Comic book scripts aren’t written to be read. At least not in the way a short story or a novel is read. A script is work product, a blueprint for the finished comic book. Most of the words that go into a comic book script will only ever be read by three or four people; the dialogue is the only element that survives from the blueprint to be seen by readers.

But sometimes a script doesn’t make it all the way from the larval stage to full maturity as a published story. The reasons can range from cancellation to a change in editor or even format. Son of the Unpublished Comic Book Scripts of Paul Kupperberg contains stories in all those categories, including a 3-issue Green Lantern story arc for DC Comics’ Legends of the DC Universe that was left without a home after the title was cancelled and a pair of issues of Batman: The Brave and the Bold that didn’t survive a change in both format and editor. Son of the Unpublished Comic Book Scripts of Paul Kupperberg also contains the original typed and hand-edited manuscript for an unused 1987 Green Lantern fill-in, as well as a never published “Elongated Man” back-up for The Flash, the script for a framing sequence for the short-lived Elvira’s House of Mystery, and stories written for DC’s Time Warp and the Warren Publishing horror magazines.