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The 15th Rumour Awards 2015 – Scoop Of The Year

It's a long long time since the very first one of these. I was 28 when I decided that an annual look back at the rumours and scoops of the year would be a good thing. 15 years later, that's still to be determined. But here we go again with a self congratulatory pat on the back. Mostly.

But feel free to catch up with previous years by clicking on all these links.

So what will get the coveted Scoop Of The Year? A story first reported by Bleeding Cool grabbed from the ether without named source that ended up being officially bang on the money, or as close as makes no difference, despite all odds? These can be from previous years, but their confirmation must have been from this.

Don't worry, we'll get to the ones we got wrong as well – and the ones that have yet to be confirmed….

Could it have been this post promising the death of Quicksilver, pooh poohed by more respected film reporters at the time (who had seen an earlier version of the Age Of Ultron scripts in which he survived) alongside a Hulk/Black Widow kiss, lots of folk in Civil War alongside a teenage Spider-Man, and Falcon in Ant-Man?

It was more accurate than the Wonder Woman movie story we wrote – we had it first as a period piece in the nineteen twenties, but it turns out that it's the nineteen tens.

We were the first to scour through the Sony Wikileaks and find a letter from Isaac Perlmutter that seemed to reveal his attitude towards female superhero properties. And what went down between Drew Goddard, Marvel, Netflix and Sony… and the possibility of a Spider-Gwen movie courtesy of Lisa Joy.

Just as we had been all over Convergence in 2014, in 2015, we had what would be called DC YOU, the DC June mini-relaunch, down pat as a retailer meeting spilled so many of its secrets.

We pre-empted the announcement of funded Valiant movies Harbinger and Bloodshot with a look at how Sony had been discussing the possibility of the films and how they may tie into each other.

There was the news that so soon after he had joined in a blaze of glory, John Romita Jr was off again to a new exciting project. That would turn out to be Dark Knight III.

We stayed close to the increasing lateness at Marvel of their Secret Wars and Star Wars titles, as well as letting you know exactly what was going on with C-3PO and his red arm. Oh, and that Old Man Logan would survive the Secret Wars….

Grabbing some images out of the San Diego retailer meeting we were able to name Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur well in advance. As for a certain Black Widow by Mark Waid and Chris Samnee, we ran this back in May and then this in August. And the big delays to the new Blade – through the reasons are yet to be confirmed.

We had the news, confirmed much later that Image Comics had scrapped their retailer exclusive variant cover programme, were demanding issues in hand from creative teams before soliciting new titles… and promoting comics with condoms.

We had some happy reading through the year, being the first to write about the leaked scripts for Preacher, Fear The Walking Dead (before it had been officially named as such giving us that scoop as well), Scream, Powers and Lucifer. The lawyers didn't seem to care about the last two.

We discovered that DC Comics had, at one time, plans for Brian Bolland to create a Killing Joke 2. There was the word that the Young Terrorists book from Black Mask was actually their cross-continuity Avengers-style tile. And that Grindhouse had been banned in Canada – and why.

We also noticed that Gwenpool had become a big thing in the cosplay and fan art communities and, I am told, brought this to the attention of Marvel editorial. The rest is history.

Bleeding Cool told you that X-Men editor Mike Marts would be leaving to head up a new publisher, and he was. That Mark Paniccia would be the new editor of the X-Men books and he was. That Jeff Lemire would be the new X-Men lead writer and… etc etc. We even mentioned Ken Lashley would be joining the X-books. And while the hiding place for the X-Men will; no doubt feature on our Wrongs Of The Year piece, we did tell you that post Secret Wars, it would be the Inhumans terrigen mists that would be killing off the mutants who stayed behind…. things changed.

A rumour from a previous year that Marvel would cancel the Fantastic Four comics came true. The reasons of course remain in the rumoursphere, but they have been privately confirmed by so many people now, that Marvel's official denials seems a joke. And the excuse that many titles were being cancelled for Secret Wars and that was just one of them, seem empty given the continued absence of the book in solicitations. And then there was the ripping of Fantastic Four and X-Men characters off of T-shirts, more T-shirts and posters….

Another rumour that X-23 would end up in the Wolverine suit after Logan's death was also bang on. As was the one that Terry McGinnis would be killed off and replaced with Tim Drake as Batman Beyond – and we even had it a year before, had we but known. Conversely we also told you that Donatello the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle would not die…

We told you that Superman would be losing his secret identity. and then gave you the proof. As well as Lois Lane's complicity in this. That Commissioner Gordon would be the new Batman.  And we also teased that Jane Foster would be Thor as well. And Brett Booth would draw Aquaman.

As was the story that DC were going to run a mini-relaunch in June. They did, DC YOU. Though maybe they shouldn't have…. we reported that the guaranteed twelve issues granted those books was withdrawn rather shortly after they launched.

Bleeding Cool was the first to tell you about the DC half page ads, and also to spot how they were being mocked.

We were the first to tell you about Mark Millar's new comic Huck – though the artist was totally wrong. Funny Skottie Young is still on the registered trademark application…

Oh yes and there was that day we just ran all the All-New All-Different Marvel Now books…

We were happy to assure certain fans that Donatello was not as dead as they were all making out….

But were also the first to tell you about what would become DC's biggest project of the year, Dark Knight Three – though at the time, Scott Snyder was attached. He has sub sequently talked about leaving the project. A subsequent piece named John Romita Jr, Klaus Janson and Brian Azzarello as contributing, with Azzarello as the lead, but also got some folks wrong too.

But the plot?

We mentioned before how it would involve the original Carrie Kelley Robin character, now elderly, taking the Bruce Wayne role in the story. But it will be one in opposition to the Supergirl character introduced in Dark Knight Strikes Back, mirroring the Superman/Batman conflict of the original Dark Knight Returns, that will also form the core of the upcoming Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn Of Justice movie.

Okay so not to strong on the "elderly" but I'm pretty happy with that. And, oh dear, it looks like we were the first to spoil that first issue a year before it was published. Was our subcriticism of CBR hypocritical? Usually…

Add that to being the first to translate an interview Miller gave to Le Monde gave us the rest of it.

So for all that, in combination, we're making the very existence and subsequent details of Dark Knight III: The Master Race the Scoop Of The Year. Even though the first story came out last year…

Follow the rest of the Rumour Awards here.

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