What Could Have Been/Comic Books: Difference between revisions

** That's not all. The second Silk Spectre was going to be a teenage runaway simply named Silk, the world would actually be [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]], with no disease and easy genetic modification. Antarctica was going to be a huge resort for the rich and wealthy, an idea which ended up trickling down to ultimately being ''only'' Ozymandias' lair.

* 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.

* The [[Spider-Man|Green Goblin]] was originally intended by [[Stan Lee]] to be an [[Sealed Evil in a Can|actual demonic goblin-thing released from an Egyptian sarcophagus]]. Steve Ditko apparently convinced him that a human psychopath in a costume fit the tone of the Spidey series better. This idea was used in the Ultimate Universe, where that universe's Norman Osborn mutates into an actual goblin due to an experiment.

** 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.]

* [[Gail Simone]]'s [http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=130350 original proposition] for the Cassandra [[Batgirl]] was to have her rescue a sincerely faithful Christian preacher to Gotham's homeless population from a mugging and be converted by his sincere, strong faith in forgiveness and the teachings of the Bible. Taking up a new, white-colored costume, and devoting herself to the most vulnerable of Gotham's residents -- the mentally ill, the homeless, runaways and immigrants -- she would become known as the Angel of the Bat and, for the first time ever, would be genuinely happy.

* When [[J. Michael Straczynski]] thought up his ridiculously controversial ''Sins Past'' storyline {{spoiler|(which revealed that [[The Gwen Stacy|Gwen Stacy]] had had a child with Norman Osborn}}, he planned for Peter Parker to be {{spoiler|the child's father}}, but Joe Quesada, the EIC of Marvel, [[Executive Meddling|felt that]] this would [[Comic Book Time|age the character]] too much. <ref> Much more acceptable would be to turn one of the most innocent characters in the history of comics into a cheater, thereby tainting the most fondly remembered relationship in comics.</ref>

* ''[[Star Raiders (comics)|Star Raiders]]'' [http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2010/09/17/comic-book-legends-revealed-278/ was originally intended as a 120-page-long limited series.] Unfortunately, due to [[The Great Video Game Crash of 1983]], [[Atari]] canceled the deal with [[DC Comics]] midway through development. With 40 pages of painted art already completed, DC decided to cut their losses by commissioning an additional 20 pages to finish the story, then released it as a graphic novel. Needless to say, the story suffers from the compressed story arc, and many characters and plot points are [[Left Hanging]] as a result.

* The Red Circle: The original plan was that JMS was going to debut them in the pages of ''[[The Brave and the Bold]]'' in their original forms and team them with DC's big names. But apparently DC felt that the spots on ''The Brave and the Bold'' would be better served with the [[Milestone Comics]] heroes instead, so DC and JMS did four one-shots reviving some of them (mostly radically altered) before launching The Shield and The Web into their own titles (with the other two heroes introduced in the one-shots in back-up stories: Inferno and Hangman, respectively). The books lasted 10 issues each, but not before DC publishing a Mighty Crusaders Special at the same month as the ninth issues of the two books! The only major appearance of any of the Red Circle guys in another DC book was when the Shield showed up in two issues of Magog. Currently, they are publishing a Mighty Crusaders six-issue mini-series in order to try to wrap up all loose ends that the earlier Red Circle book had left behind!

* According to James Fry, if Marvel had approved of more ''Slapstick'' stories after ''[[The Awesome Slapstick]]'', his Rogue's Gallery would have included established Marvel villains such as The Toad Men and the poultry-based team-up of [[Super Zeroes|The Black Talon, Gamecock, and Bantam]] -- revealing them to be [[Sibling Rivalry|rival siblings]] in a battle that would have ended with all the heroes doubled over with laughter at their expense...

* Dave Stevens sketched and scripted a three issue [[The Rocketeer (comics)|The Rocketeer]]/[[Superman]] [http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=29312 mini] that never saw the light of day. It would have been set in [[The Thirties]] on the day of [[Orson Welles]]' infamous ''[[War of the Worlds]]'' broadcast.