Billion Dollar Idea File #1 Pitching the D.C/Marvel Hoboverse
This is a promising, if modest, start
Inspiration for billion dollar superhero ideas can come from anywhere. Rumor has it that the seeds for Superman’s epic reign were planted when a pair of enterprising young comic book artists named Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were sunbathing at the beach when a man in red, white and blue tights with an S on his chest dramatically flew in from nowhere to save a little girl from drowning.
“That’s Super, Man!” shouted a nearby weed freak. Later, the idea-hungry new artists had a few drinks with the man they’d taken to calling “Superman” after the reefer junkie's offhanded comment and asked him to tell them a little more about himself. Deeply inebriated, the foolish superhero blurted out, “For the sake of my safety—and yours, I can never reveal my secret identity, but I can tell you what it’s NOT. I most assuredly am not a mild-mannered reporter for The Daily Planet named Clark Kent who is hopelessly in love with fellow reporter Lois Lane. And I sure as shit am not from that piece of shit small town Smallville. Whoops! I’ve said too much about who I am not. I must fly away now.”
But as he flew away, he accidentally dropped a business card revealing that he actually WAS Clark Kent, bespectacled news hound for The Daily Planet! Stan Lee famously got his ideas for superheroes from all the unsung artists and writers he ripped off, such as Jack Kirby and Stan Ditko.
As is this
And I, the next comic book billionaire, had my gazillion dollar epiphany watching my son play on a playground in his Spiderman costume, which is raggedy and torn and filled with holes after days and days of wearing it consecutively. Don’t worry, we did wash the costume. We may allow our son to do things that might seem a little bit off if, say, a 32 year old were to do them, but we are sanitary.
The costume was so raggedly that I admit that Declan looked a little bit like a hobo Spider-Man. That’s when I realized that that’s where the superhero genre must go: into the hobo verse. We’ve had zombie versions of superheroes. We’ve had a Victorian era steampunk Batman. There are futuristic versions of Batman. Rumor has it there’s even a version of Batman where he’s actually grim and serious instead of the lovable goof we know from the 1960s television show and The All New Super Friends Hour.
So why not all-new versions of beloved Marvel and D.C characters where every caped crusader and masked marvel is a hobo fighting crime, sure, but more importantly hopping trains, scavenging for food, drinking hooch on lonely moonlit rides, playing harmonica and telling hobo tales around a campfire near a train yard?
Can you even imagine the kind of tricked-out bindle a technological genius like Tony Stark would travel with? Being pursued everywhere by those damn railroad cops everywhere would undoubtedly make a meek-seeming, bindle-toting vagrant named Bruce Banner angry, and let me tell you: you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry!
Everybody loves Superman. They’ll love him even more when he’s flying over Metropolis and using his X ray vision to see which soup kitchens has the shortest line! The Punisher is half a hobo already! And the prestigious D.C and Marvel hobo lines would provide a pretext for bringing my favorite hero, Rutger Hauer’s Hobo with A Shotgun, from the movie The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, into the superhero comic book world.
We’ve gone the futuristic, high-tech route. Now let’s exploit the public's unending fascination with hobos and hobo culture and get crazy rich. I’m calling this a billion dollar idea, but I will settle for a million dollars. So King of Comic Books, hit me up at the email connected to this site and let’s do a business.
Unless you don’t like making money and being hailed as a genius, in which case feel free to ignore this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hop onboard the single greatest idea of all time.
Or you can contribute even a dollar to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/nathanrabinshappyplace. I’m cool with both options