The Allies (or are they?)

While Moore was working for Awesome, he wrote a proposal for an Allies series, which never saw the light of day. It was going to feature Supreme, Glory, Professor Night, Roman, Die Hard, Spacehunter and The Fisherman. I can only assume the stories would have been similar to the one that appeared in Judgment Day: Aftermath.

Strangely, in 1999, long after Moore had left, Awesome announced an Allies series written by Eric Stephenson based on Moore's story ideas. They even had an ad for it in the back of Supreme: The Return #1:

 

Of course, those weren't the characters from Moore's suggestions. Here's what Stephenson said about working on it:

"The Allies is going to be a lot of fun. I'm trying to stay true to what Alan laid down for these characters as far as the groundwork goes, but at the same time, I'm not slavishly imitating his style or approach. I don't even know if it's possible to do that! At any rate, the line up for the new team is Die Hard, Supreme, Glory, Badrock, Spellcaster, Thor and Fighting American and the first issue deals more or less with how this new team is assembled and how they deal with their first threat. An important thing to note about the team is that it's essentially a group of seven heavy hitters. These guys will be handling huge, larger than life crises in a way that teams like Youngblood just plain couldn't."

And here's what Rob Liefeld had to say about it in November 1998 in Newsarama:

"While the majority of titles that Awesome has published have catered to the

fantasy/sci-fi audience we want to get back into the super-hero business in a

big way and THE ALLIES is our ticket," said Liefeld. "Alan has created a great

batch of new super-villains in Dr. Drang, The Killer Mist, The Basilisk, and

Florax The Dominator! This team boasts what I believe to be the most powerful

line up in comics history. It's not often you get the Thunder God of Myth

standing next to the most powerful man in the universe. The stories will be on

a grand scale with epic confrontations, but we know that the characterization

is what will bring the readers back. Eric and I collaborated on what many

agree to be the best work of my career in YOUNGBLOOD #6-10 and a few TEAM

YOUNGBLOODs, and this work will easily top those efforts. I'll be doing the

first four issues of THE ALLIES and then I'll begin work on the RE:GEX movie

and begin working on a new RE:GEX mini-series. THE ALLIES will be a big book

for Awesome and will open up a whole new field of opportunities for us."

Newsarama later asked More about the Allies:

"Allies comes from a bunch of very, very short, very brief synopses that

I did for Awesome a couple of years ago," Moore says. "The ad that ran in

Previews is actually completely out of date and has noting to do with the

comic that is going to be coming out. As Rob explained it to me that was the

art they had, on hand. The team I wrote was made up of completely different

characters."

Also, the creator credit will be slightly different than originally reported.

"I've got no objection to Rob using any stuff of mine that he paid for," Moore

says. "However, I told him that I'd prefer if he downplayed the "stories by

Alan Moore" aspect because my input if anything was very skeletal outlines.

But Rob assures me that nevertheless, they are bigger, stronger outlines than

anyone else in the business, but by my standards, these are three or four

line, vague ideas for possible stories. As far as I am concerned, The Allies

is a Rob Liefeld/Eric Stephenson production, and any resemblance to my stories

will probably be coincidental. There wasn't much there to begin with."

Rob Liefeld however, politely disagrees with Moore. "As you can imagine with

the stories that have circulated about how detailed Alan's scripts are (We

have his scripts for a four-issue Warchild miniseries that he wrote for us,

and literally, Alan wrote four pages describing the first page of the issue.

The first panel is an entire page!), his synopses and outlines much more than

the standard length and content."

"Alan wrote very thorough synopses for The Allies that have true beginnings,

middles and ends," Liefeld says. "What he calls 'synopses' are more complete

than what some creators call 'scripts.' But in accordance with Alan's wishes,

The Allies will now read, "from stories by Alan Moore." But everything else

that will be coming from Awesome is fully written by him, and I think people

are going to be very excited to see it."

Moore need not have worried, as none of the issues from The Allies ever made it to print. Maybe one day we'll get to read the proposal so we at least know what his ideas for the series were.