The Red Ten #0

[cyberghostface]

"THE RED TEN is how I would kill The Justice League if DC was crazy enough to let me. (They’re not.) I’m borrowing the structure the Agatha Christie’s classic 'And Then There Were None' because I think it’s one that is uniquely suited to the comic book format. C’mon, a ten issue mini-series, each issue a character dies and one of the survivors is likely behind it all? Add superpowers to the mix and you’ve got a funny book I want to read!

I first read Christie’s book in the fifth grade. The brilliant thing about it was that when re-reading it for THE RED TEN research, I realized I had no idea who the killer was right until the last few pages…even though I had already read it! Now that’s a good whodunnit. I hope we can keep readers guessing all the way to issue #10." -- Tyler James

Warning for animal cruelty

This was a FCBD issue so I'm posting the whole thing.





































The issue also includes the following bonus story from the Oxymoron miniseries:

Comments

[kamino_neko]

Wow...hardly even bothering to file the serial numbers off enough to avoid trademark disputes on some of these...

I understand that they're intended to be recognizable Captains Ersatz of the JL, but...you could accomplish that while still not making everybody a minor tweak of some canon version or other Captain Ersatz of the characters.

[silverhammerman]

Yeah, I expect that to a certain degree a lot of non-Big Two superhero comics are going to have derivative characters, since writers are frequently looking to deal with the broad archetypes, but this seems unusually shameless. I don't really want to label it as fan fiction as a perjorative, but the whole thing just seems a little pointless. I mean, if someone can get a comic made and takes themselves seriously as a writer, surely there has to be something they'd rather do than thinly veiled fanfic.

[beyondthefringe]

I'm used to seeing pastiches of the Justice League. I mean Hell, Warren Ellis has cranked out half a dozen alone, as has Garth Ennis. But this is just so -lazy-, they even swiped the actual characters' tag lines. World's Greatest Detective, Fastest Man Alive, etc. And really, "Master Mage" like we don't recognize a moonlighting Doctor Strange when we see him. And Lear is so Lex Luthor I almost didn't realize there was a difference.

Also, the giant armored boobs on Red.

This is just a lackluster effort. Even Paul Jenkins was creative when he murdered all -his- characters in Deathmatch or whatever it was called.

[tcampbell1000]

I wouldn't mind the copying of character if it was in the service of a more original story. Like, if you have something new to say about Superman and you'll never get your chance with the real deal, go ahead and write Supreme.

It's the stated goal of "killing the Justice League" that I find off-putting. I feel like it's been aptly demonstrated that killing superheroes, in the real world, is pretty easy. They're drawings. You draw them dead. Boom, done. What's your STORY? There are worse sources of inspiration than Agatha Christie, but considering Stan Lee already did this particular ripoff 35 years ago, there are a lot better ones, too.

[beyondthefringe]

That episode was one of the very first things I rewatched on Disney+ :)

[tripodeca113]

Oh I read about this series before. It seemed kind of interesting.

[lordultimus]

I did kind of enjoy lampshading the "hey, isn't Superman more powerful than the rest of the league combined?"

[leahandillyana]

I absolutely hated that comic. Almost every death is somehow related to sex, it’s obscene. And the author gender bent Batman to no homo Joker, it’s actually funny in a way the author didn’t intend. Also, he lost like a thousand points for not using Zatanna when he could.

[cyberghostface]

It's a bit of a stretch to assume the main reason why they genderflipped Batman was because of a few lines with the Joker counterpart that wasn't even romantic. Don't know what you mean about every death relating to sex either, it's less than half if even that.

[leahandillyana]

Characters who commited sex related crimes are (I'll refer to them by the name of their ersatzes, I never remembered their actual name) Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter (or rather the man puppeteering him), Mera, Atom and Zatara.

[cyberghostface]

Since we're going into spoilers now... 'sex related' is pretty tenuous for a number of those. I.E. a woman killing her romantic rival is a sex related crime?