The same thing as last time, this is a continuation of our tour through the very first AMAZING HEROES Preview Special covering comic books that were meant to be coming out in 1984.
CAPTAIN AMERICA #300 ran into editorial difficulties and wound up being broken into two regular-sized issues, so not everything (not that there’s much) indicated here actually happened in it. CAPTAIN CARROT: THE OZ-WONDERLAND WAR came out a bit later, and in oversized issues each containing what had been intended as two issues.
A bunch of info in the CEREBUS write-up about the CEREBUS/X-MEN crossover that never actually came about. Chris Claremont did introduce S’ym in X-MEN as a riff on CEREBUS creator Dave Sim and his character.
D’ARC TANGENT never did manage to publish a follow-up to its one issue.
A number of those DC CHALLENGE creative pairings didn’t quite turn out that way. In particular, George Perez never penciled the concluding issue, which wound up being a jam book.
The DEFINITIVE HANDBOOK OF THE DC UNIVERSE mutated along the way into WHO’S WHO, presumably because the original title was too close to THE OFFICIAL HANDBOOK OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE for comfort. DITKO’S WORLDS eventually saw print as a single issue of STEVE DITKO’S STRANGE AVENGING TALES #1.
ELEMENTALS never came out from Texas Comics, who didn’t wind up publishing much of anything, but rather migrated over to Comico a short while later.
More Previews of 1984 to come in the weeks ahead.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Funny that Chas Truog pencilled a “Coyote” comic before pencilling “Coyote´s Gospel” in Animal Man
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De facto death of the Defenders. It limped on for 2 or 3 years after, then was cleared out to make way for X-Factor. The team was gutted, losing the founding 4 powerhouses. Writer Peter B. Gilis (“Strikeforce Moritori”, “Eternals” w/ Butch Guice here) even says the replacements weren’t “awesome”, but @ least were “complex”. Great. Champions V2. Tom, you’ve got 3 Defenders on the Avengers now. Do everyone a favor, after Mephisto’s Multiversal Masters of Evil, spin Namor, Valfkyrie, & Nighthawk off, w/ Strange, the Surfer, & the Hulk for the best Defenders series ever.
Anyway, DNAgents! I’d like to find that collected. An art desert on Daredevil before Mazz arrived, & then Miller returned to write again. DC Comics Presents still kicking, looking interesting, too (maybe the current “World’s Finest” can pique other, ongoing team-up interest). Moench & Gene Colan (!) on Detective Comics. Joe Staton & Rick Burchett on E-Man! (Ty Templeton should’ve tried his hand at it, later.) Eclipse Monthly. Elric by the impressive team of Roy Thomas, P. Craig Russell & Michael T. Gilbert. A new Doom & Terminus in F4. “Who’s Who” before it was called that.
Good times. Great memories. Thank you.
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I liked Gillis’ run on Defenders. Odd, but that fits Defenders.
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I think my favorite moment in DC Challenge was the Roy Thomas issue in which the Guardians explain everything to Metron, who is… unimpressed by their planning (“Are you Guardians simply improvising?”). Oh, and the idea Sardath starts shooting Zeta Beams at Earth non-stop, so Adam Strange never has to wait to visit Rann any more.
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