We’ve been looking at some of the ideas that surfaced for what to do as a follow-up to DC’s ultra successful 50th Anniversary Crossover limited series CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, which were being discussed and debated well before CRISIS had itself run its course. In the end, a number of different ideas were explored and then discarded before DC eventually settled on the story that would become LEGENDS. What we see here is another of the aborted concepts for that follow-up story.
The “Villain Committee” who were responsible for coming up with this idea for this storyline and who pulled these ideas together into this memo was a consortium of DC editors of the period. It included Andy Helfer, Karen Berger, Barbara Randall, Janice Race, Bob Greenberger and Roy Thomas. Their pitch involved uniting all of the big name villains of the DC Universe into a “Cartel” masterminded by Luthor–this would still be the late Pre-Crisis battlesuit Lex Luthor, as the later Marv Wolfman/John Byrne Kingpin-style Lex Luthor hadn’t been conceived yet.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
I really think I’d have preferred this premise to Legends, and it might have helped the Captain Marvel miniseries become a regular monthly.
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Aside from hating the idea of involving the SGT. ROCK and G.I. COMBAT series with the superhero goings-on — it’s one thing to have Rock show up in, say, BRAVE & BOLD, but another to have Johnny Quick and friends show up in SGT. ROCK — this feels pretty interesting.
But starting it in WWII seems like the kiss of death. Start it in the present and get readers interested before you ask them to buy G.I. COMBAT. If you build the first arc to a revelation that the Spear of Destiny is the villains’ ace in the hole and then flash back to the past module, more readers would be inclined to go along. Though even so, there’d be a lot of resistance.
And not just from readers — I think they’d have something of a hard time selling this idea to ROCK and G.I. COMBAT-editor Murray Boltinoff. Even to boost the sales of either series, both of which would be dead within a few years.
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Although I guess Joe Kubert would have still been the ROCK-editor at this point; I don’t think he’d want to do it either.
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It’s funny how ideas work: Luthor’s artificial island would pop-up again in Singer’s SUPERMAN RETURNS, and even in the villains island of 52.
And looks to me that ROCK JR. and his team was the root for Rick Flag Jr. and the SUICIDE SQUAD.
I so loved Levitz’s JSA ORIGIN, that my first JSA pastiche done for Spain, CÍRCULO JUSTICIERO, was just a retelling of that, in six issues and with some more INDIANA JONES in it. But he did it before, before Indiana, Hellboy and the rest.
But who were the mysterious married couple of villain with a daughter?
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I expect they were new characters that somebody was hoping to introduce in this, rather than anyone established.
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If it was Sportsmaster and Huntress, I would think this the most amazing idea ever, but I’m probably the only one… 🙂
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So, basically, what you’re telling me is DC plotted the last 3-4 years of the X-Men books for Marvel…
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Reminiscent of Luthor bringing everyone together for Infinite Crisis, but sounds a lot more interesting. And much more so than the Legends we finally got.
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Definitely some interesting ideas mixed in here, some of which seem to eventually have come to fruition in one way or another (although probably coincidentally for many of them). But all my brain is saying is “I remember that font! That is an early Mac document!”
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