Since John Seavey is never gonna do it

For those unfamilar with John Seavey he writes a blog called fraggmented, on this blog one of the things he writes about is the story engines of various tv shows and comic books. If you get the itch you should check it out (sorry, I'm too retarded to link stuff, lol). Anyways according to his definition of a story telling engine. Basically, it is the settings, occupations and, supporting casts members that can each generate stories inorder for writers to work serialized fiction.
Anyways, I enjoy reading this blog and after finally succombing to new comic day. I got some new comics. Including the Green Lantern Corps. Which is basically a cop show in outerspace. Well, while reading the latest issue of GLC. It dawned on me for the first time (yeah, I'm kinda slow like that) I noticed just how good of a storytelling engine this book has. Fisrt of all, it has around two hundred people in its supporting cast. Which makes it easy to write since if you can't figure out something to do with one character you can always do it to one of the many bit players. Not only that but, you can also use any of the bit players in order to draw the main characters into a new story or play against the main characters. They can do all sorts of stuff to generate new stories. Next is there is the galactic cop angle. By using the tropes of both a cop shows and sci fi shows, to generate new stories. The writers can do alot more stories than some one wrting about cops and robbers or space travel. The writers of the Green Lantern Corps. They can mix and match tropes from both kinds of stories or the can just focus more on the cop part or more on the space part as they wish (as long as they do blend together once in awhile). Basically, you can look at the GLC as Star Trek and Law and Order (or one of those types of shows) or if your so inclined you could describe it as Frirefly crossed with The Shield (but not quite as violent) and it has the added bonus of having a cast of hundreds. The only problem with this story telling engine is how far you can go in any direction without going to far and ending up breaking the audiences willing suspension of disbelief. Besides that though the skies the limit (literally) or at least that's my ten cents.