Twilight of the Superheroes

Twilight of the Superheroes is the title of a proposed comic book crossover that writer Alan Moore submitted to DC Comics in 1987 before his split with the company. Although various elements suggested by Moore later occurred in various comics, Twilight was never published and is considered a "lost work". The proposal gained fame after surfacing on the internet in the 1990s where its status as a lost work by one of the superstars of the medium, as well as its dark treatment of superheroes, garnered much attention.

The title refers to the concept of Ragnarök from Norse mythology. The story was to be set two decades in the future of the DC Universe and would feature the ultimate final battle between the heroes of Earth, including the older and younger generations of superheroes, as well as the supervillains and some extraterrestrials who inhabited Earth in the DC continuity. Twilight was conceived as a standalone limited series which could also be tied to ongoing titles at the other writers' consent, much like the then-recent 12-issue limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Various web sources preface the proposal by claiming that it originated in 1987, after Moore had made a name for himself with comics such as Swamp Thing but before his departure from DC. The proposal itself is prefaced with a long disquisition in which Moore talks about his thoughts on the super-hero genre, the problems of cross overs as a marketing and storytelling device, and his overall goals with the project. With regard to super-heroes, Moore stated that one problem with the genre was the lack of a definitive end to the story of most heroes; in the manner that the Norse Gods, for instance, had a definitive end. He felt that this prevented superheroes from achieving the iconic status that they might otherwise acquire and praised Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns as an effort to provide such an end point for at least one DC hero. On the subject of crossovers as a storytelling tool, Moore criticised them as either forcing other books to make tentative connections to a central storyline, or forcing readers to buy comics they otherwise would not for fear of not understanding the storyline. His goal for the Twilight proposal was to address both of these concerns by providing an end point for the DC superhero universe, as well as providing a crossover which would logically tie into the company's various books without forcing readers to buy numerous titles.

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