NEVER REALIZED 002: THE SPARTAN ONE-SHOT

First of all, I should get some more recent business out of the way. As it turns out, the William Metzger/Spider-Man film rumors were absolutely 100% true. Go figure.

Admittedly, it’s strange to think that something I created over twenty-five years ago -- and could at best be described as an obscure, deep cut character -- is now and forever part of a much larger pop cultural conversation due to its inclusion in a movie that had the 2nd highest opening in history. Truly bizarre.

But, hey, at least I got to see my name in tiny print -- along with a legion of my fellow comicbook creators -- at the tail end of a nine-minute credit crawl. Hooray for Hollywood…

Now, back to the past...

So here’s something I only have vague memories of. I certainly don’t remember writing it, although I most certainly did. Luckily, I have plenty of proof of its existence that I just recently uncovered.

In early 2001 (if memory serves), there was planned SPARTAN one-shot (I don’t recall if it was ever going to be titled JACK MARLOWE, but I suspect not) that was 48 pages in length. It was penciled by artist, John Lucas and meant to be inked by the late, great, John Cassaday.

Sounded pretty good on paper (no pun intended). But it was ultimately not to be.

Cassaday and Lucas were great friends, so I suspect this particular project originated with Cassaday approaching Wildstorm editorial with the specific aim of getting Lucas some significant work. Providing inks was undoubtedly a way for Cassaday to sweeten the pot. By that point, Lucas had done a smattering of work in the industry, including some very cool Starman-related work for DC Comics. But Cassaday had quickly proven himself to be a valuable asset to Wildstorm, mainly due to the series he had been illustrating to great acclaim, Planetary (with Warren Eliis writing). His maneuver must’ve worked, since I was soon offered the project to write (being the current WILDCATS writer at that time, in the middle of my run with artist, Sean Phillips, on Volume Two).

As I indicated above, the whole thing was written and, as far as I can tell, the whole thing got penciled by Lucas. But only a handful of pages ended up being inked by Cassaday.

I honestly don’t know 1) why Cassaday didn’t finish his ink job, or 2) why another inker wasn’t assigned and the one-shot eventually finished and released. Trust me, it was no great loss to the overall Wildcats-related continuity… but that’s still quite a bit of money to spend on something without any chance to recoup.

I probably should synopsize the story here, but I honestly don’t remember it and there’s no way I’m going to spend the necessary time reading through one of my old, unpublished scripts if I don’t have to. And I don’t have to. I suppose you could consider this the lost story of the Volume Two-era of WILDCATS. Not a particularly vital story, I’d imagine, but a decent curiosity, nonetheless.

I did write another WILDCATS “spin off” one-shot around that same time… LADYTRON, drawn by Eric Canete, which actually did get printed and sent out into the world.

Fun fact: it was a project that was actually initiated by -- and for -- artist, Travis Charest, and I was recruited to write it. But Travis begged off (after doing a small handful of sketches, which I think I still have somewhere) and Canete was quickly recruited, having just worked together on the final issues of MR. MAJESTIC. Funny how these things are interconnected…

John Lucas went on to take over for Cassaday on his western series, Desperados, as well as drawing Howard Chaykin’s Forever Maelstrom mini-series (both for Wildstorm) and eventually worked with me again on a fill-in issue of Haunt. He’s also continued to work on a ton of other comicbooks, as both a penciler and as an inker. Really good guy.

Believe it or not, there’s even more Wildstorm-related content in the newsletter pipeline. I mean, are there really any people out there still interested in this stuff…?

Joe Casey

USA