Everybody has an opinion about which Marvel characters need their own spin-off. With the right writers and enough effort, I'm sure most characters could receive a treatment that is either enjoyable to watch or true to the comic books. Whether both outcomes can be acheived will remain to be seen, although even in past film adaptations of big-name heroes (Spider-Man, Thor, etc.) these two factors have been juggled with varying degrees of success.

I expect, in Sony's effort to extend cinema's grubby-fingered reach into the Marvel universe, the decisions about which characters can support a feature length film will boil down to 1) how much "book time" the character has in Marvel's canon upon which to draw as source material, and 2) how enjoyable Sony gauges a solo outing for a particular character will be for audiences.

A big factor implicit in number 2 is how familiar the general public is with a character. Everybody knows about Spidey. Fewer have heard of, say, Toxin. Sony will probably choose to start with characters that have higher visibility: think Venom, who has already appeared in Sam Raimi's Spiderman 3.

But are we overlooking someone here?

We need an Aunt May movie.

Having already appeared in the previous Spider-Man movies, she is recognizable to audiences. In the past, she harbored resentment toward Peter for his role in her husband's death – this wound could lead to her "turning to the dark side," so to speak, like so many villains before her.

But who would watch a movie about Peter's elderly aunt? I'm glad you asked. The trick is to turn Aunt May into a superheroine. I know, I know – that wouldn't be faithful to the comics. And let me tell you, I support integrity to the original work as much as the next guy; but if filmmakers are going to get Spider-Man wrong, this is one way it could be spectacularly wrong. Am I right?

Here are my top three ideas for an Aunt May alternate identity.

Mayfly

Kids living on the floor above May perform experiments on fruit flies in the microwave for a science project. Some mutated larvae make their way into May's water supply. Some of the larvae embed themselves into her back while she takes a shower. Over the next few days, she becomes aware of a startling phenomenon: at night, she grows a pair of humongous wings. Gradually she learns how to fly, and she spends her nights zipping around the city doing good ... or ill.

Or...

Maypole

After suffering back problems, Aunt May receives surgery in which her spine is fused with a therapeutic contraption that happens to be the technological descendant of Otto Octavius's four-armed machine. Supposedly the kinks had been worked out, but a gnat crawls into the circuit area and dies across two critical components, shorting the system and freeing the device to control May much like Doc Ock's disaster. She begins to use her new mechanistic might to rob pet stores of every last bunny.

Or...

Anti-May

May's house is being foreclosed upon. OsCorp needs the space for a new covert lab unit and buys the property. May is permitted to live there until she finds a new home, but crates of equipment begin arriving and cluttering the living room. Thinking one of the shiny instruments is actually a high-end industrial oven, she bakes biscuits in it. Later, the authorities, responding to neighbors' reports of "a loud zapping noise" emanating from the house, are confused to find globs of biscuit dough splattered all around an atomic particle condenser and fail to notice a slight distortion – not unlike a heat wave in summer – near the door. Anti-May spends her now time foiling OsCorp experiments and befuddling physicists.

Share Your Idea! Have an equally ridiculous idea for a spin-off? Share it in the comments below.

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