Arriving late to the party.

[Punk]

Hi! How's everyone doing? First off, I'd like to apologize to anyone, if there's anyone, who I'd disappointed during my first tenure here. I was all pumped up for writing Ultimate Teen Titans, but my original plans were seemingly cut short by lack of characters. I chickened out, 'cause I was thinking I couldn't tell a good story with what I was left of. I had no central goal within the title itself, too. Sure, I had Cyborg, Simon Dark, Beast Boy, but I didn't really feel like I could write something interesting without Red Hood, Scarlet, Damian, and of course, Deathstroke.

Add to that my schoolwork as of late and I'm unable to make up time to write stories. I've heard that there's now a Marvel version of Ultimate DC? Cool. It sounds really intriguing.

So, I was wondering if there's anything major I've missed during my AWOL. Again, I apologize and I hope to be writing my first title here very soon when time allows me.

[C_Miller]

Welcome back. Sorry that Teen Titans didn't work out. However, it's a common misconception that you can't tell good stories without certain characters. At a site like this, quite often you have to be a little creative when you don't have ideal circumstances, especially for late comers. I'm currently writing JSA without Mr. Terrific, Dr. Mid-Nite, and Alan Scott, all of whom are my favorite JSA characters. But I'm making it work through claiming other characters in their spot. In Hellblazer, Darth and I are doing a John Constantine and Raven buddy-cop title. So yeah, it does take some thinking, but there are a lot of cool stories to be told out there.

At one of the old DC sites, we had Atomic Knights, Body Doubles, The Ray, Monolith, Power Company among others. Hell, you could do a Cyborg solo series if you wanted and maybe do some cool things there. And we still don't have Shazam claimed.

[buck]

This board has a number of very cool titles using B and C listers. Checkmate and Zeta Warriors. Brave and the Bold and Spoilers. Ultimate Shade and Ultimate Shield. Just got to harvest the right ideas and you could have one of these awesome off the beaten path titles.

[C_Miller]

Exactly. For inspiration, check out some titles from the late 80s early 90s. Sandman, Shade The Changing Man, Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Starman, Doom Patrol. All of them started off as D listers. But a bunch of british guys had some good ideas and those all became classics to some degree.

[Punk]

Thanks. I'd like to write a Cyborg title soon, or actually any title here on the site for that matter. I do have a question, though: is it allowed in here to create new characters? Or are we just restricted to characters who are legit in the DCU?

Is there something I can help around with the site? One of the things I've always wanted to see was an alphabetized version of all claimed characters, seeing as I had trouble myself with the claims list back then. Can I have your permission to do this? I'd love to work "behind-the-scenes" before I write my own title.

[C_Miller]

1. You can create characters, but they can't be the focus of a title. If you claimed a Cyborg title, you could use original characters for villains, support or even give him an original side kick, but the main focus of the title must be Cyborg. And I'd also say that you need to have more DC characters than that. But yeah, you can fill gaps with original characters.

2. After we had the big issues with your claims, we actually retooled the entire claims thread. Now we have 90% of the characters listed by code name and secret identity. So it's pretty much fool proof and it's easier to catalog for us. If you really wanted to do an alphabetized list, I'm not going to stop you. Just create a thread in the Author's Discuss board.

As for things you can do to help the site, we always need people reading and reviewing. That's something a lot of the people here have been a little bit lax on.