Frank Miller and Steve Gerber’s Metropolis.

Earth One isn’t the first time that DC have launched entirely new reboots of their main characters. The following is from a 1986 issue of Amazing Heroes and leads into a piece about Frank Miller’s then “upcoming” Batman: Year One…

Actually, “Batman: Year One” has its origins in Miller’s concept for the original Dark Knight series some years ago. It was then that Miller and Steve Gerber proposed to DC their idea for the “Metropolis” line of comics, which would revamp DC’s three principal characters and start their continuity over again from the beginning. The new Wonder Woman series would have been titled Amazon, the new Superman series The Man of Steel (which, of course, would not have been the same as John Byrne’s series of the same name), and the new Batman series would have been called Dark Knight. “I plotted the first four issues of the Batman title,” Miller says, but the Metropolis line was never launched, and he later used some of the ideas he had worked up for the Batman in his recent graphic novel series.

Peter Sanderson, “A Talk with Frank Miller” in Amazing Heroes #102 (1986 Sept 15)

I remember reading references to Miller and Gerber working on a pitch for Superman at the time of DC’s first Crisis, but I hadn’t realised they had something so comprehensive in mind. Even now, I don’t think the world is ready for Frank Miller’s Wonder Woman.