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Post by DocQuantum on Aug 19, 2019 20:08:08 GMT
Can anyone think of an existing Earth-1 reporter or writer who would have been in his late teens/early 20s in the 1920s? Perry White is out because he’s a bit too young and is too famous anyway. I’d rather use someone a bit more obscure, whose history is largely unknown, and whose last name isn’t White, Taylor, Lane, Olsen, or Kent. (Though I’d love it if he had some kind of connection with any Daily Planet reporters!)
I guess he’d be pretty old by the 1980s, around 80 or so. I’ll do some research of my own later, but I thought I’d ask if anyone can think of any.
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Post by johnreiter902 on Aug 20, 2019 11:25:59 GMT
older than Perry will be hard to find. I would see if their is a story about Superman helping out a reporter who is being told he is a has-been
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Post by lawrenceliberty on Aug 20, 2019 17:26:03 GMT
Could obituary writer Ryan Lowell have started out as a reporter as a young man?
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Post by DocQuantum on Aug 20, 2019 18:08:53 GMT
I think Ryan Lowell is a bit too young. My guess is anyone working at the Planet during Superman’s career would be too young. Someone active in the ‘20s would be 65+ then and past typical retirement age.
I’m thinking maybe there are some wealthy elderly writers who may have appeared in a single story somewhere, perhaps even in a series like House of Mystery? Preferably one that shows them in a positive light.
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Post by DocQuantum on Aug 20, 2019 19:18:24 GMT
I’ll probably have to make one up.
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Post by dans on Aug 20, 2019 22:55:16 GMT
Maybe some supporting character from the early Green Hornet? pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Crime_Editor this guy may be DC property. He could easily have been born around 1900, was a reporter during the 20s, and started his own newspaper in the 40s... he was associated with the Black Hood, but you could ignore that?
actually there are a number of public domain reporters here: pdsh.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Reporter_Characters who are not specifically associated with a super hero, and some of them are described as being editors during the WWII era, which could put them in their 40s. If you go with one of them, you might be able to find some old comics online and you could have some pre-generated backstory...
If you want to go further afield...
Pat Garrison, reporter for New York Record, played by Donald May on The Roaring 20's (1960–1962)
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Post by redsycorax on Aug 20, 2019 23:02:13 GMT
You don't have to neccessarily restrict yourself to the Superman franchise. Green Lantern worked at the Gotham Broadcasting Corporation if you're talking about Earth-Two, so see if any of his colleagues are named in this context. Did GBC also own newspapers such as the Gotham Gazette? Perusing the DC Database disclosed: dc.fandom.com/wiki/Steve_Bard_(Earth-Two): Superman Vol 1: 29 (July 1944) Bard looks somewhat youngish, but that may only be young looking. His age isn't specified anywhere, so he could have been active in the twenties as a journalist. There seem to have been quite a few journalists active on Earth-S who might conceivably have had alternates elsewhere on the other four Earths if you want to cheat.
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Post by lawrenceliberty on Aug 28, 2019 20:52:14 GMT
Earth S's Scoop Smith might also exist on E-1?
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Post by Dave B on Sept 1, 2019 3:20:31 GMT
There's Bruce Lane, Scoops Smith's editor, perhaps a version of him exists on Earth I. Also you could use the Earth I version of George Taylor.
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Post by DocQuantum on Sept 1, 2019 8:07:52 GMT
There's Bruce Lane, Scoops Smith's editor, perhaps a version of him exists on Earth I. Also you could use the Earth I version of George Taylor. Yeah, I'm leaning more toward George Taylor, Sr. at this point (as differentiated from his son, George Taylor Jr., who is Oliver Queen's boss at the Star City newspaper he works for). He probably retired at around 65 around the time Superboy moved to Metropolis, when Perry White took over as Daily Planet editor. That would have been in 1968 in our compressed timeline. So he would actually be around the perfect age for what I have in mind in the 1920s -- young reporter/sidekick to an adventurer. Thanks, everyone!
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Post by DocQuantum on Jun 19, 2020 8:07:47 GMT
Just an update, if anyone is interested. I'm not going to use George Taylor, after all, except perhaps as a guest appearance at some point.
I'll be using a fairly obscure character named Nelson Strong of the Adventurers' Club as our taciturn and rugged hero, and inventing a new character to act as the reader's POV character and the hero's trusty (and sometimes bumbling) sidekick, Dizzy Dobbs.
I'm going to call the series The Adventurers' Club after the short-lived series where Strong first appeared as its Chairman of the Board back in 1972/73, when he was an old man. In the 1920s he's a young World War I veteran acting as a soldier of fortune.
I've got the first story plotted out already. I just need to start writing it at some point.
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Post by DocQuantum on Jun 19, 2020 8:19:51 GMT
I would like ideas for characters, places, and themes to explore in the 1920s. I've begun a list of things to explore or touch on, such as hidden lands and occult menaces from H.P. Lovecraft, but there's almost no end of possibilities. I could even touch on characters related in some way to existing DC characters. I mostly want to explore the kind of heroes that could have originated out of the Jazz Era on Earth-1. The decade earlier had Hans von Hammer and the Balloon Buster, while the decade later had the Shadow, Doc Savage, and the Avenger, and the decade after that had Sgt. Rock, Blackhawk, and the Unknown Soldier.
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Post by DocQuantum on Jun 19, 2020 22:33:59 GMT
DC Comics had so many hidden lands in their stories. For the first Adventurers' Club story, which hidden land should I use? The most obvious ones are Skartaris or Atlantis, but I'd rather use something a bit more obscure, such as a hidden land that only appeared once, to avoid contradicting existing stories I may be unaware of.
One possibility is Mistri-Lor, which appeared in Action Comics #298, in which Clark, Lois, and Jimmy are stranded, and where Queen Lura falls in love with Clark. Any others?
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Post by dans on Jun 19, 2020 23:03:17 GMT
Certainly, Doc Savage and his gang were active during the 20s, as they all served in WWI. They weren't teamed up, probably, although maybe Monk and Ham hung around together. Renny traveled the world managing big engineering projects, so he might have some great adventures.
Charlie Chan first appeared in 1925, and hard boiled detective stories were big in the 20s. Constance Kurridge was a female reporter among other things who had some adventures in the 20s.
I wonder if there might have been some pro-prohibition heroes, and some anti-prohibition anti-heroes?
Public radio was pretty new. There might have been some law and order radio show and one of the characters was a vigilante in his spare time? Barnstorming was big; maybe a barnstorming pilot had a secret identity and solved cases around the country. (Or a group of pilots, maybe the whole aerial circus had secret adventures, or maybe there was an evil aerial circus?). It's been done, but what about a hobo hero?
Howard Carter opened King Tut's tomb.What mystical powers might have been unleashed on the world? What kind of powerful artifacts might he have found there?
Harry Houdini was famous; certainly John Zatarra was operating during that time, and probably several other of DCs earliest mages. How old was Dr. Occult?
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Post by dans on Jun 20, 2020 1:01:09 GMT
I've been looking up Constance Kurridge - she is sort of neat...
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