According to Bill Willingham's Home Page, here's what happened to the Elementals:
quote:Will You Ever Do Anything On The Elementals Again?
Probably not. When the publisher, Comico, self-destructed in the late Eighties, I felt it was a good time to leave the Elementals and go on to other things. So I sold all rights to the Elementals, permanently, to the new owner of the supposedly resurrected Comico. Little did I know at the time that the new owner would never follow through on any of his announced plans for the series, even though - as part of the conditions of the sale - I produced an exhaustive bible on how to continue the series to its logical conclusion. This document, filling two of the largest three-ring binders made, was very probably the largest, most complex series bible ever produced for a single comic-book title. The last time I had any occasion to visit the Comico offices, one of the volumes of the series bible was being used (very effectively I have to admit) as a doorstop. Since then, the new owner of Comico was rather resolute in his efforts to drive the once popular series into the ground.
However, all is not doom and gloom. Not entirely anyway. In the last year or so, finding myself nostalgic for the old Elementals days I began to wonder what it would have been like to have been able to finish the series. Almost from the beginning (from issue #12 to be exact) I had a definite conclusion to the Elementals story in mind. I was as disappointed as anyone that the Elementals would likely never be completed. Since working on the original series was no longer an option, I did the next best thing. I created an entirely new superhero series, with entirely new characters, and immediately placed those characters in a situation very similar to what I had planned to do with the Elementals. Then I wrote the conclusion to the story. It's not exactly what I originally intended (the characters in the new series are different enough not to have direct equivalents among the characters in the Elementals), but it's close. And I also think it's a darn good story in its own right.
The name of the new series is PANTHEON. It's twelve issues long, with a one-issue epilogue. As of this writing, Issue #2 is on the stands and the third issue is about to be released. I wrote it, Mike Leeke (my old partner in crime in the Elementals days) is penciling it, and the publisher, Bill Williams is inking it. And yes, before you ask, I'm confident I'll be able to complete my part of this new series because all twelve issues of it (thirteen if you count the epilogue) were written before the first issue appeared. Pantheon will come to its conclusion, provided enough of you keep buying it so Mr. Williams can keep publishing it.
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