Optimus Prime as a Green Lantern? A “Bat-Former”? The mind boggles….
The history of comics, much like film, television, and literature, is littered with the remains of projects that either failed to get off the ground or were halted at the legal negotiation stage. One such project is a Justice League/Transformers crossover that was to be drawn by celebrated artist Phil Jimenez (Infinite Crisis, The Invisibles), who also pitched the project. Ultimate Spider-Man scribe Brian Michael Bendis first mentioned the mighty comics crossover that never was on his Tumblr page recently, posting an epic conception by Jimenez of what the project would have looked like had it come to fruition.
You can check that art out here below.
Following the Tumblr post by Bendis, Jimenez revealed a few tantalizing details about the unrealized crossover on his Twitter feed.
“Oh, what an epic that would have been. You missed out on Wonder Woman’s invisible jet becoming a very cool Transformer.”
The following day Jimenez tweeted, “Giving credit where credit is due: the idea for Optimus Prime as a GL was none other than [IDW Publishing Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall's].”
Why the Justice League/Transformers crossover never happened remains a mystery only Jimenez knows the truth behind and right now the artist is being coy with the intimate details. Given that both titles were high value properties to their respective publishers, DC Comics and IDW Publishing, the potentially massive comics event could have dissolved over a case of nonsensical legalities. Thus the project may never reach the comic shop shelves in this lifetime, but it’s both fascinating and sad to think of what could have been. To have the mightiest heroes in the DC Universe take on Cybertron’s finest and worst in a grand scale battle would have made for the kind of four-color event that makes us remember why we love comics in the first place.
[Source: Brian Michael Bendis, Comic Book Resources via Topless Robot]
