8 Comics That Almost Had Better Endings
2. Crisis On Infinite Earths
One of the biggest events to hit the DC Universe was 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths. The story was created by Marv Wolfman, who felt the DC Universe needed some tweaking, as its Multiverse and broken continuity over the previous 50 years made it confusing and difficult to follow.
Wolfman's pitch was taken almost exactly as he hoped, but in the end, the editors forced him to use a completely different ending. Originally, Wolfman had wanted to end Crisis with the rebirth of the Earth. This would then be followed by the characters' rebirth as well.
He wanted the books to restart at issue #1, and then he and other creators working for DC at the time would then restart everything. The Flash and Supergirl wouldn't be dead because they, along with everyone else, would get rebooted to their first issue, and everything would start over from the beginning.
DC's EIC, Dick Giordano, didn't believe the company had the talent needed to make that happen, so he and the editors responsible for the books didn't go down that route. Wolfman spoke about the changes to the ending in an interview with Dan Greenfield:
"And I was told that the editors didn’t like that because if the heroes didn’t remember all their stories, it would invalidate everything that had existed previously, to which I answered with extreme sarcasm, “Our heroes do not buy our comic books. (Laughter) The fans do and they will still have all those books on their bookshelf and they will remember all those things.”"