Fringe’s Alternate DC Comics

Justice League - Alternate Universe

I came across this as I was looking for a copy of the Justice League cover for my last post.

I guess back in May of 2010 they did an episode of Fringe that visited an alternate earth in which we saw these alternate reality versions of some iconic DC Comics covers.

Alternate Crisis

I had no idea they’d done this, which shows how closely I’ve been following Fringe. It looks like they went to a ton of effort to have these covers made as a throw-away gag in the background of one episode!

Here’s the blog where I originally discovered this, which features more covers side-by-side with the originals.

And here’s some coverage from DC Comics that has better views of those covers.

Blue Beetle and Booster Gold

NOW IT CAN BE TOLD!

I couldn’t have been more excited when I got the script for an issue of Justice League Adventures I was to draw that featured guest stars Blue Beetle and Booster Gold and was written by Keith Giffen. Beetle and Booster were key players in the much-loved 1980s incarnation of the Justice League comic book, that mixed drama and humor in a Buffy-esque sort of way with a League comprised of B-listers like Beetle and Booster, Guy Gardner, Fire & Ice and others with serious mentors like Batman and the Martian Manhunter. It was gloriously absurd stuff, and was written by J.M. DeMatteis and… Kieth Giffen!

Justice League #1

Justice League Adventures was the tie-in comic to the then-current Justice League animated TV series, and was in continuity with that show rather than the “mainstream” DC Universe Justice League comics. In his story “Wannabes,” Keith brought his magic to the animated incarnation of Justice League, and had Beetle and Booster at the beginning of their superhero careers encountering the experienced Justice League. Beetle and Booster spent the story bickering in their best style, and the sparks flew in hysterical ways as the Justice League reacted with exasperation at their antics. Plus, Keith Giffen indulged his love of obscure, ridiculous characters and used the existing DC super-villain group The Demolition Team as the bad guys. It was great stuff. I was so excited to draw it, and my love for the material showed page-by-page in the artwork as I worked through the issue.

The Demolition Team

What could go wrong?

Just as Wannabes was being completed, we got word that Booster Gold was actually going to be used in an episode of the animated TV show upon which the comic was based. The Justice League animated series was given a makeover and was becoming Justice League Unlimited – featuring a much larger cast of DC Heroes, and one episode was to focus on Booster Gold. Great news, right? Extra publicity for us! Not so fast…

Booster on Justice League Unlimited

There was concern expressed by the powers-that-be at DC Comics that Wannabes might conflict with the show’s depiction of Booster both in terms of his visual appearance and in terms of story continuity. My position was… “who cares?” The Atom appeared in the tie-in comic before being used on the show, and his costume was different and was written with a distinctly different characterization when he appeared on the show, and the world didn’t end. If Wannabes appeared when scheduled, it would be almost a year until the announced TV episode would be completed and would air. By then Wannabes would be such old news I couldn’t imagine anyone really caring about whatever minor differences might exist between the two versions of the character.

But that’s not how the powers-that-be felt. It was decided that Wannabes would be shelved until the TV episode aired and we could see whether the comic represented a calamitous continuity error. I was terribly disappointed, as Wannabes was my favorite work on the Justice League Adventures series to date – story and art – and while I was paid for my work I really wanted it to be seen!

So a year goes by, the TV episode aired, and it turned out that their version of Booster was almost identical to ours. Not surprising really, as it was based on the same source material. The visual character design was similar to mine, and the character was portrayed as an attention-craving newbie working with the League and could easily have been seen as a follow-up to the comic’s “first meeting” story.

Good news, though, right? Now there’s no reason not to publish Wannabes, which had been gathering dust on a shelf somewhere in DC editorial. Right?

Not so fast!

Johnny DC

When the Justice League TV show changed to Justice League Unlimited the comic was re-branded as Justice League Unlimited as well and started over with a new #1 issue. DC used this re-branding as an opportunity to bring the comic in-line with it’s new Johnny DC brand for all it’s animation based titles and kids books, which included cutting the page count of the stories from the DC-standard 22 to 20, and using those two extra pages for a kids-friendly letter column section. The result of which was that the Wannabes story was now two pages too long to fit the new format. I never understood why it why it would have been such a big deal to cut a couple of pages of in-house ads from the issue or cut the letter column for one issue, but this problem kept Wannabes from seeing the light of day for another three-and-a-half years, until the Justice League Unlimited TV show was coming to an end and the tie-in comic was being wrapped up as well.

Finally motivated to use the paid-for inventory stories that were sitting around unused (there was more than one – I actually had drawn TWO of them!), these stories saw print as “untold tales” of the Justice League, and the length problem was solved by cutting two pages from the story. I wasn’t happy about the cuts, but I was happy that at least the bulk of the story finally was to be seen by an audience!

Justice League Unlimited #43

Wannabes finally saw print as Justice League Unlimited #43. The pencils from this story – including the two missing pages – are up in my gallery. Give ’em a look!

Wannabes - page 8

Gargoyles: Bad Guys

Time flies.

Back in 2007 I was asked by Greg Weisman if I’d be interested to draw a fill-in issue of his Gargoyles: Bad Guys mini-series. The book was for Slave Labor Graphics, a publisher also doing the main Gargoyles comic, itself a continuation of the Disney’s Gargoyles animated TV series. The comics were written by Greg and are considered a continuation of the canon of the show. Gargoyles: Bad Guys was a 6-issue spin off featuring several characters introduced on the TV show has villains who were now working together and trying to do some good.

Greg knew the Bad Guys comic needed a fill-in on art to keep it on schedule, and we’d been looking to work on something together again following up on our one previous collaboration when I drew a 10-page story called “The Flashback of Notre Dame” Greg wrote for JLA Showcase 80-page Giant #1 back in 2000. That story was an unofficial crossover of sorts, as Captain Atom (a character Greg had written for DC in the 80s) along with some Justice League Europe co-stars encountered some small-“g” gargoyle creatures who bore an uncanny (but legally dissimilar) resemblance to their Disney counterparts. So when Greg asked me about contributing the the Gargoyles: Bad Guys book – even though he counceled me to say no due to the low page rate – I had to say yes.

I penciled and inked the 24 pages of Gargoyles: Bad Guys #3 faster than I would have liked – but it was a lot of fun to play in that particular sandbox. I was invited to bring some of my own style to it and not slavishly follow the animation models for the characters, but given that I was filling in for one issue of a 6-issue series I didn’t want to do anything too drastically different. It’s one of those projects I’d love to do again more on my own terms and with more time, but it’s best to just enjoy it for what it is and move forward. Otherwise you turn into George Lucas…

Gargoyles: Bad Guys #3 pg 11

Batman & Robin #18 – pencils & color

Last year I was called on to draw six pages from Batman & Robin #18, written by Paul Cornell. The story featured Dick Grayson as Batman and Damian Wayne as Robin encountering a villain named The Absence, a woman who discovered she had a brain deformity called Dandy Walker Syndrome only after surviving a gunshot wound to the head. Weird character. But hey, it’s a Batman villain!

I’ve posted the 6 pages I drew from the story in my gallery, with the pencil art I drew side-by-side with the inked and colored pages for comparison.

Batman & Robin #18 page 18

Nathan Fillion joins JLA (animated) cast

Well this cast should make a lot of people happy. I wonder if the change in the JLA lineup is purely creative or has to do with the availability of the characters. I know there’s currently a Plastic Man animated series in development, which *might* preclude the use of the character in other animation projects at the moment. But I’m not aware of any current issues with Aquaman.

Click the image to go to the original story on SuperheroHype.com.

JLA: Doom

Last week it was announced that the next feature-length animated DC Universe film would be titled Justice League: Doom and would debut its trailer at the upcoming New York Comic-Con. Today, TV Guide has a update and a look at the voice cast.

Doom will be based on Mark Waid’s “Tower of Babel,” a story that ran in JLA #43-46 and that featured Ra’s al Ghul stealing Batman’s secret files that explain how to defeat each member of the Justice League. Not only does the team have to contend with the onslaught of specially-focused attacks but also the betrayal of their teammate and friend.

Kevin Conroy will return as Batman, Tim Daly as Superman, Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern, Michael Rosenbaum as the Flash, Carl Lumbly as the Martian Manhunter, Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman and, new to the role, Bumper Robinson as Cyborg. Cyborg did not originally appear in the comic book version of the tale and appears to replace Aquaman and Plastic Man for the animated version.