InsaneJournal

Alan Moore's Glory proposal
In the late 90's, Rob Liefeld hired Alan Moore to revamp Liefeld's "Awesome Universe," the superhero universe of such characters as Supreme and Glory. Moore's version of Supreme, which was something of a Superman pastiche/homage, is fairly well-known to fans, and a lot of people have sung its praises. Somewhat less well-known is Alan Moore's proposed revamp of Glory, which would have followed along similar lines, using Wonder Woman instead of Superman as a template. There were some troubles with Liefeld's company around the time it was set to come out, so not much in the way of actual comic book work materialized. However, Liefeld did end up publishing Alan Moore's outline for the revamp, alongside a bunch of other stuff, in a one-shot called "Alan Moore's Awesome Universe Handbook."



It's quite the fascinating read, as Moore shares some thoughts on early Wonder Woman comics and the way mythology tends to be approached in shared universe superhero comics. It's an intriguing peak at what might have been if Liefeld had only run a tighter ship. And it's a testament to Moore's skill as a writer that this mere proposal, by itself, is more interesting, imaginative, and charming, probably even more intelligent, than most superhero comics being published these days. I especially like his description of the Diamond Chariot, the equivalent to Wonder Woman's Invisible Plane that he comes up with. Oh, so many possibilities.

I'm a little confused as to whether the idea was for Moore himself or someone else to do to actual writing. At places in the outline, it sounds like the latter's the intention, but the few issues that actually were published, first by Awesome, then later by Avatar, were written by Moore.

Did that Avatar mini-series ever get completed, by the way? The fact that, to this day, Liefeld is sitting on several issues worth of Alan Moore scripts that have never seen the light of day is just... well, it's the sort of thing that'll make you want to cry.

And while I'm on the subject of Alan Moore's work for Liefeld, does anyone know in what behind-the-scenes material it was stated that Johnny Panic was Darius Dax's biological son? It's a question that's been bugging me for a while now. Wikipedia claims it's mentioned in Moore's Youngblood proposal, but that's not the case.