A group of teenagers investigate supernatural strangeness and, when necessary, beat it up.

When these four friends investigated their first mystery, a strange kid in their neighbourhood, they made a friend in the half-human, half-otherwoldly creature named Byron G. Rothschild. Now that they have a real live supernatural being on their side, there’s nothing they can’t handle, right?

Lucy Suss

The leader of the Mystery Fighters, Lucy is an expert in all things rope-related. She can tie or untie knots, she can throw a lasso, and she is always prepared. She’s an expert at making connections, with ropes and with mysteries. She’s the one who ties the team together.

Lucius Suss

Lucius is Lucy’s twin brother. He’s a sensitive quiet type, who gets overwhelmed when he’s in a loud environment or a crowd, but he is extremely perceptive. He’s the one who will pick up on little details that the others may miss. He uses a specially modified shield when he fights mysteries.

Marjorie Steeler

She may seem like the team’s muscle, and she is, but Marjorie is no dummy. What she likes is the research part of an investigation. If she gets to go through some town’s old newspapers or a murder victim’s diary, she’s ready and willing to turn up whatever facts are needed. She’s also in the contending for the world record of Most Mummies Punched.

Dorian Clock

Dorian is the team’s tech guy, but he’s also the team’s public face. He’s more social than those other losers, so he manages the team’s website and social media presence, and is the one who drums up their cases. He’s also the team member that is least useful in a fight, though the others don’t hold it against him.

I’m calling it a sitcom, because that’s what this year is about, but I see this one more as an action mystery show. It’d be comedic, because these are idiotic teenagers, but if it were a real thing, I’d want actual mysteries. Someone pay me to make this show happen, please!

A hypochondriac moves back to his home town, only to find that the only doctor he can get there is a talking cow.

Fabian Martin

Fabian went to school in the big city, but after his graduation he had trouble getting into the job market there. His nervous disposition made it hard for him to keep up with the pace there, so he’s moved back to the small town where he grew up. He’s found things very relaxing back there, but that was until he tried to get a cough looked at and found that the new doctor in town is a talking cow. And nobody seems to find it strange but him, which just makes it worse.

Bessie Hefler

Dr. Hefler is a brilliant doctor who graduated at the top of her class in medical school. She’s highly qualified to do her job, and is a consummate professional. She doesn’t know what would be worse, if Fabian never accepts that she’s a good doctor, or if he does and she has to deal with his non-stop visits over every thing he thinks is wrong.

Helena Martin

Helena is Fabian’s sister who never moved out of town. She doesn’t see what’s so weird about a talking cow being a doctor and just assumes this is the latest way her anxious little brother is getting obsessed over something dumb. Meanwhile, she has her own life. She’s training to become a veterinarian.

This is a brilliant idea for a sitcom and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. Anyway, the pilot would probably not get picked up.

Our cast are inmates in Flood River Prison, and they have a secret.

Gabe Diaz

Gabe went to prison after an armed robbery went bad and he was shot by his supposed partner. Full of hatred for both his betrayer and his self, Gabe wasn’t much enjoying his stay in prison. That is, until he met Sparkleshiner…

Sparkleshiner

Sparkleshiner is a magical pixie sort of thing that lived in the forest that was destroyed to make room for the prison. With nothing better to do, it went to explore the building, where it befreiended Gabe. Now, with its magical powers, Sparkleshiner periodically helps Gabe out of jams, but also frequently gets him into them.

Joshua Kleppent

Gabe’s cellmate is Joshua Kleppent, notorious former hitman who may or may not have dabbled in cannibalism, and he was pretty rough on Gabe for a while. But when Gabe made a supernatural friend, Joshua was brainwashed to be friendlier. Now he is Gabe’s best friend and helps keep Sparkleshiner a secret.

Budson Rodney

Budson was just weeks from getting out when Gabe first came to the prison, but his sentence has been extended because of all the trouble he’s gotten into trying to prove that Gabe is up to something. His constant efforts to snitch to the warden, and his constant failure to prove anything, have driven him over the edge and now he wants to murder Gabe.

Colby Worthington

Warden Colby Worthington hates a lot of things. He hates his job. He hates the inmates. He hates himself. He actually assumes that Budson is right, that Gabe is hiding something, but why is that his problem? Why can’t everyone just kill each other and let him be? After all, he’s got serial killing to do. That’s right, Colby Worthington is a serial killer. A man needs to have a hobby.

If it isn’t obvious, this is my bizarre take on the I Dream Of Genie or Bewitched type of sitcom, in which a character has magical powers and they have to keep it hidden from someone. I decided that that would be funnier if everyone involved was a terrible criminal.

In a world where superheroes are fairly commonplace, there are bound to be more loser ones than good ones. This is a sitcom about a handful of heroes of lesser renown who keep stumbling across one another in their attempts to fight crime. None of them are really friends and they only tolerate each other in the name of fighting for justice, or as close as they can manage.

Secret Sword

Our point-of-view character, the Secret Sword is a young lady who found a sword that gives her magic powers. Having recently been fired, she decided to fight crime. She is immediately in over her head, and gets beat up repeatedly, and sticks with it only to show up the other heroes, who think she can’t make it.

Flasher

A prominent hero who has been active for decades, the light-powered Flasher is so very tired. He puts on a brave face for his fans, but he really thought that punching bad guys would have made a difference by now. He can only open up about his cynicism around the younger generation of heroes, who he wants to talk out of even trying, but also hates because they haven’t made everything great yet either.

Big Beetle

A teenager who accidentally got trapped in a superhero costume created by a rich scientist, Big Beetle has to fight crime to the scientist’s liking in order to get out of the costume for temporary spells and have a normal life. He doesn’t actually care about heroing, but the scientist sure does.

Techbelly

By eating metal or plastic or other such things, Techbelly’s powerful high-tech belly can rearrange them to create devices and gizmos that do all sorts of cool sci-fi stuff. Using these gizmos, Techbelly works to take down the criminals who run the illegal weapons rings in town. After all, he could make a lot of money selling high-tech stuff if they weren’t around.

Watchful Eye

Stuck by lightning, a young man found he suddenly gained a peak-human fitness level and no longer required sleep. Deciding to use these powers to benefit humanity, he became the Watchful Eye, a hero who prowls the streets and, when he sees danger, calls the appropriate authorities to the scene. All the other heroes find this incredibly lame and mock him mercilessly.

Steel Owl

The mysterious Steel Owl is a vigilante of the night wearing high tech armour that provides awesome powers and hides the wearer’s identity. There are rumours that the Steel Owl is actually a rich playboy who hates crime, but the truth is that the Steel Owl suit is worn by a high-ranking police officer. She knows that what she is doing is very illegal, but just enjoys it too much. It isn’t even an “I hate crime so much” thing. She really just finds superheroing fun. The rest of the cast are in awe of the Steel Owl who seems so cool and aloof and driven, but the Steel Owl is just extremely desperate to not mess up in any way and give away her secret identity.

Superhero sitcoms have been done well and done poorly. This, I think, would be one of the latter. I don’t think this show even gets to air all the episodes that are produced before it is cancelled. I would try to avoid the “superheroes hanging out in their downtime” thing that is most common. These guys all run into each other while working, but never in their downtime. It would only be Seinfeld-grade sitcom coincidence logic that makes them have to endure each other. That amuses me, at least.

I just shovelled a bunch of characters from loose sketches into this. At some point I was half-jokingly dared myself to create ANOTHER superhero universe so, while these would fit into one of the many I have already created, instead I declare this Yet Another Universe. Try and stop me.

Flasher is meant to be a superhero whose name would be seen as terrible by people who think about it more than he does (see the Whizzer, for example) and, in case it isn’t clear, I absolutely think the Watchful Eye is the most sensible person in this cast.

Two families living in a duplex have to put up with each other’s quirks.

Ming Doswell

Ming is a police officer from a line of police officers, and she deals with chaos so much in her job that she’d like to get some order in her home life. She will never actually achieve this.

Clinton Doswell

Clinton is a simple man, and likes it that way. He is a stay-at-home dad who does some odd jobs to make extra money, but the thing he is most concerned with is that his kids have a fun childhood. Because of this, he doesn’t put many restrictions on them.

May Doswell

May is the younger sister and she’s all about learning. She does her homework by choice and seeks out extra credit assignments and even tries to learn on her own. She’s also very nosy, and pries into other people’s business all the time.

Erica Doswell

The older of the girls, Erica is a trickster. She will do anything to get a laugh, including lying to other members of the family to see things go wrong.

Abner P. Ruiz

A professor of classic literature, Abner is convinced that the way to raise children well is by exposing them to the fancy-pantsiest of novels. This hasn’t worked with his son, or with his students, but he blames them, not the works.

Colleen Ruiz

Colleen Ruiz is a writer of dramatic plays and constantly tries to seek inspiration in her family life. She is not above “experimenting” on the kids in the families to see how they react to situations.

Thesaurus Ruiz

His idiotic intellectual parents named him Thesaurus because they thought that would make him good with words. It hasn’t. Thesaurus’s main love is sports, much to the embarrassment of his father.

The idea of a big cast of characters coming together is pure sitcom normalcy. All kinds of opposing or complimentary motivations could generate all sorts of story ideas here. There’s no real PDR-Style Twist to this premise though. Probably that would make the show more popular, though.