” Not that I think you should… even pop-culturally ironic endorsements of genocide are a bad idea, no matter how sympathetically you build out an origin story. But that is a damn fine villain, if I do say so myself. And I just did.

The episodes start off as a grudge match, with the initial title being “Squirrel Girl vs…” but after some initial fisticuffs, her positive nature takes over, and she helps the villians/heroes with their problems, instead. Like she helps Deadpool with his ennui, Thanos with his lousy philosophy… it means the episodes end with kind of a goofy Aesop but also include superheroics, action and drama. The key, and this is a balancing act, to be sure, is she doesn’t detract from the overall threat level of her adversaries, she just finds ways around them; she might not be able to overpower Dr. Doom, but she can help him with his self-loathing- or at least give him a friend.

Because it’s a comedy show and it’s good to show contrast, I’d have her first guest be Deadpool. This would also allow her to receive, in universe, a complete set of Deapool’s Guide to Supervillains cards, which I think are great.

I think Disney’s got the rights to the ’67 Spider-Man cartoon, so presumably we could use her improvised theme song to that tune by Ryan North, which she sings in the cold open to the first episode as she stops a gang of muggers in the park:

Squirrel Girl, Squirrel Girl! She’s a human and also a squirrel! Can she climb up a tree? Yes she can, easily. That’s whyyyy her name is Squirrel Girl! Is she tough? Listen bud: she’s got partially squirrel blood. Who’s her friend? Don’t you know: That’s the squirrel Tippy-Toe. Surprise! She likes to talk to squirrels! At the top of trees, is where she spends her time like a huuuuman squirrel she enjoys fighting crime!! Squirrel Girl, Squirrel Girl! Powers of both squirrel and girl! Finds some nuts, eats some nuts, kicks bad guuuuuys’ evil butts! To her, life is a great big acorn! Where there’s a city crime-torn, you’ll find the Squirrel Girl!!!

The first episode might need to be double-length, because we have to set up the premise, namely that Doreen Green, the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, is going to college. She foils a mugging on her way to meet her new dormmate, Nancy Whitehead. Nancy’s immediately suspicious, because Doreen has a pet squirrel that she seems to talk to. Tippy Toe is very animated, babbling about a threat, that her squirrel sense is tingling. Nancy asks what’s wrong, and Doreen tells her TT’s squirrel sense is tingling- though sometimes that means she just has to pee. Doreen opens her window to let the squirrel out.

It’s while she’s packing her things into their room that she sees Deadpool go running after someone. I’m assuming he’s being very loud and disruptive, and not being familiar with him, she goes after to see if she needs to help him (or save someone from him). They have a fight, before they start talking. Turns out, Deadpool is feeling ennui, no longer satisfied being the clown he’s been, and not yet comfortable existing in the leadership role he’s created for himself with X-Force. She helps him by explaining that her army of squirrels are strong enough to take on villains- as well as trigger-happy mercenaries- together, even if they’re vulnerable individually.

I’d probably like to use Kraven as Deadpool’s quarry, to stick to the book as closely as possible, but it’s possible we could need an alternative, since I don’t know if the deal with Sony covers the ability to use Spidey characters or no, in which case I’d slot in U.S. Agent or Bucky. Deadpool is convinced that, since either character returned from the ‘dead’ they’re zombies, and that he needs to “quarantine” them (with a bullet to the brainpan). From his ranting, it’s clear that Deadpool is aware of the Marvel Zombies show, though he says he might have dreamed that part.

Both concerned for his sanity, and also concerned that there might be some truth to his concerns, Doreen decides to help Deadpool, and together they track down his quarry. Because it’s Doreen’s show, in the final fight Deadpool gets shot in the head, and Squirrel Girl beats them, before helping them with their personal problem (respectively: siccing Kraven on Gigantos as a more worthy foe, helping John Walker with his imposter syndrome, helping Bucky with his sense of loss), finishing in time to prevent Deadpool from shooting them and convincing him they aren’t the hungry dead.

2. I’d probably do the next episode as a flashback, to the time when she met both Dr. Doom and Iron Man. Tony wasn’t too impressed with her, until his armor was disabled by Doom, and Doreen single-handedly (okay, with the help of her squirrels) managed to take out Doom, before helping him with at least some of his crippling emotional problems (though not so much that he’s emotionally ready for the reemergence of Reed Richards). I think, because I have a punchline for this in a couple of episodes, her squirrel attack manages to rob him of his pants, and he wraps his cowl around his waist like a towel.

3. I’d probably due a variation of the Ratatoskr story. Doreen hears chatter from her squirrel sidekick Tippy Toe that there’s an evil squirrel. They’re attacked by the squirrel, which reveals Doreen’s secret to Nancy, but they manage to escape, and seek Norse help. They can’t find either Thor (unless we can get them- in which case, sure, why not?) but she does manage to find Loki, which is mostly a flimsy/brilliant excuse to bring in Cat-Thor, which is just what it sounds like: Loki uses his illusions to make him look like Thor as a humanoid cat furry. He knows about her evil Norse squirrel, and helps fight it. As Cat Thor. Wielding his own tiny, adorable Meowlnir. After the good guys win, Loki proposes a sequel, and that he do that oen as Frog Thor- this time as a tiny frog in a Thor costume (more comics accurate). Nancy writes it off as too ludicrous- that they don’t live in a comic book. Loki looks to camera, and we do a Warner Bros. esque end to the episode with a knock-off version of their theme song.

4. Tippy wakes Doreen up by biting her eyelid and pulling it. She’s finally got an idea of what the tingling was all about, and informs Doreen that Galactus is coming- in fact, the Devourer of Worlds is almost on top of them. Doreen reasons that she has to stop him from reaching Earth, and that the best way to do that is borrow one of Iron Man’s armors (maybe to grease the skids on this idea, Pepper, as a memorial to Tony, has lent out an exhibition of his armors to the school). Doreen is caught by one of the suits acting as a Sentry, but once she’s ejected, an army of squirrels with stolen armor pieces arrive, and she assembles them into a makeshift Iron Squirrel costume. The armor is locked, but when Doreen says she isn’t sure what the password is, the suit recognizes her voiceprint, tells her welcome, and tells her her new password is, “IBeatthePantsOffDrDoom.” She starts towards the Moon, Tippy Toe flying with her in a helmet attached to a glove. Here’s where things get convoluted: Thanos didn’t stop using the Time Stone after the Snap. He used it to check the future, and found the one instance where the Avengers could win- and that it required Tony Stark. So he tries to go back in time and fight him. But Strange used magic to make it so that if he attempted it, he would end up at this point, instead, where he would encounter the Unbeatable Squirrel Girl- thinking it was Tony, and lose. That’s right, Thanos attacks her in the armor, and gets his butt kicked. Because I say we go for broke, he has the gauntlet and all its powers- only for Tippy to steal all the stones as he fails to hit the acrobatic Squirrel Girl. It might be funny to have a Dr. Strange cameo, so he can explain all the weirdness, and send Thanos back to where he came from, with the stones, but the idea of going back to stop Tony erased from his mind.

5. Galactus arrives, and Strange tells her this is, unfortunately, not a fight they can win, opens a portal and abandons her. For a moment she’s demoralized, before frowning and deciding he doesn’t know everything, and she’s not about to stop kicking butts and eating nuts now. She gives fighting Galactus the old college try, before realizing that him coming there is the equivalent to him ordering in, that he knows the Earth is filled with countless heroes that will drop everything to help him find an uninhabited planet to devour, instead. So she helps him find a new planet to devour.

Odd sequel series pitch: Squirrel Girl’s Dirty Half-Dozen: Maybe a special, maybe a direct to Disney+ movie, or you could probably make it work over six episodes. Doreen gets targeted by an assassin- but someone with cosmic power. Galactus, sensing the danger, contacts the others she interacted with in Season 1, and they all gather, because they’re strange folks, many of them with no other real friends- but for Doreen they’re willing to show up. They interact with one another, even as the assassin arrives, only for Squirrel Girl to first vanquish them, and then befriends them (I’d throw out Terrax as a possibility, maybe having stolen Beta Ray Bill’s hammer or otherwise powered-up in a way that would give Galactus pause). Doreen arrives with the assassin in tow, and the gathered villains improvise, pretending it’s just a party, instead (or maybe that was always the plan, and it’s her birthday?)

I think the pilot, “Falling For Thirty Minutes” focuses on Loki, both because his rise somewhat parallels Doom’s, but also because he’s already better established than most of these, and because I have a really fun idea where this takes place. We borrow a moment from Thor Ragnarok, Loki charging at Dr. Strange who portals him away. We find him falling through a black void, falling indefinitely. Only he realizes he isn’t alone at all- falling beside him (but also posed like he’s standing still with his arms crossed, his flapping cape the only indication he’s moving at all) is Dr. Doom. He tells him he has a proposition for him. Loki asks if it includes getting out of “here” and Doom says it does. He opens, without a sling ring, a portal beneath them, and Loki slams unceremoniously into a conference table inside a castle. Seated around it are people we’ll get to know over the course of the series: Namor, Justin Hammer (in Whiplash’s armor, modified to make him Whirlwind), Maximus the Mad, Baron Mordo, one of the Deviants (from Eternals), the Hood (I’d bring back Walton Goggins, and tweak the character’s backstory accordingly so his established character from Ant Man and the Wasp could fit into that character’s backstory) and Sebastian Shaw. Loki has a look around the room, then says, “No. You can take me back to my void, now.” We notice a character in shadow just beyond the candle light from the candelabra adorning the table who tenses, his eyes glowing purple- but this is very subtle. “I have no interest in joining your Injustice Legion of Doom.” Doom waves his hand, and the other guests, chairs, and tables disappear as made of smoke he wafted away, and Loki falls to the floor (the creature in the shadows doesn’t disappear, but remains so far back in shadows some viewers may not even notice him on first viewing).

Doom and Loki walk through the halls of Doom’s castle. Doom explains to Loki the world needs an Illuminati- an enlightened counterpart to the Avengers boorish brutes, sauntering in and trying to punch threats to death. “Doom is not a villain.”

“Then Doom may wish to consider a change of name, or at least to first-person.”

“Doom is a ruler, from a proud heritage. Doom is answerable to his people, who deserve better protectors than these,” he conjures an image of the Avengers. Loki’s tempted by the opportunity to do good while showing up his brother. But that also raises his skepticism. He says he won’t be used as a weapon against his brother. Doom laughs, and tells him he wants him for his knowledge of Asgardian magic and tech. From the way Doom speaks, he regards Loki almost as a protégé, a would-be ruler, whose mother taught him magics; their paths diverged when Doom succeeded to the throne, and Loki lost his. Loki realizes he’ll have to go back to the void, and Doom opens a portal for him, and he jumps down into it.

We stay on Doom, whose mind is consumed by his reverie, zooming into the bloodshot eye within his armor. We see Victor as a child. His mother is teaching him magic, telling him that with their strength, they can free their band of Roma from the Baron’s tyranny. But something happens; his mother’s eyes go red, and she looses an evil smile. She speaks with a voice that is several, layered over top, and Victor realizes she’s been possessed, and turns his magic to trying to free her. The demon that’s possessed her is too strong, and blasts him back. It taunts him, with his weakness, with his inability to save his mother, and blasts a hole through the wall and leaves. An injured Victor pursues, following a trail of blood and fire towards the village’s chapel. As he approaches, it goes up in flames, and screaming can be heard from inside. Victor tears his way in, half with magic, half with his bare hands. Since it’s a Disney+ show, I assume we should be coy about the carnage, but the village’s children, and many of its adults, have burnt to death. The flames do not touch a small bubble in the center, where his mother remains safe from the flame. Despite his youth, young Victor carries his mother outside, before dropping her in the earth, and collapsing with her, exhausted from the feat. He crawls to her, and shakes her, but she’s gone, and he cries out.

We cut to Infinity War, aboard the Asgardian ship filled with flames. A beaten Loki grins and proclaims, “We have a Hulk.” We watch, however, as Loki’s smile fades, as he watches Hulk fall to Thanos’ onslaught. Cut a few moments later, as Loki charges Thanos himself, only to be caught, and killed (we don’t need to linger on him turning blue, because this is a Disney+ show, damnit).

Loki wakes up, again in a black void. He asks if it’s the same black void. Doom is suddenly behind him, and informs him it is not. It was once Hela’s realm, but after her unfortunate collision with Surter, it’s been… under different management. He informs Loki that all fees have been rendered; subtly, in the background, we see a wagonload of Latverians being driven away by a man in a red suit, who tips his hat to the two of them. Suddenly, Loki gasps, and we’re in a different room, with the part of Loki now being played by Lady Sif. Doom explains that they needed an Asgardian vessel to house him; frost giants being eminently more accessible, he tried them first, but only an Asgardian would do, and it just so happened he’d come into the possession of Lady Sif some time prior to Ragnarok.

Later, a sullen Loki is plied with liquor, furnished, it seems, by Doom himself. Loki tells him he isn’t thirsty, but thanks him for the thought. The real Doom enters, takes a stein for each of them from the Bot, and sits opposite him. He tells Loki that he hoped they’d have a moment to talk, so he could pass his condolences to Loki for the loss of his mother. Loki’s surprised, both that he knows this, and at Doom’s gentility. Then he sees something in Doom’s eyes, recognizing a kindred spirit. “You lost your mother, too,” he says quietly. “But you brought me back…”

“Some monsters are easier to deal with than others,” Doom says. He sets down his stein, and we see his ale swirl as we transition to a cauldron. A now adolescent Doom is casting a violent spell that’s created a tempest in the stone room he’s in; we can see that the book he’s using is one of the chanied books from Kamar-Taj. Victor’s fighting just to maintain his footing, let alone continue throwing in reagents and properly speak the words. An explosion shatters his cauldron, sending Doom flying back into the wall. As the contents of the cauldron spill out, his mother, her eyes glowing red, climbs out of the sludge. She tears a bacon-strip starting from her collar-bone and ending along her jaw. The demon inhabiting her explains that he flays Doom’s mother nightly; that her torment is all the sweeter, knowing that Doom suffers just as much above as she does below- but that she made her pact, and she belongs to him, and there’s no magic than can sever her from him. Doom attacks anyway, only for his spells to rebound on him.

Back in Castle Doom, one of Doom’s handmaidens brings Loki a refitted costume, and she tries it on; it’s similar to his old one, but appropriate to Jaime Alexander, instead. She’s admiring herself in a mirror, only when she gets to her face, her smile fades, as she looks into her own eyes. Doom knocks at the door, and she tells him to enter. She doesn’t feel right, having stolen Sif’s body. Doom tells her that Sif should be dead- at the hands of Hela, that she was delayed in Latveria because she tried to reclaim an Asgardian artifact in his position- that subduing her left her unresponsive; it might be a fun conceit, as the series goes along, to have Loki Sif talk to Lady Sif inside their shared head, trying to get her to respond, her slowly becoming more conscious… even as he becomes more attached to being alive in her body. But he tells her that if Loki wishes to vacate her, he will do everything in his power to revive Lady Sif- provided Loki renders aid, first. Doom claims to have mastered human technology at a fairly young age, but that Asgardian technology and sorcery are an entirely new field- perhaps this time giving him enough power to free his mother.

Loki is surprised by that assertion; he thought Doom lived for Latveria. Doom agrees that he does- that he would sell himself and his mother into damnation for his country; but that he would happily damn himself to save his mother. “And if you can…” Loki says, clearly thinking of his own mother. Doom says he would happily share the knowledge with her, if he discovered that secret. Sif asks if he can’t just bargain for her mother. He says he can’t; intercepting a soul not in Hell is simple enough; prying one loose from its maw requires more power than even he has been able to amass… thusfar.

We go back to a teenaged Doom. His armor is cruder, closer to Iron Man’s cave armor and clearly hand-pounded. He blasts his way into a military base, mowing through soldiers until he reaches a rip in reality- a literal mouth opening into Hell. He steps through, and is immediately assailed by an army of monsters- and nearly as quickly repels them. He looses a drone that chirps, flying into the air, then moving in the direction of his mother. He flies after it, landing beside his mother, chained to a throne, where sits the red-eyed demon. It taunts him. Doom unleashes on the demon a truly spectacular amount of magical and technological mayhem, only for it to laugh. Last, Doom tries to snap the chain that binds his mother with his armored hands, to no avail. Collapsing from the exertion at her feet, his mother stands, her eyes glowing red, and punts him back through the rift. He lands badly, several of his bones broken, his armor so destroyed it’s falling off of him as he flees. A young Nick Fury picks up one of the pieces and watches as the kid runs.

We zoom back out of Doom’s eyes as a single tear slides from it, disappearing beneath his mask. We go to credits.

The series continues this way, each episode featuring a different member of his Illuminati, their travails in some way paralleling his rise. Doom would be recruited by SHIELD who would sponsor his formal education; he was bright enough that the super-scientists of the previous generation basically fought over him, Howard Stark and Hank Pym and anyone else we can think of taking turns teaching him to be even brighter; it’s also here that his rivalry with Reed Richards begins. However, once Doom’s inventions start paying off, a Latverian father comes forward, backed by the Latverian government, demanding the boy’s return. Doom is torn, at first, until Valeria, his childhood sweetheart, joins the entreaties, and Doom decides to return home. Once there, however, he’s placed under the thumb of the very same Baron his mother had tried to fight when he was a child. Only this time, Victor fights back, and between his magic and technology routes the Baron- but doesn’t stop there- at the urging of those who had long been held under the Latverian aristocracy’s thumb, Doom topples the entire nobility. His work done, he tries to return to his village, and Valeria, only for the people to insist that he lead their new country. At first, Doom is reluctant- his heart is in his science, after all. Thankfully, his dilemma is circumvented by a threat to the entire Earth- so he can go back to the US to join the international effort, while still faithfully serving Latveria. This is the space mission that Doom undergoes with the Fantastic Four in the 60s (see my pitch for that movie from last year). When he exits the portal, it’s a few years later. Latveria is once again at the mercy of the aristocracy; in his absence, Valeria attempted to rally her countrymen, and was executed. By now Doom doesn’t take off his armor; he’s scarred, and also disgusted by humanity. With relatively little urging from his countrymen, Doom embarks on a bloody coup, executing the nobility to a man by hand. When he notices that even his lieutenants aren’t up to the task of leading his armies or watching the country while he sleeps, Doom builds his army of automated Doom bots. Doom’s technological breakthroughs make Latveria, a once poor, agrarian nation, one of the wealthiest per capita in the world, and it is so highly sought after in the rest of the world that they sweep his atrocities and human rights violations under the rug (not so much in his own country, but basically anywhere that Roma or witches are being persecuted, he repays the atrocities a dozen-fold). It also means that despite his aggression against the Fantastic Four upon their return, he enjoys diplomatic immunity and is untouchable.

Depending on whether or not there’s enough there to last ten episodes, this entire series could be set up for a big confrontation with the Avengers in one of the movies, but there’s always the possibility of having the first 5-6 episodes be Doom’s intermingled origins, and the last 4-5 episodes be interspersed with what the Illuminati actually does once assembled. I would probably have their anti-Thanos plan basically be to try and redirect the energies of the Snap; that they plan to spare humanity by redirecting its murderous energies onto alien worlds, instead, using the combination of their various magics and technologies. They even have a backup for themselves, a prison within Latveria where they can redirect any Snap energy directed at themselves to convicts who would otherwise be put to death. Their larger plan fails (obviously), and their secondary plan partially succeeds, in that they’re able to save themselves… but it destroys both the prison and the surrounding city, as well, killing tens of thousands. I think part of their journey would also be a parallel attempt to get the Infinity Stones. Depending on budget, a pretty great season finale could be them tracking down and brawling with Thanos to try and wrest the gauntlet from him- it looks like he’s in fact going to lose, but at the last minute uses the Gauntlet one final time to destroy the stones. Half the Illuminati want to execute him- but Doom, understanding a man who would gladly die to complete his life’s work, insists they leave him in peace, since there’s nothing more to be done here.

Most of the Illuminati go home, dispirited. Save for Loki. He’s known Doom long enough to know that he’s never understood how to give up. So he asks him what the next phase will be, and Doom reveals he’s working on his own time machine- that they’ve been looking at the problems all wrong. Instead of undoing their losses, they can simply prevent them.

This could be set up for nearly anything; we could have a rollicking dual time-traveling adventure with the Avengers, we could do a version of the Doom and Iron Man in King Arthur’s Camelot storyline; it could even be a set up for some version of the Battleworld story, where Doom goes back in time and makes himself instrumental in every important event in Marvel history, so that he’s revered as its most important and central hero, likely twisting Marvel’s heroes in a Doomward direction, say by turning the Hulk into the Maestro, Iron Man into a Superior version, an Old Man Logan version of Wolverine (all of which could be set up for a new phase, where the heroes, once they’re returned to normal, have to work against what they now realize is a potential future of theirs, that Hulk could become the Maestro again)… until of course it all falls apart and things are set mostly right. I’d probably start small- do the King Arthur thing, but with Rhodey maybe, alongside of a version of Tony’s intellect uploaded into his armor’s AI so he can keep up with Doom’s inventing (but he gives it a different voice, we find out, because hearing Tony in his head was too painful… maybe the end reveal is his suit is catastrophically damaged, and can’t do the voice change anymore- so he has to say his real goodbye to Tony …), do a Disney+ TV Movie that’s riffing on a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, but the possibilities really are pretty limitless.

I think the story opens like this: we see Shuri in costume as a female Black Panther, giving a speech through a voice modulator disguising it’s her, at the UN, talking about the need for the world, in the wake of Thanos’ mass-murder of half the population, to join hands and protect and provide for those left behind. She refuses questions, goes right from there to her plane, where Okaye is waiting. She tears off her mask, to reveal she’s crying, for her brother, for her country- it’s too much to suddenly have thrust on her. Okaye gives her a tough love speech, tells her the Avengers have been calling- and she thinks Wakanda should answer the call. Shuri disagrees- saying they’re in this deep because the Avengers failed, but she won’t stop her from helping them if she’s asking for leave. But first, Okaye drops Shuri off; it’s a mission similar to T’Challa’s first in his movie, a quick espionagey thing, impressive and over quick. Afterward, they fly back to Wakanda in silence.

Shuri’s still deep in thought when she returns to the Temple of the Heart Shaped Herb; it’s been emptied out, and houses a table, with several seated figures we see mostly in shadow as she enters, though even in the low-light we might be able to make out that they’re all wearing similar Panther garb with slight hue variations (similar to Killmonger’s gold). Shuri, annoyed, drops into her seat, removes her mask, and says, it’s done, now it’s time for their next move. We pan around the table, and each Panther removes their mask in turn, revealing, in order: T’Chaka, M’Baku, Ramonda (her mother), Storm, Nakia and Killmonger.

We end on a music sting as we get back to Shuri, and drop in the logo from the Black Panther movie. A panther’s growl is heard, and two swipes tear a bloody “s” at the end, making the title plural. We fade to black, and flash some white text informing us it’s “Sometime earlier…”

We see Shuri on whatever a Wakandan version of a television would look like, and as we pull back, we see the chyron at the bottom of the ‘screen’ states that Shuri, presumed next in the Wakandan lineage, is missing, presumed lost in the Snap. We pan across the street, and see some of the damage done to the Golden City, some from Thanos’ troops, some from disasters as half the population vanished. Some of this damage includes a portion of one of its grander buildings being sheered off, collapsing into the street in a shower of glass (presumably they aren’t all made out of vibranium). Sifting through the rubble are trainees with the Dora Milaje- not yet wearing the ceremonial garb, though their training equipment is a lighter, less adorned variant. Specifically, we linger a moment on Ayo, who pauses to wipe sweat from her brow. It’s just at that moment that her trainer, Aneka, walks by, and chides her for lazing about while Wakanda herself bleeds.

We pan down, not too far beneath the rubble, until we find a small pocket of air, and a shredded pipe dribbling water. Beneath it, catching its water in her mouth, is Shuri, positioned like that because she no longer has the strength to move. She made an effort to bandage a wound in her side, but she’s clearly blead through that, and vainly tries to hold pressure to it. Suddenly, there’s more light as one of the larger pieces of debris shifts. Aneka helps Ayo move it, exposing Shuri to the sun. Ayo gasps, trying to cover her mouth.

Okaye is there when Shuri wakes in a hospital, and tells her she’s surprised she didn’t die. Ramonda is there, and asks for time alone with her daughter. She tells Shuri the other clans have agreed to back her claim to the throne for the time being- she’s cynical enough to think no one wants the job of cleaning up this mess. But she’s held off announcing a new Black Panther. Shuri suggests ‘she’ remain dead- that they play up the metaphysical of the Black Panther mantel, instead- that Wakanda is already wounded, and a flesh and blood ruler would make them more vulnerable still. Her mother agrees, and leaves her to convalesce… and she waits until Ramonda is gone to break out of her hospital room.

She finds her labs largely screwed up from the battle. But she finds the information she was looking for- readings from the Mind Stone embedded in vision, and other readings from Thanos using the stones nearby (along with some video from Infinity War). We have a montage of her testing things for days on end; I like the idea that there’s still a hole through her wall where we watch the sun setting/rising as she goes about this. All of her experiments fail, and she throws something past her mother as she enters in frustration. She’s there because Shuri has responsibilities she can no longer shirk; she could hold the wolves at bay while she healed, but now it’s time to put away childish things. An exhausted, emotionally and physically, Shuri collapses against her mother, and admits that she can’t bring him back. Whatever the Stones are- they are beyond even her. Ramonda spares a moment to grieve with her daughter, before telling her that their people need her more than T’Challa, now, and handing her a fitted version of his costume.

She dons it, and follows Ramonda away. We watch the day drag on through the hole in the wall, into night, before Shuri returns. She pulls off her mask, and yawns, stretching, catching her reflection off a piece of partially broken glass. That gives her an idea, and she pulls up the readings she got off of Thanos as he teleported away (using the Space Stone), immediately after the Snap. Her computers analyze the scene from multiple angles, eventually displaying the number, “68%.” She stares at the number steely-eyed.

We cut to later, as the sun rises. She’s redesigned her gauntlets from Black Panther, and uses it to project a different energy, one that opens a portal- for a second, before it explodes outward, throwing her against the wall; luckily, the kinetic energy is absorbed by her suit. She gets up, and checks her calculations, which are sitting at 74%. She pulls on her mask as her mother arrives, and they leave together. We cut to later, as she walks back in. This time she’s dragging more than before. She does another test, this time hiding behind one of the forcefield cloaks, which absorbs most of the dissipating energy. Her figures are at 82% now. And the portal remains for a moment, long enough for her to jab the tip of a Dora Milaje spear into it, before it disappears, sheering the end of the spear off. She sets the computer to start calculating again, and takes a nap. When she wakes the computer is still calculating, but is up to 90%. She’s about to go towards it when her mother walks in. She scolds Shuri, because she doesn’t like having to march her to work every morning. She glances forlornly back at her equipment as it ticks over into 91%.

She returns at night. Her figures are still stuck at 91%. She tries to adjust things, but the computer tells her it doesn’t have sufficient data to extrapolate further- 91% is as good as it gets. She starts up the gauntlet, and the portal seems stable. She puts the spear in, without incident. She starts put in her right arm, before realizing she’s right-handed and decided to test it with her left, and it comes back without incident. She sees the Black Panther mask laying where she put it, and it reminds her of her brother, and she picks it up, and talks to it like it’s him (Yes, we’re alas poor Yoricking this).

She tells him she’s lost without him, that she knows this is a risk- maybe a stupid risk, since she’s already the back-up ruler. But she doesn’t think she can do this without him- and she isn’t willing to try. “I’m not giving up on you, brother,” she says, putting the mask down. She adjusts the gauntlet, and the portal gets wider, wide enough for her to step into.

We play it like it’s a vision, at first, that she’s at that vision tree, speaking to the ghost of her father. She’s disappointed, because she wanted to travel between worlds, but it’s good to see him. He tells her it’s good to see her, before explaining that this is not a vision. He leads her to the hill that overlooks the Golden City, and there is nothing but flattened, burned earth; if you’ve ever seen the aftermath of a volcanic eruption, that’s the level of destruction we’re talking. T’Chaka reveals that the Avengers fought beside him to stop Thanos- that he personally stopped the Mad Titan- but that the cost was terrible- all of Wakanda reduced to ash, including his wife and his beautiful children. He tells her there’s nothing left for him there, and says it’s time to go. She doesn’t understand, and he says, “You’re here to rescue me, aren’t you?”

They return through her portal, and she collapses onto a couch. She’s relieved, to be unburdened of her mantle. He’s confused. He says he’s not going to take this from her- but he can help her carry the load. Just then, Ramonda comes in, and goes through a rainbow of emotions very rapidly. She’s of course thrilled to have her husband (or at least a version of him) back, and at the same time angry at her daughter for taking such a huge risk, and overwhelmed at her dedication to her brother… it’s just a lot, and thank God we’ve got Angela Bassett delivering it. The episode ends with Ramonda demanding this be the end of her interdimensional adventures, and she agrees, but as her mother leaves, her eyes drift back towards her equipment….

Because I have a life, and pets, and am not being remotely paid for this, I’ll broad-strokes it from here. We’ll probably include a version of the World of Wakanda comics, which is why I dragged in Aneka and Ayo. Each episode would likely be recruiting a new Black Panther, and their world, while Shuri gets pulled deeper into her own bureaucratic Hell.

As we build up this bench of Black Panthers, they would begin to clash in interesting ways since they’re all used to getting their way, eventually forming factions, one of which would likely vie for control of the country. I think the B plot masquerading as the A plot is that a version of Klaw, this time in a much sillier, more comics-appropriate costume, slips through in the wake of one of the stolen Black Panthers- still played by Andy Serkis because he was a rollicking good time. He forms a band of white guerrillas, himself adopting some of the costume accoutrements of Man-Ape, and mocking the White Gorilla clan quite a bit (to M’Baku’s deep irritation). He uses his knowledge of his Wakanda to start amassing a stockpile of vibranium, and using that to outfit and grow his army. 

To spice things up, I think most of this council would eventually be against Shuri, except Killmonger (and maybe M’Baku)- frequently making her question her stance because she’s making a deal with the devil (and a jerk). In the end, she holds fast, and is able to defeat the shadow council of Panthers, who, it turns out, weren’t power-mad; they hatched an idea that to be kind, they needed to be cruel- that none of them wanted her throne, so they needed to toughen her up enough to sit on it- or convince her to stand aside for someone else more suited to the role- before she gets herself or others killed.

In the end, the warring panther factions stop Klaw, finding out he’s a vibranium cyborg and very hard to kill (this is when he ends up looking the most like his comics counterpart). I think the subterfuge of the other panthers is too convincing, and Shuri fights her father to the death, with him finally explaining everything as he’s bleeding out, “I do not usually prefer a trial by fire; but the world is aflame. Wakanda needed you tempered, or it needed you to step aside.”

Aside from being a kind of crazy, but worthwhile story, it would also be a potential solution to the Chadwick Boseman-shaped hole in the franchise. Real talk, for a second: this wouldn’t be an issue if Shuri’s actress hadn’t shared some questionable content on social media; she would have been the presumptive inheritor of the mantle, otherwise (her character has taken over for T’Challa before in the books). This would give her a second at-bat- to give her a chance to prove that she can be a team player, and that she can handle the weight of that legacy… and if she can’t, it opens up a lot of other possibilities. My personal preference, if Shuri can’t be rehabilitated, would be Killmonger. You can lean into the righteous anger with him, but have it be a version of him that outgrew the desire for genocide, who had long talks with the spirit of his uncle and realized how hard it was for him to lose his brother like that- to have to choose fealty to his country over his family. He could even recognize that plenty of the white soldiers he served beside were caught in the same cycles of generational poverty and powerlessness he wanted to eliminate- recognizing that colonialism largely exploited the colonists, too- that it and its modern equivalent (capitalism) monetize the rest of us for the benefit of the monied and powerful- which should get him into the same rough ballpark as T’Challa.

but really, it’s Marvel Zombies

Covid-19 Note: I know I’m pitching this in the middle of a pandemic. But between how long it would take to write this, then Claymation it, that should put us out 3-5 years. By then I think it wouldn’t be quite as traumatizing (still, better to focus on goofy zombie fun than anything too real-world pandemicky).

Note: About halfway through writing this pitch, I stumbled across the trailer for the “What If…?” animated series (with what feels to me a questionable revision to the title’s punctuation). Looks like there might be a Marvel Zombies episode, possibly, or maybe they’re just doing a “What if Bucky lived instead of Cap” ep and Hydra reanimated Steve to go after him… anyway, that’s a thing, apparently. But this is a different thing.

And to start off, this one’s weirder than usual, namely because to get this even remotely Disney+ friendly, it would need to be stop-motion or claymated (even animated or CG this gets to hard R-rated in a hurry). Like the animated What If series, it would use the actual actors where/whenever possible, or sound-alikes when not. I’d suggest a partnership, either with the studio who did Nightmare Before Christmas or the folks behind Robot Chicken (or buy them both if Disney hasn’t already). I’d base the first season around the first Kirkman book- and especially spreading out the tone of that book to cover all of the zombie sequences- along with a very loose adaptation in the first episode or so of the Mark Millar Ultimate FF run that introduces them, including some of the story from the Army of Darkness crossover, since they blend pretty seamlessly together (if Marvel wants to buy Ash Williams, I’d be happy to have him along for the ride… but I’m assuming he gets replaced in this treatment). I’m assuming the name it’s released under, at the start, is “Marvel’s Secret History,” before at the end of the first episode (probably around the time that Reed gets cornered by all of the zombie Avengers) the actual title is revealed at the end of the episode as “Marvel Zombies.” Of course, since this is going to be a hard, hard PG-13 in the execution, it might make more sense to just forego the surprise, and market it as a more adult-oriented, blackly humorous show from the jump. The pitch is likely to range into R-rated, so if that’s an issue for you. properly warned ye be, says I.

We open on Reed tinkering with the portal-maker that he uses to access the Negative Zone. In his tinkering he ends up looking across at an alternate version of himself- another Reed, younger, but clearly the same guy (he is, for all intents and purposes- and yes, this is a way to backdoor “The Maker” into the MCU, you clever minx, you, but played by a younger actor, so we get snotty Reed- and also so we’re not burning our Reed actor’s contract appearances at twice the rate). That Reed has been scanning alternate universes for a safe space to try and flee to, after an interdimensional contagion ravaged his world. He mentions that so many of the universes aren’t like theirs- a lot of them never managed to undo the Snap, and even those who did, were prime targets for other calamities, like the cancer verse, any of the symbiote-conquered dimensions, dimensions ravaged by Annihilus, the Phalanx, Galactus or any of a thousand different mutants, monsters or madmen. With their world so damaged, they can only intermittently search, and at great personal risk. Reed says he can’t just let them over; they request that he come himself, he can verify what they’re saying, then they can save those who can be saved. Reed accepts, and leaves his portal open, with the caveat that he won’t share the unlock key to it until he’s satisfied.

He’s been had, obviously. As soon as he arrives, the other Reed, and a zombie version of the FF, attack him. The plan is Maker is going to use Reed’s corpse and the unique energy signature it outputs to trace the portal back to his reality, and figures he can brute-force Reed’s encryption. Reed slips through their grasp in an exciting escape through the bowels of the husk of the Baxter Building, only to find still more zombies at street level, including most of the Avengers, who chase him through the streets. He’s webbed up by Spider-Man, only to be ‘rescued’ by the Hulk, who is the “Hungriest one there is.” They bicker comedically (remember, we want the whole thing to match the darkly comic tone of the Kirkman Marvel Zombies series), and Reed makes a break for it, and they give chase. Headpool (who is, yes, the severed head of a zombie Deadpool) asks for a fastball special, and Hulk chucks him at Reed, who narrowly stretches out of his path in a kinetic, slow-motion sequence, with Headpool crashing into a bus side window comically (it’s subtle, but the window moves into his path). Suddenly, all of the cars on the street begin to float, and Colonel America orders a retreat, because Magneto has arrived. Cars rain down towards them, smashing a few of the lesser characters we aren’t going to keep around.

Magneto takes Reed to his subway station lair. Ben Urich is there, and Magneto refers Reed to him to tell the story of the infection since he was there from the beginning, and we watch it in flesh back (pun intended, because it’s that kind of a pitch).

He was embedded with the Avengers, a fluff piece from his editor to try and humanize them, make Americans feel better about the nuclear weapons running around in tights. They’d just returned from a jaunt to the Savage Land, where Ben had almost been eaten by his first dinosaur. I’m having fun narrating as Ben, but probably the narration would fade away and we’d stay in the flashback for several episodes. In fact, to preserve the quirky, dark fun, we’d pretty much have to spend half our time not in Ben’s perspective in the flashback, to give the Zombie Avengers opportunities to be oddball- because this idea lives or days based around whether or not we can make the zombies fun, for reasons you will understand by the end of it. “Seemed like the danger was all behind them. Black Widow was joking about telling him her secret to making the perfect tea back at the Avengers compound, when there was another all points alarm, this one in the middle of New York. They all boarded a Quinjet, in good spirits, because an emergency in NYC meant they’d all be home for dinner.

“It was someone we’d never seen before- or maybe we had- there seemed to be contradictory accounts on that front, but fella named the Sentry, fell out of the sky. The Avengers didn’t know if he was friend or foe, but he was down, in a crater he made when he landed. Hawkeye said he sure was ugly. Sentry tore through them. Snapped Widow’s neck, choked the life out of Captain Marvel, bit Colonel America- all of this faster than I’m describing it.”

“Colonel?” Reed asks quietly to himself. “Hmm. Another difference.”

Ben continues, “He ripped a chunk of out Luke Cage- I didn’t think anything could get through his skin. He flattened Hawkeye- I could see ribs poking through his suit, and I remember thinking they looked like his bow, with strings of flesh and viscera hanging off the ends to complete the macabre homage. I was a deer in headlights, watching this carnage, scribbling like a man possessed. Didn’t realize Sentry had noticed me, was moving towards me, as I tried to get it all down for posterity. Hah.” The laugh is almost a sob, at the idea of there being a posterity to grant the knowledge to. “Widow got back up, twisted her head back around straight. Cap stood up, got his shield, and I thought, okay, this is where they rally- and that I didn’t know Widow was that hardy. Instead, Cap grabs Wasp and bites a chunk out of her wrist, and Widow started blasting pedestrians on the sidewalk.

“I was yanked away- saved, I realized, later, by Spider-Man. But he just had to try his luck. He swings back down amongst the Avengers, grabs some woman under his other arm, and tries to get us both to safety. Only this time the Avengers noticed, and pursued. Luke threw Colonel America- I think Wolverine called it a Fastball Special- and he cannonballed into Spidey, and we both fell a few stories into a dumpster. I’m covered in blood when I come to, which can’t be more than a few seconds later. The Colonel bit deep into Spidey’s shoulder, and he’s trying to negotiate with the other Avengers- there’s plenty of meat to go around- why not let him keep this one morsel; half the Avengers have dragged along pieces of people and don’t stop tearing off pieces and swallowing, barely taking any time to even chew. I never saw what became of the girl- either she landed bad or I figure the Avengers got her. Spidey wrapped his chompers around Hawkeye, threatening to bear down on him if the others wouldn’t let him have me.

“The Colonel said, ‘There’s plenty of meat to go around- it was really you we were chasing- couldn’t let a fine candidate like Spider-Man get away. But you’re an Avenger, now, Brooklyn, and while the mission may have changed, we’re still the Earth’s Mightiest. So once you’ve got your head on straight, I’m sure you’ll see the mission like the rest of us. And leave us Hawkeye; we just might need him before this is out.’

“That was the first time I realized the zombies were thinking– Colonel America was strategizing. They were prioritizing the superhumans, and if they were allowed to, humanity was finished. Spidey threw me on his back, and I’d never felt more like a fly in my life. But while we were swinging, he took off the mask, to show me his face- that he was still human. The bite was effecting him, but his healing was fighting it. I tried to get him to take me to the Fantastic Four, to Reed, with the Avengers out of commission the First Family were the next best thing. But the thought of them brought Spider-Man back to his family, and he took me home- his home, instead. He put me down just outside of his apartment; he wasn’t thinking straight- I mean I watched him go in, watched his family greet him watched… but something in him changed. He attacked them. It was gruesome, even compared to what happened to the Avengers.”

At the mention of them, we cut away, as a handful of stragglers show up to the Sentry fight, the Avengers attack their allies. I’m going to say this group includes She-Hulk, Black Panther, and Giant Man (Hank Pym), Scott Lang, and Wasp II (Hope). The Avengers we saw earlier are playing possum, with Hank violently shaking Janet trying to wake her. “Thank God,” Colonel America says, walking towards them with his shield raised. He moves closer, saying, “Avengers,” before lowering the shield enough they can see his partially desiccated face, “bite to wound.” Quickly the heroes are overwhelmed, not really understanding what they’re up against. We see several Avengers fall before cutting away (though we don’t see Hank and Black Panther injured in this fight).

Back to Ben, and our scene with Spider-Man, “Nova showed up and flew in through his window; they both flew out a second later, the Spider attacking the Nova. Daredevil showed up, too, and tried to convince the Nova to kill Spider-Man, but he couldn’t. They were friends; ‘chums,’ I think he called them. Daredevil tried to do it himself, but he couldn’t outmaneuver the Spider, and got chomped for his efforts. Nova was freaking out; I wasn’t going to wait and see if he wised up or if Spider-Man remembered he’d left a snack on the adjoining roof, so I climbed down.

“New Yorkers get jaded. We see celebrities, super heroes. Every real New Yorker has a story. Not meeting them professionally, or getting rescued. But seeing them in their day to day lives. I bumped into Hank Pym once getting a hot dog. He wasn’t still wearing the suit, those days, was just a down on his luck inventor. Wild hair. Smirk. That glint in his eyes. But I heard him, walking down the street, and recognized his voice; elephants made less noise than he did, stomping down the street. And I thought, I’m saved. But the reporter in me, it told me to wait. Listen. Observe. Cause he was talking to somebody, the Black Panther, come to find out.

“He said his scientists in Wakanda could handle the infection. Pym thought he could handle it back at his lab- but was just glad to have run into T’Challa when he did. Only the Panther was side-eyeing him, like he knew something I didn’t. Then I saw it; Pym’s uniform was dark, reds and blacks, so I didn’t notice at first, but his side, it was bloody. He’d been hurt. Panther knew it, too, said so; Hank was fast, grew tall enough even the Panther couldn’t get away.”

We hear Pym muttering about squirreling him away for a snack later as he drags him into an underground stairwell, then we’re back in Ben’s POV: “I felt a gun pressed into my head, and thought at least that’s a reasonable way to die, instead of getting eaten alive or torn into jerky strips. The Punisher had me turn around, and was surprised I wasn’t one of them. He asked if I could hold a gun, and didn’t wait for me to respond before thrusting a shotgun into my hands. He led me to Fisk Tower, one of the board rooms in the basement level. The Kingpin himself was there, with every superpowered Mafioso in the Five Burroughs. He welcomed Frank inside, said the rules had changed, it was humanity against something else. Frank didn’t even let him finish the thought before mowing them all down. I wasn’t sure I was going to have any better luck with that monster than with the others, and my legs were carrying me even before I registered dropping the shotgun, which was probably a mistake.

“I ran the rest of the way to Four Freedoms Plaza; I don’t remember breathing the entire way. Alarms were blaring off; the lobby was empty, no security, half the windows shattered. I found a keycard slicked with blood, and it got me to the penthouse. The place had been trashed, and I could hear screaming. There’d been a rampage, but I couldn’t just leave; I felt like I had to know, like… that same observer in me, from before, had to know who’d lived, who’d died. God, I don’t know how I managed to survive so long with such awful instincts.

“Reed and Sue’s kids were dead. She-Hulk filled in for the Thing for a while, after a fight with the Wolverine, even wore one of their blue suits. So she had access, cards, codes, the works. Why the hell she used it to attack the Fantastic Four’s kids, I’ll never know. She was raging the way her cousin was known to, but Ben had her, and Sue executed her; pretty sure this green stain here is the part I got hit with.

“I screamed, and the Human Torch nearly burned me alive. Richards listened, though I’m pretty sure I only made sense every hundredth word or so. And then they got the call, from Fury. He had a decommissioned Helicarrier floating above Manhattan.”

Elsewhere… Giant Man returns to the Avengers compound. The Avengers are snacking on one of their support staff. They offer him a bite. Colonel America breaks away from the rest of them to speak with Hank. “I got a plan. When I’m fed, I can still strategize. But I need your big brain to help with some subterfuge.”

“Sounds fun,” Hank says with a truly grotesque smile. “But first I’m going to need,” the Wasp (Janet) throws him a leg, and he takes a bite out of it, and he follows the Colonel.

We’re back with Ben. “The Four took me with them to Fury, along the way rescuing Nova and Thor from the Thunderbolts.” Because we’re in the MCU, I’m assuming these Thunderbolts would be the ones from last year’s pitch, so Red Hulk, a symbiote, Elektra, maybe Ghost Rider. Headpool and Punisher are not with them.  

We switch narrators, briefly, to Magneto, “I worried over Charles, when the plague hit. I was too late to save him, but I was able to save his charges from Alpha Flight, the Canadian mutant team. They had turned. We received communication from Fury, as well, and rendezvoused with the carrier.”

Back to Ben: “Guy like that can really get you to hate the sound of your own voice. Anyway, everyone who wasn’t one of them showed up. Scarlet Witch was the only Avenger there; apparently Colonel America called an all-points alarm.”

Inside the Avengers compound. The lights are all off, and the zombies are trying to hide. Hawkeye snickers, loudly. “If you can’t cram it, Barton, I’m breaking your jaw,” Colonel America barks quietly.

“I ate the women I loved most in the world. Why?” Spider-Man moans, his voice breaking.

“Shut up, Parker,” Colonel America says. 

Several Avengers burst into the room, slowing when they see it’s dark and seemingly empty. The lights come on, and Hawkeye yells, “Surprise!”

Colonel America groans, then stands and says, “Avengers, assimilate!”

“Oh, like the Borg on that old Star Trek show.” Spider-Man says.

“Shut up, Parker,” Colonel America says through a mouthful of Jack of Hearts.

We’re back on the carrier, where Scarlet Witch is giving a tearful rendition of what came next. “Every Avenger showed up, and everyone who did, they took a bite out of. I called out to Pietro to escape, but he didn’t come. As I was fleeing, I saw him scoop up what looked like me, but it was Mystique. She bit him, and my heart broke.”

“Your Quicksilver survived the fight with Ultron,” Reed remarks.

We cut back to the Helicarrier, where Fury takes over the briefing. “Early reports put Quicksilver all over the planet, stopping us from just dropping a nuke on New York, this is now a global contagion.”

Ben summarizes: “Fury’s plan was pretty simple: the eggheads would work on a cure, while everyone else tried to beat back the tide- rescue what humans we could, stem the loss of life where we couldn’t. After, I managed to shove my way to Fury, and told him what the Colonel was planning- it wasn’t an accident that the world’s heroes were targeted first- that we had to get to superhumans first.

“Son of a bitch already knew, already had a hundred point plan in place, assignments going out to strike teams. He dispatched Sue Storm to Atlantis, on the hopes of using her rapport with Namor to use it as a safe zone; but the infection had already spread there. They sent Johnny to Attilan, to try and secure that; Black Bolt was the last man standing- the Inhumans were overrun and the only thing he could do was destroy it all with a scream. Fury went himself to Latveria, to try and reason with Doom, but there was never any ship there to sail. The X-Men went to the Savage Land, Magneto to Mount Wundagore, Strange to Kamar-Taj, Iron Fist to K’un-Lun. Everywhere they went there was either no room at the inn, or no survivors.

“Reed hand-picked a strike team. Their primary goal was capturing Hank Pym, with a secondary goal of discovering the whereabouts of T’Challa; he didn’t believe the King of Wakanda would fall as easily as the rest. It included the best man-hunters available, including Wolverine, Jessica Jones, Madrox, Misty Knight, Hellcat, Blade, and Deadpool.” We pop out of Ben’s POV, to show them stalking through the streets. They find Hank’s lab, and Pym, and the bloodied tatters of Black Panther’s costume. They capture Pym, but as they’re exiting, they’re ambushed by the Avengers. Not all of them make it back, but presumably Madrox, Deadpool and Wolverine do.

We have a scene of Reed and Hank talking. Hank is almost evangelizing the benefits of being a Zombie, that they’re still able to move, but require far less energy, and can still think; in a way it’s an incredible evolution, if only the negative side effects could be tempered. Reed is not repulsed by Hank’s twisted sense of humor. Sue walks in on them, and is disgusted, and says so before storming out.

“I was assisting Fury, since I was good at tracking multiple trains of thought. Banner was making the most progress, Tony seemed to have abandoned the idea in its entirety, and Reed was getting stranger and stranger. Fury confronted Stark, who admitted that his simulations showed the Earth was a lost cause the moment Quicksilver became infected, so he’d spent his time building out a portal and looking for other worlds. He’d found a handful of suitable life preservers, but that with only the helicarrier’s power they couldn’t use it until everyone was assembled- and even then, they probably couldn’t save everyone. They knew Hank McCoy was among the infected, and couldn’t trust broadcasting this information, knowing he could likely decrypt it.

“Like I said, Colonel America had been planning all this time, building his army.” We pop out of Ben’s POV, in Central Park, where the Colonel gives a demented version of one of his speeches.

“When I was first bitten, all I could think was about eating. But after gorging myself on tourists, which, by the way, taste like hot dogs, I could think again. For a few minutes. And I realized, damnit, people, we’re Avengers. We needed to tackle this problem like Avengers. And that meant getting organized. Because unless we were fed well enough to plan, there was no way we were going to be able to beat this. Now, I know the price of eating is high- Parker can’t stop blubbering about his aunt and stupid girlfriend-“

“Why!” Spidey exclaims, collapsing melodramatically to his knees.

“Shut up, Parker. I know I’m asking a lot. The price of eating is high, but it always has been. It’s a price I’m willing to pay. And if I’m the only one, then so be it. But I’m willing to bet I’m not.” Relative silence, mild golf-clapping. “You think this ‘A’ on my head stands for vegetarian?” he asks dramatically, pointing to his forehead which does not have an A on it.

“Uh,” Spidey says, cocking his head to the side.

“Now let’s go eat some super heroes!”

And we’re back in Ben’s POV narrating. “The only reason we stood half a chance at all was the Avengers attacked when most of our side were back from globe-trotting. They gathered beneath the Helicarrier, and attacked. The returning heroes saw them, and without hesitation counter-attacked.”

This is the clay/silicone equivalent of End Game, a massive fight. For the first few minutes, it looks like the good guys are winning, like they’ve got a chance.

We cut back up to the Helicarrier. Reed is laughing with Hank, as the Fantastic Four show up. Ben is antsy to get out to the fighting; Sue is angry, because their friends are dying while they talk. Reed insists that what they’re doing is more important; their friends are dying so the four of them can ensure they preserve everything they care about. First he mentions his colleagues’ work. “Stark is paranoid; wouldn’t even let me into his labs. But I know his models predict us losing, just like mine, and he’ll have abandoned his original project, and substitute it with some kind of life raft or escape hatch solution instead. Pity; his original solution might have worked best, if he could have ramped up production on armor quickly enough to coat us all in unbitable skin. But then he wouldn’t have been special, and I think Stark would rather die than go back to being a face in the crowd.

“Banner’s been sharing notes with Hank and I; radiation doesn’t seem to effect the infection, and biology was always a distant second specialty, so he welcomed our… expertise. He likely would have missed the deadline- if you’ll pardon the pun- anyway, even without them steering his work in a more fruitful direction. But what neither Stark nor Banner understood, was this isn’t an aberration to be stamped out, this is evil-lution (yes, pronounced like that), a unifying life form that could end poverty, disease, want, racism, xenophobia. There are kinks, to be sure; the hunger will need to be curbed, an infection 2.0. I’ve been steering Banner’s research in that direction, even if he isn’t savvy enough to understand the modifications I’ve made.”

“We,” Pym barks from his place clamped to a table.

“Too right, Dr. Pym.”

“You’re insane. You’re both insane,” Sue yells.

Maker sighs. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to see this from my side, Susan. But I suspect you’ll be able to from Dr. Pym’s. You might have noticed a small scratch, while I was speaking. All it takes is the slightest abrasion of the skin, at the microscopic level. Hank’s ants have already infected you- in fact, you’ll be turning in 3, 2, 1.” The other members of the Fantastic Four vomit, and their faces contort.

“Why?” Sue gargles in agony.

Maker strokes her cheek. “Because I love you. I want us to be able to be a family in this new world, and to arrive intact. Our friends, below, many will not be so fortunate. But make no mistake, this was always humanity’s last stand. But with my, Bruce and Hank’s research, perhaps some sliver of humanity might remain.”

“You’re insane,” she says, convulsing on the ground.

“You’re not professionally qualified to make that judgment, and it’s petty of you to use it as an insult to describe a difference of opinion. In less than a half a minute you’ll be in complete agreement with me; we’ll be a family again.”

We cut back to the battle below, only the tide starts turning. And just as things are darkest, the Sentry arrives- and the battle is well and truly lost. Heroes we know and have managed to survive to this point are being bitten, including Wolverine and the X-Men.

Reed and his Frightful Four break down the door into Stark’s lab. “I didn’t want to believe it. I know you’ve been troubled by your failures surrounding this plague, but I thought better of you, Reed.” Tony’s mask slides shut. “Avengers!” he says through a modified voice. Thor and Hulk step into the room. The three Avengers take on the four of them. They’re being overpowered, even before Tony reacts to an injury inside his suit. We go super small, and see Giant Man has bit stark inside his armor. “Pym?” Tony yells. “I’m compromised.” Thor is flung across the room by Invisible Woman. Hulk, trying valiantly to hold back the other three, but Thing bites his eyeball. Tony yells back to Thor, “You have to destroy my teleporter, before they try to use it to escape to fresh worlds.” Thor nods solemnly, and brings his hammer, crackling with lightning, down on the teleporter.

As still more heroes are bitten, Magneto yells for them to retreat to the Hellicarrier, it’s their best hope. They can make their last stand there. From outside, we see the thunder strike cleave the carrier, fatally wounding it, and sending it crashing down into buildings.

Finally we’re back with Ben, who’s with Fury on the Helicarrier. He asks what’s going on, and Fury tells him it’s their roll coming up snake eyes. He gives Ben a flash drive, tells him to take it to Strange. He’s going to try and sneak himself to Latveria, see if maybe Doom can be talked off the sidelines now. Only Fury’s cut down by a Repulsor Ray through the chest.

“Fury always has another scheme,” Iron Man says as we pan away from Ben, who gets into an escape pod and ejects. Iron Man is left standing with Reed and Hank, who are distracted by Fury, who’s still moving. Iron Man remarks that it smells like bacon, and Hank assures him that it tastes even better.

Urich’s escape pod lands him at the edge of the battle, as it’s getting dark. The field is an orgy of blood and violence. He sneaks his way past/through it, trying to remember the way to Strange’s Sanctum (depending on budget/difficulty, this could be a hell of a ride through the battle as he’s trying more than anything not to be noticed amid the chaos). He sees it through an alleyway, and is attacked by a zombie Howard the Duck, and is saved by the Scarlet Witch. They enter the Sanctum (she’s able to bypass the lock magically), to find Mordo has eaten Wong. Mordo is remorseful, feeling he did not want to become this pitiable creature. Strange emerges from a portal, and puts Mordo out of his misery. He tells them that Kamar-Taj had fallen, that he stayed there, working with its mystics to try and find a magical solution, but as one by one they succumbed to their infections, he was forced to face the truth: magic has failed. Strange opens a portal to Latveria, on the hopes that a man of both science and magic might be able to succeed in its stead.

We see the exterior of Castle Doom, under assault by various zombified European heroes like Captain Britain and, for some reason, Goliath. Inside, Doom doesn’t great them happily- he takes issue with anyone teleporting inside his forcefield. Strange tries to reason with him, and Doom says he has plans. He arrogantly tells them he neither needs their help, nor will he accept it. As always, Doom will provide for the people of Latveria, as the rest of the world could not provide for their own.

We cut back to the Avengers Compound, where all of the assembled zombie heroes are planning (we can cut it back to the more strategically oriented among them, so Colonel America, Iron Man, Maker, Hank Pym, Cyclops) to make the scene more manageable. Hulk is there, not because he’s strategic, but because he’s a fun foil to have in the room. Stark’s scans show that infection rates are close to 90% most of the world over- thanks to Quicksilver’s overactive metabolism they’re running out of food faster than even their most pessimistic models. There’s one exception: Latveria. Doom’s forcefield has so far kept the infection out, and he’s kept his population safe. There are a handful of European enhanciles trying to break through, but Doom should be able to handle them. And combined, the Avengers should be able to topple Doom’s castle, and feast. Reed tries to be a voice of reason, to get them to ration the humans- that they don’t actually digest, or even really eat; their hunger makes them gorge themselves, but the Latverian population could last them for years, during which time they could either fix Stark’s portal or move to the stars. “Hulk always wondered what Skrullburger taste like.”

Back at Doomstadt, Doom unleashes an army of Doombots. They kill or chase off the zombies, save for Goliath. He swats them away- their ordinance isn’t enough to really harm him at his size. So Doom launches missiles, which jab into him then explode. Doom is pompously triumphant, as the rest of the Avengers show and lay siege to the castle. Their big guns lay into the force field, which begins to flicker.

Doom is taken aback, about ready to give up. His scientists say they still need time. Dr. Strange and Scarlet Witch offer to help him, and all three go outside, lending their magic to the force field, and keeping it up for a few minutes. They open a tiny portion of the forcefield to allow a squadron of Doombots out to attack the zombie heroes. But this is the next big battle, with the magic wielders doing a lot of damage to the zombies when the field comes down- just not enough. They’re outnumbered horrifically, and one after another get turned. Doom, the last to fall, stumbles back inside the Castle, and orders his guard to “Die for Doom!” Ben follows him into his labs, where a steady stream of Latverians are being led through a portal. Doom admits the tragedy: he’d been spying on the Helicarrier- that was why he didn’t need the intel Ben brought from Fury. But they weren’t able to completely recreate Stark’s device- they could only move the Latverians. He offers to send Ben with them- he’s proven resourceful, and might be able to help his people reactivate Stark’s teleporter and make it off world. He’s been watching Reed, and knows he moved the teleporter to his building. “Or, you can stay here, and I can eat you. I would really enjoy doing so. The hunger is becoming unbearable.” Ben runs through the portal, and Doom smashes it.

He’s immediately surrounded by zombie heroes. “Hah!” he laughs. “Doom has won! You have lost your prize, and I’ve already been bitten. There is nothing you can do to Doom!”

“I can still clobber ya,” Thing says.

He punches him, and we pan towards the other zombies, as we hear Doom yell, “Ah, my beautiful face!” and the sounds of further clobberin’.

They bicker, about their lost food, how they’re already starving. Spider-Man collapses to his knees. “MJ, why?”

“Shut up, Parker,” Colonel America says.

We cut to Ben, arriving through the portal. They’re in Four Freedoms Tower; it looks largely like it did when Ben was last there, including flecks of She-Hulk all over the place. The teleporter, however, is still just as smashed as when Thor whacked it with Mjolnir. They’re stuck. Ben tries to convince them to split apart, that the Avengers will be less likely to hunt them down if they’re in smaller groups. But the Latverians don’t want to separate, and decided to flee north.

Ben, feeling like he’d failed, wanders off alone. He’s found by several zombie Avengers and attacked. Magneto saves him, and brings him to this lair.

And just like that, we’re back to our framing story. Reed asks what his counterpart wants. If he hadn’t fixed the teleporter, maybe he had reservations about spreading the disease between worlds. He theorizes he may still be collecting data, to decide the best ways to spread it, or whether it makes more sense to spread it to other planets within this dimension, first, before venturing between them. Either way, he needs to get them back to his home dimension, and away from these zombies, and then ensure they can’t be followed. Though clearly his counterpart repaired it enough since for them to speak across dimensions and lure him there.

But first, Reed insists they track down the Latverians. His plan is to lead them back to the teleporter and safety. They don’t have to go far, unfortunately, and find that the Avengers caught up with them as they tried to trek outside of the city. Their hunger led them to, yet again, gorge on the Latverians, and they’re hungry by the time Reed, Magneto and Ben arrive. They flee, attempting to hide again in the underground lair, but are tracked there by Wolverine and Daredevil. They flee again, this time to the tower. Magneto has the sickening realization that he can’t go with them, that he has to stay, and destroy the machine from this side after them, to ensure the infected can never use it. Reed tells him that it’s paramount that he focus his attack on the intellectual zombies, his counterpart, Doom, Stark, Pym. Magneto understands. Hawkeye looses and arrow at Reed, and Ben jumps in the way, sacrificing himself for Reed, who uses the teleporter; they both make it through, to be able to have a tearful goodbye.

We linger on the teleporter after Reed leaves in the proper MCU, having locked it down with his security code, and turns down the lights. The Maker and the Frightful Four suddenly appear there, having teleported invisible along with Reed. “Come along, my Frightful Four. We have so much to do to remake this world in our glorious image.” We zoom past the Frightful Four, and into the last crackling bit of energy as the portal dissipates.

We see Magneto, standing triumphantly over the machine, crushing it. Then he blasts his way out of the building, and crushes the building, too, for good measure. The assembled zombie Avengers attack Magneto. He drops the surrounding buildings on their heads, then assembles a cocoon of metal that flies into the sky. The flying Avengers chase after it, as Magneto slinks away on foot, with Captain America’s shield and Thor’s hammer, too. Magneto gets a call, staticky radio transmission. It’s from Asteroid M, his satellite base. There are survivors there, and they want to rendezvous with him. He gives them coordinates to Pym’s hideout, figuring he can secure himself there for a time.

He tries to escape, but is spotted. A fight ensues, and he severely wounds several of them, including putting a girder through Daredevil’s chest and lopping off the top of Colonel America’s head with his shield. He also prevents Spider-Man’s web-shooter from functioning, leading Spider-Man to fall several stories and break his leg (it’s hanging by a thread for a while, literally). He’s shot by Hawkeye with an arrow, and decapitates him with the Colonel’s shield, then puts the arrow through Thor’s throat. They literally rip him into pieces, with Hulk, proclaiming himself the hungriest there is, ending up with a leg to himself.

They eat Magneto, and discuss the nature of their grotesque transformation. Banner, in particular, distends disturbingly from the leg in his now tiny, human stomach. Over the coarse of the scene, he can feel it slowly pushing out of him as it tears his insides apart, all while Spider-Man mewls about the monster they’ve become, and that he ate the two most important people in his life. Pym insists that they can think straight, temporarily, since eating Magneto, and they mustn’t waste this precious time on self-recriminations.

Banner, fearing the damage Magento’s leg bone will do when it ruptures through his stomach , asks one of them to hit him, because he doesn’t want a hole in him. Thor obliges, whacking him with his makeshift cinderblock hammer in the face (since he’s no longer worthy to lift Mjolnir). “Id’s nod worging, I feel no bain, I’m nod durning,” says a still human Banner. He narrates as the bone tears out of his stomach, bursting out of him like the chest-burster in Alien (if a bit lower). You see now why this had to be Claymation? Thor leans over to eat some of the Magneto chunks that fell out of Banner. Done right, this is all darkly comical, I promise.

They discuss the fact that they’re biologically dead- they clearly aren’t digesting, with his heart gone, Daredevil’s blood is all pooling in his legs thanks to gravity. Wolverine sums it up best- they’re dead, but not dying. Cage sees something in the sky, then they all see it: the Silver Surfer.

He’s gone before they can follow. Hank breaks off from the rest, saying he has to find Janet. We follow him, and he goes into his underground lab, where he was captured earlier. He has a secret compartment, and inside, an undisturbed lab, as well as an unconscious Black Panther. He’s missing an arm, and chemically sedated. Hank goes to work sawing off one of his legs as he talks about the fact that with another piece of him he can think things through, maybe come up with a way to finish Banner’s serum to help quell the hunger. He’s full of rationalizations, about how this is all a for the greater good, that if he were conscious T’Challa would probably even agree- not that he’s going to let him wake to ask him, which is why on some level he knows he’s a monster.

Janet, who followed him shrunk down, confronts him, demanding he share Black Panther. He reckons he’s going to need every scrap of meat to figure out a cure for the hunger. They argue, come to blows, and he grows and bites her head off, spitting it out because they taste terrible.

The rest of the Avengers return to Iron Man, who figures out pretty quickly that there was enough of Magneto to eat, because Hulk is Banner and Spider-Man is weepy, both of which happen after feeding. He and Colonel America discuss a plan to take a handful of their strongest and smartest and disappear to look for better food sources, with fewer mouths to feed. Daredevil, due to his super hearing, eavesdrops enough to suggest they take a Quinjet; if people think it’s an Avengers rescue mission they’ll run out to greet them.

Just then, the Silver Surfer arrives again. This time he stops overhead, and tells them their world is to be used to sate the hunger of Galactus, that their time is short, and they should prepare for their end. Stark orders the Avengers (really at this point every remaining super being) to get him. Iron Man is cut in half by the Surfer’s blast. Stark manages to grab onto his board and pull himself up to chomp on his leg; however, his teeth shatter on Surfer’s tough skin.

As the Surfer is swarmed, it is eventually Thor who manages to shatter his makeshift hammer on the Surfer, knocking him off his board. Several zombies attack, only for the Surfer to dispatch them. Wolverine pounces, slashing Surfer; his blood is corrosive, and burns away the flesh on Wolverine’s arm (and without the tendons holding his unbreakable bones together, they fall to the ground). Iron Halfman grabs Wolverine’s knee, and tells him to fling him into the fray, so Wolverine fastball specials him. As the fighting heats up, Pym skulks in the shadows of an alley, deciding discretion is the better part of valor, and leaves.

Spider-Man decides to just tear the stupid limb off, rather than leave it dangling, and Banner’s hunger finally wins out and he rehulks. Hulk smashes his way through the fight and snatches Silver Surfer. He gets blasted with the Power Cosmic in the face for his troubles, but Hulk chomps off the Surfer’s head. The rest swarm on Surfer’s body. Giant Man scoops up Spidey and Iron Man and helps them get some torso. Hercules tries to steal the Surfer’s head from Hulk’s mouth, only to get smashed. Beast complains some of them didn’t get any, and Colonel America thrusts out his hand to tell him to quit whining- and blasts his face off with the Power Cosmic.

Cut away to an empty city street. We hear the sound of a walking device, then Black Panther wobbles into view, using a makeshift crutch on the stub of one arm, carrying Wasp’s head under the other. She’s begging for just a taste, for him to cut off a piece of a finger, she’s so hungry. He’s her friend, but the entire thing is morbid, and he lectures her over that fact.

Magneto’s Acolytes confront Black Panther, thinking he’s a zombie, and ask him where Magneto is. They’re shocked he’s human, and alive. But some of the Acolytes want to kill him, anyway, so he flings Wasp’s head at one, and fights long enough for Cortez to tell them to back off, and they all scurry back to the Asteroid together.  

Glactus arrives, and the zombies attack him. Galactus mows through those who weren’t Power Cosmiced up, and the remaining heroes retreat to Pym’s lab. He was planning to use Black Panther’s body to keep them all smart enough to build a machine to help them beat Galactus. Instead, they come up with a grotesque solution- re-eating chunks of meat, then surgically removing them from their stomachs to eat them again. Their bodies are acidic enough the meat gets smaller each time, but it’s helped. Colonel America arrives with the last item on their list- Wakandan Vibranium. They also have McGuffins from all over they’ve been assembling (we can play these runs out, depending on pacing needs). They finish their device, and prepare to take on Galactus, but are met by Red Skull and his own band of zombie villains.

On Asteroid M, Black Panther settles in, and meets Forge, who offers to build him some prosthetic limbs.

Back in the city, the Avengers blast Galactus with the machine meant to amplify their cosmic powers, downing him. Red Skull’s band try to join in the meal- and a fight ensues. It really is a who’s who of Marvel versus, with everybody getting a grudge match or two. But the Cosmic Avengers really do outclass their former villains, and tear through them-the exception being poor Colonel America, whose exposed brain is a fairly easy weakness for Red Skull to exploit (in the book he tears a chunk out; personally, I’d put a grenade in there, but there are clearly a lot of black comedy options). Galactus, however, has rallied, and is ticked off. But he’s vulnerable, and the Avengers tear into their meal.

We fade to black, and we do a five years later, not because I’m reviving that gag again, but because that’s what happened in the book.

A ship lands on Earth. Black Panther, with robot limbs, Wasp, in a shiny new robot body, the Acolytes among them a new Mrs. Black Panther and their new cub, venture out. They say there haven’t been scans of lifesigns for years. They’ve been watching the planet, nothing moving, no zombies, nothing. They mention that Galactus’ attack killed most undead life on Earth, but some of the sturdier heroes and villains survived, for a time. But they haven’t seen hide nor hair of them since. They don’t know where they could have gone.

Title card: Another world. A peaceful alien race is bedding down for the evening. We linger on them long enough to start to empathize, when they’re attacked by the Marvel Zombies, inexplicably now wearing Galactus armor (he always was a trendsetter). Captain Marvel, at the head of a force including the Shiar Imperial Guard, and an Armada that’s a who’s who of Marvel alien races, is at her back. She says something to the effect that their eating tour of the galaxy is at an end. Iron Man remarks, “Oh, good, she brought dessert,” and leaps at camera, and we’re swallowed down, then back out the hole at the end of his esophagus (because he’s only half an Iron Man, remember). Hulk tears intestines out of a super skrull, and they fly into camera in the shape of the logo for “Marvel Zombies.” He eats messily as that slides off the camera, only for more viscera to hit with, “The end?”   

On second thought, (or really, on revisiting the books this is based off) maybe this should be R rated and just go to Hulu, instead. Don’t want to give all the children nightmares. Because who are we kidding, kids and adults are going to see the style and assume this is for kids. And actually, on that note… the show should begin with zombie Colonel America, sitting in a chair, to give one of the recorded messages used in Spider-Man: Homecoming. “So, you think this is appropriate for kids? Just because I’m animated using silicone dolls, doesn’t mean we aren’t going to show a ton of graphic violence, really twisted humor, and scenes so adult most of our voice actors probably shouldn’t have been exposed to them. Look, parenting is tough, and I don’t want to tell you how to raise your kids, but if the thought of watching Spider-Man eat Mary Jane and Aunt May sounds like it might be too much, I’m telling you, we linger on it. By the end of that scene you’ll think Disney’s going to open up a Spider-Man’s Finger-Licking Girlfriend stand at Disneyland, and the scene is just an elaborate commercial for it. But hell, if you want to raise a generation of little psychopaths, what do I care? I eat a bunch of people in this show, some of them friends. You think this ‘A’ stands for approved for all audiences?” he asks, pointing at his forehead, which does not have an A on it.

“You’re not wearing the one with the A, Steve,” the cameraman interrupts.

He kicks his chair over, which is good because it knocks over the camera and cuts him off as he says, “Aw, f-“

If we are still going to try to put this on Disney + (which I think could work- there’s other PG-13 stuff on there), I’d even follow that with some white text on a black banner. “We’re not kidding. This is a pretty adult show. Marvel heroes get turned into zombies and eat people. We play it for laughs, but for impressionable kids, this could really screw them up. If you wouldn’t let your kids watch Day of the Dead, Army of Darkness or all eight Herbie the Lovebug movies in a single sitting, we really can’t in good conscience suggest you watch with your children. Then again, we were also bit by Colonel America, and so we don’t have a good conscience anymore- just the bad one, and we can feel the hunger overtaking us even now…”

The  Fantastic  Replacement Four

Set during the Blip. This pitch makes some guesses about when/where the Fantastic Four actually enter the story of the MCU- the timing of this series necessitates that they appear in the MCU pre-snap, and then all four of them get snapped, and have to deal with something else instead of Thanos’ return in Endgame. It also, at least at this moment, requires one mutant to have found his way into the MCU by that point.

We have the classic Fantastic Four in their uniforms. Sue is watching the destruction on television anxiously, trying to convince Reed that they should have answered Tony’s call- that the fate of half of all life may have been decided without them. Reed, barely looking up from his work, says that if he fails, the fate of all life might be at stake. He looks up, to see Sue dusted, and gets out a “Damn,” as his outstretched finger dusts, the effect traveling down his elongated arm as he’s dusted. Ben and Johnny enter, eating corn-dogs. Ben talking about how stretch wouldn’t use the emergency beacon if it wasn’t- he’s stopped when he dusts, and Johnny manages to call his name before dusting himself. We slowly zoom in on the beacon.

And zoom out on an identical beacon in a messy laboratory. It’s clear it was a mess even before, but someone has clearly been rampaging through it. We hear a raging growl, as a table is flipped past camera, and Bruce Banner stalks into frame. He’s upset, upset that the Hulk is still in hiding, upset that he failed to save everyone, upset that he was left behind when so many people better than him are gone. He’s angry, angrier than he’s ever been. But he can’t Hulk out, either, so it’s an impotent rage, and eventually he collapses to the floor, utterly defeated.

He finally notices the beacon, and when he touches it, we hear Reed’s voice (maybe see a hologram of him, too, if that’s not asking too much); it can also be a robot voice if we can’t get this much voice work out of Reed. “Bruce, we’ve never formally met, but I’ve admired your work and your mind for quite some time. If you’re hearing this, it means I can’t complete the work, and I need you to take it up. There aren’t many people on the planet who could even understand what I’m going to tell you, let alone be able to continue to adapt my designs for the task at hand. Tony’s never been much of a joiner, and if he got involved, I’d lay even odds he’d find a way to make the problem worse rather than better. And Hank is too old and stubborn. I’m sorry to lay this on you. But right now, you’re the smartest man who can actually make a difference, and the world- no, the universe, needs you. Right now.”

The task at hand is that the Negative Zone, long used as a prison by highly evolved societies across several dimensions, has found a weak spot. It was never guarded, exile being the idea, more than containment. They’ve been testing for weaknesses, probing it; Reed is certain within a matter of months they’ll break through unimpeded into their world. So yeah, the big concern here is preventing Annihilus from leading an army of several universes’ worst into NYC. Reed tells him he’s going to need partners- and not just his large partner, and has some suggestions. He calculates the odds of his first string of suggestions all surviving in the event that Thanos succeeds are slim, but he’s offered a handful of back-ups. His original suggestion is Spider-Man, a gifted technician in his own right, capable of acting as a suitable lab assistant, good for bouncing ideas off of, and less mentally rigid than his mentor, Stark. The image of Peter is blocked by a red “Blipped” across his face. Black Panther & Shuri are the next suggestions, both brilliant in their own fields and formidable combatants, also “Blipped.” Finally, the recording suggests Stephen Strange, a brilliant physician but also a mysticist- and magic is simply science that hasn’t been quantified, making him one of the world’s best resources on protoscience. Bruce, seeing the pattern, here, rubs his eyes under his glasses.

We dissolve to later in the night, as Reed describes the Ghost Rider. We continue the narration, as we cut to an action scene involving him fighting a demon in a biker bar in the guise of a human, handling the one pretty handily, only to turn, and the entire bar is full of possessed/werewolf/vampire/etc. bikers. Ghost Rider drags his quarry out of the bar, moving slower, clearly having been roughed up a bit. One of the bikers stumbles after him, collapsing in exhaustion. Ghost Rider’s quarry is pleading, that he didn’t believe, he thought it was all bullshit. Ghost Rider extinguishes his flame, and it’s Johnny Blaze, looking apologetic. He sighs, and explains that he can’t help him; he’s just the repo man. If he’s got a contractual dispute, he’ll have to take it up with management. A honky tonk cover of “Sympathy for the Devil” plays subtle from the bar jukebox inside, as a man in a crimson suit appears, and tells him he can take it from there, and disappears with the biker.

Back with Banner, the recording tells him Ghost Rider is a lower level magical practitioner, but might still hold the key to being able to lock away the Negative Zone inhabitants- since obviously the infernal realms are kept under lock and key, and as one of its primary guards- and one of a handful persuadable to assist humanity- he should still have some useful information.

Reed’s next suggestion is a man who’s been pulling the levers of various governments for more than a century undetected- he knows the ins and outs of special ops and the inner workings of secret government programs like the back of his hand. “If you tell me it’s Nick Fury I’m defenestrating you,” Bruce says, as, at the mention of the name, Fury’s pictured with the word “Blipped” appears onscreen. A picture of Patch pops up on the screen. That’s right, Wolverine has been on this Earth for a century, fighting in dozens of wars, working clandestinely for virtually every government at some point, all while maintaining his anonymity. Well… near-anonymity. Bruce peers at Wolverine, and flashes back to a fight they had in the Canadian wilderness, Wolverine slicing into him with his big old claws. “Huh,” Bruce says, continuing to stare.

What breaks him out of his reverie is the recording moving on to the next contestant… “And finally…” he sighs, “there is no finally. We’re past the dregs, here. There’s a lot of talented operators remaining, don’t get me wrong. But no one of them can fill the voids left by those who are gone, so if you’re this far down the list… I’d probably suggest that you just rotate people in as you need them. Mission-specific. I have some thoughts… but ultimately, this is going to be your team, and you need to be free to run it as you see fit.”

We cut to a bar in the Canadian frontier. Wolverine is wearing a cowboy hat, and says, “No,” before Banner can even sit down. He’s taken aback. “I remember the smell of you. And I remembered the look of you when you started traipsing around with the Avengers. I don’t want any Hulk Scout cookies, and I’m not much of a joiner.” Hulk explains the whole mess, that they were hand-picked by the greatest mind on the planet to face a life-on-all-worlds threat.

He replies, “From what I remember you’re a cockroach, so you might still manage to survive the onslaught, but the folks in this bar won’t, beer won’t, cigars won’t- what I can only assume is your body weight in mousse won’t.”

Wolverine kicks out his stool, and we think we’re going to have a fight. “You had me at beer. And maybe cigars. So I’ll let the mousse crack slide this one time, on account a not wanting to brawl in the middle of Clay’s place.”

We’re back at the nighttime bar scene with Ghost Rider, moments after Mephisto and the mark disappeared. The rest of the bikers empty out of the bar, and line up for round 2. “He’s gone,” Blaze says, reigniting his skull. “You can’t get him back by making me bloody you all again.”

Wolverine and Hulk arrive, Wolverine getting between Blaze and the crowd, as Banner gets close and explains that he needs him for a team. Blaze initially says no, until Banner asks, “You hunt souls, right? And what happens to that gig when all life as we know it in the universe is gone?”

“Mephisto probably starts making deals with whatever killed all life as we know it. But I take your point. I’m in, at least as far as my contract allows. Could… I get a little help here.”

“I’m not… currently Hulking…” Banner says sheepishly. “More of the brains than brawn, at the moment.”

“Remind me to kick the hell out of you,” Wolverine says, unsheathing his claws.

Banner considers a moment, before saying, “No.” Wolverine and Ghost Rider do most of the ass-kicking, but Banner tries. He even gets pretty mad when someone hits him from behind with a pool cue, and starts to green a little bit, before it putters out, and he yells, “Come on!”

After the fight, they all arrive at Four Freedoms Plaza. They’re snazzy digs, and they’re all suitably impressed. “I know I’m the product of the Canadian education system, so maybe there’s a metric conversion issue, here, but I only count 3. Sign on the door says 4.”

In the classic arc this is based on, Spider-Man is the last of the Replacement 4. Obviously, he’s been blipped… but, since I’ve suggested bringing in at least one Spidey clone before, I’m going to do so again now. If Sony are willing, I’d bring in Ben Reilly. I’d probably make it the one from my Sinister Six pitch last year, with the messed up face, explaining why he always keeps his spider-suit on (which is actually Peter’s first hooded suit, with maybe some minor tweaks). I don’t assume that’s a possibility, and certainly not for more than a handful of episodes at best, but failing that, I’d probably make it a rotating position. It’s hard to replace Spider-Man, frankly, but it might be more fun, anyway, as a special skills guest-spot that lets a different character shine based on what they need.

Probably the ones who best fill the Spider-Man role, if we were trying for a longer-term fill-in would be either:

1. Deadpool, who wisecracks, has a similar costume, and ties to Wolverine.
2. She-Hulk, who wisecracks, can heavy-hit when Hulk can’t and has ties to him and can navigate legalities for them.
3. Daredevil, who has a similar street-level focus and kind of fits in the same milieu, plus can legalese, too.

Either way, I’d suggest roping in all 3 for at least a guest spot (imagine the fun you could have forcing Deadpool to do a Disney + episode while he kept trying to act up, only to find that his copious swearing is bleeped, his violence gets cut away from, and his repeated attempts to expose himself are black-barred). I’d probably then do Daredevil, maybe as a result of legal wrangling related to Deadpool’s behavior- only it’s too nuts around here and he can’t hack it with these lunatics. Then do a Punisher guest, because he fits in with the gritty anti-heroism of the team, only to be fired by Hulk as too bloodthirsty (“And that’s saying something, because I’m keeping the clawed lunatic in the rotation.”), finally settling on She-Hulk as kind of combining the best of all 3. Wolverine, skeptical, asks what she brings to the table the Punisher did. She puts on Ghost Rider’s jacket, that was hanging over a chair, and says she looks good in black. Ghost Rider says he has to give that to her.

Regardless of what you do with the fourth slot on the team, which could come down to contractual wrangling and schedules as much as anything (or Moon Knight might make for an interesting permanent addition, and God knows Oscar Isaacs makes anything better just by sauntering on set), I think it would have four seasons, roughly covering the four(ish) year gap.

Obviously, over the course of the show one of the bigger subplots would be Banner trying to fix his relationship with Hulk. I’d suggest bringing in Leonard Sampson from Incredible Hulk, because Ty Burrell is a lot of fun, and seeing Bruce deal with his anger issues but also all of the loss and anguish related to Thanos… it could actually make for some really compelling television. Over this time we’d get Gray Hulk/Mr. Fixit, because that’s too cool/weird an idea to leave on the table, before eventually ending up with him making peace with himself and getting Professor Hulk as we find him in Endgame.

Aside from that, I’d probably suggest having this team fill in the rest of the gap left by the original four, so doing a lot of the everyday heroics; that would, I think, help explain how we get to Endgame and Hulk is suddenly a beloved and well-liked hero- because he’s been filling in for beloved and well-liked heroes, and keeping his smashing to acceptable outlets. Maybe a part of that is becoming more publicly open about his struggles with mental health and loss- so that Professor Hulk isn’t just a personal triumph, but a symbolic defeat of depression and tragedy that a lot of those who remained could relate to.

Note: While looking up Elsa, I discovered she was apparently going to get a show at one point. Which I obviously think is still a good idea. I’m not rehashing, though we’re drawing from the same relatively shallow pool of issues surrounding her.

To start, though, I’d bring in both an aging Ulysses as a background character, and her brother Cullen. It is, in some respects, Supernatural, but not candy-coating the pain and abuse involved in a monster-hunting father trying to pass the family business on to his children. Before the Marvel logo, we have a cold open on a dungeon. There’s a werewolf pup, cowering and whimpering in the corner. A child Elsa is pushed into the room, with the door abruptly shut behind her. She’s terrified, and startled as the door opens again, and a dull, silver spoon, probably a baby spoon at that, is thrust into her hand. We reverse, and see an aging man with a red stone jutting out of his chest. He smiles, but there’s something not quite right about it, before he says, “Make daddy proud,” and closes and locks the door. She turns back towards the werewolf pup. She tries to reason with him, tells him he’s just a little boy, just like she’s a little girl. There’s no reason for them to fight, or even be frightened of one another. They can be friends. She can help him, and he can help her. She reaches out with her non-spoon-filled hand towards him. The pup spins, snarling, before leaping at the camera and engulfing our view, the sounds of his viciousness drowned out by the young girl’s scream. We cut to a darkened stone staircase, lit only by flickering candlelight. We hear a kachunk, as the door’s lock is picked, and the girl emerges from the room, too dark to see what’s occurred. She walks up the steps, the now bloodied spoon hanging limply in her arm as she passes camera, and we fade to black, as the Marvel logo and music play.

Match cut to what we saw before the logo, adult Elsa climbing the steps to the mansion, blood dripping from the knife in her hand and the werewolf head in her other. She kicks in the front door, dropping head and knife on a silver platter that has a little handwritten note requesting you “Please restrict viscera to the platter,” in fancy script.

Elsa stalks through the home, past Adam (Frankenstein’s Monster) in a French maid uniform dusting in the front room. “Father’s got you doing the Time Warp again,” she mutters to herself. He spins, having a wonderful time of it. His frivolity bothers Elsa, and she scowls. “You don’t have to wear that to dust,” she says.

“Shut up, he likes it,” Cullen says, running past her. He’s younger by a few years, probably high school age, a little bit bratty.

“Oh, what I wouldn’t do to be an only child again,” she mutters, wandering into the study/library, walled with books, with a fireplace to one side and two wingback chairs at the center.

“You didn’t track blood inside, did you?” Ulysses asks from one of the chairs. “You know how Adam gets, when you drip blood on the wood floors.”

She sighs heavily, massaging her temple. “What I wouldn’t give to be an orphan,” she mutters.

“I heard that,” he says stiffly.

“You were meant to,” she says irritably.

“You’re far too old to be this petulant,” he says, going back to his paper. “The werewolf pack?”

“Removed. I took the alpha’s head to mount.”

“Oh, Adam will love that. He has been practicing on his sewing.”

“We hunt monsters, correct? I don’t understand why we keep one on staff.”

“Oh, it’s not his fault he’s an abomination; he’s more human than not.”

“Weren’t you the man who said creatures are either all human or not at all? Or is it just he’s the only maid you’ve found who will iron your underthings?”

“Adam was a treasured member of this household before his brain was spliced into that homunculus. Least I think he was; his brain was certainly taken by that nasty Frankenstein fellow.”

“My immortal soul for an aneurysm,” she mutters.

“Someone’s in a mood tonight,” he says, and folds his paper loudly. “Fine. What has your knickers twisted?”

“I’m meant to be at school.”

“You’re meant to be hunting. You’re a Bloodstone.”

“I said I’d help over the summer holiday. I didn’t tell you I’d take the entire bloody enterprise off your hands. And we’re still playing hide the sausage with whatever ghoul is daft enough to land in the papers.”

A sinister grin spreads over his lips. “You’re right,” he says. “Too right. Sit.” She does, and he regales her with a tale of a monster town, where every man, woman and child is evil, where they treat their tap water with human flesh. To protect it, they send out roving bands of monsters into the surrounding countries, never within a hundred kilometers of the town, to capture humans for meat, so disappearances are never linked back to them. I’ve spent my entire life hunting this town…” she’s unimpressed, having heard this fairy tale her entire life, “and I finally have a lead.” That makes her sit up.

He describes one such roving band, and as he does so we begin to see it, on a rain-slicked night, a wagon covered and hidden (maybe to make it more modern, it’s the kind of military truck with a cloth back), in a caravan, on an old dirt road. Cullen and Ulysses, from perches on either side of the road, fire, taking out the monsters on motorcycles riding in a support formation for the truck. Elsa leaps from her own motorbike and climbs the rear of the truck, steeling herself before peeling back the curtain, expecting butchered bodies to be used as food stacked to the ceiling, and instead finding huddled masses, including a woman holding a swaddled child. The child notices her, and it’s face contorts; it’s a banshee babe, and it’s mouth opens wide to scream, knocking Elsa off the back of the truck. She lands on the follow car, spider-webbing the windshield. Cullen, excitable and scared, shouts over the radio that he’s lost track of his sister. Ulysses watches as Elsa is crammed in the back of the truck, which drives off as he grunts, “Bugger.”

Cullen is freaking out, trying to get Ulysses to do something. Ulysses barks at him that he is doing something, he’s following them in their truck, and trying to think over his mewling. They follow the caravan all the way to a toll bridge. The guard lets the caravan through without incident, but raises the metal pole barrier for them. “Scheduled bridge lift,” he says, when they inquire. Ulysses says he doesn’t see a boat anywhere. “Along any minute,” he replies, not looking up from his dog-eared paperback. Ulysses sniffs, then says something in trollish, which gets the guard to cock his head menacingly. He starts growing, his skin greying as he expands out of his shirt. He’s a bridge troll. Maybe throw in a billy goats gruff quote.

Cut to a few minutes later, Ulysses kicks the dead troll’s body off the bridge and it splashes in the water below. They lower the barrier and cross the bridge. There’s any number of ways the caravan could have gone, and the rain has washed away all tracks.

We cut to an interior location. A groggy Elsa stirs. A sympathetic sounding woman tries to reassure her, that she took a nasty spill, but she’s been examined, and aside from a nasty concussion, the doctor doesn’t think she’ll suffer any longer term impacts. As her vision clears, she realizes her nurse is a monster. The man walking through the halls with a bouquet of dying daisies is also a monster. The doctor who walks in, she’s a monster. She’s in a monster hospital. We fade to black, and show the title card again, for the full title reveal, “Bloodstone, and the Legion of Monsters.”

But all, of course, is not as it may initially seem. The monsters are, largely, normal folk, just trying to get by with some truly unusual health challenges. She’s more disgusted to find that her family, her father in particular, is the thing that goes bump in their nights- the sound of the Bloodstone name makes a small child quake in fear.

She meets the denizens of this strange Monster Metropolis, including N’Kantu the Living Mummy, Werewolf by Night (and other werewolves), more Frankenstein monsters, vampires, succubi, aquatic creatures from dark bodies of water… pretty much any kind of monster you can imagine is represented here (you might be able to entice Guillermo Del Toro to work on this project, since it’s another bite at the apple he so relished working on in Hellboy 2). The deeper Elsa gets into this society and its problems, the more she questions her upbringing and what she’s been told.

At first she stays because she wants to understand how she could have been so wrong. Eventually, she opts to stay to undo some of the harm she’s done. But she’s also not a prisoner. She’s able to leave, and meet with her father, and tell him what’s happened, and what she’s learned. He reacts violently to the revelation, and assumes she’s been ensorcelled, hypnotized or worse. He vows to Cullen he’ll burn down the Monster Metropolis and tear her from its rotten corpse.

It might, if it can be figured out, be cool to have Blade show up for a cameo towards the end- contrast his kind of compassionate, thoughtful “cull the herd” hunting to Ulysses- that he’s naturally skeptical of the idea of a Monster Metropolis, but so long as they aren’t acting like a terrorist training ground he could give a crap. But what sets the season on the collision course it’s on is how Ulysses reacts. Elsa reacts to the pain of knowing she’s caused hurt and fear by saying, “I don’t want to do that anymore.” Her father reacts by saying, “No, I was right all along. Genocide is the better answer.” He wages a war against the Metropolis, against its food supply, and the surrounding human communities that have always given it aid and protection. At first Cullen is torn, between his loyalty to his father and to his sister, but eventually he leaves his father’s side. Ulysses shoots him, and Cullen is saved by monster doctors. The season comes to a head when Elsa is forced to fight her father. He tells her that so long as the Bloodstone is in his chest, so long as its mystic energies keep him alive, he will not rest until the Monster Metropolis is destroyed, and his children are restored to his side. She beats him, and tears the stone out of him.

“What have you done?” he asks, as without the Bloodstone he begins to wither away.

“What my father raised me to do. Killing monsters.”

The second season would be more a new show that Elsa graduates to, called NextWave, bringing on Monica Rambeau, Boom-Boom from New Mutants, Robot Man from… Fin Fang Foom’s butt (actually… that might be appropriate to the tone of Nextwave…). I’d probably throw in Namor, rather than the Captain, because you get similar attitude off him, similar powers, too, while having an actual character around. I like the idea of bringing back Agent Coulson, but as a clone of his original self, this time the deranged head of H.A.T.E., Dirk Anger. It’s possible he’d need a mountain of cocaine to get the character right… I say give it to him. Alternately, we might want to find an actor who can give that level of manic performance without the need for chemical alteration, just because I’d feel bad if we accidentally killed Clark Gregg.