Unity 2000 4 - 6

[Sean_Jackson]

Is there any info out in the wild that tells what would have happened in these issues? I could have sworn I read and interview with Shooter at one point where he touched on it, but can't find it anywhere.

[jedimarley]

Someone here has to have some info on this.

[ManofTheAtom]

You can find all the inked/uncolored artwork for issues 4-6 here.

You can make up your own dialogue, heh.

Seriously, I think that a colorist and a writer should finish the project, if only just for fun, then post the finished pics somewhere.

[greg]

http://www.valiantcomics.com/valiant/joe/u2kinfo.asp

(Bottom link on that page is the PDF of the plot.)

[Schmakt]

reading Shooter's layouts and descriptions really makes me admire his ability as a creator and storyteller...

[Sean_Jackson]

Ding, that's exactally what I was looking for.

[Unblessed]

who's the pointied haired guy again?

~The Unblessed Soul

[justin]

The time I worked for Valiant Comics I count as the single worst experience in my entire 35 year long career. It took a six-month- long website campaign to get paid for my pencils on the final issue of Unity 2005. During that time I was publicly slandered and privately threatened by the publisher. So I hope you'll understand my decision to never do anything that could in any way aid or promote Valiant Comics.

I would be glad to help you with something to do with the Bravura line or something else. But I will do nothing connected with Valiant Comics, not even for charity.

Jim Starlin

Issue 6 is a total "be-littleing" of Acclaim and Valiant. If you look at the Morningstar character in Unity 2000, issue #1, it is Steven Massarsky. I have been told this by numerous former creators. Unity 2000 is nothing short of a vindictive venture Shooter put himself into!

-justin

[Daniel Jackson]

I don't care if they call it a "what if" story or a dream, I would still like to see issues 4-6 come to print. Jim could even rewrite the last three if they could get him to do so. It would just be nice to have some closure for Unity 2000.

[ManofTheAtom]

Morningstar is Steven Massarsky.

And his penance was to work at Wizard, lol.

[alias]

I don't care if they call it a "what if" story or a dream, I would still like to see issues 4-6 come to print. Jim could even rewrite the last three if they could get him to do so. It would just be nice to have some closure for Unity 2000.

Issue 6 was never completed.
Shooter never turned in his finished script for it because he wasn't paid (just like Starlin). I read this in an interview recently. I'll try and find it. The interview also said that Van Hook's (I think it was him) company was doing the lettering and they were stolen or lost and everyone kept saying the project was cursed im serious

[ManofTheAtom]

The script was finished since the art was done. What wasn't finished was the dialogue for issue 6.

Shooter writes "Marvel style", which means that he does two scripts, one for page descriptions and one for dialogue after he sees the art.

This is a writing technique Stan Lee came up with when he was writting most of the Marvel line.

Supposedly it was created to ensure that the comics would ship in time (i.e. a page script has something like "page 1 has four panels of peter brushing his teeth". that's later given to the penciller to draw, then the art is given back to the writer to dialogue), but in my op it has become a scam since the writer gets paid twice for doing work he should only be get paid for doing once.

A writer, for whatever reason, can do the first script and not do the second one if the publisher is late in paying, or a writer can be replaced with someone else to do the dialogue after the story has been pencilled (i.e. PAD's Spider-Man 2099), which ends up doing dialogue that has nothing to do with the actual story and can have a negative effect on it since it detracts from the original writer's vision.

[IMissValiant]

I guess technically if someone bought the covers and interiors for 4-6, scanned them & had them colored digitally, they could be "published" even at Kinko's, and sold.

[childres]

You would own the actual pages and script, but you wouldn't own the character rights that you would need in order to publish them. While the characters were up in limbo and the owners didn't seem to care there was a little leeway on what a person could do, but now the intellectual rights have been purchased from acclaim. They were bought by a group that cared enough to pay almost a mil for them. Some of the copyright names have been disputed by another group filing for them ( big mess that you can read in other threads here on the boards).

What I'm saying is that if you had the $, you might buy the covers & interiors, you might color them, you might publish them yourself, but when started selling them for your profit you would probably soon be talking to lawyers from at least one group and maybe two.

Now if you bought the covers and interiors, scanned and colored them for your own personal enjoyment and didn't try to publish & sell them, thats something entirely different.

Wish they could be published though, its a shame they stopped the series before it finished.

-Joe

[Todd Luck]

The time I worked for Valiant Comics I count as the single worst experience in my entire 35 year long career. It took a six-month- long website campaign to get paid for my pencils on the final issue of Unity 2005. During that time I was publicly slandered and privately threatened by the publisher. So I hope you'll understand my decision to never do anything that could in any way aid or promote Valiant Comics.

I would be glad to help you with something to do with the Bravura line or something else. But I will do nothing connected with Valiant Comics, not even for charity.

Jim Starlin

Issue 6 is a total "be-littleing" of Acclaim and Valiant. If you look at the Morningstar character in Unity 2000, issue #1, it is Steven Massarsky. I have been told this by numerous former creators. Unity 2000 is nothing short of a vindictive venture Shooter put himself into!

-justin

I think if Shooter wanted to be vindictive towards Massarsky he could could do better than an inside joke in a comic. I'm a little confused. Lou Morningstar (who first appeared in U2000 2) wasn't modeled on Massarsky in appearance according to what Shooter wrote in the plot. He certainly didn't look like any likeness or picture I've seen of him.

What are the parrallels? I certainly wouldn't think Massarsky lives in suberbia, works in a cubicle, cheats on his wife, and is secretly the devil incarnate . Of course, Shooter models characters on people he knows all the time and it usually doesn't mean anything.

[IMissValiant]

Hi Joe,

I didn't mean it to mass produce, more of as something just for us fans. Regardless, I don't have the thousands of dollars necessary to buy the artwork and have it colored, lol.

You would own the actual pages and script, but you wouldn't own the character rights that you would need in order to publish them. While the characters were up in limbo and the owners didn't seem to care there was a little leeway on what a person could do, but now the intellectual rights have been purchased from acclaim. They were bought by a group that cared enough to pay almost a mil for them. Some of the copyright names have been disputed by another group filing for them ( big mess that you can read in other threads here on the boards).

What I'm saying is that if you had the $, you might buy the covers & interiors, you might color them, you might publish them yourself, but when started selling them for your profit you would probably soon be talking to lawyers from at least one group and maybe two.

Now if you bought the covers and interiors, scanned and colored them for your own personal enjoyment and didn't try to publish & sell them, thats something entirely different.

Wish they could be published though, its a shame they stopped the series before it finished.

-Joe

[magnusr]

The time I worked for Valiant Comics I count as the single worst experience in my entire 35 year long career. It took a six-month- long website campaign to get paid for my pencils on the final issue of Unity 2005. During that time I was publicly slandered and privately threatened by the publisher. So I hope you'll understand my decision to never do anything that could in any way aid or promote Valiant Comics.

I would be glad to help you with something to do with the Bravura line or something else. But I will do nothing connected with Valiant Comics, not even for charity.

Jim Starlin

I find this disturbing. If at least he had said something about not wanting to be connected to this series or to the people who ran Acclaim so badly, but to have a stigma with all of Valiant? It is interesting to compare with Shooter who still happily take care of his fans. Also, I'm one of the most unforgiving persons around and I'm not boycotting Starlin (or to make the comparison more valid, the whole of Bravura for instance) and my experience from the person respresenting him for art sales might have been worse than his experience with the persons representing Acclaim. Which btw is why I'm selling pages from issues 1 to 3. I have a list (not quite up to date) at: http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryRoom ... &GSub=7766

Issue 6 is a total "be-littleing" of Acclaim and Valiant. If you look at the Morningstar character in Unity 2000, issue #1, it is Steven Massarsky. I have been told this by numerous former creators. Unity 2000 is nothing short of a vindictive venture Shooter put himself into!

-justin

I had not seen the connection, got to say I kind of liked Morningstar... The Armorines appearance for instance was another comment on comic book writing, not to mention when Solar complains about parallel worlds.

/Magnus

[justin]

Lou Morningstar (who first appeared in U2000 2) wasn't modeled on Massarsky in appearance according to what Shooter wrote in the plot. He certainly didn't look like any likeness or picture I've seen of him.

My bad, I meant issue #2. Morningstar according to 3 different people at Acclaim, all told me within the last 3 months, that Morningstar was in deed modeled off of Massarsky. If you read the whole "magic ink" part in issue #6 I believe (don't quote me, I don't have my printed and bound version of Unity 2000 here with me, its at home) Acclaim creators took it as a slap in the face of comic fans. This is one big reason it never finished publishing. Martz left for Marvel and Banmally was too green to keep the reigns moving forward. Accounting forgot to pay Shooter, then it turned!

-justin

[Todd Luck]

Lou Morningstar (who first appeared in U2000 2) wasn't modeled on Massarsky in appearance according to what Shooter wrote in the plot. He certainly didn't look like any likeness or picture I've seen of him.

My bad, I meant issue #2. Morningstar according to 3 different people at Acclaim, all told me within the last 3 months, that Morningstar was in deed modeled off of Massarsky. If you read the whole "magic ink" part in issue #6 I believe (don't quote me, I don't have my printed and bound version of Unity 2000 here with me, its at home) Acclaim creators took it as a slap in the face of comic fans. This is one big reason it never finished publishing. Martz left for Marvel and Banmally was too green to keep the reigns moving forward. Accounting forgot to pay Shooter, then it turned!

-justin

Could you be more specific? I still have no idea what you're talking about. Here's what the plot for U2000 2 says about Morningstar:

"Cut to a plump, pleasant looking Mike Hobson type—you remember Mike, right?—on the train going home from another long day at the office. This is Lou Morningstar, new character. Rumpled suit and tie, please, this guy’s a middle management bureaucrat."

Why was the magic ink thing a slap in the face? An exert from the plot to issue 6 on the magic ink:

"Darque pulls out a copy of Doctor Solar #1—the comic book that inspired Phil Seleski—and says he’s found out it was created right here in their reality. Furthermore, he says, the cartoonist who made it used magic tools provided by Morningstar! These, says Darque, opening an ornate chest (suitable for holding magical implements—show it in the background somewhere prior to Darque’s opening it). Inside are a typewriter, ratty looking legal pads, pencils, brushes, pens, a T-square, some paper and a large bottle of Black Magic ink. Darque wants to know what the plan was. Did Morningstar engineer all this? No, says Morningstar. He was just trying to help the guy. Morningstar gave him the tools to create a reality—then he didn’t have to make stories up anymore, he could just watch what went on and write it down. Anyway, now the spell is broken and the story was never finished. The tools are just trash now. Even this? asks Darque, holding up the ink. That wasn’t magic in the first place, says Morningstar. It’s just ink."

Morningstar lies about the ink being powerless, gives it to Erica to kill Solar, and, when it appears she did, she tries to turn it on Morningstar. It doesn't work on him and the gun leaks the ink on to her, killing her. Solar had really blocked the ink with an energy shield. He appears, gathers the ink. Then Solar discovers that he's been animating a dead Gayle this entire time and that Darque's reality is really the primary reality where the Phil and Gayle of that world have the chance to be happy together. Solar allows his world to vanish and drinks the ink. He dies. Only Darque's reality (where Armorines V2 and Shadowman V3 was set in) is left.

How was this percieved as a slap in the face to fans by the Acclaim creators? Accliam's primary goal when they called Jim up and offered him this miniseries was to kill off all their old universes and replace them with a new one.

And what did any of this have to with it not being finished? Cronic lateness on ALL four comics they published cost Accliam's comic arm thousands in lost profits and caused Accliam to kill that arm of the company. Trust me, I was there on the newsgroups communicating with Omar, Priest, and Perham during every painful month of that time period.

[Todd Luck]

The time I worked for Valiant Comics I count as the single worst experience in my entire 35 year long career. It took a six-month- long website campaign to get paid for my pencils on the final issue of Unity 2005. During that time I was publicly slandered and privately threatened by the publisher. So I hope you'll understand my decision to never do anything that could in any way aid or promote Valiant Comics.

I would be glad to help you with something to do with the Bravura line or something else. But I will do nothing connected with Valiant Comics, not even for charity.

Jim Starlin

Anyone know what the public slanders and private threats he's talking about are?

[magnusr]

Anyone know what the public slanders and private threats he's talking about are?

Like you I followed most talk about this series and I also missed the public slander. Not even that the art had to be corrected to fit the script was made public enough for me to hear it. So I also wonder what this is about. Maybe it was more in the biz and not so much among the fans?

/Magnus

[Unblessed]

Why was the magic ink thing a slap in the face? An exert from the plot to issue 6 on the magic ink:

SNIP

Only Darque's reality (where Armorines V2 and Shadowman V3 was set in) is left.

Hmm... I guess I should actually READ my U2K issues.

Anyway, "magic ink" seems a little weak to me. I'd rather a more anti-climactic battle. When after Solar defeats Darque, Solar learns the truth and decides to end his reality. But I guess battle scenes and fights are over played out.

~The Unblessed Soul

[Todd Luck]

Anyone know what the public slanders and private threats he's talking about are?

Like you I followed most talk about this series and I also missed the public slander. Not even that the art had to be corrected to fit the script was made public enough for me to hear it. So I also wonder what this is about. Maybe it was more in the biz and not so much among the fans?

/Magnus

Actually I don't think the art was ever corrected to go along with the plot (the first issue has atleast a dozen instances of devations between the two) but I only knew that at the time because a promotional giveaway printed Shooter's plot for issue 1. Of course when I got copies of the scripts years later, they're riddled with Shooter complaining about Starlin's devations, none of which appear to have been changed.

The only thing I can think of that could've possibly been considered "public slander" was that, when Starlin said they were late on paying him, they said he had been payed for all six issues and that the only thing he hadn't been paid was a bonus for completeing the series (which that email quote seems to contradict)

[magnusr]

Actually I don't think the art was ever corrected to go along with the plot

In the plot Magnus and Shadowman are supposed to arrive later than the other heroes to the fight. In the art they are there all along. As published, they do arrive late. I've never been told who made the corrections and where that art is.

The only thing I can think of that could've possibly been considered "public slander" was that, when Starlin said they were late on paying him, they said he had been payed for all six issues and that the only thing he hadn't been paid was a bonus for completeing the series (which that email quote seems to contradict)

Interesting. Definately a contradiction.

/Magnus

[ManofTheAtom]

How was this percieved as a slap in the face to fans by the Acclaim creators?

It turned the VALIANT Universe into DC's Earth 2, that's how.

In Flash of Two Worlds, the story in which Barry Allen traveled to Earth 2 by vibrating his molecules and met Jay Garrick, it was revealed that Gardner Fox, a comic book writer from Barry's Earth 1, had dreams of Jay Garrick's adventures on Earth 2 and used them to write his comic books.

What you posted from Shooter's plot is the same exact thing. It was lame back then and it's even lamer today, lol.

U2K could have been so much better, but it wasn't, not because of Shooter's doing but because of Nicieza.

He's the one that convinced Acclaim to reboot the universe and hire his friends to do it

If he had stayed with the original universe then by the time the 99 event happened (either by him or by Shooter) it wouldn't have been a lame Crisis on Infinite Earths rip off (which is what Shooter did) or a lame poll for the fans to choose between the two different characters (which is what Nicieza wanted to do), and instead it would have been what it should have been all along.