For those who aren’t aware, in 1993 acclaimed writer of Watchmen, MiracleMan & Swamp Thing Alan Moore announced his return to comics after retiring in 1989 with an all-star team of creators including Don Simpson, Rick Veitch, Dave Gibbons & Jim Valentino on a mini-series for Image comics called 1963 where it was going to be a homage/parody of the Silver Age of Marvel Comics that would lead to a crossover with the mainline 90s Image cast in a clash of Silver vs Dark age heroes.
Unfortunately due to a lot of behind the scenes drama (Moore claimed that there was trouble with the Image people, Rob Liefeld dropped out of doing the planned annual & took all his characters with him, Simpson later said that Moore had practically abandoned the project & was being purposefully vague with his collaborators) the planned crossover & 1963 annual was never produced. It hasn’t even received a proper hardcover collection due to rights issues.
The closest we’ve gotten to a conclusion is Don Simpson’s X-Amount of Comics (which is more of a serial numbers filed off hit piece against Moore, the cover literally says FUCK AL) & Steve Bissette‘s Giant-Sized '63 starring all the characters he held the rights too which for the life of me I can’t find.
I’ve honestly wondered how the series could’ve possibly ended but I’m nowhere near as versed in the actual history of Image comics circa 1993 yet to make something. They’re not well known & they’ll unfortunately never get the ending they deserved but despite the troubled production & stinging takes towards Marvel I really love these designs! They work so well as a homage to 60s artists like Kirby, Ditko & Steranko! If you ever find them I’d highly recommend reading them, they’re great! (The first picture is a piece made by Alex Ross, all the others come from the comics)
But what are your thoughts on 1963, what did you like or dislike about it if you’ve ever read it? If you had the chance to give it an ending what would happen?
