Green Lantern/Superman: The Legend Of The Green Flame.

Miller Covers Gaiman
Cover image

No, it’s not a preview of Frank Miller’s upcoming Batman: The Dark Knights Strikes Again, which promises to feature lots of DC’s classic heroes, but it kinda/sorta could be. It’s actually the cover to Neil Gaiman’s upcoming special Green Lantern/Superman: The Legend Of The Green Flame.

The special, which was written over ten years ago by Gaiman, is now being illustrated by Matt Wagner, Eddie Campbell, John Totleben, Mike Allred, Jason Little, Eric Shanower, Arthur Adams, and according to DC, “many more cool entries from the Rolodex of Senior Editor Bob Schreck.”

The story teams Superman, Green Lantern and a host of familiar DC characters in an adventure to Hell and back, spanning more than four decades.

Last year, Gaiman told Newsarama a little more about the special, explaining to us that the script was originally meant to be the “last episode” of DC’s former Action Comics Weekly series. “But it was scrapped for continuity reasons which were at the time incredibly important but which are pretty much forgotten today,” explained Gaiman. “In brief, I`d written a story about Superman and the Hal Jordan Green Lantern as old friends, one of whom has problems, the other doesn`t. It was decided the week after I`d written it that too many people knew Superman`s secret identity and henceforth no one would know it. The story didn`t really work if they weren`t old friends in their secret identities, so it was scrapped. In it, Superman and Green Lantern go to Hell.”

The story was originally commissioned by then DC editor Mark Waid and features cameos by all the characters featured in ACW at the time – including, amongst others, Deadman, the Blackhawks and the Phantom Stranger.