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It's hard to imagine too many projects that could rival the ingenuity and outside-the-box creative thinking that inspired DC Comics' award-winning Wednesday Comics newspaper strips, the creator-centric Solo series, and Batman Black & White, all spearheaded by DC's former art director of 27 years, Mark Chiarello. Nonetheless, in an interview with Popverse at Chicago's C2E2 2025, Chiarello revealed one fascinating 'what if' (or is that Elseworld?) from his DC days.

"I knew a guy who worked at the New Yorker magazine, the really highly respected literary magazine. And I made a list of the most famous writers in America. Not comic book writers, but mainstream writers," Chiarello shares. "So it was Maya Angelou and Pete Hamill and Howard Stern, as a comedy writer. Bruce Springsteen as a great lyric writer. I wanted to see if I could get some of these people to write a Superman story for me and do a book called Tall Tales."

Before you start thinking just how unlikely a lengthy, in-continuity ongoing Superman comic would be from any of these iconic figures, don't worry, Chiarello had a plan.

"I called it Tall Tales, where they would write a short story, an eight-pager, about Superman and do whatever they wanted because I thought it would be cool to step outside of our comics world. So we'd have people who know all these great writers buy a Superman comic. The guy at the New Yorker was gonna print the written word, the prose, and we were gonna print the comics as a joint venture."

So what got in the way of this incredible idea? Chiarello shared.

"I started calling all these people. I spoke to Springsteen's assistant. He said Bruce would never do that. I spoke to Steven Spielberg's number one assistant," says Chiarello. "Steven would never do that. You know? So on the list of 60 people, zero out of 60 said yes."

"So I never got to do the project. That would've been cool, though. I was so disappointed. I was heartbroken. "

It's possible that the project was simply ahead of its time, as Chiarello noted he pitched it around 2000. Perhaps in a post-MCU landscape, the great writers of the world would be more amenable to writing a short Superman story.

As far as creative collaborations, Chiarello fantasized about one idea.

"I'm a big Creedence Clearwater Revival fan. If I have a John Fogerty story, I call Frank Miller. "Hey, you wanted to draw John?" All these cool guys. The pairings you would've gotten outta that!"

It's hard not to think this could have been another amazing, groundbreaking anthology under Chiarello's guidance. For now, all we can do is wonder… anybody have Springsteen on speed dial for round 2?

Need more? Here's our picks for the best DC Comics stories of all time.