In Nothing Was Delivered, we look at announced comic book projects that never came about. We'll try to find out WHY they didn't come out. I'm sure you all know tons of examples of comic book projects like these, so feel free to write me at brianc@cbr.com to tell me some for future columns.
In Uncanny X-Men #178 (by Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr and Dan Green), Colossus was badly injured in a fight with the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Kitty Pryde came up with a novel idea to help save him - she would go get a special device that she had read about in a magazine that Reed Richards had invented!
The only problem was that the Fantastic Four were not there, so Kitty decides to break into the Baxter Building...
She does not expect that their security is so good...
And she plummets nearly to her death...
We later learn that Caliban has saved her and the Morlocks healed her. However, that must have sparked something in Claremont to pursue a connection between Kitty and the Fantastic Four, because when he later wrote the crossover miniseries, Fantastic Four vs. the X-Men (with art by Jon Bogdanove and Terry Austin), the hook of the series is that the Fantastic Four need Reed Richards' help to save the life of Kitty Pryde, who had been so badly injured during the Mutant Massacre that she was losing control of her intangibility. She seemed like she might literally vanish away into nothingness!
In the end, Reed find a way to stabilize her...
Kitty bonded with Franklin Richards during the storyline.
Claremont remembered that (is there anything that Claremont DOESN'T remember? That guy is crazy knowledgeable). So years later, when Claremont was given the chance to take over Fantastic Four (along with artist Salvador Larroca and Art Thibert), he thought that Kitty would be a great addition...
He later recalled:
"My intent was to have Sue [Storm] "adopt" Kitty, seeing in her a classic troubled teen on the verge of going majorly bad. She would sort of function as Franklin's big sister. (Since nobody was using her in the X-Men, I figured nobody would mind me sliding her over to the Fantastic Four. My mistake. Boyoboy can Marvel editors be territorial!) So that plot thread crashed and burned, and then when I tried it in X-Men (2nd Series) #100, it crashed and burned, and then when I tried to launch Kitty's mini series, that got approved, got an artist assigned to the project (Lee Moder) and then it got shot down, crashed and burned!"
Later, Claremont was at least able to do his "Kitty Pryde away from the X-Men" miniseries, Mekanix...
If anyone has a suggestion for another interesting comic book series/story that never got published, let me know at brianc@cbr.com!