Welcome to Brainstorm's
Corner, a monthly springboard showcase. A springboard, basically a one-page
prose summary of a comic book story, is the format used for submitting stories
to companies such as DC Comics. In one page, a writer must describe the plot
while also trying to make it as intriguing as possible. It's quite a challenge!
Brainstorm's Corner
gives YOU, the reader, the chance to critique the story before a writer sends
it off to every editor at DC. So let
Fanzing know…would you pay to read this? If not, why not?
After reading the absurd excuse for a Hanukkah story in the DCU Holiday Bash II, I came to the realization that every Hanukkah story that's ever been published as part of a holiday collection has been either a) humorous, or b) a Christmas story with Jewish trappings. The rare one might tell the story of Hanukkah, but they never try to examine the true meaning of the holiday…the writers all think of it as a "Jewish Christmas." To address this issue, I wrote up a springboard for a Hanukkah story that could appear in a future DCU Holiday bash. It stars the Legion a) because they're amongst my favorite characters, and b) because Leviathan (Colossal Boy, in the old continuity) was one of the few known Jews in DC Comics.
The story begins with many Legionnaires preparing to perform a Radio-City style Christmas show (for charity), with most of the female Legionnaires dressing in Rockette-like outfits. (I feel Jeff Moy would draw this particularly well.) Saturn Girl does not participate, as she feels it is extremely undignified, and one of the others tells her that this show is an Earth ritual that has survived since the twentieth century, and that it would therefore be worth her while to endure the indignity of it in order to participate. Saturn Girl professes not to understand the point of religious rituals, which do not exist on her home planet of Titan. One of the others explains how most religious rituals have an understandable purpose, and mentions visiting the family of Leviathan after his death, as they were sitting Shiva according to their Jewish traditions.
Saturn Girl, realizing that she had never truly paid her respects to Leviathan after returning from the twentieth century, visits his parents right around the time that they are preparing to light Hanukkah candles. After she watches them do this, she inquires as to the significance of the ritual and of rituals in general. Leviathan's parents explain how the lighting of the candles is a re-enactment of the miracle that God did for the Jews many centuries ago. He mentions Passover and, reading from a Passover Hagadah, which speaks of a Jew's obligation to feel that he himself went out of Egypt, not merely his ancestors. These rituals and re-enactments help make one feel the kind of gratitude to God that the actual participants in the miracles felt.
Saturn Girl realizes that on Titan, where thought and feeling can be transmitted directly, there is no need for these rituals, but that to non-telepaths, they are an indispensable means of transmitting the feelings of history from one generation to the next. Understanding this, she decides to participate in the Legionnaire Christmas show after all.
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So, what did you think ? Was it good? Was it lousy? Splunge? Would you fork over anywhere from $2 and up to read it? Should DC hire this person immediately and you'll burn your collection (or at least Brother Power The Geek) if it doesn't happen?
Perhaps you would like to hold up your naked ideas for over
1500 people to see? If so, first check out DC's
submission guidelines (available here thanks to Jon Karl Franklin
Haynes).
All Characters are ™ DC Comics
This proposal is © 1998 Chaim Kellar.
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