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Times when writers really wanted to use a comic character but management wouldn't allow it, so they did the next best thing.

Slayven

Slayven

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Oct 25, 2017
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Alan Moore wanted to use the Charlton characters for Watchmen but DC said no.
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Morrison wanted to us Hawkman for his big JLA relaunch but DC said no so he invented Zauriel the angel
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Bob Harras wanted to reboot Captain Atom, but the plans fell through. Not wanting to waste the idea he created Breach
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Cause Legion continuity was a mess and Superboy no longer existed but Al gordon really wanted a Superman/boy in the Legion created Impulse aka Kent Shakespare. They never got around to it, but Kent was suppose to be a decadent of Superman that caught the Kryptoian flu and it activated his latent powers.
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Bendis originally created the story with the idea it would be Jessica Drew(aka the original Spiderwoman) but Marvel said no so he created Jessica Jones
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Supergirl literally didn't exist anymore but they really wanted her in the Legion so they created the Daxamite Laurel Grand. Bonus Brainac and Supergirl were an item so they just copy and pasted all of that
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Another Legion one, Superboy was originally involved with the early Legion but because there were no more Superboy they had to replace him. M'onel existed since the 60s but they rejiggered his story to sub in for Clark
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Youngblood was suppose to be a revamped Teen Titans making them celebrities and government agents. Shaft was suppose to be the revamped Red Arrow, Vogue a new take on Duela Dent, and Die Hard a CADMUS android.
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Storm and Nightcrawler were almost DC characters but got rejected and got taken to Marvel
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Reym

Reym

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Jul 15, 2019
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Wasn't Nextwave intended to be like watchmen, but except for Dirk Anger and The Captain they just said "fuck it" and used canon characters?
...and then the Nextwave versions of them basically became canon?
 
sir_crocodile

sir_crocodile

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Oct 25, 2017
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Slayven said:
Only thing I remember from Zero Hour is Damage flexing the big bang back into reality. The reboots blur together, I remember more about the Genesis Wave.
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Zero Hour was the one where Hal was super-powerful Parallax trying to remake the universe because of his guilt over Coast City. Before they retconned everything to make it about hal being controlled by the fear demon lol.

It felt more like cleanup for Crisis on Infinite Earths tbh
 
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Slayven

Slayven

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Mandos said:
Isn't Buried Alien an extreme case of this
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That is an homage/cameo. Like when the White Martians killed Wolverine and Dr.Doom
sir_crocodile said:
Zero Hour was the one where Hal was super-powerful Parallax trying to remake the universe because of his guilt over Coast City. Before they retconned everything to make it about hal being controlled by the fear demon lol.

It felt more like cleanup for Crisis on Infinite Earths tbh
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Feels like every event since crisis was them cleaning up or wanting to have their cake and eat it too.
svacina said:
This just reminds me of the horror that is the LoSH continuity.
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And they still try to make it make sense
 
Weiss

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Rob Liefeld tried to pull this shit twice back in the 90s that went above and beyond his usual plagiarism of others and often himself. He was going to license Joe Simon and Jack Kirby's Fighting American (a creator owned character of theirs) to reuse some already drawn art for Heroes Reborn: Captain America but didn't want to pay for it, so he created an ersatz version called Agent America but Joe Simon threatened to sue. Liefeld went through with paying him and Jack Kirby's widow, but got sued again by Marvel to make sure his take on Fighting American didn't throw his shield.

Reym said:
Wasn't Nextwave intended to be like watchmen, but except for Dirk Anger and The Captain they just said "fuck it" and used canon characters?
...and then the Nextwave versions of them basically became canon?
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Dirk Anger and H.A.T.E. were supposed to be Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. yes.

It was eventually explained in Al Ewing's Mighty Avengers that Nextwave did actually happen, but the characters were dropped into an alternate reality by the Beyond Corporation and when they came back to Earth-616 nobody believed them.
 
GreenMamba

GreenMamba

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Oct 25, 2017
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Wasn't Emma Frost's diamond skin secondary mutation invented by Morrison because Marvel wouldn't let him use Colossus due to him being dead at the time?
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Slayven

Slayven

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GreenMamba said:
Wasn't Emma Frost's diamond skin secondary mutation invented by Morrison because Marvel wouldn't let him use Colossus due to him being dead at the time?
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That was always conflicting some said she had superstrenght in the form and others said she didn't.
 
Weiss

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GreenMamba said:
Wasn't Emma Frost's diamond skin secondary mutation invented by Morrison because Marvel wouldn't let him use Colossus due to him being dead at the time?
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Yep. He also pulled Beast out from Claremont's X-Treme X-Men and gave him his cat form because he wanted to use Moira MacTaggert, but she was just recently killed off too.

Moira is now at the center of Hickman's entire X-Men saga and been revealed as a Mutant with the power to reset the timeline 11 times when she dies, because comics are funny like that.
 
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Slayven

Slayven

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I will say to the end of time Marvel not allowing Bendis to use Drew was a big mistake for the character. Really would have given her something solid for the first time since inception

Weiss said:
Yep. He also pulled Beast out from Claremont's X-Treme X-Men and gave him his cat form because he wanted to use Moira MacTaggert, but she was just recently killed off too.

Moira is now at the center of Hickman's entire X-Men saga and been revealed as a Mutant with the power to reset the timeline 11 times when she dies, because comics are funny like that.
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Only 11 times?
 
Garlador

Garlador

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Thread, thy name is Rob Liefeld.

Liefeld called Fighting American co-creator Joe Simon and Roz Kirby, widow of co-creator Jack Kirby, who agreed to license the character to him, but at a price Liefeld would not accept. Liefeld created the similar character Agent America, drawing "maybe three pinups and one poster image", but withdrew the character, he said, when Simon threatened to sue. Liefeld negotiated a new deal for Fighting American, but was then sued by Marvel. During the course of the trial, he said, his version of Fighting American acquired a shield. As one of the terms of the settlement, however, Fighting American was forbidden from throwing his shield like a weapon, to distinguish him from Captain America.
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Weiss

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Slayven said:
I will say to the end of time Marvel not allowing Bendis to use Drew was a big mistake for the character. Really would have given her something solid for the first time since inception


Only 11 times?
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Yeah something like that. Her X-gene makes her invisible to detection and every time she dies she resets the timeline back to her birth with all her accumulated memories and has to survive at least until her X-gene activates again. She can do this a maximum of eleven times and we are now in the 10th timeline.
 
Watchtower

Watchtower

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Oct 27, 2017
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Really gonna make this thread without even an acknowledgement of the Squadron Supreme, eh? They got an event going on and everything.

Garlador said:
Thread, thy name is Rob Liefeld.


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Liefeld's entire career boils down to him making cheap knockoffs of other people's shit because he has no ideas beyond just fanboying over said shit.

Like Slayven mentions Youngblood being recycled Teen Titans ideas, but his earlier work on New Mutants was also him recycling Teen Titans ideas. Hence Deadpool, since said ideas naturally involved Deathstroke.
 
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Slayven

Slayven

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Weiss said:
Yeah something like that. Her X-gene makes her invisible to detection and every time she dies she resets the timeline back to her birth with all her accumulated memories and has to survive at least until her X-gene activates again. She can do this a maximum of eleven times and we are now in the 10th timeline.
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Not a fan on limits like, why 11? Seems like a damaged X-gene
 
Weiss

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Slayven said:
Not a fan on limits like, why 11? Seems like a damaged X-gene
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Man how's a genetic variation in your body give you the power to send the entire universe hurtling back 40 years, over 10 times?

Storm having weather control as precise and powerful as the actual god of thunder is weird enough. There's some weird ass power creep in Mutants.
 
Memento Mori

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Might be a question of how much data the brain can store. 11 lifetimes is several hundred years of memories.
 

mrmoose

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I love that Superboy-less Legion era.

In Armageddon 2001, Monarch was supposed to be Captain Atom but then everyone and their mother figured it out so they pivoted to... Hank Hall?

Comic tangent but in the Justice League Animated series it was pretty clear that for whatever reason they couldn't use the actual JSA so they invented the Justice Guild of America instead.

One of the best ones is Sandman. Gaiman wrote Black Orchid but wanted to use the 1974 yellow and red Sandman character as part of the backstory and was rejected because they were being used in Infinity Inc. After Black Orchid finished he went back and reused that as a pitch for a new series with a completely different Sandman (and then worked in the 1974 one later)
 
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SilkySm00th

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Slayven said:
Not a fan on limits like, why 11? Seems like a damaged X-gene
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This was my only take away from that explanation. 11 times is such a weird thing to KNOW about a super power. Like did they cast identify on her bones and realize she only had 3 charges left or something? Does she just need a long rest? wtf...
 
Weiss

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SilkySm00th said:
This was my only take away from that explanation. 11 times is such a weird thing to KNOW about a super power. Like did they cast identify on her bones and realize she only had 3 charges left or something? Does she just need a long rest? wtf...
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See above. Destiny's a precog and saw Moira's future.
 
PlanetSmasher

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I heard that Willoughby Kipling in Doom Patrol was supposed to be John Constantine but they couldn't square the rights, so they made an even shittier strung-out wizard character to replace him.
 
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PlanetSmasher said:
I heard that Willoughby Kipling in Doom Patrol was supposed to be John Constantine but they couldn't square the rights, so they made an even shittier strung-out wizard character to replace him.
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John Constantine fucking beget an entire line of shitty strung-out wizard characters to replace him because of rights.

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Trenchcoat Brigade - TV Tropes

The most famous spitting image of an Occult Detective, many creators figure that if they give a bloke a trenchcoat, a pack of smokes, a five o'clock shadow, a quick wit, hard-boiled and self-referential dialogue and a dark, mysterious past, they' …
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Slayven

Slayven

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mrmoose said:
I love that Superboy-less Legion era.

In Armageddon 2001, Monarch was supposed to be Captain Atom but then everyone and their mother figured it out so they pivoted to... Hank Hall?

Comic tangent but in the Justice League Animated series it was pretty clear that for whatever reason they couldn't use the actual JSA so they invented the Justice Guild of America instead.

One of the best ones is Sandman. Gaiman wrote Black Orchid but wanted to use the 1974 yellow and red Sandman character as part of the backstory and was rejected because they were being used in Infinity Inc. After Black Orchid finished he went back and reused that as a pitch for a new series with a completely different Sandman (and then worked in the 1974 one later)
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Yeah the Monarch Id leaked and they replaced him with hawk. They even invented a character (Waverider) to make it work
 
Birdie

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Not comics to comics but arguably Mario and Megaman were basically "we don't have the rights to Popeye/Astro Boy!"

Though I've heard varying stories on how much of that is true, especially with Megaman.
 
Santar

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In Marvel Zombies it seems they initially wanted it to be Superman who started the zombie plague, but they changed the coloring to make it The Sentry instead to avoid all the problems that would cause.
If you change the coloring it really looks like Superman:

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PlanetSmasher

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Birdie said:
Not comics to comics but arguably Mario and Megaman were basically "we don't have the rights to Popeye/Astro Boy!"

Though I've heard varying stories on how much of that is true, especially with Megaman.
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I feel like if Mega Man was meant to be Astro Boy he would be able to fly.
 
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Slayven

Slayven

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Birdie said:
Not comics to comics but arguably Mario and Megaman were basically "we don't have the rights to Popeye/Astro Boy!"

Though I've heard varying stories on how much of that is true, especially with Megaman.
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Can't unsee the Astroboy/Megaman thing now
 
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