10 Greatest Comic Books We Never Got To See
3. Chris Claremont & John Byrne - The Dark Phoenix Saga
Jim Shooter has caught a lot of flack over the years. By all accounts, the former Editor-in-Chief at Marvel was stunningly lacking in tact, diplomacy, and any capacity to compromise his vision of what comics should be. But, the man was also writing genuinely good comics for DC at the age of 14. He understood comic books. So, of course, do Chris Claremont and John Byrne, two bona fide legends. But this may be one scenario in which the notoriously difficult Shooter was in the right.
In the decades since the classic Dark Phoenix Saga, writer Claremont has elucidated that the original ending of this tale included Jean Grey surviving and having to come to terms with having killed five billion people. Jim Shooter read this and thought, no, you can't just kill five billion people and then ruminate on it for a while before moving on. Shooter regarded Claremont's proposed ending as 'wimping out', that Grey needed to be punished for her actions, because that is how comics worked in 1980. And he's right.
Just because Jean Grey was beloved doesn't mean she should go unpunished. But... one can't help but feel Chris Claremont's ending, though unsatisfying in some respects, would have been more interesting.