Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and twenty-sixth week where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

Click here for Part 1 of this week's legends. Click here for Part 2 of this week's legends.

COMIC LEGEND:

When Brian Bolland and Alan Moore's "Batman/Judge Dredd" project was sequelched, Alan Davis was then initially brought in to take over from Bolland on the project.

STATUS:

False, but very close to being True

A few months back, I did a Comic Book Legends Revealed about a possible "Batman/Judge Dredd" crossover that was going to be written by Alan Moore and drawn by Brian Bolland.

At the time, reader Dennis L. wrote in to me to ask if it was true that when the project didn't happen with Bolland, that fellow British superstar artist Alan Davis was going to reunite with Alan Moore (who Davis had worked on on "Captain Britain" and "Marvelman") to do the project.

The answer is no, but sort of.

You see, the main sticking point with the original crossover, which would have been around 1985/1986, was actually the publisher of "2000 A.D." (where Judge Dredd starred in a regular feature), IPC Magazines. They felt that Batman was not a viable character to team Judge Dredd up with.

They sold their comic book business to Fleetway in 1987. Fleetway had a entirely different take on the situation, so in 1988, they began to plan a crossover of the two characters. However, here is why it is a slight false. This was a brand-new attempt, without any connection to anything Moore and Bolland had done.

But yes, Alan Davis, who had already drawn "Batman and the Outsiders" and "Detective Comics" by this point, was going to be the artist. What's interesting is that Davis had drawn Batman but had never actually drawn a "Judge Dredd" story. So as a sort of tune-up while the contracts were being sorted out, Davis drew the John Wagner-penned Dredd story for "2000 A.D." Prog 585, which had an awesome cover that was quick suggestive of what the crossover might have looked like...

The bad guy within was the "Bat-Mugger"...

He was a socialite who led a double-life as a mugger. However, while the city liked him in his secret identity, that's what ultimately did him in. Look at the ring he gets here...

He punched Judge Dredd at one point in the story and it left a perfect imprint of the ring.

In any event, the contracts never got sorted out and Davis moved on to different things, but DC and Fleetway got a deal done and the crossover appeared in 1991, written by Wagner and Alan Grant and drawn by Simon Bisley...

The Davis one would have been cool, though!

Thanks for the question, Dennis!


Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at CBR: Why didn't Captain America eat any Shawarma in the famous "Avengers" post-credits scene?


OK, that's it for this week!

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo!

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batshark

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Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed

See you all next week!