Out of any of the pitches on this list, Twilight Of The Superheroes is the one that's probably the best known but also the least read. Before Alan Moore got the bright idea to examine superhero comics through the analytical lens of Watchmen, using analogues of famous existing characters, he intended to reconstruct the genre using an actual cast of big cape titles: before DC nixed the idea of, say, Captain Marvel/Shazam being a sexual degenerate. Not really associations you want to have with one of your headline characters. Twilight Of The Superheroes is a legendary pitch that eventually evolved into Watchmen, but this initial treatment was far different from that later iconic work. The title refers to Richard Wagner's opera the "Twilight of the Gods" and was due to be set two decades in the future of the DC Universe as the older and younger generations of superheroes, as well as the supervillains and some extraterrestrials who inhabited Earth, entered into a final battle. It would've taken in everyone from Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman to John Constantine, and eventually settle on a less-than-rosy end for the company's fictional universe. Unfortunately Moore split with DC soon after Watchmen was published, and the series never got past the planning stage, with the pitch later leaking onto the internet. Ironically Mark Waid's Kingdom Come series had a lot of parallels with Twilight Of The Superheroes, but you can't help but feel Moore would've had a different take...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
