You know, there actually WAS something like this done in Morrison’s X-Men run. So I guess it had some legs, after all.
I’ve come up with a few ideas myself, over the years—mostly Marvel-based stuff. Sometimes just to pass the time, or when an odd inspiration hit me, and I developed it in my head out of curiosity. I’ve never tried pitching any, or anything, though—they were always something “for the future,” at best.
-One would have been focused on the fighter air wing flying off a SHIELD helicarrier—Top Gun sorta stuff, with the addition of some exotic elements the setting allowed. One pilot would have been a heavyset Mutant with a rocklike physiology, who had the unique advantage that he wasn’t susceptible to blackouts or redouts under high-G maneuvers (no blood)—I thought it’d be interesting to explore such a character without making them a “Tank.”
Another character would have been the CAG. Older guy, Cold War vet, kind of a Robin Olds/Chuck Yeager cast. One flashback would have depicted his younger days, where he engaged a flying supervillain (I was going to use an existing old one, but who was either canonically dead, or hadn’t been used in so long it wouldn’t cause too much fuss if I killed 'em) in a dogfight, and shot them down. While flying a Skyraider.
-Another idea would be the “X-Corps of Engineers.”
Basically, a superpowered civil engineering group, with particular arcs devoted to various “Megaprojects,” like the Qattara Depression Project. Basically “Cut Lex Luthor A Check,” the series. A dry, based in science as much as possible approach to exploiting the rich possibilities of characters who violate the laws of physics.
By editorial mandate, not a single fight scene would ever take place;* and interpersonal emotional drama would be kept to a bare minimum.
I’d also intended that it be artistically patterned after a Manga style, for several reasons. First, that the audience would more easily accept the shift in tone and format if there was a subtle shift in medium—and especially to one with a more solid history of dealing with comparatively unusual subjects (e.g. historical romances; slice of life comedies; hard sci-fi; bread baking championships, etc.) than most western comics. So, it hopefully wouldn’t feel like “a comic book that fails to be a comic book.”
Second, because I felt the Manga format was more seemlessly inclined to sorts of artistic approaches that would suit the intended stories very well—large blocks of text, diagrams, footnotes, frequent asides and interludes for technical explanations, etc.
And third, so it could be printed in black and white. To save printing costs, because I was sure almost no one would buy the damned thing.
*Well, maybe the occasional jovial drunken donnybrook. I ain’t made of stone.