Before Christopher Nolan and Zack Snyder teamed up for Man of Steel, even before Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, Warner Bros. had plans for a movie called Superman: Flyby. The 2003 script for that never-made film was written by none other than Star Trek: Into Darkness director and soon-to-be King of Star Wars J.J. Abrams, with plans for Charlie's Angels head honcho McG to direct.

Ten years later, the detritus of that scrapped project is flooding the comics internet. Not only has ComicBookMovie discovered artist Adolfo Martinez Perez's storyboards for a climactic scene, io9 has also dug up some of artist Phil Saunders' concept art. Check out a slideshow of the storyboards and some of Saunders' pieces after the jump.



The big bad of Superman: Flyby was going to be Superman's cousin, Ty-Zor, and this storyboard shows the circumstances of his ultimate death at the end of the film. There's also a weird encounter between a dying Ty-Zor and Lex Luthor, who was apparently meant to get Kryptonian powers through some sort of transference.

Abrams' script, which went through a few drafts, included lots of odd changes to the Superman mythos. For instance, Jor-El committed suicide rather than dying when Krypton blew up. In fact, Krypton never blew up at all. Kal-El was sent to Earth to fulfill a prophecy. You can read his whole script here if you please.

Saunders provided concept art for the battle mechs in the film, a few examples of which are below. You can see his whole set here.

[Via ComicBookMovie and io9]

More From ComicsAlliance