¡Extraño! pitch feat. art by Luciano Vecchio (Patreon)

Now for something a little different. About three years ago I was invited to pitch concepts for a spin-off series to the Harley Quinn animated show, with the brief simply being for it to be based on "as obscure a DC character as you like". I pitched this, and oddly enough one of their feedbacks was "this... was too obscure". I think we maybe might know another reason they chose Kite Man over this but I thought I'd share a little bit of the text from my pitch and some of the gorgeous artwork provided by the incredible Luciano Vecchio for the document!

I would love to one day write this as a comic but I don't have anybody at DC's number and I have no idea if it's the kind of thing they'd want.

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What if RuPaul was Dr Strange? That’s Extraño.

Created by Steve Englehart and Joe Stato, Extraño debuted in 1988 as one of the New Guardians and was significant for being mainstream comic’s first openly gay superhero. Then he was killed off eight issues later. And Extraño is pissed!

¡Extraño! is an adult, animated comedy about one of the most powerful beings in the DC universe - who also happens to be a flaming, out-ofdate, gay stereotype. Extraño is loud, vulgar, self-obsessed and always looking for his next hookup. He refers to himself as Auntie and others as sweetie. He wears a never-ending assortment of fabulous, impractical outfits into battle and is always flirting with his fellow teammates.

As a result, he’s been kicked out of every superhero team he’s been a part of. The other heroes insist it’s not because he’s gay, but because he’s the wrong type of gay. He’s not exactly “good representation”. And when Extraño is snubbed to be part of the first all-queer superhero team, that is the last straw!

When we first meet him, Extraño is a washed-up has been. He lives alone in his one-bedroom apartment with his two cats and does fortune telling on TikTok. He’s always telling the guys he brings home that he used to be a superhero but the blurry picture of him meeting the Flash doesn’t tend to impress. But when the queer superhero team are lost in another dimension, Extraño, feeling guilty that he may have wished for their demise a little too hard, announces he’s going to be the one to save them (and then they’ll have to let him join!)

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But he cannot do this alone. In order to venture into the multiverse, he’ll need to recruit his most trusted allies. This means reaching out to the rest of the New Guardians, his old, extremely-80s superhero team who he abandoned to attempt a solo career. And they’re not too happy to see his face. The show will feature many flashbacks to these technicolored heydays when the New Guardians would give Captain Planet and the Planteers a run for their money.

The New Guardians are:

JET has spent the last few decades throwing energy beams at her dart board with Extraño’s face in the middle. She still tries to be a superhero, but there not many Legion of Doom members operate from her home in Bristol, England.

RAM was fused with his computer and became a master of all things electronic, capable of controlling machines and connecting to the internet with his mind. Unfortunately, he gained these powers in 1988 and so he’s ridiculously out of date.

GLOSS once had the power to control the very Earth itself but she’s put all that behind her since becoming a grandma. She’s always defending Extraño from the others, and making sure he’s had enough to eat and his cape is warm enough.

TAZ aka the Tasmanian Devil (not that one) is a big softy most of the time but when angered (or hungry) he becomes a raging hell-beast. That’s one of the reasons he and Extraño broke up - but perhaps they can rekindle their comicbook romance?

Other superheroes from the DC universe will appear, often-times alternate versions of themselves as the New Guardians journey across the multiverse to stop their arch nemesis -

KRONA, a member of the Guardians of the Universe who originally gave the New Guardians their powers. As a result, Krona is like a father to Extraño. But he’s furious that his creations fell into obscurity and wants to make them relevant again. He treats the different multiverses like different TV shows he’s created and acts like an outer-space exec. He’s similar to Michael in the Good Place, constantly trying to win favor with his superiors so that he can get more funding for his universes.

They’ll also meet in the alternate dimension -

GOOD EXTRANO, a more “progressive” version of Extraño, who is suave, sexy and only talks about men a regular amount. The rest of the team like him a LOT more, but in reality, he was created by Krona to replace Extraño and make the New Guardians more appealing.

In the end, Krona will give the heroes a choice - stay lost in the multiverse forever, or go back to their world with this “improved” (and secretly evil) Extraño. But will our Extraño have learned enough on his quest to be the best version of himself and win the day?