What Bugs Me About "The Event"

...is that I actually had an idea for a comic book called "The Event", that I was thinking vaguely about pitching to CrossGen, during the five minutes before that company imploded. The idea was that there was a guy who developed perfect precognition--not only could he see the future, but he could see every possible future including the futures created by him altering the future as a result of his own actions. And he saw, five to ten years down the line (an appropriate length of time for a sixty-issue series or so) a big, apocalyptic event coming down the line. Something very Cthullhu-esque, if you get my drift. The rising of some ancient evil, that could only be stopped through a very specific and unbelievably complex series of events. Essentially, a one-in-a-million chance to save the world...but this guy could see every single thing that needed to be done over the next five or so years to make it happen.

And so he becomes this elaborate puppet-master, working behind the scenes to ensure that all these different people play their roles in saving the world. Some knowingly, some unknowingly, some even unwillingly (after all, he's the only one who knows the big plan, and he can actually see how big of a mistake it would be to tell the wrong person. Some of these people would suspect him of trying to destroy the world, not save it.) The story would be told not from his point of view, but from the viewpoint of the people he's manipulating: Every issue would gradually unveil the plan and their parts in it, until at the end they come together in the full understanding of how they need to save the world from the creature that would destroy it.

The opening gambit--and the opening scene of the first issue--would involve him getting one of the key characters involved in events the only way he can. He steps out in front of her car. She winds up getting him medical treatment, meets a nurse who's also involved in events...and then he disappears from the hospital. The two of them begin investigating his disappearance, leading them into the conspiracy behind it all... (The opening panel is captioned with, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," with a picture of the guy walking directly into the path of the car.)

I would have fleshed it out a bit more as a serious pitch, of course, but there's no point now. Trying to pitch a series called "The Event", involving a big conspiracy? Nobody would ever take the idea seriously again. Thanks so much, NBC.