Once upon a time, George Clooney was all set to play Nick Fury in a Marvel movie, that preceded Samuel Jackson's portrayal in Iron Man, but plenty of time after David Hasselhoff played him in a previous movie. Clooney was a big fan, it was seen as a redemption for his Batman, and he was all set to sign on the dotted line. Then Clooney's people thought to look at the Nick Fury comic book, Fury written by Garth Ennis and they found a foul-mouthed, perverted, murdering, morally repugnant version of the character, and dropped out. This more than anything doomed Bill Jemas' tenure as publisher of Marvel Comics, as the power base at the company swung away from Jemas and back to Avi Arad and a certain someone called Ike Perlmutter. But it seems it wasn't just one comic that killed a big media project, Marvel editorial has form in that regard.

The other day, Marvel executive editor Tom Brevoort mentioned, in reference to a Frank Miller cover for Daredevil that it had killed a Daredevil cartoon pitched to ABC in 1982.

Bought them all. That Daredevil cover killed an ABC cartoon pitch. https://t.co/zdSyVuciGM — Tom Brevoort (@TomBrevoort) March 25, 2020

A cartoon that had a very different tone…

Yes, that's the one. — Tom Brevoort (@TomBrevoort) March 26, 2020

Brevoort also shared two presentation boards from the Daredevil cartoon proposal that certainly gave the impression that Daredevil + Dog drew at least some of its inspiration from Miller's work on the comic book. Just no gun in the face. And more dog.