Welcome to the conclusion of a special On Writing/Tales of Development Hell crossover event!
As I explained in yesterday’s post, Stan Lee’s Alexa—a comic book I wound up writing for publishing house ibooks, inc. in 2004—began (with a different writer) as a project for Virtual Comics, the comics imprint of Byron Preiss Multimedia Company (both Virtual and BPMC are now long gone). Alexa was the story of Alexa Moran, a popular writer/artist at the Fantasy Factory, a Marvel Comics–like company; the hook was that she had an unexplained superpower that allowed her to open dimensional portals—it only ended up complicating her life. In the story, the comic that Alexa wrote and drew was The Ex-Wives, which involved three ex-wives of the same superhero, who had passed along his super-traits via sexual transmission.
In the real world, however, the exes had been designed by artist Dave Gibbons (Watchmen, Kingsmen) in the early 1990s, but when Virtual Comics decided to give them their own series (spinning off from Alexa), Editorial decided to sex them up—a lot—to take advantage of the Bad Girl Era that ruled the comics industry later in the decade. For that job, artist Steven Butler was brought in—but when Virtual Comics folded not too longer after his involvement, his art got shoved in a drawer and forgotten…until I got the Alexa scripting assignment in 2004. For Alexa #2, I wanted to use the first three pages of what was meant to be The Ex-Wives #1…but then the miniseries got canceled after issue 1 was published in 2005.
Still, I thought you’d like to see what I had in mind for those pages, so using photocopies of the art I’ve had on file (sorry about the quality), I’ve lettered them from my never-used script, just as they were meant to appear in Alexa #2. You’ll probably notice that the dialogue isn’t dripping with my usual sarcastic quality. That’s because I was trying to give the dialogue and captions the “feel” of a comic scripted by The Man whose name was so prominent on the cover—after all, if the comic’s titled Stan Lee’s Alexa, there should be some sense that Stan was involved with the writing—at least for the first few pages. So what you get for three pages are superhero quipping, and characters addressing one another by their code names, and alliterative turns of phrase (“the vivacious Voluptuous Vixens”), and tough-guy villain talk. Pretty straightforward and Lee-like. (I’m a writin’ chameleon!)
The Roman-esque sarcasm starts to come back in full force in page 3’s last panel, though…
That’s some great bad-girl art, don’t you think? Of course, in today’s market, ibooks, inc. would probably get a major drubbing in the comics press over the blatant T&A, even if it were meant in fun, but I still think Steve did an outstanding job. And like I said, this art has never been published before, and probably never will be, for real, because both Stan Lee’s Alexa and The Ex-Wives were cast into comics limbo a long time ago. Just think of this as a glimpse into what might have been.
These days—after a period during which he drew more family-friendly material like Sonic the Hedgehog comics for Archie—you’ll find Steve at indie publisher Gallant Comics, providing art and character designs for the superhero series John Aman: Amazing Man—the first four issues of which you can download for free! Definitely give them a read.
Curious about other topics I’ve covered in the Tales of Development Hell series? Then check out these posts about the late, lamented what-might-have-been book projects I was involved with:
Battlestar Galactica: The New Young Warriors
“Horror Express” Movie Review: Part 1, Part 2
Law & Order: The Novels: Part 1, Part 2
Speed Racer: Leviathan: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
Spider-Man/Gambit
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Jewels of Ishlanon
Se7en: The Sequel Novel
(Stan Lee’s Alexa and The Ex-Wives ™ and copyright © 2005 ibooks, inc.)
