The Unpublished Grant Morrison - DC Comics

SECOND COMING (1982)

A story teaming the New Gods and the Justice League of America pitched to DC by 22-year old Morrison as part of their 1982 open submission New Talent Search programme.  The pitch was likely inspired in part by Gerry Conway, Dick Dillin and George Perez's satellite-era JLA/JSA/New Gods team-up that brought Kirby's Fourth World characters into the DC Universe proper, from 1980's Justice League of America #183-185.  Morrison later noted in his 2004 forward to the Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Volume 1 that he didn't fully appreciate Kirby's work on the original New Gods series, and indeed didn't read much of it, until significantly later in his career.

At least some of the material from the rejected pitch - including the climactic death of Darkseid at the hands of The Atom and Green Arrow - surfaced some 15 years later in Morrison and Howard Porter's 'Rock of Ages' storyline from JLA #10-15.

Source: Leaving JLA, Planning A Hypercrisis by Michael Doran, Newsarama, 15 October 1999

THE PHANTOM STRANGER (1988)

Turtleneck-wearing, occult crime-fighting in the swinging mod sixties.  One of a number of proposals Morrison presented to Karen Berger in his first meeting with DC during their UK talent search in 1987.  Though his pitches for Animal Man and Arkham Asylum were both commissioned, Morrison's Phantom Stranger - along with another proposal for the character by Neil Gaiman - was flatly rejected as plans were already afoot to publish Paul Kupperberg and Mike Mignola's take on the character as a four issue mini-series later that year.

Sometime sexy sidekick of The Phantom Stranger, blind occult bookstore owner Cassandra Craft was featured, according to Gaiman, in both his and Morrison's pitches.  Cassandra later cropped up in Morrison's 2005 Seven Soldiers: Zatanna mini-series. 

Further details from a Reddit AMA Morrison did in October 2025 - 

"I pitched a Phantom Stranger story to Karen Berger, along with Animal Man and Arkham Asylum, in 1987, but they were already working on something with the character.  I like to keep him mysterious, but my story linked him to an earlier sighting of a Phantom Stranger lookalike, who turned out to be the Devil, in one of DC's spooky comics from the '50s."

If anyone has any idea what this spooky comic from the 50's might be, I'm all ears.

Morrison would try again alongside Mark Millar in the mid nineties.  An anonymous user posted in the Comic Book Resources forums, “Mark Millar and Grant Morrison once pitched a book where the Phantom Stranger was sort of a cool '60s dad who was charged with watching powerful children in a sitcom-ish way. It was immediately shot down, but The Phantom Uncle probably would have been a great name for it.".  Art would have been provided by Morrison's Filth collaborator Chris Weston, as revealed in a column Millar wrote for Comic Book Resources in 2002.  I asked Chris about the pitch -

"I think it was to Stuart Moore.  Our take was to do it as a James Coburn/Our Man Flint pastiche.  Opening shot: a grinning Phantom Stranger and gal-pals zooming down the Pacific Highway in an open top sports car.  I'm not sure our pitch went beyond that one line and a few drawings (which I can't find).  Can't recall any plot."  

Whilst writing JLA in the late nineties, Morrison made vague plans to write a Phantom Stranger-centric issue in his second year on the title - echoing his frequent appearances during Len Wein's iconic Justice League of America run in the 1970's - but, possibly due to Morrison's extra workload relating to the DC One Million crossover, the planned issue never appeared.

Sources:

Interview with Neil Gaiman, quoted in Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed 158 by Brian Cronin, Comic Book Resources, 5 June 2008

The Column, Issue 3 by Mark Millar, Comic Book Resources, 9 August 2002

Chris Weston, Twitter, 2013

Leaving JLA, Planning A Hypercrisis by Michael Doran, Newsarama, 15 October 1999

ANIMAL MAN (1988)

Morrison's Animal Man was originally pitched as a four-issue mini-series, though DC upgraded it to an ongoing series before issue #1 had hit the stands.  Two of Morrison's first batch of scripts for the ongoing series were rejected.  

Issue #7 was originally intended to feature a story entitled 'The Mod-Gorilla Boss of Central City'.  A very DC go-go check foe from the original Animal Man run in Strange Adventures (#201), the Mod Gorilla Boss was a gorilla-gangster decked out in the finest fashions of Carnaby Street, and the only member of Animal Man’s solo rogues’ gallery.  Despite his proclamation of being the ‘real deal’ on the cover of his one and only appearance, the money-mad Gorilla was actually a criminal scientist injecting himself with a gorilla transformation serum.  Of course.  The title also backhandedly references obscure and equally left-field Batman foe the Gorilla Boss of Gotham City, probably the Mod’s original inspiration.

Morrison’s embracing of DC’s more far-out icons of past decades, now extremely commonplace, was deeply unfashionable in the post-Crisis landscape of the late 80's, and probably contributed to editorial skepticism at this proposed tale.

Though it's unlikely any art was completed for it, the solicit did somehow make it onto DC's Direct Currents page for January '88, which ironically appeared on the inside front cover of the actual Animal Man #7 (which featured the Watchmen-baiting 'The Death of the Red Mask' and no gorillas at all) - 

"The Mod Gorilla Boss takes on the mob in Miami with Animal Man caught between both sides"

After the script was rejected, Morrison extensively reworked it for inclusion in a proposed Mark Waid-edited one-shot entitled Gorillas-A-Go-Go.  The second version featured revivals of many more of DC's more outre 60's teen-appeal characters such as Scooter (from the Swing With Scooter series), Binky, Caps Hobby Hints, and even the stuffed corpse of Rex The Wonder Dog.  From Amazing Heroes #176 -

"It's written as if Bob Haney were still alive. Which he probably is. Everyone appears in it. Scooter's in there, Binky, all these fabulous people. I don't know what else I can say about it. It's a piece of nonsense. It's ...  well, Scooter. What else can I say? It's as sublime as that. The return of Scooter. Don't know who's drawing it yet."

It certainly seems that that the script was completed - one source has it that the art was finished too - but neither the story or the special ever appeared, likely due to Waid being fired from DC editorial in December 1989.  Per Grant Morrison's Reddit AMA from October 2025, DC no longer have a copy of the Gorillas-A-Go-Go script and Morrison lost the original in a computer crash (probably the same one that did for Forever England) back in the 90's.

The original script for issue #8, entitled 'Dominion' and described by Morrison as a "really heavy, grim animal rights tract" was also rejected.  Once again the solicit, though extremely vague, made it out into the world via Direct Currents - 

"Though the INVASION! is over, it has left it's victims behind.  Animal Man is one of them as he heads home from the hospital with his animal powers scrambled... and his mind full of the horrors he's experienced."

In 2019, Chas Truog posted some art from this lost issue on his Facebook page - 

"I got two and a half pages into drawing issue #8 of Animal Man, when I got a call (either from editor Karen Berger or more likely her assistant, Art Young): Stop working on the issue, we're pulling it. The plot was part of the aftermath of the Invasion! crossover series done in 1988, which affected all the books in the DC Universe (this was pre-Vertigo, so Animal Man was still in the DCU). Buddy gets zapped by some kind of alien ray which drains him of his super powers, and spends the issue in a fever dream. It became a rant about extinction and animal rights, and the climax was Buddy getting skinned and worn by a runway model in a fashion show. It was pulled because either there wasn't enough of a story there, or the image of a skinned Animal Man was too much (maybe both). The splash page, which was the only other complete page done for the issue, and showed a graveyard of extinct animals, was reused in a later issue.

Buddy encounters a human-sized, ragged looking talking cat playing a sitar at the beginning of his fever dream. I must have drawn page one, then the splash page (page three), and then page two. This is literally where I got the call to stop work, partway through panel three of what should have been a five or six panel page... This [page] was reused without the cat in issue #25... The final version was inked by Mark Farmer." 

Morrison re-used the 'Dominion' title and, I'd guess, probably some of the content from the rejected script in another 'really heavy, grim animal rights tract' that he contributed to Eclipse Comics' PETA benefit book, Born To Be Wild in 1991.

The published issue #8 featured the Mirror Master.  DC's solicits suggest this was originally intended for issue #9, and the Martian Manhunter/JLE transporter story featured in the published issue #9 was probably a last minute replacement job.

DOOM PATROL (1991) 

Another unrealised collaboration between Morrison and Brendan McCarthy.  From The Strange World of Brendan Mccarthy blog;

“I found this DOOM PATROL script the other day that I had doodled all over, from Grant Morrison… It was an episode that Grant wrote for me to draw back in 1991/92 or thereabouts: I asked for an old style DC ‘imaginary story’ with Danny The Street as the central character. But by the time the script turned up, I had to do a film so I couldn’t draw it and I think eventually, we all sorta forgot about it… It would be fun to draw it up after all these years and release it as a VERTIGO ANOMALY one shot.”

A tantalising look at some of McCarthy's ideas for the story, doodled on the first couple of script pages, can be seen here.  After McCarthy dropped out, the Danny the Street script was dropped and replaced in the schedule with issue #45's 'The Beard Hunter'.

McCarthy was also lined-up at one point to be regular cover artist for Doom Patrol, per the 'Next Issue' box in issue #25.  When #26 hit the shelves it featured a cover by Simon Bisley instead.  Bisley did all of the covers from #26 through to #48, and a handful of issues after that.  McCarthy didn't end up contributing any covers to Doom Patrol, but was the regular cover artist on the first year or so of Peter Milligan and Chris Bachalo's Shade the Changing Man.

According to our Italian friends at the Grant Morrison: All Star blog, McCarthy burned his bridges with Morrison in the early 2010's over, of all things, who should get credit for creating Danny the Street.

In addition to the missing McCarthy issue, Morrison also mentioned numerous times in interviews that he was keen to write the "last" Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man tale, though sadly he never appeared in Morrison's run. 

THE WHIP (1993)

S&M Superheroics, inspired by the fetish clothing found in Skin Two magazine, particularly the photography of Craig Morrison.  The original proposal for the character, submitted to the nascent Vertigo line post-Doom Patrol, later essentially became King Mob in The Invisibles.

From the Anarchy For The Masses book - 

"The King Mob character was based on... DC had an old character called The Whip from the '40s. No one had ever touched it; I found it and thought that was great, I can do this real kind of S&M superhero. The Whip is basically King Mob. The original designs for that, I just had this character who was bald and based on the fetish stuff at the time, which again was established in the underground and magazines like Skin Two." 

One of DC's most erotically-charged heroes, the Whip was later revived by Morrison in the Seven Soldiers maxi-series as Shelly Gaynor, grand-daughter of the original Whip and sado-masochistic, leather-clad thrill-seeker who documents her vigilante exploits in her book The Super Cowboys. 

BOY COMMANDOS (1993)

A revival of Simon & Kirby's classic juvenile-delinquents-in-WW2 series.  Morrison's proposal was inspired by a dream of finding a book entitled The Psychic Boy Scouts Handbook.  This surreal Burroughs-ian metasexual time-travel caper also dates from just after the conclusion of Doom Patrol.  The central conceit of a conspiracy-baiting group of sexy young protagonists became, like Morrison's Whip proposal from the same period, an integral part of The Invisibles.  

ANIMAL MAN (1993)

Tom Peyer asked Morrison to return to Animal Man for a 6-issue stint after the conclusion of Tom Veitch's run and Jamie Delano's six-issue 'Flesh and Blood' arc. Delano decide to continue and stayed on the title for two years before handing it over to Jerry Prosser with issue 80 in late 1994.  By that time Peyer had been replaced as editor by Lou Stathis and Morrison was already deep into volume one of The Invisibles.  Prosser lasted another 9 issues until the title’s cancellation with issue 89.

No scripts were started for Morrison's proposed return, as confirmed by a webchat he gave at Next Planet Over in 1999.

TEEN TITANS (1995)

In his introduction to the first JLA hardcover collection, Eddie Berganza mentions that Morrison proposed a Teen Titans relaunch in 1995.  The pitch was rejected by Berganza due to Morrison's then-unproven track record in mainstream superheroics and DC's having already gone with a pitch by Dan Jurgens and George Perez.  After rejecting Morrison's pitch, Berganza mentioned to his colleague Ruben Diaz, then editor of the flagging Justice League America title, that Morrison was keen to throw himself into revamping DC's corporate super-hero properties, leading Diaz to invite Morrison to pitch what would become JLA.

Morrison also worked on developing a Teen Titans as a movie at Warner Brothers in the mid-noughties.

From Morrison's October 2025 Reddit AMA - 

"[The 1995 pitch] was like JLA with a return to the core team - which for me was the Bob Haney version with Lilith! Other than that, I confuse it with the Titans movie pitch where I it was a Dick Grayson coming of age story, where he gets the team together coming to rescue a mysterious alien (Starfire) from some guvmint dungeon! That one was more like the Wolfman/Perez line-up... "

Due to the critical and commercial failure of Jurgens and Perez's Teen Titans relaunch, Young Justice were created in 1998 to fill the 'teen heroes' gap in DC's schedule.  Morrison played his part in this via the mini-series they first appeared in, JLA: World Without Heroes.  Though Todd DeZago scripted this JLA spin-off, it was originally planned as a 'JLA Jr.' storyline in Morrison's own JLA run.  Morrison receives a special thanks in the creator credits.  Similarities between the two stories - an evil genie, a prominent role for Captain Marvel, the revival of a defunct super team at the story's conclusion - make me think that Morrison did also end up re-purposing his 'JLA Jr.' story as 'Crisis Time Five' in JLA #28-31.  

MISTER MIRACLE (1995)

Morrison sounded out DC about Mister Miracle probably at roughly the same time as he did with the Teen Titans.  As with the Phantom Stranger a decade earlier, DC already had books in the pipeline so this was rejected.  Rachel Pollack and Tom Peyer's New Gods hit the stands in late 1995, followed by Kevin Dooley's short-lived Mister Miracle book in early 1996.  

SUPERMAN 2000/SUPERMAN PLUS (1998)

Asked by incoming Superman editor Eddie Berganza to pitch for the Superman family of titles as a 'hive-mind' (a concept Morrison and Waid would later revisit writing 52), Morrison, Mark Millar, Mark Waid and Tom Peyer proposed a revitalization of the Superman titles, in keeping with prior reimaginings by Mort Weisenger in the Silver Age, Denny O'Neill in the Bronze Age, and John Byrne in the Post-Crisis era.

You can read the full pitch here.

The proposal was vehemently rejected after a 'vacationing editor' (probably Mike Carlin) returned to the offices, read the pitch and presumed, incorrectly, that it was a part of a behind the scenes plot to undermine both his editorial powers and the current writers on the Superman titles.  Morrison, Millar, Peyer and Waid were subsequently informed that their chances of ever working on any of the Superman books were effectively nil.  Coupled with DC's reluctance to offer Morrison more high-profile work following the conclusion of his JLA run (editorial policy at the time was, inexplicably, to keep big name creators off the 'Big Two', Superman and Batman), Morrison left DC and spent the next 4 years at Marvel.

From a 2001 interview - 

"Not being able to do Superman and not being offered anything else at DC was the main reason I decided to do Marvel Boy for Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Quesada."

As the years rolled on, bridges were rebuilt between Superman editorial and the writers involved and all four would go on to write high-profile Superman projects; Morrison's All-Star Superman; Waid's 'Year One' reboot Superman: Birthright; Peyer's various one shots and short run on the main Superman title, and Millar's Elseworlds mini Superman: Red Son (though Morrison claims the twist in the tale's conclusion - Krypton is actually a far-future Earth and the House of El are the descendants of Lex Luthor - as his own, proclaiming it 'the best idea I ever had for Superman'). 

HYPERCRISIS (1999 / 2003)

From a 2002 interview - 

"My one regret about my brief falling out with DC after the 'Superman Incident' is that I didn't get to do my Hypercrisis series at DC to explain all this stuff and set up a whole new playground.

It's the one thing I could still be arsed doing with classical superheroes. If I ever go back, I'll explain the whole Hypertime thing and recreate the Challengers of the Unknown as Challengers: Beyond the Unknown.  It's one thing I still want to do. It had a monster eating the first few years of the 21st century and Superman building a bridge across this gaping hole in time. A bridge made of events. The Guardians of The Multiverse and a new Green Lantern Corps made up of parallel reality Green Lanterns, the Superman Squad and the mystery of the Unknown Superman of 2150 etc, etc. There's a huge synopsis filled with outrageous stuff"

A 'big summer cross-over' precursor to Final Crisis, much of the Hypercrisis material would later appear elsewhere - the Unknown Superman and the Superman Squad appeared in All-Star Superman, a bastardized version of the Challengers Beyond the Unknown appeared in Paul Dini and co.'s Countdown to Final Crisis, and the whole 'Guardians of the Multiverse' thing fits pretty neatly with Operation: Justice Incarnate from The Multiversity and the multiversal Lantern Corps from The Green Lantern.  

Other elements from Hypercrisis that Morrison has mentioned elsewhere also got put to good use - the series was intended to open with a major character's shocking death, originally Captain Marvel but changed to J'onn J'onzz for the later Final Crisis; and, to goose the sales figures, every issue was going to be a #1, a tactic later employed with The Multiversity. 

It seems that Morrison pitched the series again to the much more sympathetic ear of Dan Didio on his return to DC in 2004, though once again it wasn't commissioned.  Retitled as Crisis in Hypertime, Crisis II, or Crisis in Infinite Futures, Didio posted an unattributed page from the pitch on his Facebook page in  2015, which features a chronovore (the 'Hyper Time Drive'-powered Infinite Man, from Paul Levitz's Legion of Super-Heroes run) devouring time, necessitating a bridge made of events be built to reconnect the future and the past.  Sounds very familiar!  I'd guess this one was a collaborative effort from Morrison, possibly alongside Mark Waid, Geoff Johns, or both.  You can read the page from the pitch here.

Chris Roberson probably referenced the rejected Hypercrisis pitch as 'Crisis in Infinite Eras' in a single panel in 2011's Superman #708.   I asked him if this was a reference to Morrison's pitch on Twitter but he couldn't recall.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES (2000)

From Morrison's October 2025 Reddit AMA - 

"I did have a Legion pitch back in the day – around the year 2000, and Jim Lee was talking about drawing it! It didn't happen in the end. But yes, I'm a huge Legion fan!"

Predating - but only just - Morrison's move to Marvel in 2001, I'd guess DC either rejected or ignored this proposal alongside Superman 2000 and the original version of Hypercrisis, leaving Morrison with effectively no work on the table at DC with JLA about to wrap up.

Newly ensconced at DC after their purchase of his Wildstorm studio in late 1998, there were a bunch of rumours at the time about Jim Lee doing an extended run on a DC property, usually centered around Superman, which eventually happened on 2004's 'For Tomorrow' with Brian Azzarello.  I believe at one point Lee was considering drawing Morrison's All Star Superman before settling on All Star Batman and Robin with Frank Miller.  

JL8 (2002)

A precursor to Morrison's Seven Soldiers.  Some time after Morrison's return to DC following the conclusion of New X-Men, he was asked by editor Dan Raspler what he might do if he were to have another crack at the JLA title he'd helped relaunch to great acclaim some years earlier.  Morrison, who had already completed some spec work along these lines before his Marvel contract expired, responded with JL8, an antithesis to the wildly successful formula he employed writing JLA.

This was the series that would attempt to make a go of the oft-attempted and rarely successful idea of making the JLA title a showcase for a team of characters that could not (or did not at the time) carry their own book. A tactic successfully employed by Gerry Conway during the fondly remembered ‘Satellite-era’ of the Justice League, this idea has, until the rise of Brian Michael Bendis, essentially been the storytelling engine behind Marvel’s Avengers book for the last 30 plus years. Fueled by Morrison's ongoing Jack Kirby fetish and inspired in part by the template of Stan Lee’s second Avengers line up (Cap, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Hawkeye), the original pitch starred –

The Guardian – Simon & Kirby’s 1940’s shield wielding super policeman has essentially always been a DC analogue of Marvel’s Captain America.  After the pair left Marvel (then Timely)’s flagship character in a dispute over rights, they went on to recreate him at least twice with The Guardian at DC and the Fighting American at Prize.  Simon and Kirby's addition of the Newsboy Legion to the Guardian’s cast - a peacetime Boy Commandos - enlivened the character beyond simple pastiche and Morrison was clearly keen to keep that element of the character in place.

The Enchantress - Schizophrenic sorceress the Enchantress began life as the distinctly go-go check ‘switcheroo-witcheroo’, first appearing in Strange Adventures in 1966 and created, of course, by Bob Haney. Consigned to comic-book limbo after a handful of appearances, she resurfaced as a villain in the 1980’s Daring New Adventures of Supergirl title and later the Suicide Squad.  She reverted to hero again in the late 90’s, eventually becoming part of the Shadowpact book launched post-Infinite Crisis.  Her ever changing allegiances and unpredictable powers recall Marvel’s Scarlet Witch.  Morrison's affinity for the character undoubtedly stems from his fondness for bad Supergirl comics - The Gang, who appeared briefly in his JLA, also appeared in Supergirl's title during this period.

This strictly C-list character was replaced in the pitch by Zatanna, perhaps as Paul Dini’s still unrealized Zatanna project, in the works for many years, was taking too long to come to fruition.  In a reflection of her intended use in this proto-Seven Soldiers, The Enchantress’s more recent storylines include the recruitment of a young girl apprentice.

Mister Miracle – Morrison’s Mister Miracle is Shilo Norman, the human apprentice of the New God Scott Free.  Norman has appeared in all the incarnations of Mister Miracle’s titles over the years, but almost always as a bit part player.  Its not difficult to see the appeal of the character to Morrison.  As essentially the Jesus of the New Gods, Mister Miracle is a most Kirbyesque avatar of the Age of Horus.  Norman’s Mister Miracle is loosely analogous to Marvel’s Thor or possibly Hercules, both Gods amongst men as opposed to Shilo’s Man amongst (New) Gods.

Alias, The Spider – An obscure hero from the 40’s who was originally a Batman knock off, Alias, The Spider was (questionably) acquired by DC when they took over publishing responsibility for some of the  Quality Comics titles in the 1950’s.  Barring a few one panel cameos in All-Star Squadron, The Spider went essentially unused by DC until James Robinson reinvented the character for his Starman series.  The Spider was now a villain who pretended to be a hero in order to cover up his murderous criminal deeds.

Morrison’s I, Spyder is a (literal) sibling of Robinson’s, mixed up with a dash of J.M. Dematteis’ I, Vampire saga from the twilight days of the House of Mystery title.  Keeping Robinson’s character’s motives wholly intact, The Spider maps neatly to the Avengers analogues as a reversed Hawkeye, the carnival bowman who pretends to be a villain to meet heroic aims.

Etrigan the Demon - DC inexplicably passed on Morrison's “Satanic-powered Hulk” interpretation of Etrigan as 'too far removed from the source material', favouring John Byrne's limp (and unsuccessful) Blood of the Demon revival; he was replaced in the lineup by another vintage 70’s Kirby creation, Klarion the Witch Boy.

Morrison's concept for the Demon did, briefly, eventually see the light of day via the parallel earth Super-Demon, who briefly appeared in Final Crisis and The Multiversity.

Manhunter – A revitalization of the harbinger of DC’s Silver Age, J'onn J'onnzz, the Martian Manhunter.  Morrison envisioned the character in a more brutal, alien form, incorporating elements of Goodwin & Simonson's Manhunter from the early 70's.  The revision of the character was not to DC’s tastes at the time, with J’onn still playing a part in the JLA title.  Though J’onn J’onnzz didn't carry over into Seven Soldiers, much of the story written around the character was set on a ruined Mars and this was retained when Morrison re-worked the title as Frankenstein.

In his place, Morrison proposed a revival of Michael Fleisher’s Spawn of Frankenstein, who originally appeared as a back-up in the 1970’s Phantom Stranger series.  Eventually, Morrison dropped almost all the trappings of Fleisher’s Frankenstein, basing his version more on the tragic figure of the original novel, livened up with a dash of the classic Universal monster.

Though DC passed on Morrison’s reinterpretation of the Martian Manhunter, the character’s post-Infinite Crisis revamp placed much greater emphasis on the alien man-hunting aspect of the character.  The mini-series introducing the grittier take on J’onn J’onnzz was essentially his final major appearance before Morrison killed him off in Final Crisis #1.

I vaguely recall some mention of the Atom originally being lined up to appear here too, as an obvious analog to Ant Man.  Some concept art by Morrison of a revitalized Atom appeared in the Deluxe Edition of The Multiversity, though the margin notes around the sketch confirm that it actually came from Seven Soldiers.  Morrison would of course go on to create Dr. Ryan Choi, a new version of the character who appeared in his own series, The All New Atom, beginning in 2006.

Morrison acknowledges that the Guardian, Mister Miracle, Zatanna and the Spider (in a very different role than originally envisioned) carried over from JL8 to Seven Soldiers as is, and for most of the other Seven Soldiers mini’s the parallels are self evident (Manhunter=Frankenstein, Etrigan=Klarion).  But even if we take the Atom as a given, the 8th member of JL8 remains a mystery; the Bulleteer as an Iron Man analogue? The Shining Knight as the Black Knight?

Thematically, I think all can agree that the book benefits immeasurably from losing the 'poor-man's JLA' associations and that horrendous 'JL8' title, not only because Morrison had already proven the right way to tackle the JLA with his 'Big 7' run, but the series loose affiliation with the unfamiliar Seven Soldiers of Victory continuity provides many fresh takes on some interesting ideas like Neb-Ul-Oh and the Iron Hand. 

CAPTAIN MARVEL JR (2005)

Announced as forthcoming at the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con, Captain Marvel Jr. was presumably another casualty in the wake of the Herculean effort Morrison and his compadres put into 52.  Like Mister Miracle and Morrison's earlier Marvel Boy, Captain Marvel Jr would act as another avatar of the Age of Horus, the proposed series presumably incorporating some of the ideas Bill Jemas rejected from the unpublished Marvel Boy sequels.

Gail Simone recently revealed that Morrison's unpublished Captain Marvel Jr. stories would have formed one third of an anthology book alongside a Captain Marvel strip by Mark Waid and tales of Mary Marvel by Simone herself.  DC rejected the proposal, possibly in favour of one written and drawn by Alex Ross, though in the end Ross's book never appeared either.

THE KNIGHT & THE SQUIRE (2005) 

A proposed mini series featuring the aristocratic British Batman Cyril, Earl of Wordenshire, and his plucky commoner sidekick Beryl, written after Morrison reintroduced the characters as part of the Ultramarine Corps in JLA.  Though the mini wasn't commissioned, Morrison used much of the material to flesh out the Knight and Squire's backstory in various guest appearances in JLA Classified, Batman RIP, the 'Blackest Knight' arc of Batman and Robin, and the second volume of Batman Incorporated.

A misfire Knight & Squire mini was published in 2010, scripted by the often excellent (though not on this occasion) Paul Cornell and drawn by the pseudonymous Jimmy Broxton.

ALL-STAR SUPERMAN (2008)

As the series was drawing to a close in 2008, Morrison mentioned in an interview the possibility that All Star Superman could continue as a series of specials with different artists.  Some of the potential stories were tales of Superman vs Satan from the very earliest days of his career, Superman's first meeting with the Legion of Super Heroes, and a revival of Bob Haney's Super Sons concept.  Much of the material would end up being used in Morrison's Action Comics run some years later.

Paul Pope has mentioned in interviews that he was attached to the project at one point, along with J. H. Williams III and Richard Corben.

THE FLASH: EARTH ONE (2013)

A 1950's sci-fi style take - think 'The Man With X-Ray Eyes' etc - on The Flash for DC's briefly successful Earth One line, DC passed on Morrison's pitch in favour of a proposal from J. Michael Straczynski which was never released.

MULTIVERSITY TOO (2015)

BATMAN: BLACK & WHITE (2015)

Multiversity Too was announced at the 2015 San Diego Comic Con as a Morrison-written imprint of original graphic novels set on various DC parallel Earths to follow-up on the recently concluded The Multiversity.   The only specific project mentioned as forming part of the line was a revival of Morrison's The Flash: Earth One pitch.  Also announced at the same convention was Batman: Black and White, a series of standalone graphic novels with various top-tier artists.  No books from either series were ever published.

Morrison on Batman: Black and White, from a 2022 edition of their Xanaduum Substack newsletter -

"I had a story for Matt Bone where all of Bruce Wayne's former girlfriends are kidnapped by a disgruntled ex-employee and start swapping stories. Stephanie Inagaki was doing a super formal Bat-haiku one set at a Yakuza wedding on an ornamental roof garden in Gotham. There was the Amato photo strip featuring the fierce daughter of Tlano, the original Batman of Zur-En-Arrh. There was a mad, meta Bat-Mite thing for Sienkewicz where solving a simple crime in Batman's 3-D world is expressed in the 5-D world as a massive epoch-changing event. I had one for Ivan Reis who asked to be involved, which was World's Finest meets Blue Remembered Hills where Superman Batman and Luthor, drawn as adult superheroes in their costumes play out a violent kid game of chase and fight through ordinary streets that ends with Luthor up a tree in the park throwing branches down at a jeering Superman and Batman as the sun goes down. Gerard Way and I were collaborating on a weird expressionistic Batman/Joker story which came with its own punk song…

Woke up in a trash can!

Better call Batman!

Thought of something funny and it showed up on the CAT scan!

Smile please!

Get down on your knees!

Joker got a gun and we're gonna have some fun

With the Batman! Batman! ….etc

I wrote more than half of the book, but it got tangled up with the whole New 52 situation and the conclusion of my Batman run. After seven years I felt ready to take a break from Gotham City, which meant that this book and the proposed Arkham Asylum 2, of which 25 pages were written, fell by the wayside. I still have a nagging desire to finish both but it's not where my head's at right now and may never happen."

ARKHAM ASYLUM 2 (2017)

Announced at the 2017 San Diego Comic Con, Arkham Asylum 2 was intended to be a 120 page graphic novel drawn by Morrison's Batman Incorporated collaborator Chris Burnham.  Morrison described it as a Luc Besson-esque thriller set in the 'Batman 666' future timeline where Damian Wayne has taken up the Bat-mantle.  Morrison wrote 25 pages of script before it fell by the wayside.  They did suggest that they might finish writing it one day in their Reddit AMA from October 2025.

I'm sure I remember reading that this was basically a joke, thought up on the fly just before Morrison's panel at SDCC was about to begin as they had nothing else to announce.  It'd be great if we do ever see it though!