Immediately after Awesome went bankrupt and Alan Moore moved on, Editor Scott Dunbier at Wildstorm gave Moore a call and offered him a gig: doing a story for a Gen¹³ Annual. Moore, no longer pumping out scripts for Awesome, said yes, and wrote a 13-page script.
For those who don't know, Gen¹³ was a superhero team and comic book series originally written by Jim Lee and Brandon Choi and illustrated by J. Scott Campbell. It was published by WildStorm under the Image Comics banner, which went on to become an imprint for DC Comics, who continued publishing the Gen¹³ title.
The comic features a loosely organized team of super-powered beings composed of five teens and their mentor. It was basically outrageous teens with superpowers.
The annual never happened and Scott Dunbier sat on the script for decades until recently when he showed it on his Facebook account and said that the faxed copy is likely the only copy anywhere. With Moore's permission, Dunbier is now selling it on eBay to raise money for Bob Wiacek. You can see it here (where it's already near $4,000): https://www.ebay.com/itm/Alan-Moore-RARE-UNPUBLISHED-script-ONE-OF-A-KIND/333818947766?hash=item4db928e8b6:g:FwEAAOSwCH9f0CcQ
While you can't read it all, check out the first page and the last:
My interest in this script is that it was one of the first things he wrote after Awesome's collapse and seemed to continue Moore's fun, experimental style he was using on Youngblood and likely lead to the creation of ABC under Dunbier's watch.
The story is about some cosmic collector (like a comic collector) who comes to collect Gen¹³. While we don't know the specifics of the plot, read that last page and see if you don't think that this little Gen¹³ script might have something to say about the state of superheroes and the industry in general in 1998 and the apocalypse happening to many comic book companies... just like the one he had just seen come to its own armageddon.
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ReplyDeleteI see it ended up selling for $3,433.00. I don't get that type of collector mentality, spending that much for words typed on paper. If I had that kind of money to spare on something like this, I'd rather spend it on a plane ticket to England where I'd go to try to actually meet Alan Moore.
ReplyDeleteWell, I am curious to read it, hopefully it'll be uploaded online somewhere someday.
Yeah, but I doubt Moore kept a copy and this is the only copy Wildstorm has, which makes it unique. And it's unpublished, which makes it rare and interesting. I can see the mentality, but I don't have that kind of money to spend on it!
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