Snark Free Challenge - Redeem Jack Flagg and Free Spirit
Today's Fourth of July Snark Free Challenge is as follows:
Come up with an interesting pitch for a series starring Jack Flagg and/or Free Spirit.
Here is Free Spirit, to refresh your memory.
And here is Jack Flagg.
Good luck!
Come up with an interesting pitch for a series starring Jack Flagg and/or Free Spirit.
Here is Free Spirit, to refresh your memory.
And here is Jack Flagg.
Good luck!
posted by Brian Cronin at 11:41 AM
4 Comments:
The only thing I can think of is a storyline in which Free Spirit gets spinal correction surgery.
Jack Flagg? I got nuthin'.
John Carver is 22, just out of a short stint in the Army, when a group called Old Glory approaches him to become their special poster-boy operative, Jack Flagg. His mission is to root out terrorists at home and increase the morale of the country's youth, but he doesn't realize that Old Glory is really a group of fundamentalist constructionists trying to silence dissent and increase their stranglehold on the government.
His rival is the mysterious Free Spirit, a girl who Old Glory recruited from a college campus in 1972. She realized their scheme and has been working against the group single-handedly ever since, fighting a losing battle. While she looks 20, she has the intelligence of someone twice that age, though not always the maturity. When she finds out about Flagg, she tries to sway him to her cause, and Flagg's loyalties become torn between the men who trained him and the persuasive woman who keeps chasing him.
Kind of a politicized Aztek, or something. Include the new wave '80s recruit as a villain, and I think it could be fun.
This is probably too late for anyone to notice, but...
According to this here web site, and Free SPirit's profile at Jeanne Burch's Women of Marvel website which isn't working right now, Free Spirit is Cathy Webster, a formerly shy and reculsive college honors student who underwent treatment to give her superhuman powers so that she could do better in phsycial education but was actually brainwashed by man-hating villain Superia, but then turned against her and became an ally of Cap. (Whew!) Jack Flag, on the other hand, was a former member of Captain America's computer hotline, who became a superhero himself to fight the Serpent Society. Both were Greunwald creations from the very end of his run, during the period when Cap appeared to be dying. Both stayed part of the Hotline to carry on his legacy, but were quietly ignored by Mark Waid once he took over and never seen again.
So here's my idea--Free Spirit and Jack Flag, who come from very different backgrounds that would produce very different worldviews. One is a rebellious computer hacker, the other is a College Republican type. One is concerned with fighting relevant social problems, the other is an anthropology major with an interest in alien cultures. One really admires superheroes and desperately wanted to become one, the other is sometimes ambivalent about superheroes as a whole (although she admires Captain America) and still isn't sure of what to make of the fact that she became one herself. Both consider themselves heirs to the legacy of Captain America, but have different ideas as to what that means.
And as to their role in the MU, well... The Hotline is still around and it's now led by former perennial sidekick Rick Jones, who is now separated from Genis for good. Rick Jones, I think, was a ham radio enthusiast back in the day and briefly assembled a network of ham radio amateurs called the Teen Brigade to watch the Hulk, so it makes sense that in modern continuity he would be a computer hacker type. He has now decided to make his own way in the superheroic world rather than being someone else's sidekick again, so he's sort of become the Oracle of the Marvel Universe, who watches out for potential threats and provides intelligence information to superheroes. The Hotline has many operatives throughout the country, both civilians and metahumans. It's kind of an X-Corporation for non-mutants--if a superhero hasn't shown up in a while, there's a good chance that this is what they're doing.
The series would kind of be a cross between Green Lantern/Green Arrow, the X-Files, Birds of Prey, and Priest's Black Panther, where the heroes travel around the world investigating metahuman threats and alien invasions (there's all kinds of political and religious unrest out there after what happened in Grant Morrison's New X-Men, and naturally some of it is going to affect Earth considering the big role it's played in galactic politics in teh past) and having political debates. There would be a lot of examination of the politics and culture of the MU's various imaginary countries and alien species. And, of course, it would be fun and have a lot of things blowing up.
How about that?
Tom and Adrian, I think BOTH of your proposals are strong!
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