What Could Have Been/Comic Books: Difference between revisions

*** The "Dark Wolverine" story was later repitched as the opening storyline for the 1991 X-Men series: rather than fighting Magneto and the Acolytes, the X-Men would fight the Reavers, of which Lady Deathstrike would kill Wolverine via ripping out his heart. But the Hand (revealed to be in league with the Shadow King) would obtain Wolverine's corpse and recreate his heart/resurrect him as an agent and have him reappear in ''Uncanny X-Men'' #294, as part of the rematch between the X-Men and the Shadow King and his army of minions, as the Shadow King (via Gateway) seeks to gain control over everyone's dreams.

*** The division of the franchise into two books in 1991 might also have gone differently. A piece of original pin-up art by Jim Lee shows Wolverine, Beast, Forge, Strong Guy, Jubilee, Psylocke, Storm (in an unused costume) and Rogue, with Magneto looming in the background. Another shows Xavier, standing up, with Jean in an updated Phoenix costume, Storm (in the familiar '90s costume, suggesting this one was drawn later), Wolverine, Colossus, Gambit and Beast. There is a similar piece by Whilce Portacio that includes Cyclops, Jean, Archangel, Iceman, Gambit and Colossus with Xavier behind them. It's also been said that at some point Xavier would have been killed and Gateway, of all people, would have mentored some of the mutants. Also, let's not forget Jim Lee's "Things to Come" illustration with a creepy Skrull woman and Selene alongside Matsu'o, Omega Red, Longshot and Dazzler. You can see all of the art [http://http://forum.superpouvoir.com/showthread.php?p=85697&postcount=96 here].

* Wolverine was originally going to be revealed as not a human mutant, but an [[Humanoid Animals|actual wolverine that was mutated into humanoid form]]. When another writer attempted this with Spider-Woman and the plot point was rejected, the writer decided not to go with the mutated wolverine bit.

** Len Wein, the original creator, has gone out his his way more than once to crush this rumor. While it was the idea of another writer to have Wolverine as a wolverine cub evolved by the High Evolutionary, Wein had no part in this plan. He had always envisioned him as a mutant. Other rejected backstories for Wolverine included a mutant rancher whose bones were crushed and were replaced with adamantium while he was bedridden in the hospital and having Sabretooth as his father.

* Gerard Jones' version of ''[[Green Lantern]]: Emerald Twilight''. Basically, the Zamarons (the female gladiator counterparts to the Guardians of the Universe) were supposed to take over the Green Lantern Corps, reinstate super-villain and renegade Green Lantern Sinestro as head of the Corps, and do away with all of the established weakness of the power rings (mainly the yellow impurity and 24-hour charge). Hal Jordan would then go renegade, but not in a crazy mass murderer sort of way, but in an [[Only Sane Man]] manner as far as going "rogue" rather than take orders from his arch-nemesis and a bunch of crazy war mongering space amazons. Apparently, DC editorial hated the scenario (largely because it required people knowing who the Zamarons were), so Jones resigned from the title, and Paul Levitz, Mike Carlin, Denny O'Neil, and Archie Goodwin wrote a new plot based on Jones' script, and gave it to Jones' successor, Ron Marz, to write. The result is the ''Emerald Twilight'' that was published currently.

** You can learn more about Jones' ''Emerald Twilight'' [http://www.dcuguide.com/glcorps/curtain/gl48-50.php here].

** Ditko allegedly didn't intend for the Goblin to be Norman Osborn, though; that was Stan Lee's idea. Ditko objected vehemently, and Lee won the argument by virtue of being editor. This was rumor to be the last in a long series of arguments the two of them had over Spidey's direction; allegedly, Ditko considered this one to be the final straw, and he quit Marvel. However, more recently Ditko stated that their falling out had nothing to do with the Green Goblin's identity, and claimed that they'd both agreed that Norman should be the Goblin from the start.

** Some rumors state that Ned Leeds was Steve Ditko's choice for the Green Goblin, backed up by the fact that near the end of Ditko's run, Ned Leeds and Peter had a very antagonistic relationship where they patched things up as soon as Romita took over. Ned was later framed for being the Hobgoblin, making him Marvel's go-to guy for not quite-goblins.

* Due to [[Executive Meddling]], the grand finale to Simon Furman's long-in-the-making saga for IDW's ''[[Transformers]]'' comic series was cut from 12 issues down to 4. Readers therefore missed out on epic battles featuring big bruisers like [[Person of Mass Destruction|Sixshot]] and [[Combining Mecha|Monstructor]], while the long-awaited confrontation between Optimus Prime and Nemesis Prime was reduced to a poorly-explained affair that lasted around three pages. It also resulted in many storylines and character arcs being shortened or even ruined. One character arc involved Sideswipe trying to get to Earth in order to save his brother Sunstreaker who had been kidnapped. The original ending had them being reunited and Sideswipe learning an important lesson, the new ending completely erases any potential brotherly relations between the two and Sideswipe learning the lesson that he [[Family-Unfriendly Aesop|dosen't give two craps about his brother or any suffering he experiences]]. One wonders just how much action readers missed out on by the story being reduced to a third of its planned length.

* Siegel and Shuster conceived of two early versions of [[Superman]] before the famous one. The first was an ordinary man who gained mind control powers in an experiment and became a supervillain until his powers faded (too bad he killed the scientist who gave them to him in the first place) though this was a One Shot. The second version was a nonpowered colorfully attired strongman who went around beating up bullies. This second version eventually became the then mildly popular Slam Bradley (who didn't wear a costume, but otherwise looked a lot like Superman). In this case, [[Executive Meddling]] worked for the better, forcing the creative team to create the third wildly popular version of the character and define an entire genre of fiction.

* [[Alan Moore]]'s [http://www.hoboes.com/Comics/Twilight/ Twilight of the Super Heroes.]

* Another [[Spider-Man]] example, and possibly the best-known; [[The Gwen Stacy|Gwen Stacy]]. Stan Lee has said several times that he originally intended Gwen to be Peter's one-and-only, and that MJ was created only as [[Romantic False Lead|competition]] for Gwen. However, for several reasons too numerous (and controversial) to name here, the writer who succeeded Stan, Gerry Conway, wrote the now iconic comic ''The Night Gwen Stacy Died'' while Stan was away. Many fans still wonder what might have been had Gwen Stacy survived.

** Too numerous? The only reason I've heard was that the only direction the creative team felt that Gwen and Peter could go was to get married, and they didn't want to marry off their protagonist just yet. So they instead killed her. If there are other complex reasons, I would like to hear them.

**** John Romita confirmed the last one, mentioning that part of his reason for suggesting Gwen instead of Aunt May was that with Aunt May dead Peter would no longer have a convincing reason to maintain a secret identity. Also, everybody involved except Stan Lee (whose memory is by his own admission notoriously bad) agreed that Stan okayed Gwen's death beforehand.

* DC's 1991 [[Crisis Crossover]], "Armageddon 2001," promised to reveal that a currently-active DC hero would eventually become the villainous Monarch, who would eventually kill all of his or her colleagues and rule the entire planet with a [[Dr. Doom]]-like iron fist, all by the summer of 2001. When the story was finished, the editorial decision was that Monarch would be revealed as {{spoiler|Captain Atom}}, but then the ending was leaked to the public. A hastily-cobbled-together ending recast Monarch as {{spoiler|Hawk}}, the one character it couldn't have been. One anticlimax later, two regular books were canceled and the entire thing was rendered moot by [[Comic Book Time]] (in 2001, it was no more than two years later in the DCU). {{spoiler|Captain Atom}} into the Monarch anyway.

** It appears the post-''[[Flashpoint (comics)|Flashpoint]]'' DCU reboot is using some concepts from this proposal (namely Superman having no red trunks, both Johnathan and Martha Kent being dead, and Lois and Clark's marriage being nonexistant), though the actual extent remains to be seen.

** The "New 52" reboot ended other stories before they could start. For instance, the finale of the ''Titans'' series hinted at Red Arrow and Jericho rebuilding the team... only for the title to end and an entirely new continuity to start the next month.

* China Mieville's aborted [[Swamp Thing]] [http://www.swampthingroots.com/news_06-03-10_china-mieville-hints-at-his-swamp-thing-run.html run] which got canceled before ever seeing print in order to bring a lot of the DC characters that made the move to Vertigo back into the fold at DC.

* Hulkling of the [[Young Avengers]] was originally pitched as [[Gender Bender|a girl who posed as a guy when fighting crime;]] Wiccan was going to [[Gayngst|struggle with the fact that his love interest was sometimes male.]] It's been speculated that creator Allen Heinberg thought this was as close as Marvel would let him get to putting an openly gay couple on the team. Eventually he had a change of heart and asked for permission to make Hulkling 100% male.

*** Also, [[Flare]] was originally not going to be part of the team!

* Another [[Heroic Publishing]] example: [[Eternity Smith]] was considered for Eclipse's line of 16-Page 50-cent bi-weekly comics, but creator Dennis Mallonee declined. DC was also interested in it, but Mallonee took the book to Renegade Press for five issues before becoming part of Heroic Publishing!

* Nightwing almost got killed off in [[Infinite Crisis]].

** It's interesting how close this came to happening. Dan Didio handed the death down as an editorial mandate, but [[Geoff Johns]] flat-out refused to kill Dick Grayson off (seeing as he is one of the longest-existing comic book characters in American comics). Superboy was eventually killed off instead (and he got resurrected later on).

* In the original proposal for the ''[[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Fantastic Four]]'', Susan Storm was supposed to be permanently invisible and had to wear a mask resembling her face in order to be seen, as well as being an [[Invisible Streaker]]. Apparently having two heroes unable to depower is a bit much, and the proposal itself had this bit of reconsideration:

{{quote|'''[[Stan Lee]]:''' I hope this won't seem [[Rouge Angles of Satin|to]] sexy in art work. Better talk to me about it, Jack-- maybe we'll change this gimmick somewhat[.]}}

** More recently, during the late '90s, when [[Chris Claremont]] was writing the Fantastic Four, he had planned to have Reed and Sue hire [[Astonishing X Men|Kitty Pryde]] as a live-in nanny for Franklin Richards(this taking place after the cancellation of ''[[Excalibur (Comic Book)|Excalibur]]''), but then X-Editor Bob Harris wanted Kitty to rejoin the X-Men.

* Jack Kirby's [[New Gods]] were originally going to debut in Marvel, and would have either tied in with [[The Mighty Thor]] or [[The Inhumans]]. However before plans had taken their final shape, Kirby got fed up with his situation at Marvel (being co-creator of at least half their money-makers with no creative custody of them) and jumped ship to DC, taking them with him.

* There was supposed to be a legitimate prequel series to Watchmen, The Minutemen, which would have been of equal length and created by Alan Moore and David Gibbons. Moore's falling out with DC ended the prospects of this. Stranger still, going by comments made by Gibbons and Moore at the time, the tone would have been very different, attempting to recreate Golden Age comics as realistically as possible (if not an actual [[Reconstruction]]). This would have had far-reaching effects, since imitation of Watchmen's style was responsible for some of the worst excesses of the Dark Age of Comics.

* In 1962, [[DC Comics]] published a ''[[Dr. No]]'' comic, which failed to garner attention. [http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2006_12_03.html#012517 Only 10 years later], as the rights were about to expire, DC noticed they had the rights for more [[James Bond]] comics. [[Jack Kirby]] and Alex Toth were even contacted, but the higher-ups ultimately discarded as [[Sean Connery]] left the series and [[It Will Never Catch On|they did not know if 007 would still be popular.]]