Way back in 1995 Marvel Comics commissioned me and my mate Sam Salgood to produce an issue of their monthly book Ghost Rider 2099. I don't remember much about the setup of the book, but basically there was a big cyborg guy who faced off against an evil corporation called D'monix each month. There was a lot of cyberspace stuff, too. It was all very William Gibson.
I rattled off a script and gave it to Sam, who'd worked for Marvel before on Clive Barker's Saint Sinner as Max Douglas, and who later drew a short Spider Man 2099 story. Sam drew all 22 pages plus a terrific cover. Although he got his wrist slapped for using Boba Fett at one point without licencing permission, we were both paid in full and I sat back and waited for my first book to hit the stands.
A few weeks later the editor of the 2099 range, Joey Cavalieri (who went on to run the Superman books at DC), left Marvel and all the 2099 books were cancelled as part of what was called The Marvelution. Consequently my GR-2099 issue never saw publication. Sam kindly agreed to letter it according to my script and between us we produced a finished copy in black and white, but with no-one to publish it the story languished in our drawers as a piece of file work to show editors what we could do. Soon after we started work on Raven Chronicles, but that's another story.
Anyway, the chances of it ever being published are slightly less than zero, in fact I doubt Marvel even have a copy of this story on file anywhere anymore, so I figured I may as well put the whole thing up on my site as part of my portfolio. I'm aware that I'm probably being very naughty but where's the harm? If anyone official asks me to remove it I will.
I haven't read it in seven years and when I look at it now there are parts of it that really make me wince, especially the first four pages, but the overall story is sound, there's some good visual storytelling, and the tale nicely subverts a few cliches. It also mucks around with time a bit, something I don't think entirely comes off, but is at least an attempt to do something different.
In order for the balloons to be readable the pages are quite big, and there are 22 of them so if you're on a 56k modem you may find it downloads quite slowly.