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I have decided that someone out there ought to write a DCU AU set during the 1930s. Mostly, this is an extension of my belief that every fandom needs to have a gangster AU set during Prohibition, but Batman and Superman translate back into, say, 1933 particularly well.
Mostly because they were originally products of the 1930s, which is why Gotham is so packed with gangsters and organised crime, and because the art style of the mid-90s Batman cartoon was so thirties/forties-looking.
Forget Batman Begins and Superman Returns, I want to see Infinite Prohibition. Come on, Bruce Wayne in spats. Tim Drake in a newsboy cap. The Joker and Two-Face with tommy-guns. Lex Luthor riding around in a Roll Royce Silver Ghost, with pinstripe suits and a pimp cane topped with kryptonite (and a side-line in bootlegging? Or is that too declasse for a Luthor?). Clark Kent banging away on an old-school typewriter, covering labor strikes (very sympathetically). The Batmobile with 30s-era lines and a runningboard. Various characters in suspenders.
Nightwing would ride an Indian Scout. Roy Harper would be a bartender in a speakeasy, and drink his own wares (and have a gun in a shoulder holster, because those are sexy). Tim Drake would have started out as a newsboy, or at least have a cover where he masquerades as one. Wayne Industries would have ridden out the stockmarket crash by virtue of not being a publically traded company (Bruce owns all of it), and would still be filthy rich alongside the Carnegies, Rockefellers, and other robber barons (you know great-grandaddy Wayne kicked off the family fortune as an 1860s war profiteer). Ollie Queen, if he appeared, would be a Douglas Fairbanks-esque movie star.
Lionel Luthor would have made a fortune on steel during WWI and been bought out by his son days after the Crash ("My father shot himself in his office two days later. Rumours that his hands lacked the appropriate powder residue are unsubstantiated slander, Ms. Lane, and you can quote that"). LexCorp would own half of Metropolis--steel mills, stockyards, chemical plants--and have a reputation for crushing unionizers with an iron fist. Sometimes literally ("We don't know how that load of steel girders fell on Mr. Jones. Such a tragic accident").
It would be cool, and filled with noirish goodness that might even beat out the Victorian glee of a Marvel-verse Civil War AU.
Mostly because they were originally products of the 1930s, which is why Gotham is so packed with gangsters and organised crime, and because the art style of the mid-90s Batman cartoon was so thirties/forties-looking.
Forget Batman Begins and Superman Returns, I want to see Infinite Prohibition. Come on, Bruce Wayne in spats. Tim Drake in a newsboy cap. The Joker and Two-Face with tommy-guns. Lex Luthor riding around in a Roll Royce Silver Ghost, with pinstripe suits and a pimp cane topped with kryptonite (and a side-line in bootlegging? Or is that too declasse for a Luthor?). Clark Kent banging away on an old-school typewriter, covering labor strikes (very sympathetically). The Batmobile with 30s-era lines and a runningboard. Various characters in suspenders.
Nightwing would ride an Indian Scout. Roy Harper would be a bartender in a speakeasy, and drink his own wares (and have a gun in a shoulder holster, because those are sexy). Tim Drake would have started out as a newsboy, or at least have a cover where he masquerades as one. Wayne Industries would have ridden out the stockmarket crash by virtue of not being a publically traded company (Bruce owns all of it), and would still be filthy rich alongside the Carnegies, Rockefellers, and other robber barons (you know great-grandaddy Wayne kicked off the family fortune as an 1860s war profiteer). Ollie Queen, if he appeared, would be a Douglas Fairbanks-esque movie star.
Lionel Luthor would have made a fortune on steel during WWI and been bought out by his son days after the Crash ("My father shot himself in his office two days later. Rumours that his hands lacked the appropriate powder residue are unsubstantiated slander, Ms. Lane, and you can quote that"). LexCorp would own half of Metropolis--steel mills, stockyards, chemical plants--and have a reputation for crushing unionizers with an iron fist. Sometimes literally ("We don't know how that load of steel girders fell on Mr. Jones. Such a tragic accident").
It would be cool, and filled with noirish goodness that might even beat out the Victorian glee of a Marvel-verse Civil War AU.
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Lex rarely has to hit people himself (unless he's angry, and doing it for prsonal satisfaction, or, you know, trying to fight Superman). He has many well-paid minions to beat people up for him, while he watches smugly from the sidelines and keeps his nice, thousand-dollar suit clean of bloodstains. Possibly he smokes a cigar while watching.
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