Zeitgeist

For Whatever reason, I seem to be hooked up with the Pop Culture Zeitgeist.  The reason I believe this is that I have had ideas that have turned up in Television and Comic books.  Since I am not paranoid, I do not believe I am being plagiarized or my mind is being data mined by aliens or what not.  I feel somehow I tapped the same part of the collective unconscious that other creative types have.  Also the bigger concepts are the same but the details are very different. 

In the early 1980’s I was a teenager with way too much imagination and time on my hands.  I created a lot of worlds and concepts.  I was a huge Doctor Who fan back then.  I came up with an idea of a Gallifreyan who had an affinity with American Culture.  He was a Military man.  Funny thing is twenty years later; we get Captain Jack Harkness an American Time Traveler in the Doctor Who Universe, who later finds himself immortal.  Now there are differences, my character was from Gallefrey and his rank was Major.  Am I claiming I came up with the idea first?  No there probably were many American Whovians who came up with a similar idea.  I am just pointing out the interesting thing there is that a similar idea ended up on the show.

In the mid 90’s I had this idea.  What if Superman’s rocket landed in the Soviet bread basket of the Ukraine?  A decade later Mark Millar put out his great series Red Son.  The Series was in development since the late 90’s.  It is considered one of the best Superman and alternate reality comics of all time.  My idea had the superheroes spread out in more countries.  Lex Luthor was Soviet as opposed to being American as he was in Red Son.  I was not surprised this happened.  There are a lot of cultural parallels between Kansas and the Ukraine in their importance to the two countries they were a part of.  Early Superman was very pro the common working man which some people translate as Communist.  So I was not surprised that more that one person came up with this idea.

Also in the mid- nineties, I had the idea that the members of the X-men aged in real time and were as old as the year they were introduced.  So the original five were teenagers in the sixties so today they would be in their sixties.  The original New Mutants would be in their Forties, and so on.  In 2006 Marvel announced GeNext.  It was supposed to be similar to my concept; however it ended up a sequel to X-men: The End Trilogy.  I think the original idea would have been fun and interesting. 

Another idea I had back in the Mid 90’s was a few other X-Men related ideas.  Most of it has come to pass.  The idea was to integrate the New Mutants into the X-Men.  This was a concept that Chris Claremont had implied as the natural progression of their story.  Thirty years later they are only a few years older.  Some have become full fledge X-Men.  With the recent integration of the Avengers and X-Men, Cannonball and Sunspot are Avengers.  I also thought with integrating the New Mutants/ X-Force members, that the idea of the X-Force should be a black ops team headed by Wolverine.  This team would utilize Mutants with Covert ops backgrounds and those with powers that lend themselves with those kinds of missions.  In 2008, Marvel did just that.

Now in all this I am not claiming responsibility for any of these ideas.  I just think it is interesting these ideas could not be contained to one person.  They came out regardless of my own situation.  It is weird how some ideas will do that.  These ideas came along with parallel inspiration.  Others came up with them independently of me.  It is like we were tapping into the same part of the creative ether.  That Is My Not So Humble Opinion.