Sunday, September 2, 2018

DC Comics 1993 Editorial Presentation



Something I love doing is going through old promotional pieces and finding comic book projects that never or barely came out. Often, these are books that I wouldn't care about if they'd actually been released, but they're far more intriguing when never realized (plus they don't cost me anything extra and have a life in the imagination.) Due to the outrageous success of comics in the 1990s, that decade was a hotbed of under-realized prospects, and there's a slew of them in "1993: The Year of Change" editorial presentation that was sent to retailers and industry types. I figured I'd highlight some of their misbegotten offerings.

  • Vince Russell never got to be that big of a name in comics, and is probably best known for inking Mark Bagley on Thunderbolts. He was set to draw the '90s Outsiders revival, but was replaced by Paul Pelletier. 
  • Not sure if this Kevin Nowlan Batman piece turned up anywhere.
  • Young playboy Rick Starr would have saved the 23rd Century from a hidden war between Earth and alien forces involving the Planeteers if Michael Jan Friedman, John Calimee & Mike Chen's 8-issue Space Ranger mini-series had come out. Randy DuBurke produced covers for issues #1, #2 and #3.
  • Here's a wicked little seen Deathstroke promotional image by Jerome K. Moore.
  • For a hot minute it looked like DC's was going to make Kirk Jarvinen a big deal, but he fell right off after producing this promo image for the ongoing Aquaman series that spun out of his "Time & Tide" mini-series. You know, the one drawn by Marty Egeland, who also fell off instead of staying the course, until we ended up with Jim Calafiore. You know, Jim Calafiore.

  • Vertigo's first and only crossover event, 1994's The Children's Crusade, was originally titled "Family Values." 
  • Dean Motter's The Heart of the Beast took twenty years to come out, with a different artist and publisher. 
  • Dick Foreman & Paul Johnson's The Rites of Alchemy was apparently, finally self-published as a giveaway in 2011. 
  • Captain Stone and the Dinosaurs was a planned one-shot by Val Semeiks and "hot new talent" (re: some dude named) Charlie Santino about time-travelers. Not sure how far that got, but there is an image in the book.
  • There was going to be a Ringworld comic by Adam Blaustein & Joe Staton that was stillborn, but here's the cover art.

DC Comics 1993 Editorial Presentation
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