Michael Miller started a DC Heroes draft, where we took turns picking DC heroes and villains and pitched a comic book series based on what we got in the draft. I tied with Alex for the win. It was good fun. Check it out.

Here’s my pitch:

Team Name: Batwoman and the Outsiders

Elevator Pitch: Two very different former Batgirls, Cassie Cain and Stephanie Brown, resign from Batman Incorporated in order to put together a team that can really go out into the world, kick down villain’s doors and get proactive about justice, led by the Bat they most look up to.

Plot Synopsis: The Outsiders are characters on the periphery of the DCU, without a firm place in any team or family. Cassie and Stephanie find a link between Intergang and Talia al Ghul’s sect of the League of Assassins and prod Batwoman into leading them, forming the Outsiders in order to take the fight to the villains. The Justice League defeated Darksied months ago, fending off a full on Apokolips invasion but Apokolips tech is all over the black market.

Together, this team of super heroes on the outskirts of the families that make up the DCU put their differences aside and make a family of their own, while punching villains in the face.

Character Issues:

Batwoman, Kane was kicked out of the army for being gay. In her own comic, she continues to be a soldier but in Batwoman and the Outsiders, she becomes a general.

Cassie Cain has spent her life being brainwashed and mind controlled by the League of Assassins. In this book, she is dealing with having full control of her actions and taking responsiblity for them, dealing with being a grown-up. She is a trained assassin in a cape and refuses to wear masks or cowls anymore.

Stephanie Brown is taking a year off from college in order to work for Batman Incorporated but when that wasn’t what she wanted, she partnered up with Cassie and sought out a team of super heroes who could do the job the way these young ladies thought it needed to be done. She is a naive sophomore with big ideas, hopes and dreams. This book will see the real world smash into them and how far she is willing to go to see those dreams become reality.

Big Barda is separated from Scot Free, leaving him when he admitted that he was feeling trapped in their relationship. She is a tough, older woman of the group who has been through the wringer and has hard won wisdom and the ability to punch through walls. Barda is a Granny Goodness trained super-soldier thug, trying to figure out what it means to be a good person on her own for the first time in her life.

Renee Montoya is a woman who get’s answers. Her issues will be the ones where she gathers information for the rest of the Outsiders to act on; they will be black and white with rare splashes of color to show the information she is gathering and the violence she does to get it.

In the New 52, Steel isn’t the former Justice Leaguer I wanted for the group but that is still fine. In this world he is a former government weapons expert who left a top secret government program. Now he is an AWOL secret agent with technological know-how, about to reinvent himself and become the American Dream, a captain of industry and a super hero. We will get to see him become the Steel who is inspired by Superman to put on a cape and wear the “S” but in he beginning of the series, he’s part walking tank, part Q.

One Cool Moment: The final pages of the first arc, After the Apokolips, has the Outsiders surrounding Talia al Ghul, where we find that she has been leading them to their targets, taking stock of them so that she can offer her own leadership, so they can be led by her against the League of Assassins and a growing threat, her own recently resurrected father.

Next issue, Talia al Ghul and the Outsiders, as Batwoman takes her leave and the real gist of the book becomes clear, the team seeking its own goals by choosing its leaders carefully.

DC, Bob Harras, call me.