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Stjepan Šejić – Keeping the Fanfic Going and What Could Have Been in Justice League Odyssey

Some people come into creating corporate storytelling through writing fanfic or fanart. It's a way to stretch and practice working within a certain arena, generating a fanbase before getting down to do it "for real", accepting corporate restrictions or just creating your own work without any. This is not a new thing, by the way — instead of tumblr blogs, before Usenet newsgroups, people used to have fanzines or even comic book letters pages to practice such writing. Famously that included Geoff Johns, who once wrote in his own theory that the '90s Superboy was a clone of Lex Luthor.

This theory was rejected by the then-editor. That was until Geoff Johns became Teen Titans writer, of course. You could also read Steven Moffat's theory that, in the world of Doctor Who, the word "doctor" derives from the presence of the Doctor throughout human culture.

Steven Moffat (100043.121@CompuServe.COM) wrote:
: Here's a particularly stupid theory.  If we take "The Doctor" to
: be the Doctor's name – even if it is in the form of a title no
: doubt meaning something deep and Gallifreyan – perhaps our
: earthly use of the word "doctor" meaning healer or wise man is
: direct result of the Doctor's multiple interventions in our
: history as a healer and wise man.  In other words, we got it from
: him.  This is a very silly idea and I'm consequently rather proud
: of it.

Well, once he was showrunner, it was canon. As much as anything in Doctor Who can be.

Evan Dorkin wrote about this phenomenon in the recent Eltingville collection and conclusion with Josh's final destiny. But it seems a given that anyone who does make the jump, will put away actually creating such fanfics as they have the real thing to work on.

Unless you are Stjepan Šejić. His… often rather more mature-readers-only takes on classic superhero characters continue even as he draws the actual characters, and more in common with some of his other work, such as SunStone.

I wonder… I don't suppose any of this kind of approach could have been behind the junking and restarting of his first two issues of Justice League Odyssey? Mindless speculation there… (UPDATE: Sorry if anyone took that literally, obviously not.)

Though he has been sharing art from those abandoned issues as well…

UPDATE: Oh and from Stjepan to make it clear…

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