Hot off the heels of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Born Again, Frank Miller and Walt Simonson (supplying the artwork) were supposed to team up for a two-part Daredevil story for issues #235 and #236.
- Apparently, Dr. Strange was a guest-star in this story.
- Miller only wrote the first half. (Kuljit Mithra actually has a copy of this script.
- The two-part story was called “The Devil's Own".
Kuljit Mithra of Daredevil: The Man Without Fear (www.manwithoutfear.com) interviewed Walt Simonson:
"To the best of my knowledge, Frank never scripted Part 2. I never did pencil Part 1. And the reason was that DD was getting a new regular writer [Steve Englehart/Ann Nocenti] at the time after several fill-ins. The new writer wanted his first issue to come out at the beginning of the summer (the good sales period back then) so our 2 parter was put on hold for a few months. And if there's no deadline, the work never gets done--that's an old freelance rule.The gist of it is that by the time Marvel was interested in having us work on the story, Frank was off doing Dark Knight and I was off doing X-Factor. So it never happened. Too bad--it was a cool story too."
According to Comic Book Urban Legends (http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/06/05/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-158/):
“Only the first part was written, though, because the story was pushed back on the schedule. Once it was pushed back on the schedule, Miller lost interest a bit, and since the deadline was pushed back, he never finished the second issue’s plot and by the time Marvel really wanted the story, Miller had moved on to DC (and later, Dark Horse) and Simonson had begun his run on X-Factor – so it never got made.”
From Marvel Age #44, looks like editor Ralph Macchio was trying to put it out as a special one-shot:
Unfortunately, it never happened.
WOW!! I love FM & WS and DD !! I had no idea!! Damn now I'm angry that it didn't happen!! :(
ReplyDeleteKids these days... don't know how lucky they are with the interweb....
thanks for answering my question! i'm a fan of both miller and simonson, and it would have been a lot of fun to see them work together, especially because miller's writing style (very street oriented) and simonson's art (very large and cosmic) are so different. would have made for interesting reading.
ReplyDeleteBoth were on a high point on thei careers so surely it would have made an interesting read. But it never happened.
ReplyDeleteStuff like this drives me up the wall when I read about it. "Do we make the fans happy and release more Frank Miller Daredevil? With art by one of our best artists, Walt Simonson? Mmmmm...nah, that's okay, we don't need it."
ReplyDelete