DC's vaults seem especially stuffed with dusty old pitches and concepts that never made it to publication for whatever reason. There's a bunch that were probably better off never being completed, and even more the public has probably not been made aware of because they never even made it past the discussion stage (and considering they published Futures End, the unpublished stuff must be really horrendous). There are some jewels amongst so much landfill, however, such as Pandora Pann. You know Tomb Raider? Pandora would've had Lara Croft beat by a good decade if she'd actually been given the chance. Created by Len Wein and Ross Andru, she debuted in 1987's The Comic Reader #197, and...that was about it. Which sucks, because it was such a solid concept, but it never went anywhere. Described in The Comics Reader as "the assistant of an archaeologist who unwittingly opens Pandora's box and spends the rest of her time trying to retrieve the evil she has unleashed by doing so," Pandora Pann had a premise that could seemingly be sustained for a good long while. Originally set to debut as a back-up strip in The Saga Of Swamp Thing, Pann got put on the backburner purely because Wein was so busy, and totally forgotten about. When asked recently the writer recalled that For reasons sadly lost to history (meaning, for the life of me, I can no longer remember why), we never went ahead with the series. A shame too, since it would have preceded things like Tomb Raider and Relic Hunter by decades.
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/
