The news that Disney is acquiring Marvel Entertainment hit geekdom like an atom bomb this morning. There's been lots of speculation, excitement and fear. But one thing stood out amidst the huge infodump of news:

John Lasseter has met with Marvel folks, and everybody got very excited.

This sounds like Pixar could be making a Marvel movie. But what Marvel movie could they make? Most of the major characters are probably headed for live action treatment, and Pixar's already made a semi-definitive Marvelesque movie with The Incredibles. I don't think they'd want to tread the same ground, so that leaves out properties like Power Pack. But the Marvel library is deep, and there are many, many titles and characters that would make great Pixar films. Here are ten that are perhaps more obscure.

Ka-Zar - I have to be honest here: I don't know if Ka-Zar is an X-Men character. While there was a Ka-Zar who appeared in Marvel Comics #1 from Timely Comics (the precursor to Marvel), the modern Ka-Zar first appeared in The X-Men #10. But let's assume he's not in Fox's clutches - Ka-Zar is an amazing property for Pixar. He's Tarzan living amongst dinosaurs!

Born Lord Kevin Plunder, Ka-Zar's father discovered the Savage Land, a prehistoric paradise hidden in a crater in Antarctica. When his parents were killed Ka-Zar was found and raised by a sabre-tooth tiger, Zabu. Master of the Savage Land, Ka-Zar battles dinosaurs and Man-Apes, as well as the usual Marvel Comics assortment of monsters and aliens.

Imagine Pixar doing a pulpy dinosaur movie! This one seems like a complete win on every possible level imaginable.

Quasar - Wendell Vaughn was just a regular SHIELD agent until he became the owner of the Quantum Bands, cosmic weapons of unbelievable power. With the Quantum Bands forever attached to his wrists, Vaughn discovers he's been chosen to be the Protector of the Universe, a big calling for a square from Wisconsin. His mentor is Eon, a huge green boulder with a face and a huge eye and tentacles (so fucking weird looking), and Quasar battles cosmic threats on Earth as well as in the deepest reaches of space.

Quasar's particularly great for Pixar because the character is a normal guy thrown into such bizarre situations, most of which would be fairly silly in live action. Eon alone would just be far too weird to take seriously in a live action film. And the kinds of threats that Quasar battles - like Oblivion, the personification of non-existence - and the scale on which he battles them would make any live action film mostly a cartoon anyway. I just love the way that Vaughn's Midwestern pluck and politeness serves him in encounters with the trippiest cosmic beings imaginable, and I think Pixar would have a blast with that.

Sleepwalker - This is a character almost no one knows, and for him to work on film he'd have to be reimagined slightly, but the basic concept offers a lot of fun possibilities. Sleepwalker is a resident of the Mindscape, a dimension that abuts the unconscious of all intelligent beings. In the Mindscape he's a member of a group that guards the dimension, acting as a sort of dream police. But Sleepwalker's archnemesis Cobweb tricks him and has him trapped inside the mind of a normal Earth film student. The two have to learn how to cohabitate in the same brain, while Sleepwalker uses his weird dream powers to fight crime and injustice on this plane and the Mindscape.

The comic focused way too much on what was happening in the waking world; a good Sleepwalker movie would definitely have to spend more time in the Mindscape. And the world of dreams is a place where Pixar could run wild. Perhaps the waking world could be represented by very mocapped, very realistic looking characters, with the Mindscape being a just totally off the charts blast from the animator's imagination. And since nobody really likes Sleepwalker, Pixar could have a very free hand in reimagining him; hell, they could probably turn him into an actually viable character.

Guardians of the Galaxy - Modern day astronaut Major Vance Astro ends up in the 31st century. There he falls in with the Guardians of the Galaxy, a team made up of aliens who are the last remaining members of their individual species. Together they're battling the Badoon, an alien race that has been conquering system after system and who are now trying to take Earth. The members of the team are Martinex, a guy from Pluto whose body is made of crystal; Charlie-27, a block-headed powerhouse genetically engineered to live in Jupiter's gravity; the blue-skinned, red-mohawked sort of Na'vi-like Yondu from Alpha Centauri; Starkhawk, an Arcturian who has been granted extraordinary powers by an ancient Hawk God, and the Mercurian Nikki, who can withstand incredible heat, has flames coming out of her head, and is a sharp-shooter.

Think Star Wars if everybody was an alien. The Guardians fight big space opera battles against the Badoon, trying to free worlds and shut down the aliens' evil plans. Even cooler is the possibility to tie it all into the Marvel Universe - in the Guardians of the Galaxy comic in the 80s the team found Captain America's shield, which Vance Astro would go on to wield. Many of the members have ties to Marvel heroes (Starhawk is Quasar's kid!). Big space adventure with a weird cast of characters who could never be done live action? Perfect for Pixar.

Damage Control - In a world where superheroes regularly brawl their way through buildings and landmarks, somebody has to clean it up. That somebody is Damage Control. Operating out of New York City's famous Flatiron Building, Damage Control is the construction company that shows up and makes sure the city in shape for the next issue of a Marvel comic. Imagined as a sitcom, Damage Control is weird workplace comedy in the Mighty Marvel Manner; not only are there the usual office workers involved, but the Search and Rescue arm of the organization hires many superbeings, and occasionally famous ones show up as part of court-ordered community service. Greek god Hercules worked with the team in that capacity, for example. And since Damage Control is partially owned by Tony Stark, Iron Man is no stranger to their adventures.

While Damage Control could conceptually be a live action movie, I think it would work particularly well in CGI. For one thing, the inherent scope of the material - huge swaths of destruction must be cut in order to make Damage Control useful - would make a live action comedy movie cost-prohibitive. For another, making Damage Control a cartoon allows you to use some of the stranger heavy hitters in the Marvel Universe. Imagine an opening scene with Fin Fang Foom, the giant Chinese dragon, making a mess of Lower Manhattan. But what makes Damage Control a Pixar movie, and not a Dreamworks movie, is the human interaction among the staff. All of the humor comes from the characters, not from making fun of the situations.

Project Pegasus - Hidden in the Adirondack Mountains is a secret government research project known as Project PEGASUS (Potential Energy Group/Alternate Sources/United States). Originally tasked to find alternate energy sources, Project PEGASUS over time evolved to become a facility where superpowered beings were studied and sometimes imprisoned. There's a normal staff of scientists, bureaucrats and security personnel, but also a bunch more exotic types. The subjects at PEGASUS ranged from Jack of Hearts, a half-human half-alien who could fly and shoot blasts from his hands, to Wundarr the Aquarian (a sort of Space Jesus), to Nitro, a villain whose power was exploding.

While the mission of PEGASUS in the comics was ever-changing - was it a research facility, was it a prison, was it a halfway house for weird characters who had nowhere else to go? - a Pixar version would likely focus on the halfway house aspect. A dysfunctional family of superbeings with an authority group of humans - there are a lot of interesting dynamic to explore here. And with the Marvel Universe open to them, Pixar could pick and choose some of the weirder, more unusual super characters to feature. Think of it as Toy Story meets The Incredibles.

Squadron Supreme - In an alternate reality there are alternate superheroes, all of whom are very reminiscent of DC's Justice League. There's the superman Hyperion, the dark vigilante Nighthawk, the speedster Whizzer, the toug gal Power Princess, the hotshot with a power ring Dr. Spectrum, the undersea guy the Amphibian, and the Skrullian Spymaster, a shape-chaning green alien. And that's just the original guys - they added other characters, like Tom Thumb, a genius midget, Nuke, a radioactive man, and Arcanna, a magician. In Mark Gruenwald's amazing 12-part miniseries, which came out a year before Watchmen, they decided to use their power to take over the world and make it a utopia. Things didn't work out the way they planned. It was a hard-edged look at what might really happen if superpowered people lived among us.

If Pixar ever wanted to go PG-13, this is the property with which to do it. A smart and dark examination of the dangers of well-meaning fascism (which is exactly what's behind superheroes), Squadron Supreme is like Watchmen if everybody had powers and there was less nudity and swearing. The Mark Gruenwald miniseries is a huge, sweeping epic that would cost 250 million if done live action. Animated and stylized it would be cheaper and more accessible to the masses - superhero deconstruction your 13 year old nephew could watch. Of course it seems unlikely that Pixar will be going PG-13 any time soon, but if they did...

The Eternals - At the dawn of man the mysterious giant armored beings The Celestials arrived on Earth. They experimented on the nascent human race, creating two offshoots. One was the Deviants, a monstrous subhuman race. The other was the Eternals, who had the genetic possibility to be long-lived and super-powered. The Celestials left, intending to one day return to Earth to judge humanity. The Eternals split into two factions - one lead by Kronos, the other by the warlike Uranos. Uranos and his people left Earth while Kronos experimented with cosmic radiation that activated the Eternal's dormant genes. The experiment scattered Kronos' particles across the universe, while his sons Zuras and Alars, led the Eternals in a new golden age, which included building a city called Olympus in Greece. You see where this is going? Over the years the Eternals have stayed aloof from humanity, but every now and again they get involved in our affairs, and when the Celestials returned to judge the Earth they had to take part to save themselves.

A science fiction take on the Greek gods. This seems like something Pixar could sink their teeth into. Created by Jack Kirby after he left DC and The New Gods, The Eternals is thematically similar, and has all of that big idea Jack Kirby stuff that influenced generations. Maybe Pixar can't get their hands on The New Gods (and you bet everyone who counts Kirby as an influence wants to try their hands at that), but this is the next best thing. And because Kirby, as usual, never finished his story, there are a lot of places to go with the concept of scifi Greek Gods. You could set the whole thing in the past, or you could set it during the return of the Celestials. Giant armored beings fighting analogues of the Greek Gods over modern New York? Yes please!

Thunderbolts- When the Avengers were thought dead, a new superteam stepped into the void created by their loss. Called the Thunderbolts, these mysterious newcomers included the patriotic Citizen V, the armored MACH-1, the gadget guy Techno, the growing man Atlas, the super screamer Songbird, the mega-powered Meteorite and the young girl Jolt. But it turned out that, except for Jolt, all the members of the Thunderbolts were actually supervillains. Led by Baron Zemo, son of a Nazi supervillain, the members of the Masters of Evil used the ruse as a way to gain public trust and get access to all of the information the Avengers had. The plan was to take over the country from the inside. But some of the team members had a change of heart, and they took on Baron Zemo, using the Thunderbolts as a way to go straight.

This is probably the least CGI-specific concept on this list. It's also potentially the toughest, as many of the characters would have to be changed, since some of them come from the rogues galleries of Marvel characters whose film rights are owned by other studios. But what I like about Thunderbolts for Pixar is the theme: redemption. Pixar's been tackling more and more mature themes lately, with Up's meditation on loss being the most grown-up yet. So why not redemption? These villains find that when they play the hero they become the hero. They like the role. They like being good better than being bad, and they have to figure out how to make up for what they had done in their previous lives - if they can ever make up for it. It's a dilemma we all face, because in our own ways we screw things up and have to make them better. The idea that you can atone for what you've done is a very adult one, but also really identifiable for kids.

And I think Pixar could have a good time with a bunch of bad guys.

Prime/The Ultraverse - Marvel doesn't just have the Marvel Universe. There are a number of other properties that fit under the Marvel Entertainment umbrella (like the New Universe, for one. They have a super powered football team!), but the one that I think has the most possibility is the Ultraverse. Originally published by Malibu Comics when everybody and their dog were starting new cohesive superhero universes, the Ultraverse was a wild and fun place that died when Marvel bought it up. Now the many characters, including Prime, a kid who turns into a big, beefy superman (not original, but the execution made it work), sit gathering dust.

Prime is really a 13 year old boy who is able to create an adult, superpowered protoplasmic body around himself (it's messy and gooey when he turns back into a boy). It's essentially Shazam!, but what made Prime really unique is the fact that the Prime body was itself an extension of the kid's subconcious. The way it looke was impacted by who and what he held in high esteem at any given moment - the original body was cartoonish in musculature and had a face that looked like the kid's dad. Later, when Prime met grim n' gritty superheroes he turned into Rogue Prime - tattoos, spiked armor, facial scars, all the bullshit from 90s comics. The series didn't last long enough to really explore this, but the idea of the kid literally becoming his role models is too good to pass up. And the cartoony nature of the Prime body makes a stylized Pixar take perfect.

Of course Prime isn't the only Ultraverse character out there. I'd love for John Lasseter to have gotten excited not about any of the Marvel Universe characters but about having access to this unused library. A boy can dream. Which is what Prime's all about, after all.