Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and ninety-ninth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.
As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for part one of this installment's legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
DC Comics rejected Alan Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes proposal for being too "out there"
False
Recently, DC released the full proposal of Alan Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes. CBR's own Brandon Zachary has gone into depth on the plot of Twilight of the Superheroes in a number of articles (here is the first one).
I wrote about Twilight of the Superheroes a dozen years ago in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed (it would have been featured much earlier, but I was stuck in this weird thing at the time where I thought certain stories were "too well known" for legends, which was moronic, since I soon realized that, duh, my idea of "too well known" was not even REMOTELY similar to comic book fans, in general).
The basic gist of the story is as follows (I'm leaving out some of the more tawdry/disturbing plot bits)...
SPOILERS FOR AN UNPUBLISHED STORY!
It is around the year 2000, and superheroes more or less rule the world. There are eight "Houses" which are made up of related superheroes.
The two strongest ones are:
House of Steel - Superman and his brood (including Superman's wife, Wonder Woman)
and
House of Thunder - Captain Marvel and his Marvel Family
These two houses are about to join with the marriage of Superboy (the son of Superman and Wonder Woman) and Mary Marvel, Jr. (the daughter of Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel - yes, I know, that is a creepy pairing - Moore does not shy from the creepiness of it).
The other six are:
House of Titans - Made up of, yep, you guessed it.
House of Mystery - Various magic characters.
House of Secrets - The remaining super-villains who have not been captured/killed.
House of Justice - The remaining unaffiliated superheroes
House of Tomorrow - Due to a flux in time, all time travelers have been stuck at this point in time, so they all gather here.
House of Lanterns - Abandoned, because awhile back, Earth has turned on aliens and driven them all out (Superman being the notable exception, of course). They currently have a base on the moon, waiting to get back to Earth, planning an invasion along with New Mars, Rann and Thanagar.
Okay, so the whole story takes place in a flashback at the beginning of a framing sequence with John Constantine at a bar in late 1987, reading a letter. A woman asks him for a light, and he flashes back to earlier in 1987, and that begins the story.
It appears that the John Constantine from the future somehow helps Rip Hunter (one of the time travelers stuck at that point in time) escape to the present (1987), where Hunter teams up with 1987 John Constantine to warn all the heroes about the future. Future Constantine has told 87 Constantine (through Hunter) that the world of the future is awful, and he needs to help change it.
So anyhow, Constantine and Rip Hunter go to various heroes and warn them - presumably, these would take place in the various titles of the DC line of comics.
Meanwhile, in the Twilight of Superheroes series, proper, the Constantine of that time is the readers' guide to the world of the future. Constantine is his normal self, just older, but actually in a happy relationship with a woman he's been with for some time now - which is a nice change of pace for Constantine. So Constantine makes his way through the grimy world of the remaining human characters, the ones who don't belong to the various Houses. He meets Green Arrow, etc. One notable absence, of course, is Batman. However, Constantine seems to be making various plans and contacts with people here and there. He is obviously planning SOMEthing. He keeps having mysterious meetings with people we don't learn the importance of until later.
In the end, there would be a whole series of twists and turns.
That's what happens in the long finale (I'd imagine the finale would be so big it would take up at least two issues, maybe three) - first, all the remaining Earth houses attack the wedding of Superboy and Mary Marvel, Jr., because they want to prevent that union. Massive bloodshed, but the House of Steel and Marvel manage to survive more or less intact (while mostly wiping out the other heroes).
When the dust settles from that fight, though, we get the big revelation that that Martian Manhunter has been impersonating Captain Marvel Sr. for the whole series, as part of an alien invasion. The Green Lanterns, the Rannians and the Thanagarians all invade at once.
Big fight with the remaining characters, and in the end, the aliens simply have too much manpower (including the Daxamite Green Lantern).
However, this is when Constantine's plan comes into play - Batman and a small group of human heroes attack using armor created by the Metal Man Gold (who disappeared earlier in the series) and fight the aliens to a stand-still, but when it looks like a stalemate, Constantine reveals his final trump card. He has contacted the New God Metron (seen earlier in the series, although not made clear what he was doing), and used his chair to travel to Qward, where Constantine has sold the secret of Boom Tube technology to the Qwardians, so while the aliens are on Earth, their home worlds are currently being invaded by Qwardians. So the aliens all leave, and Earth is left with mostly humans and non-powered superheroes, so the world is ultimately (in Constantine's view, at least) a happier place.
We cut back to the opening, and realize that the letter Constantine is reading in 1987 is from his future self. He is learning via the letter (that Hunter gives to Constantine after they warn all the heroes) that the whole thing has been a con, and young Constantine was meant to warn the heroes of 1987 specifically so that this future WOULD happen. Older Constantine apologizes, but says, on the bright side, A. I conned you for a good cause and B. at least you'll end up with the woman of your dreams. In fact, I'll even tell you when you meet her. She comes up to you and asks you for a light at a bar at the end of 1987.
So yeah, you guessed it. The young Constantine is so angry at his future self that he tries to think of a way to hurt him, and all he can think of is, when the woman asks for a light, he replies:
"No. I'm sorry. I don't smoke."
She leaves, and the books ends with Constantine drinking himself into a stupor as he weeps uncontrollably.
Cool, huh?
So naturally, over the years, the story has been that DC, while admiring how freaking BRILLIANT the story is, felt that it was TOO much and rejected it. I know I assumed that back in the day, but in actuality, it was Alan Moore who took it back from DC!
He explained to the great Scott Braden (who has done seminal work in unpublished comic book projects)
"There were a few raised eyebrows over some of the character portrayals," Moore remembers, "but I gather they were generally in favor of the idea at that time. Of course, I had my famous rile with DC that was ostensibly over the introduction of a rating system, but that was really a last straw in a number of things, including problems with Watchmen royalties. So I withdrew the offer of writing Twilight, and that was the last I heard of it. But again, I gather that they were pretty keen on it."
Grrr....so we actually COULD HAVE HAD IT? Grrr....
In the latest Movie Legends Revealed - Why did Karate Kid Part III replace John Kreese with Terry Silver when the movie was about Kreese's revenge?
Check back soon for part 3 of this installment's legends!
Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com
0 Comments