Posted in: Batman, Comics, DC Comics | Tagged: Batman, frank tieri, gangs og gotham

The DC Wild West Comic Gangs Of Gotham That They Never Published

Whether it is Mike Deodato's Miracleman Triumphant or Frank Quitely's Lobo: By Blows, the comic industry is littered with partially or fully completed comic book stories held by big publishers that were never published for… reasons.

Origin Story is a comic book Substack newsletter created by comic artist and playwright John Stanisci with comic marketing man Jeremy Atkins as a venue to share their collective experience, creative pursuits and projects across entertainment mediums, dealing a project still in a DC Comics bottom drawer. Stanisci writes;

Brian Cunningham gave me a great shot on a Constantine inventory story that I pencilled and inked. REALLY fun stuff and, maybe in another newsletter, we'll show you those pages! I took those pages over to Chris Conroy, my editor on Batman Beyond and asked for a shot. Now, you have to understand that A: Chris is one of the BEST editors in the game, B: is a SUPER nice guy and C: was the editor of the Batman books, so, it was kind of a big ask even for a super great guy like Chris. BUT, at the time, Chris was editing the Batman Eternal book which had one and two off stories. Not a huge commitment….and it looked like not everything on the Batman eternal slate was assigned. Sensing blood in this editorial water, I pounced. Ok, I didn't pounce. I…very gently, and with great reverence, asked if I could take a one or two issue slot. I may have bowed my head. Chris said yes.

There was a really cool two issue story called GANGS OF GOTHAM, written by Frank Tieri and, without giving too much away (in the very very small chance DC ever wants to pick this up someday), it tells the story of Gotham in the 1800's and who were the first folks to don masks and why they did. It gives us a look into some of the ancestors of our favorite characters and, trust me, there were a TON of surprises.

Frank wrote a GREAT story of Gotham in its formative, brutal time. It's a story about immigrants and gangs forming to just try to survive in this dark, crime filled world. Just killer stuff. We were doing two issues but Frank had a larger story planned and I SO wanted to do the whole thing. I got to work and pencilled, I think, around thirty pages. We had Scott Hanna on board to ink and it was looking great. Then…DC decided to move to L.A….and other changes. Changes that swept through the company and, in its aftermath, apparently, a whole bunch of 'underway' projects just didn't go forward, including Gangs of Gotham.

That was when all the DC Comics titles went on pause for two months and we got Convergence… remember?

These things happen. It's all a part of the industry and I'm very, very grateful to Chris Conroy and the good folks at DC for giving me the shot. It was shortly after working on Gangs Of Gotham, that I had the notion of starting my creator owned series LIFEDEATH, which of course, led to my meeting Jeremy Atkins and the rest…isn't history to absolutely ANYONE except for well, me and Jeremy!! But you get the idea!!

And he shared a bunch of pages from Gangs Of Gotham that never was.

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