8 Awesome Comics That Were Unbelievably Cancelled

4. Phoenix By Chris Claremont And Rick Leonardi

The Phoenix Rachel Summers
Marvel Comics/Alan Davis

X-Men fans don't need reminding that Chris Claremont is quite the legend. The writer was a key architect behind the X-Men's resurgence in the eighties and nineties, a time where pretty much everything he touched turned to gold.

Naturally, then, it should come as a surprise to some X-Men fans that the writer failed to get a certain X-Men spin-off off the ground. At one time, Claremont and artist Rick Leonardi had commenced work on a Phoenix comic all about Rachel Summers, but it never saw the light of day. Why? Well, according to one particular instalment of Cup of Joe (Joe Quesada's own 'bullpen bulletin'), Marvel backed out of the series over anxiety that it would be too complex.

"The series was going to be written by Chris Claremont and inked by Dan Green. Rick said it dealt with Rachel and her relationship with Franklin Richards and the Power Pack. The going logic at the time was that it got too complicated with past/present/future continuity and was subsequently shelved with I believe less than an issue having been penciled. That’s the whole story, folks, wish I had better news to report but it seems that this project was no where near completion before it was killed."

Claremont has infrequently returned to the X-Men since he concluded his ground-breaking run on the series, but one would hope there's a chance the writer will be able to link up with Leonardi again, and hopefully tell an updated version of the story they once had in mind.

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