A writer's published work is only the tip of an iceberg. Notes, letters, early (and sometimes radically different) drafts, writing exercises, proposals, incomplete work … even, tho one hesitates to admit it, the occasional piece that just didn't click with any editors. Tho this mass of verbiage doesn't even enter the public consciousness, it piles up like month-old red-hot comics in a retailer's back room, because when it comes to his own stuff, the average writer can't bear the thought of throwing anything away. Especially these days, when old data can be stored so deep, for so long, at so little expense. No matter how useless it is, maybe, someday, if he lives long enough, he might salvage something from it.

If the writer is famous enough, all this will start gushing forth the moment he's dead. If he's famous, but less so, it'll be preserved by librarians, so scholars can occasionally paw over it. But the most he can realistically expect is that it'll wind up on a CD in a younger relative's attic, eventually to drift away into Alphabet Heaven.

And then you have the guys that recycle old writing into blog entries.

Relax! I'm not going to regale you with unpublished Bucky Bug scripts. Couldn't even if I wanted to — those scripts belong to The Walt Disney Company. And by the way, that's another category of unpublished writing — stuff that's bought and paid for, but still, for one reason or another, doesn't make it into print. I have eleven such Bucky Bug scripts cluttering up a filing cabinet in Burbank, Ca.

No, I'm just recalling some ideas that would have made perfectly entertaining comic books, if only the world hadn't, in one way or another, passed them by.

What do I mean by the world passing them by? Oh, they just reach a point where they're obsolete, i.e., no longer relevant to their sociocultural context. I'll give you a joke, as an example.

Q: What has big, silver wings and a crooked bill?

A: Air Force One.

The world passed that one by the moment Bill Clinton stopped being president. Of course, the world occasionally circles back, but in a slightly different way — I first heard the "big silver wings" joke back in the early '70s, only it wasn't a bill. But for the most part, once they're obsolete, they're gone.

Here's an example of an obsolete comics proposal.

Picture a comic book parodying the career of Heidi Fleiss, done in the style of Betty Boop. Make it a really loose parody — never mind how closely it parallels the true facts, just throw in one low gag after another about Fleiss's line of work. The name of the comic is — get this — Heidi Ho.

Hyuk hyuk — what a hilarious idea, eh? If you happen to recall Heidi Fleiss, that is. Unfortunately, The Hollywood Hooker's 15 minutes of fame have long since receded into the mists of time, and so have my chances of ever getting that wonderful comic published. It never got beyond the idea stage, because of the mere accident of my thinking of it a few "minutes" too late — Fleiss's notoriety was already on the wane, so it was bound to be obsolete by the time any real work could be done.

Another idea got a little more development — in fact, I even managed some plotting. This one dates back to when Topps went into the comic book business, and Marvel responded by going into the bubble gum card business. They bought Fleer, and my brilliant idea was, what effect would Marvel ownership have on Fleer's already-established line of comics characters?

What, you didn't know Fleer had comics characters? Don't you remember Corky, Judy and Pud? The Fleer Double Bubble Kids? Comics about them, printed on waxed paper, were wrapped around every chunk of gum Fleer sold, except the flat ones that came with trading cards instead. More appeared in comic book ads, alongside Captain Tootsie and "Get Wildroot Cream Oil, Charlie".

The story I planned to write would open with three typical American youngsters. Real typical. The older boy, Thud, wears a beany and a red and white horizontal striped T-shirt, which barely covers his grotesque obesity. The younger boy, Dorky, wears his hair in a cowlick and usually has a big, pink gum bubble in front of his face. The girl, Doody, looks like Steve Ditko was her fashion consultant. Yup — typical as de day am long.

The three are happily engaged in their favorite pastime — acting out three-panel gags. All the gags have, as a major theme, the amazing virtues of their favorite brand of bubble gum, which, among other things, is capable of delighting taste buds, forming nigh-invulnerable bubbles, prolonging youth and, properly applied, alleviating hemorrhoids. And since they can apparently keep this up for hours on end, the sequence goes on for page after page after page after page after …

No it doesn't. I wouldn't do that to a reader. Halfway down the first page, we see the sky start to split open, unnoticed by the kids. They still don't notice as, behind them, the disturbance expands over the course of page 2. By the bottom of that page, huge gobbets of alien space-time continua are spewing out like spin-offs spew out of X-Men. That's when the kids notice.

Then comes a full-page splash in which they're sucked into the growing timestorm, as the Marvel Universe suddenly engulfs their formerly peaceful, isolated, and rather narrowly-focused corner of the Omniverse.

This is followed by as many superhero — uh, I was about to say "clichés", but maybe it would be more polite to call them "classic story elements". Anyway, as much superhero stuff as I can cram into a oneshot comic book. (No, I never saw this as a series.)

The kids acquire super powers as an accidental by-product of Conspiracies among Military-Industrialists. They confront their Evil Extra-Dimensional Counterparts. Encounters with a Cosmic Being leave them awash in the Oneness Of All. Eventually, Doody and Dorky must unite to do deadly battle with … Dark Thud!

When I told artists about this hot project, for some reason, they didn't get as enthusiastic about it as I was. Go figure. I eventually found someone who thought it would be fun to do, and (even more important) would probably be able to work it into his schedule once I got a go-ahead from a publisher. But by that time, Marvel's purchase of Fleer was old news, so it wound up in my ever-burgeoning pile of unpublished writing.

That one would have been loads of fun, but it wouldn't have made me wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. But the next one — yeah, the next one had legs! The hero was Oliver North.

Yes, that Oliver North.

In my comic book version, Ollie is a reincarnation of Jesus. He's once again assumed earthly flesh to carry out a special mission for The Father and The Holy Spirit — he must save the U.S. Senate from the Minions of Satan. Naturally, this will involve the occasional Titanic Struggle with the Avatar of Satan Himself, Ted Kennedy.

And of course, there would be roles for various other political and/or minor quasi-religious figures, shifting as the landscape itself shifts. For example, what about Donald Trump as Mammon? One way or another, I'd hit every conceivable aspect of American politics.

The beauty of this one is that it would appeal to such a broad demographic. If I played it right (I should specify that means "correctly"), it wouldn't matter how the reader felt about Ollie himself, because it could be read as either a black comedy or a simple, straightforward statement of unvarnished truth.

Yes indeed — Oliver North, the man who would pave my path to riches and fame. Oliver North, my hero!

And then he lost the election, and the whole thing became just another piece of obsolete, unpublished writing.

Loser! Bum!

Well, at least I salvaged enough of it to fill a few paragraphs in a blog. There's unpublished writing that's a lot lower on the food chain than that.

What, for example, am I to do with obsolete would-be blog entries?

— DDM