As we’ve spoken about over the past couple of weeks, given the overwhelming success of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, even before that series had run its course, DC Editorial had been soliciting concepts for a sequel series of the same sort. The development of this project went through a lot of gyrations and reversals of direction and of creative team. Eventually, the CRISIS follow-up was released as LEGENDS. But before that, at least at one point, it was going to be called CRISIS ON CAPTIVE EARTH.
CRISIS ON CAPTIVE EARTH had been put together under the oversight of editor Bob Greenberger. It was intended to have been plotted by Paul Levitz, scripted by Len Wein, penciled by Jerry Ordway and inked by Karl Kesel. By November of 1985, this creative team had worked out their proposed storyline in enough detail for Greenberger to circulate this memo throughout editorial, in order to inform everybody what the story was going to be about and to set up the necessary character usages and tie-ins.
Everything seemed to be proceeding apace with the project, including the creation of a logo as seen at the top of this page, so what happened? Well, near as I can piece together from the documentation that I’ve seen from this period, there was a lot of pushback to this storyline from creators and editors who were not among those who had input into the story’s design. I have access to at least one memo that I can’t in good conscience share, as it makes the creator in question look too much like a petulant child who doesn’t understand that DC owns the characters that he is working on and can do with them as the organization sees fit. In any event, there was enough pushback that attempts to adjust for it were undertaken, with the project transitioning into being called CRISIS OF THE SOUL. But the bloom was off the rose, excitement for the story was waning, and while certain small aspects of it did survive into LEGENDS, that wound up a very different project.
You can already see structural problems with what’s being proposed this early on. The outline for the first issue doesn’t really make it at all clear even in a broad sense what this story is meant to be about, and it feels like a series of portentous vignettes more than a story with a strong hook. CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, on the other hand, had laid out its stakes in the first three or four pages, showcasing the destruction of Earth-3 by the Anti-Matter Wave and the threat to every parallel world.
Funny/horrifying in retrospect that this second issue introduces Ilene Alden, a prominent young neofascist whose line is Make America Great Again. There are no new ideas under the sun.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
Where are you getting this from? Why no credit to the source? Will you do the same honest critique for Marvel projects that were shelved/changed/discarded? Thanks.
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Amazing. I have no recollection of anything with the title Crisis On Captive Earth. This is totally new to me. Thanks for, ummm, unearthing it.
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This is fascinating. I’d never seen any of this stuff before.
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As always, it’s very interesting to read about these might have beens in comics history. I had no idea that work on CRISIS ON CAPTIVE EARTH progressed as far as coming up with ideas for the logo. (Which looks great, BTW. I assume that’s Todd Klein’s work?)
“I have access to at least one memo that I can’t in good conscience share, as it makes the creator in question look too much like a petulant child who doesn’t understand that DC owns the characters that he is working on and can do with them as the organization sees fit.”
I can make an educated guess as to who this was, and BOY do I want to read that memo now!
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Reminds me a lot of the later Underworld Unleashed crossover.
So Aquaman would have become evil Sub-Mariner?
You’re right about the opening — nothing screamed We’re Not Kidding like killing Earth-Three. This overall feels more like a big JLA story with guest stars than a worthy follow up. But yeah, the neo-Nazi shrieking about the borders is creepily prescient.
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“I have access to at least one memo that I can’t in good conscience share, as it makes the creator in question look too much like a petulant child who doesn’t understand that DC owns the characters that he is working on and can do with them as the organization sees fit.”
I can think of at least three people working for DC at the time who this might be. Two have the features they were working on mentioned in this précis. All three were notorious for throwing fits over assertions of editorial prerogative. (And no, Alan Moore isn’t one of them.)
I’m for publishing the memo. If it’s one of the three guys I’m thinking of, they’re all retired. All three are open about having acted like this. They’re all proud of it, too.
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What a sloppy mess. I’d have saved $ by skipping it. This (mis)interpretation of Aquaman made me think of Geoff John’s awful “Flashpoint” version. He’s not a hero in 5his. I miss the days when American superheroes were overtly pro-Democracy. Aquaman’s a king, so maybe it’d less to push him over the edge, but it still rings false he’d commit genocide.
This has a Corruptor (jeez, another weak generic villain name, like the later Monarch), Controllers. Where’s the Collector, the Champion, the Gamesman guy? 🙂
Green Arrow pushed to the EDGE??? Oh, NO! 😉
This sounds like one big biring event. I’m glad it didnt happen.
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Well, may be wasn’t done this way, but you can easily identify the long descendence of this ideas in:
-LEGENDS: The public riots.
-MILLENIUM: The Jail Scenes in Suicide Squad/Spectre/Batman cross-over.
-MILLENIUM: The humans endowed by cosmic energy -that guy both reminds me of the one in the Ego issues of Byrne’s FF and a bit of the Secret Wars II Beyonder.
-TWILIGHT OF THE SUPERHEROES: Earth quarantinned.
-GENESIS EVENT: The Godwave energy reaches Earth, empowering people.
-MAXIMUM SECURITY: Where, I think, Ordway took the quarantine idea and turned it into an alien jail. But you should know better.
And last, but not least, STAN LEE PRESENTS CRISIS (or was it JLA?) where Ordway finally introduced THE CORRUPTOR. Most definetly, not an Stan Lee idea -like most or all of those. ;-P
PS: Oh, and don’t you find this pretty similar to the PSYCHO-MAN/MALICE Byrne’s adventure in FF, that, maybe not by sheer chance, JERRY ORDWAY inked…?
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That darn Jerry Ordway!
“MAXIMUM SECURITY: Where, I think, Ordway took the quarantine idea and turned it into an alien jail. But you should know better.”
That was me, before Jerry got recruited for the book.
I kinda wondered why DC was going to have a villain named The Corruptor when it was Marv who co-created Marvel’s Corruptor. Either way it strikes me as a very Stan type name.
kdb
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And the superhero hospital showed up in Invasion!, no?
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I would have guessed Alan Moore as the complaintant, except if it had been, we’d all know about it by now.
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Well, didn’t hit too far, quoting from memory.
And just in time, Kurt, hope that the “Controllers” will lift the ban of my own prison. (private joke, don’t mind me, crazy would-be comic book writer mode now).
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Just yesterday was reading Secret Origins #2, where the editorial mentioned this crossover and that Blue Beetle would play a role in it. The Blue Beetle series which this issue was a lead-in to was of course written by Len Wein and Greenberger was handling the Secret Origins editorial pages at the time, so it all tracks.
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