By Todd Allen

Let’s start the new year out with a “what if.”  Over the years, there have been a ton of early-to-mid-’80s rumors about various Marvel creators having proposals in to revamp the DC characters.  Some of the stories involve Steve Gerber and Frank Miller pitching new versions of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman as Crisis on Infinite Earths was being planned (and that The Dark Knight Returns spun out of said pitches).  I’ve heard Howard Chaykin and Walt Simonson’s names attached to similar rumors.

We can confirm that Warner and Marvel were in talks for Marvel to take over publisher duties for the DC characters in 1984.  Jim Shooter has posted documents and correspondence on the subject.  It seems the deal fell apart in the wake of a (mostly) unrelated lawsuit from First Comics.

What would a Marvel-centric version of DC look like?  Prior to 1984, DC’s biggest success was New Teen Titans, by Marvel defectors Marv Wolfman and George Perez.  A fine series, but not one that necessarily felt particularly “Marvel” in its editorial approach.

For a “Marvel” approach to a DC book, I’d point you to 1982’s “Phantom Zone” four issue mini-series by Steve Gerber and Gene Colan.  Phantom Zone is a classic DC book, with the classic DC silver age Superman mythology — but handled with a bit more realism and a darker psychological take on the villains.  That is to say, Superman written a bit more like a Marvel book, almost Superman written more like an issue of Man-Thing, and drawn by a classic Marvel artist.

The Phantom Zone is about a group of Kryptonian criminals (Zod, Dr.Xadu, Va-Kox, Az-Rel, Nadira, Kru-El, Faora — old school Phantom Zone) getting loose and trapping Superman in the Phantom Zone.  What really sets this apart is the sociopathic portrayal of the Phantom Zone villains.  They’re homicidal.  People die.  On panel.  And each one has their own little psychological flaws that drive their behavior.  The evil is much more up front than you see in a silver or bronze age Superman.

On the flip side, the Superman narrative is a metaphysical journey through the Phantom Zone as Superman tries to find an exit and runs into magical forces.  Superman has bumped into magic before and since, but the tone here is much closer to Gerber’s Man-Thing or Englehart’s Doctor Strange.  Pre-Vertigo, if you must.

While Superman isn’t greatly changed, Gerber’s interpretation of Batman (breaking a criminal’s jaw as he first appears in the series) is a lot closer to what would become the Frank Miller interpretation a few years later.  He’s a little scary and he’ll take it out on punks.  Wonder Woman, who it seems Gerber would later pitch a reboot for, comes across as a much more regal persona than some other interpretations.  Much more the dignified princess, who happens to be an Amazon warrior.

Gerber’s under-rated Void Indigo series from Epic (which doesn’t seem outlandishly violent today, though protests over such things put it in an early grave) is said to be a reworking of a Hawkman proposal that would likely have been pitched around the time Gerber was working on Phantom Zone (Void Indigo was published in 1984 and likely dates to 1982 or ’83).  It isn’t hard to Void Indigo as Hawkman, with reincarnation and aliens co-mingling with barbarian weapons.  A Vertigo Hawkman, if you will.

Whether Gerber’s darker takes on DC heroes would have been representative of Shooter’s Marvel taking over DC is subject to debate.  Shooter cut his teeth at DC and may well have wanted to preserve the traditionally more upbeat mood of the DCU.

A well-regarded, but never reprinted series by two well known creators, The Phantom Zone might be a good choice for the DC Comics Presents treatment, possibly throwing in Gerber’s “farewell to the pre-Crisis DCU” sequel from DC Comics Presents #97.

10 COMMENTS

  1. On the other hand, part of the reason THE PHANTOM ZONE was done, and by the people it was done by, was that Steve Gerber was in the middle of suing Marvel over Howard the Duck and Gene Colan had left Marvel after clashes with Jim Shooter.

    Hard to imagine either of them being enthusiastic participants in a Marvel-run DC.

  2. If you want to be literal about Gerber being the specific Marvel guy on a revamped line, by ’84, Void Indigo was at Epic and there was (rejected) work done on a Howard the Duck revival in ’85. Perhaps not the happiest of bedfellows, but not impossible. Well, until the Howard script was rejected… at that point it probably would have been over.

  3. Really creepy comic to read as a kid. It made me think that in the end The Phantom Zone was really just Krypton’s version of Hell.

  4. I remember as a kid making up a tune to go with the lyrics “Supahman, you a pahty-poopah…Wondah Woman, you a pahty-poopah…”

  5. A convincing argument can be made that Gerber & Colan’s PHANTOM ZONE was actually the first big DC “event” series – ie; a global/universal threat that involves all the big guns of the DCU where everything (and by “everything”, I mean “nothing”) changes forever.

    Of course, in today’s market, what Gerber & Colan could effectively do in four issues would now take twelve – with numerous tie-ins, one-shots & companion limited series. And Darkseid would be behind it all, wearing 90’s fashion-armor and engaging in cosmic fisticuffs – just like Kirby always had him doing.

  6. I have always wondered if the opposite scenario was considered. Did Warners give serious thought to buying Marvel when they were going through the bankruptcy in the early 90’s?

    Warners could have bought the company quite cheaply considering the bankruptcy. They would also have eliminated their main competition and picked up decades worth of intellectual property in the bargain.

    Not to mention the opportunity for new story lines within a shared universe.

  7. >> Warners could have bought the company quite cheaply considering the bankruptcy. >>

    Probably not.

    Remember, Marvel Comics was never not profitable. It was the parent company that was overloaded with debt to the point that it could no longer be serviced.

    Warners could have tried to buy the company, but I doubt they’d have succeeded — they’d have had to buy up a lot of bad debt, and had some way of doing something with it other than eating it.

  8. Warners also skipped on buying Eclipse and CrossGen at bankruptcy.

    Disney paid a pittance for CrossGen, just to get the rights to Abazad, which failed after two novelizations. They also acquired the patent to CG’s COW comics reader (and thus all other comics readers), which has been neglected.

    DC could have acquired an instant imprint with CrossGen, with a catalog of non-superhero genres. I believe Disney paid $10,000 plus debts.

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