What Could Have Been / The DCU

The DCU

The following have their own pages:

• Batman
• Legion of Super-Heroes
• Superman
• Teen Titans
• Wonder Woman

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Various

• Neil Gaiman once scripted an issue for The Sandman taking place in the dreams of an unborn fetus as it's being aborted by a doctor, but he declined to publish it because he knew that the subject of abortion would generate too much controversy. And he considered it too dark, even by Sandman standards.
  • The "last" volume of The Sandman was going to be about an issue longer, with the speeches of Alianore, Odin, and Death in full. And Superman, but that was Executive Meddling.
  • Sandman was initially conceived as part of the Wildcards universe, and Gaiman only brought the concept to DC after it was rejected by George R. R. Martin.
• 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 Doctor 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 Captain Atom, but then the ending was leaked to the public. A hastily-cobbled-together ending recast Monarch as 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). A later story turned Captain Atom into the Monarch anyway.
• Breach was supposed to be Captain Atom also, in this case a Continuity Reboot for the character. The decision to change it must have come very late, as there are some goofs in the first issue where he's referred to using Captain Atom's real name. Infinite Crisis has Alexander Luthor Jr. state that he would've been the Captain Atom of a hypothetical Earth-Eight (alongside a few other replacement characters), but was forced to be a case of Expy Coexistence due to the lack of a multiverse.
• Crisis on Infinite Earths was set to have a different, almost anti-climatic ending. The original ending would have been issue 10, when the Anti-Monitor's fight with the Spectre leads to the multiverse's destruction and the complete rebirth of the DC Universe. Marv Wolfman's plan was originally to have everyone in the DCU modified, even taking new genders and new nationalities in the process. However, CoIE proved to be very popular and Marv was forced to extend it two issues more and show that all of the characters were still there. There was another alternative ending in which Superman of Earth 1 would die during the fight with the Anti-Monitor and Earth 2 Superman's aged look was only a make up disguise since his aging stopped at the peak of his powers. This idea got scrapped when John Byrne's idea for The Man of Steel mini series got planned.
  • Wolfman's plans purportedly extended beyond simply reimagining every character from the ground-up; he wanted to do the same to DC Comics as a company and is supposed to have lobbied for the company's name (at least on the covers of the comics) to be changed to "Action" which would facilitate a more direct and dynamic comparison to "Marvel". The closest thing was when DC created an alternate branding called Superman Comics during 1987.
• Ferro Lad was intended to be black in Legion of Super-Heroes, but DC editors shot down the idea as they feared losing readers in the South. Due to the meddling, Jim Shooter opted to kill off the character. Shadow Lass was also originally intended to be a black woman, but had her skin changed to blue.
• Swamp Thing:
  • The notorious final set of issues of Rick Veitch's run, which would have had a time-travelling Swampie meet Jesus Christ. This was subject to Executive Veto at the last minute as too controversial, despite the fact that there would apparently have been nothing in the story to offend mainstream Christians. Veitch promptly quit in disgust.
  • Veitch's departure led to Neil Gaiman pulling out of the comic in sympathy. His run would have followed Veitch's and, according to him, would have involved a sort of Bat Family Crossover featuring all of the DC Universe's plant-themed heroes and villains. Seeds for this had already been planted in a couple of Gaiman-written comic issues featuring Poison Ivy and Jason Woodrue.
  • China Miéville's aborted 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.
• 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. They then published 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. The Red Circle heroes have since returned to Archie Comics.
  • Also, according to Mark Heike, he planned a proposed 25-page special featuring almost every single REAL costumed hero Archie created (No Pureheart or Captain Sprocket) battling the best of MLJ's Golden Age villains, with each chapter drawn by an AC Comics artist. It was slated to revive interest in these heroes, but Archie Comics did not consider it workable. The material was re-purposed as AC's 2003 one-shot Sentinels Of America.
• Dave Stevens sketched and scripted a three issue The Rocketeer / Superman mini that never saw the light of day. It would have been set in The '30s on the day of Orson Welles' infamous The War of the Worlds broadcast.
• Nightwing was almost killed by Alexander Luthor Jr. 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 (at a time when DC was in a legal battle with the estate of Jerry Siegel over rights to the character). The plan was for the recently-resurrected Jason Todd to succeed Dick as a Darker and Edgier Nightwing – the One Year Later relaunch instead had Jason unsuccessfully try to usurp the mantle from Dick.
• Final Crisis:
  • The story was originally supposed to bring back the classic Aquaman, who would've replaced the poorly-received A.J. Curry version of Aquaman that was floating around at the time. In Morrison's own words, they and J.G. Jones had wanted to bring back an Aquaman "we could all understand", but they didn't provide an explanation for how he'd returned or regained his iconic appearance, with the assumption being that another writer would fill in the details later. DC ended up scrapping the plan in favor of the then-upcoming Blackest Night crossover, leading to Aquaman's cameo appearance in Final Crisis becoming an Aborted Arc.
  • Hawkman and Hawkgirl were originally supposed to die, which is why they catch fire near the end of the story and then simply vanish from the plot. Dwayne McDuffie had even scripted a scene in Justice League of America showing Red Arrow visiting Hawkgirl's grave, which had to be hastily rewritten when editorial changed its mind.
• In August 2003, Mark Waid and Mike Wieringo put in a proposal for a one-shot special that would revamp Aquaman. Rather than going the Darker and Edgier route like Peter David's Aquaman (1994), they'd wanted to do a Lighter and Softer take playing on the wonderment and majesty of the ocean. It would have featured a Russian marine biologist named Yelena as an Audience Surrogate, with the goal being to remind people why the idea of having epic adventures underwater seemed so cool before Superfriends ruined it.
• Paul Dini wrote a Zatanna Prestige Format one-shot for Vertigo, which sold out in a short time. Vertigo had plans for a miniseries and eventually a series. Then, Grant Morrison got the bid for Seven Soldiers and snatched Zatanna away... Dini's ongoing Zatanna series did eventually happen in 2010, though it was cancelled after 16 issues.
  • When Dini first announced his Black Canary / Zatanna graphic novel, it was said that Amanda Conner would be on art duties. The book was then delayed for years, and when it finally did get released, the artist had been changed to Joe Quinones.
• Speaking of Seven Soldiers, the project was originally going to be a Justice League Spin-Off focusing on some of the lesser known heroes of the DCU, with Morrison specifically envisioning the new team as a pastiche of Marvel's Avengers. To that end, the original cast consisted of characters who each paralleled a specific Avenger, with the Guardian standing in for Captain America (a shield-wielding Badass Normal), the Enchantress for Scarlet Witch (a magical heroine with a bit of a dark side), Mr. Miracle for Thor (a caped Jack Kirby creation with ties to a fantastic other world), Etrigan the Demon for the Hulk (a tormented man with a dangerous Superpowered Alter Ego), obscure Golden Age hero Spyder for Hawkeye (an adventurous archer with an arsenal of Trick Arrows) and Martian Manhunter for The Vision (a stoic green hero with the ability to become intangible). Morrison was denied permission to have the Demon, Enchantress or Martian Manhunter in the book since they were all being used elsewhere at the time, so they replaced them with Klarion, Zatanna and Frankenstein, respectively. By then, the whole Avenger pastiche angle had begun to fade away, and it was eventually decided to drop the Justice League title and do the story as its own unrelated thing.
• Christopher Priest initially intended for the Justice League member Triumph to be a closeted gay man, but could never come up with an appropriate story to handle the subject matter. This led to other writers mistakenly giving Triumph female love interests, and later, an illegitimate son.
• Priest's The Ray series was originally going to be about an entirely original character named the Avenger. His editor liked the pitch, but asked for a name change due to the obvious legal issues "Avenger" presented. Priest ended up revamping the character into a new version of the Ray, a character he remembered from the Freedom Fighters.
• Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!:
  • One of the proposed endings would've seen the creation of a new multiverse world that was essentially the Pre-Crisis DCU. This presumably would've provided an alternative for fans who preferred the classic versions of DC heroes, as opposed to the host of gritty revamps and Younger and Hipper Legacy Characters that were popular at the time.
  • Another idea would've had Hal Jordan temporarily recreate the Multiverse, with a new Earth-2 ultimately emerging as the only surviving world. This would have allowed the JSA to continue existing without having to explain how a bunch of people who'd been fighting crime back in the '30s and '40s could still be active in the present.
  • Alex Ross came up with a mini-series idea called Batboy, who would have focused on the son of Bruce Wayne and his ally, Superman, Jr. Most of the original heroes would have been retired save Green Lantern Hal Jordan with the Teen Titans becoming the Justice League. As the story progressed, Batboy would realize his world was too perfect before learning the truth — this was Hal Jordan's perfect Earth from Zero Hour: Crisis in Time!.
  • The ending was originally supposed to reveal that the alternate Batgirl seen throughout (from a universe where the Joker decided to kill Commissioner Gordon instead of crippling her) became a new Time Trapper after she made a Heroic Sacrifice to save Damage.
• Shazam!:
  • After the 70s revival series was cancelled, Roy Thomas pitched a Continuity Reboot of the Captain Marvel franchise that would've given the character a Race Lift and recast Billy Batson as a black kid.
  • Before the Trials of Shazam series, Alex Ross pitched a new Shazam series which would've seen the Marvel Family traveling the world and trying to reclaim Captain Marvel's powers after they were scattered across the planet. The series would've officially brought Black Vulcan from the Super Friends cartoon into DC canon by making him the first non-white member of the Marvel Family.
• The JLA / JSA: Virtue and Vice graphic novel was clearly intended to be a three or four-issue miniseries. The story breaks into almost perfect twenty-two page segments. Why it was released as one book was unclear, but DC possibly wanted to test out releasing more stories directly as graphic novels.
• In 1962, DC Comics published a Dr. No comic, which failed to garner attention. 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 they did not know if 007 would still be popular.
• Gail Simone pitched an idea for a New 52 team book that would've starred Stephanie Brown, Bumblebee, Black Alice, and Misfit. The book would've effectively brought Brown out of Comic-Book Limbo after her Batgirl series was cancelled.
• There was a Doom Patrol remake pitched by Scott Lobdell and Illias Kyriazis that had a massive misfit team of players. They would have been led by Beast Boy (going back to his Changeling code name) and Robotman (who would have been shrunk to toy size and forced to be worn around Changeling's neck.) and comprised of Zatara, Madame-.44, Platinum of the Metal Men, Sprout (who is most likely Swamp Thing's kid) and Bizzaro (though which one isn't revealed). Taking a cue from the modern Booster Gold series, they would have been a super team that went around stopping Earth-destroying threats yet never get any sort of recognition because no one would know about it.
• In the 90s, there were plans for a mini-series called Love and War by Jeph Loeb and Paul Smith. The series would have been a Batman: Year One style take on the early days of DC's Trinity (Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman), but the whole thing fell apart due to a rather silly dispute; Smith had wanted Wonder Woman to wear a pair of star-spangled shorts (similar to her Golden Age design), while the editors were adamant that she wear the more Stripperiffic costume she had at the time (which Smith described as a "G-string").
• Two related examples for Black Lightning:
  • In an example of how Executive Meddling and changes from an initial pitch can be a good thing, had Tony Isabella not pitched Black Lightning, DC's first plan for their first black male superhero was to be the Black Bomber- a white supremacist ex- soldier who underwent an experiment that would turn him into a super-powered black man whenever the powers would activate. The two scripts that were completed were stated to be very embarrassing in plotline, with the basic formula being that the main character would transform to save someone in need, but after de-transforming, he'd react in disgust and racial slurs at the fact that he'd saved a black person. The main character would also have two girlfriends (a white woman and a black woman for each identity) who would be aware of his secret and transformations. Comics historian Don Markstein later described the character as "an insult to practically everybody with any point of view at all". After Tony Isabella read the scripts, he convinced editorial to reconsider, and was given the opportunity to pitch his superhero instead, who became the Black Lightning we're familiar with.
  • Much later, in Dwayne McDuffie's run of Justice League, an alternate universe version of the League had a member named "Brown Bomber", as a Mythology Gag to the above failed concept. He was depicted as a bald white man in a hoodie, and would transform into a super-powered black man but could only use his powers for an hour. This appearance also underwent some revision by editorial: Originally, there was to be a punchline where Brown Bomber asked Vixen if he could now "use the N-word" , to which Vixen would reply "No, you absolutely can't". The Brown Bomber's question was edited out when the issue made it to print, but Vixen's response wasn't, leading to what looked like an awkward beat panel beforehand and Vixen responding to nothing. Here is the edited version◊. One way of reading the edited version is that she's objecting to him calling his power "C.P.T."; alternatively, it could be read as her objecting to his entire concept and existence.
• The female Dr. Light in Crisis on Infinite Earths was to originally be a black woman, but George Perez and Marv Wolfman reconsidered the idea while designing her, as they felt she'd be too similar to the then-current female Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau). In the end, they decided that she'd be Japanese.
• In the late 1980s, Kurt Busiek and Kevin Maguire were scheduled to launch a series called Wildcard, which would have starred a new teenage superhero. The project was downgraded to a one-shot after Maguire was pinched for penciling duties on the historic Justice League International, and Busiek eventually decided to just scrap the whole thing altogether.
• Speaking of which, the original plan for the Justice League relaunch that eventually became Justice League International was far different. After the failure of the Detroit-era Justice League, editor Andy Helfer had wanted to bring back the iconic "Big 7" JLA roster roster from the Silver Age, similar to what Grant Morrison ended up doing years later. However, he only ended up getting Batman and Martian Manhunter since the other "Big 7" heroes were all off-limits at the time (e.g., Superman and Wonder Woman were in the process of being rebooted by John Byrne and George Perez, respectively; The Flash (Wally West) having his own title; Hal Jordan was already helming The Green Lantern Corps series). The unorthodox cast the book eventually ended up with (Guy Gardner, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, etc.) was basically a case of Real Life Writes the Plot, rather than a conscious decision to focus on lesser known heroes. Also, the book was originally going to have a more serious tone, but co-writer Keith Giffen suggested that a comedic take on the League would help distinguish the book from the more serious titles of the 80s, like New Teen Titans and X-Men.
• Crimson Fox was originally called Red Fox, but the threat of legal action from the publishers of an indie comic called Redfox led to her being renamed.
• Jack Kirby's original ending to the New Gods saga was completely different, but was changed after he saw Return of the Jedi. The rumor is that the ending was going to feature Darkseid redeeming himself and performing a Heroic Sacrifice to save Orion, which Kirby felt would've been too similar to Darth Vader sacrificing his life to save Luke.
• When Jim Lee's WildStorm imprint was bought by DC Comics, he approached his former coworkers at Image about an idea concerning both the Image and DC heroes by moving some of the Image heroes like Spawn to the DC Universe, a la Heroes Reborn. There was a lot of enthusiasm, but all that materialized in the end was a brief crossover where Majestic and Superman got interchanged and spent some time in each other's universe.
• The original villain for the Infinite Crisis leadup was originally meant to be Mr. Jupiter, a man who tried to help out the original Teen Titans near the end of their initial run. It was dropped and replaced with Max Lord.
  • Dan Didio revealed a "hit list" of things he wanted to get rid of in Infinite Crisis. Among them were "Superman's marriage" (which meant he'd been gunning for it since 2004) and "non-used Young Justice characters" (which meant he'd probably tried to get rid of those like Empress, Secret and Arrowette). As well, there was a note talking about Conner Hawke, the second Green Arrow, being put into retirement after killing a villain, which never happened.
• The comic book Breach was initially pitched as a revamp of Captain Atom, before being changed to an original character. When the book was cancelled, DC even acknowledged this by revealing that Breach was actually an Alternate Universe equivalent of Captain Atom, before killing him off in Infinite Crisis and bringing back the real deal. In fact, as a bit of referencing The Artifact moment, there's a goof in the first issue where someone refers to Breach by Captain Atom's real name. Somehow, the editors missed this.
• The series Scarab was initially pitched as a Darker and Edgier reboot of the Doctor Fate character for the Vertigo line. The writer was forced to create an original character when the editors liked the pitch, but felt his take was too extreme to work for an established hero.
• Earth 2:
  • James Robinson originally wanted Red Arrow to be a new character (or possibly an Expy of Roy Harper) named Roy McQueen. He left the book before he could really explore the character or his identity, and the subsequent writer ended up making Red Arrow the Earth-2 version of Connor Hawke.
  • At a convention, Robinson had said he was looking to bring back Alan Scott's children, Jade and Obsidian, by introducing Infinity, Inc. as the Earth-2 equivalent of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Like with the Red Arrow reveal, he left the book before he could do anything with the idea.
• James Robinson's The Golden Age was probably one of the more acclaimed comic book minis of the 1990s. The ending featured a memorable and natural Sequel Hook, and Robinson confirmed that there would be another mini called The Silver Age with art by Howard Chaykin. However, it got stuck in Development Hell for a decade. In the meantime, JLA: Year One and particularly DC: The New Frontier told stories similar to the one Robinson had been planning, killing any chance of the comic ever being made.
• The original teaser for the Geoff Johns / Jim Lee Justice League relaunch had a slightly different roster, with the Ryan Choi version of The Atom and the Golden Age heroine Lady Luck tapped to appear as part of the team. For unknown reasons, Lady Luck was ReTooled into a new character named Goldrush (who only made a guest appearance), while the Atom who ended up joining the League was a new character named Rhonda Pineda ( who turned out to be The Mole for the Crime Syndicate). Element Woman and Hawkman were also hinted at being part of the League.
• Atlee, the third Terra, was originally going to be an original character. It was Dan Didio who suggested to Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray that she be the new Terra instead.
• The Multiversity:
  • Donna Troy was solicited to appear in The Just #1, and there were character sketches done by Ben Oliver released in earlier interviews. When the actual issue came out, Donna was nowhere to be found, and seemed to have been replaced by Artemis.
  • The cover solicited for The Multiversity #2 featured Batman (Damian Wayne of Earth-16) and Blitzen (Flash of Earth-10) along with Aquawoman and Thunderer. The cover that was released instead had Red Racer, Atomic Knight Batman, and Machinehead of Earth-8, which made more sense since Red Racer and Atomic Knight Batman were more prominent in the main story than Damian and Blitzen. (It's also just as likely Blitzen was removed due to being a Nazi version of the Flash.)
  • The hardcover collection contains sketches and mock covers done by Morrison, including an actual Doctor Manhattan cover done as an homage to Doctor Solar. There are also designs for a Major Max character who is either a counterpart to Captain Marvel or Miracleman (Max's comic appears in Pax Americana and the Multiversity Guidebook suggests the Carol Danvers-alike in the Retaliators is the "new" Major Max, which fits with the original being Mar-Vell).
  • Morrison's original 2009 proposal for the series, reprinted in The Multiversity Director's Cut #1, has a number of these:
    • The series was originally intended to be eight issues: the two-issue framing story and the six spotlight issues for each Earth. There's no mention of the Guidebook.
    • Society of Super-Heroes didn't have the Conquerors of the Counter-World part of its title; its internal title was "Doom from the Counter-world". Earth-20's Evil Counterpart was Earth-30 rather than Earth-40.
    • The Just was set on Earth-7.
    • Pax Americana was to begin with a student riot.
    • The events of Thunderworld - specifically the Sivanas' creation of a new day - was what drew the Big Bad Ensemble's attention.
    • Ultra Comics was originally Ultraa the Unknown. Ultra himself was intended to be a Pinocchio-style character, a fiction who wanted to become real.
• Gerard Way and Becky Cloonan were slated to do a Doom Patrol revamp, but the project was delayed because of Way's music career. While the series was eventually launched sometime later, it was tweaked from the original pitch, and Nick Derington replaced Cloonan as the main artist.
• Alan Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes.
• The original plan for The Kingdom, whose final version was a sequel to Kingdom Come, would have been a prequel or even an aversion of the series. According to Alex Ross, the story would have focused more on the civilian identities than the heroes themselves. Gog, Magog's precursor, would appear here and attempt to murder the New Gods before Magog would kill him. As well, Superman would have visions of the Joker murdering everyone in the Daily Planet and he would take steps to prevent it.
• When the DC You initiative was announced in 2015, there were two magic-based titles called Dark Universe and Mystic U included in the line-up. James Tynion IV and Ming Doyle were working on the former and reportedly left the title, and Alisa Kwitney was writing the latter. While Mystic U (under the title Mystik U), after a lengthy delay, was later announced for a November 2017 release during DC Rebirth, aside from Tynion and Doyle leaving the project no other news has come to light regarding the Dark Universe title, and it's entirely likely said book is officially dead.
• Superboy (New 52):
  • This version of Superboy, as a stoic agent of N.O.W.H.E.R.E. tasked with hunting down the Teen Titans, was conceived as a possible status quo shake-up for the pre-New-52 Superboy vol. 5. The original idea was that the pre-New-52 Kon would be brainwashed and reprogrammed. When the New 52 continuity reboot was settled upon, the concept was instead worked into his new origin story.
  • During Marv Wolfman's tenure as writer, there were plans to feature an evil version of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Artist Joe Prado even finished an evil Lightning Lad design, but for whatever reason the plan was altered and Superboy teamed up with characters called Schiz, Volt, and Lodestone. The three were clearly meant to invoke the Legion founders (Volt especially was blatantly Lightning Lad) and even referred to them as "Imra, Garth, and Rokk." Later on, an evil Legion did appear in the completely unrelated series Justice League 3001, with an evil Lightning Lad completely different from Joe's design.
• In late 2019 and early 2020, there were major rumblings about DC Comics' latest big relaunch, including a revamped timeline which spanned from World War I to today that saw Wonder Woman, not Superman, as the first DC Comics hero. Additionally, the return of more of the pre-New 52 canon was teased, such as Cyborg once again having been a member of the Teen Titans. Rumors circulated that this would lead to a new Crisis spinning out of Flash Forward which would spawn "Generation 5", which would see new heroes donning classic hero mantles, with such rumored ideas being Jonathan Samuel Kent taking up Superman's role and the former Batwing Luke Fox becoming Batman. A Free Comic Book Day comic entitled "Generation Zero: Gods Among Us" would set things up followed by two one-shots in the following months entitled "Generation One" and "Generation Two" with two more presumed to follow suit. The end of Doomsday Clock had a sequence where Doctor Manhattan looks into the future and vaguely references something called "5G," presumably tying into the "Generation 5" concept. Certain books at the time also began laying the groundwork for this, such as Steve Orlando's Wonder Woman run introducing a tribe of Amazons who lived in South America in order to set up the future debut of Yara Flor, who would have become the 5G Wonder Woman; and Kelly Sue DeConnick's Aquaman debuting his and Mera's infant daughter Andy just in time for her to grow up to be Aquawoman. Tom King also stated at the time that his Batman (Tom King) run was meant to set up 5G in some capacity, with fans and critics pointing to Batman Annual #2, which briefly showed a future where an elderly Bruce Wayne was retired from crimefighting and married to Selina Kyle, as further evidence of the new timeline aging up some of DC's characters. However, before any of that could be set into motion, Dan DiDio was suddenly fired in February 2020 followed by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic bringing the comic industry to a screeching halt. When DC resumed production and began releasing comics again, none of the "Generation" titles were released at all. Even more, Wally was now a major player in Dark Nights: Death Metal with Scott Snyder suggesting that this story was the "new Crisis". This seems to be supported by the fact that the collected edition of Flash Forward containing the unprinted Generation Zero story ends with Wally deciding to face the Batman Who Laughs, leading into Death Metal. Further dashing this original storyline was the announcement of the one-shot Generations: Shattered, which instead features heroes from various points in history teaming up with "the original" Batman (re: the one from Detective Comics #27). The titles that would have made up the 5G relaunch were eventually repurposed as a group of mini-series under a new banner dubbed DC Future State, which was now changed to depict a possible future of the DC Universe rather than the new status quo going forward. However, the stories in Future State are still largely based on ideas DiDio had for 5G in spite of the repurpose, an example being his Creator's Pest Wally West being possessed and turned into a villain.
  • Recently, news and rumors site Bleeding Cool discovered more of what Generation Five could have been. Many of the modern heroes would have been aged about 20 years Jon and Damian entering adulthood. Luke Fox would have been Batman and Jon would have been Superman, but Clark would have taken a more authoritarian role with Superman and the Authority leading into such an angle, while Jon would be the classic idealistic version. As well, Damian would have been THE Big Bad of the Generation Five era, taking up the role of his grandfather Ra's al Ghul and putting him at odds with Jon with Luke distrusting Jon because of their earlier bond.
  • The aforementioned 5G tease in Doomsday Clock also showed a new Turtle and a female Kid Flash, who were implicitly Wally West’s children Jai and Iris. The idea has yet to be followed up on, with Wallace West instead remaining the current Kid Flash, though Iris did later appear as Kid Flash in the non-canonical Green Lantern: Alliance graphic novel.
  • Bleeding Cool later was able to piece together what would have been the entire Generation Five storyline: Superman's revelation of his secret identity would have harsher consequences, with Jon staying longer in the 31st Century and his desire for other heroes to reveal their identities leading to a schism that destroys the Justice League. Bane would still kill Alfred, but Batman would drive away the Bat-Family in his anger. Joker would take over Gotham, sending Batman over the edge. Before he could kill the villain, he would make him an offer, which makes Batman allow him to escape. Dark Nights: Death Metal would happen (under the title Dark Crisis: Death Metal), aging up everyone. This would lead to a series of one-shots called Last Call, setting up the Passing the Torch for the younger generation — Superman would take Lois to Africa and give Metropolis to Jon while Batman would regather the Bat-Family to apologize. However, he would learn the Joker would uphold his offer: killing Bane for killing Alfred, causing Bruce to shut down everything Bat-related and hide in England. Luke Fox would realize there was need for a Batman and take over with his sister Tamara joining as his Robin. Damian would resurface as leader of Leviathan in retaliation for Bruce seemingly tossing him to the wayside, leading to Luke and Jon fighting the former Robin and the two heroes becoming a new World's Finest. In Africa, Superman would meet up with Jenny Sparks and the two would create a new iteration of The Authority. Joker would return and, fighting Luke, reveal what Bruce had done, leading Luke to hunt down Bruce, who instead decides to surrender and turn himself in for his role in Bane's death. Superman would see this as an injustice for some reason and he and the Authority would rescue Bruce, setting them up to battle the DCU. Superman, noting his powers failing, would get himself a massive power boost which would threaten existence, leading to Bruce sacrificing himself to destroy Superman, fully passing the torch. This storyline would have lasted until 2024, with 2025 being the point where DC and Warner Bros. would have kept going or smashed the Reset Button.
  • As a result of the story being reworked, many ideas were changed later in production, with the obscure Tim "Jace" Fox being reintroduced to replace his brother Luke as the future Batman in Future State being one of them. Bane, along with several other characters, would seemingly die as a result of a bomb by Joker, with all of them going on to become zombies and form Task Force Z, only for it to be later revealed Bane had faked his death and left Henry Clover Jr. (Gotham, brother of Gotham Girl) to die and become zombified in his place. As for the Authority, Superman would instead form it with a reformed Manchester Black (ironic due to the Elite, Manchester's previous team, being a Take That! to the Authority), with the team not reappearing after the initial Superman and the Authority miniseries. Ultimately, the Justice League's members were seemingly killed in Dark Crisis courtesy of their conflict with Pariah and the Great Darkness, but they would turn up alive and disband for good, with the Titans taking up the reins as DC's main heroes afterward (though their mentors would still reappear as solo heroes). The other conflicts were then tossed out in Dawn of DC in favor of Amanda Waller becoming the new main antagonist.
• Legion of Super-Heroes (2020):
  • The Legion's return was originally being set up in Doomsday Clock but due to all the delays, Bendis was given the chance to reintroduce the Legionnaires in his Superman run. Doomsday Clock followed suit by erasing its Saturn Girl and featuring Bendis' Legion appearing in the last issue.
  • Lightning Lad and Light Lass were both going to be white as they are in other Legion continuities. The twins appeared as such in promotional materials and design artwork leading up to the Legion's debut in Superman. At some point the two were hastily redrawn as Black people.
• Grant Morrison's Animal Man was originally intended to just be a 4-issue mini-series. But seeing how well it's doing, DC immediately turned it into a monthly series, with #26 being Morrison's last issue.
• The Nail writer/artist Alan Davis stated he'd forgotten about Batman: The Dark Knight Returns when he did the book, which depicted Oliver Queen as having retired from being Green Arrow after losing an arm (and an eye, as well as becoming crippled following a fight with Amazo). While The Nail depicts Ollie's right arm as the one missing, Davis has stated that had he remembered TDKR, he'd have made it the missing arm be his left one like in that story.
• The 2021 one-shot Stargirl Spring Break Special was supposed to set up a Justice Society of America series by Geoff Johns and Bryan Hitch. The series would later be greenlit but without Hitch as the illustrator.
• Grant Morrison's non-starter crossover Hypercrisis was meant to institute hypertime, an idea of theirs introduced by Mark Waid in The Kingdom, as the formal return of the multiverse. Also titled The 12 Labors of Superman, the event was to open with the funeral of Captain Marvel, and the revelation that a monster known as the Chronovore was devouring the early years of the 21st century, with Superman and company repairing history by creating a 'bridge' of reordered events. It was intended to reinvent the Challengers of the Unknown as Challengers: Beyond the Unknown, introduce the Guardians of the Multiverse with a corps of Green Lanterns from different realities, and substantially utilize the time-travelling Superman Squad introduced in DC One Million (was well as introducing the mystery of the Unknown Superman), among other unrevealed ideas - many of the notions from this pitch ultimately found places in Morrison's other comics.
• Dark Crisis was meant to have Red X to be a major player in the story, however, the character's poor reception in Teen Titans Academy saw the character removed.
• Legends had an interesting history being created. DC was caught off-guard by the popularity of Crisis on Infinite Earths and began to plan out a sequel to it:
  • Roy Thomas created the first idea, some of which would actually happen down the line, including the Wally West Flash and Captain Marvel being introduced, Superman and Batman no longer being super-awesome buddies, the marriage of Supes and Lois, etc.
  • Another idea by Roy Thomas included turning a hero into a villain (even suggesting outright Aquaman) and Superman disappearing for a year while his titles would run as flashback stories
  • The story was later converted to "Crisis on Captive Earth", in which the story's villain, the Corruptor, uses an item known as the soul gem (an item that was part of the Amethyst: Princess of Gemworld series) to corrupt people's souls and turn them evil, allowing his masters The Controllers to quarantine and destroy the Earth, Aquaman becoming a full-fledge villain. There were a lot of problems with this.

Green Lantern

Green Lantern

• The black Green Lantern was originally going to be called Lincoln Washington. Artist Neal Adams came up with John Stewart as an alternative after finding the proposed name too stereotypical.
• 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 here.
• Karu-Sil of the Sinestro Corps was originally conceived as a Ghost Rider villain.
• Larry Niven wrote "The Green Lantern Bible", which would have established the Post-Crisis history of the Green Lantern Corps, and would incorporate hard science fiction concepts into the Green Lantern mythos. Some of the stuff would later appear in the 1992 one-shot "Ganthet's Tale" (co-written and drawn by John Byrne), and parts of the bible can be seen in his 1991 book, "Playgrounds of the Mind". One of Niven's proposals include making Guy Gardner an alien, which kind of happened (see below).
• After losing his yellow Power Ring and after the Zero Hour: Crisis in Time! crossover, then-current writer Beau Smith wanted to revamp Guy Gardner as an Indiana Jones-type hero (i.e., without his powers), but he was forced by editorial to add the Vuldarian shape-shifting powers due to the popularity of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers at the time. You can learn more here.
• Joshua Hale Fialkov was hit with an editorial mandate demanding that he kill off John Stewart and then build a storyline around the investigation of his murder. Fialkov refused to do so, and walked away from the book as a result. After the reason for Fialkov's departure was leaked by Bleeding Cool, the resultant backlash (as Stewart is one of DC's most popular and recognizable black superheroes) from the fans caused DC to nix the idea.
• Green Lantern (Infinite Frontier) ended with John Stewart leaving the GL Corps and taking on the new identity of the Emerald Knight, with the last page teasing a new series called John Stewart and the Emerald Knights. Due to a change in plans for John (rumored to be due to the Green Lantern HBO Max series that was in development at the time), Emerald Knight was subsequently downgraded to a mere one-shot, with the character instead retaking the Green Lantern mantle in a new series called Green Lantern: War Journal as part of the Dawn of DC initiative.

The Flash

The Flash

• For The Trial of the Flash, Cary Bates had several plans that would have continued if not for the Crisis, including Flash being found guilty and going "on the run." This would’ve kicked off a new story arc which would have had Flash continuing to do his good deeds as a wanted man with an arrest warrant hanging over his head. What he liked most about this idea was "the delicious irony of a Flash who ends up joining his own Rogues Gallery."
• In the The Flash: Rebirth collected edition and on Twitter, Geoff Johns' pitch for the 2010 Flash series is included, and features a more substantial role for Wally in the form of a backup story written by Johns and drawn by Scott Kolins. However, as the pitch concludes by noting it would be leading into Flashpoint in 2011, it appears that much of this dropped due to the Schedule Slip the final issues of The Flash: Rebirth suffered from.
  • Ethan van Sciver also said in a live chat that there were plans for a book called "All Flash" before Flashpoint, which was to focus exclusively on Wally and his kids. However, the editors got scared that the phrase "All Flash, No Substance" would be used to insult the book. According to Sciver, that phrase alone killed the book.
  • There were also talks about a Kid Flash series focused on Bart, scripted by Sterling Gates (who would later write for the Flash tv series) as part of the post-Flash Rebirth status quo, but it was scrapped by DC in favor of only one Flash book, focusing on Barry.
• Artist Ethan van Sciver started making commentaries on his comics on his Youtube channel. When talking about Flash: Rebirth, he revealed that he planned to create a family of evil speedsters for Professor Zoom, including a wife, a daughter (called Mara Thawne) and Impulse's nemesis Inertia, as he believed that Thawne wasn't intimidating enough if he had to face the whole Flash family by himself. However, the New 52 ended that idea.
  • Van Sciver, who designed the Black Lanterns for the Blackest Night event, also revealed that before editorial approved Flash: Rebirth, it was "quite possible" that Johns would have brought back Barry as one of the main Black Lanterns. This would also give Wally Barry's place as co-protagonist of the story along with Hal Jordan.
• Johns planned to make Jai West the new Turtle, and Irey's Evil Counterpart. This never came about thanks to the New 52 erasing Wally and his kids from existence, and with their resurrection in DC Rebirth, this idea has not come to pass.
• The Flash: Rebirth ended with a depowered Hunter Zolomon approaching Eobard Thawne for a second villainous team-up. Nothing came of this, as the New 52 happened, and neither Thawne nor Zolomon existed in that universe for a long time. Thawne would eventually resurface with Zolomon's powers, but this wasn't well-received and this Thawne had his reality and history re-written in-universe so that he was more like his pre-Flashpoint counterpart. Zolomon would appear a while later in the future with his powers returned, posing as a Time Judge (a character that had appeared briefly in the 2010 series following The Flash: Rebirth), and also wearing a Flash costume; whether this was always the plan with Zolomon is not known.
• Prior to Wally's New 52 reintroduction, Brett Booth posted several ideas for Wally's costume on his personal blog - Whilst mostly resembling the costume Wally had been wearing prior to the reboot, one major difference was the use of black on the hands and the waist down◊ to give Wally a costume that whilst resembling Barry's, would allow the reader to easily distinguish between the two Flashes at a glance; and an alternate color scheme on the same costume, replacing the red and gold other with blue & silver◊ - ultimately, Booth would use different designs when he got to introduce a future version of New 52 Wally as the Flash, and when he got to design Wally's new costume upon his return in DC Rebirth.
• Interestingly enough, Wally wasn't the original choice to replace Barry as the Flash. In fact, when Marv Wolfman decided to kill off Barry in Crisis on Infinite Earths, he and Len Wein originally envisioned the replacement to be a new character named Mackenzie Ryan, who was a lab tech at STAR Labs and was also a single father with a daughter between 8-12 years. His abilities would've differed from Barry's as he had the ability to manipulate energy fields (light, sound, etc.) than super-speed. However, it was ultimately decided that Wally would be more well suited to replace Barry, so it was discarded though Ryan does get mentioned in the nineteenth issue of The New Teen Titans (vol. 2) and the energy field manipulating Flash would be reused for the Tangent Comics imprint.

Watchmen

• Watchmen was originally penned to be about a group of Charlton Comics characters DC had recently acquired. But since the plot Alan Moore wrote had many of them killed off and thereby unusable in future story lines, it was suggested he make up his own characters.
  • That's not all. The second Silk Spectre was going to be a teenage runaway simply named Silk, the world would actually be 20 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.
  • Not only would the Charlton characters be unusable, but it would have a profound affect on the DCU, so it was then to have the story take place in alternate version of Earth-4.
• 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.

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