Trivia / Mort the Dead Teenager

• Acclaimed Flop: The miniseries was HUGELY unpopular upon release, so much so that it has never seen a physical reprint. There is a small group of fans who hold the series to a high regard, making it a cult series.
• Advertising by Association: Before the comic released, the monthly Marvel sales catalog Sales To Astonish advertised it as being similar to that of Ren & Stimpy, which was currently having its own Marvel adaptation. You can read the blurb here.◊
  • Also of note is the release date that was pushed back from September to December.
• Bonus Material: In the Official Expanded Marvel Handbook, Mort has a listing as a character, with new art of him in a more streamlined Marvel style not drawn by Hallgren. His entry summarizes the comic and adds first and last names for some of his family members and friends, and specifies his height as 5'7" (170 cm) and weight as 145 lbs (168 kilograms). He also appears on one of the covers sitting in the hand of Red Ronin.
• Creator's Oddball: To fans of Larry Hama, it’s usually regarded as his weirdest work, as he is most known for his action-filled series with gritty characters. For fans of Hallgren, it’s more of his usual type of stuff.
• Dawson Casting: The role of Mort in the film was supposed to go to Elijah Wood, and Kimberly to Dominique Swain, later replaced with Jessica Simpson.
• Development Hell: The movie adaptation had been in and out of production for almost 15 years, until the rise of the MCU, where it was effectively shelved.
• Dueling Works: If any of you know Tom and Mary Bierbaum, you’d be surprised to find out they made an independent comic called Dead Kid Adventures around the time after Mort was released. It ran even shorter than Mort, and was cancelled after 2 issues when the publisher went through financial trouble and ceased operations. An Ashcan Copy exists as well.
  • What's even more interesting is the fact that the titular "Dead Kid" himself has a similar name: Morty Coyle.
• Exiled from Continuity: Mort canonically takes place on Earth-616 in the Marvel Universe (though originally not intended), but due to conflicts with Death (a female character in all other works) and Death (a male character in Mort), plus all the plot contrivances such as Mort’s cyclical loop in the final issue and the fact that Mort technically isn’t considered a superhero, it would be very difficult to implement Mort in future works or the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
• Inspiration for the Work: Hama simply thought of the name first and worked a story around it due to it sounding good.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Mort has never had a physical release in English aside from the initial release in 1993-1994, and while even though the comics are worth at most $5 when rated, it’s somewhat hard to come by in physical stores if you don’t know where to look.
  • Somewhat averted regarding the digital release, which is on nearly every service Marvel Comics are available.
• Quietly Cancelled: The film appears to be this, as there hasn't been mention of the production since 2010 when it was being shopped around to producers. The Jessica Simpson footage had been edited into a pilot trailer, but both are now lost media due to the producers either simply not having it on hand or due to rights reasons.
• The Other Darrin: Jessica Simpson to Dominique Swain’s Kimberly in the test footage shot for the movie. The contents of both of their footage are currently lost media.
• Promoted Fanboy: The initial executive producers of the first iteration movie adaptation were none other than Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg. When it switched hands, the executive producer was now Quentin Tarantino. Madonna was also attached to the Tarantino iteration as a producer.
• Referenced by...: Wizard Magazine had a feature that originated in the late 90s called "Mort of the Month", dedicated to making fun of rather obscure and odd characters in comics, with Mort himself being the source of the name.
• Release Date Change: The comic was supposed to come out in September of 1993 and run until December of that year. Pushbacks regarding production caused it to come out in December, and have it run until March of the next year.
• Schedule Slip: Production reasons caused the comic to come out in December instead of September of 1993.
• Short Run in Peru: A physical edition of the series was released in Norway in the late 90s as a Pocket Comics book, alongside the ENORMOUSLY POPULAR Conan the Barbarian releases.
• Stillborn Franchise: As it was a miniseries, it most likely wasn’t supposed to create a franchise, but if the movie had come out, it most certainly would have.
• What Could Have Been:
  • If the original pitch for Mort were picked up in the early 90s as a movie before work started on the comic, it most likely would have been more successful.
  • According to an issue of Wizard Magazine, there was talks of an animated series based on Mort for UPN, but this was not to be.