This is about the world's worst super-hero team.
Eric and Woody could not possibly be more different. Eric is a former Army tactical officer and martial artist. A coolly calculating man who fades into shadows and walks between rain drops. Woody is an almost-was rock star whose basic approach to detective work is hanging suspects out of windows. Eric applies meticulous planning and subterfuge to his work. Woody drives his '65 Mustang through storefront windows. Eric's costume contains dozens of sophisticated micro devices used for defensive and investigative purposes. Woody carries a nine millimeter and a Zippo lighter.

And these two guys are stuck with each other.

This is Dysfunctional Batman and Robin starring Eriq la Salle (the nearly-postal Dr. Benton from ER) and Woody Harrelson (reprising his character from White Men Can't Jump and Money Train). In a twisted reprise of The Defiant Ones, these polar opposites are handcuffed to one another to comedic effect as they stumble along a heroic career.

A result of exposure to a malfunctioning containment field (more on that later) Eric and Woody are now sharing the same pool of X-Band. Not unlike the gag in The Fly, Eric and Woody were locked together inside a chamber and had their collective mass shifted to an energy state. Although they've made it back to flesh and blood, they are both still prone to shifting back into an uncontrollable energy state, possibly losing corporeal integrity and being scattered to the winds.

In other words, Woody and Eric share the same Energizer Battery. The same "life force." They draw from the same well. They each wear a stylized wrist band, which cannot be removed, that monitors their energy output and reserves, as well as performing a bunch of Space Ghost-esque tricks. The gag is, at least once every 24 hours, Woody and Eric must get together and slam these bands together to "re-set" their energy reserves and prevent them from reverting back into an energy state and vanishing.

In other words, these two guys, who get on each others' nerves, can never live more than a half-day's drive from one another. Oh, and the share a pet goat.

Possibly the most popular work of my career, Quantum & Woody began as a suggestion from Acclaim Editor In Chief Fabian Nicieza. Newly cemented in his Big Chair, Fabian wanted a buddy book, something akin to the work Doc Bright and I did on Power Man & Iron Fist. Brainstorming this with Mark Waid and Brian Augustyn, Brian and Mark asked Fabian, "Why not GET the guys who did PM/IF?"  Dhuh.

I wasn't anxious to work for Acclaim. I'd had some bad experiences at the old Valiant. I talked to Doc about it and we dragged our heels a bit before committing. We also wanted a good creator equity deal in place (we have one; whether the company will honor it or not remains to be seen). From the onset, Doc suggested we reverse the likely roles, making the black guy the straight man and the white guy the irreverent funnyman. What I wanted to do was play with themes of race and political correctness, coloring outside of the lines and enjoying the freedom of not being at DC or Marvel. We both wanted the book to have heart. And to have lots of action.

I never intended the book to be seen as a "funny" book. It was an adventure book, like PM/IF. I think a lot of the humor in the first issue came about as a result of my having to write it in a New York hotel room while my laptop (and later Acclaim's loaner laptop) kept dying. I wrote issue #1 out of sequence because, well, first issues are boring. Here's the heroes.  Here's their origin.  Here's the villain.  Yawn.  So I mixed it up, moving things around in sequence and separating them with titles,  like a blackout sketch comedy (or the Frasier TV show, for you younger kiddies). The humor was a mean-spirited irreverence in the vein of David Letterman and Howard Stern

And, ghah, five years latter, I'm still stuck with it.  Fabian and company liked the format and the edgy, irreverent fourth wall scraping, biting-the-hand-that-feeds-it-humor.  Fabian also fell in love with a goat we used as a plot device in issue #3. At a loss for a reasonable ending to the first story arc, I asked Doc to pit the goat in the final shot, wearing a mask and cape (Woody's idea, a dig at Quantum and the whole "concept" of costumes).

Months later, while writing, oh, issue #7 or 8, Lynette Thompson, our editor, called and said something about naming the goat. "What goat?" I asked.  I had completely forgotten about the goat, but he had become the hit of the office (at least to Fabian). I called Doc and asked him to retroactively draw this goat, in mask and cape, into the intervening issues (some of which were already done). I thought a goat mascot was pretty dumb, but Fabian's instincts were dead on: HAEDUS (for Heavily Armored Espionage Deadly Uber-Sheep) became so closely identified with Quantum & Woody, that it was often the only thing the fans talked about.

In 1996 Diamond Distributors worked out a co-op program that allowed me to travel across the country, promoting Quantum & Woody and my other projects. Everywhere I went: goats.  Goat toys, goat drawings, goat T-Shirts, actual goats dressed in masks and capes.  It was pretty wild.

The tag line The World's Worst Superhero Team, which Doc and I loathed and fought a war of attrition with Acclaim to be rid of,  is actually a misnomer symptomatic of the ongoing clash of perceptions between Doc and  myself and Acclaim comics.  The fact is, it seemed that few people  truly "got" QUANTUM & WOODY on any but the most superficial level.  Acclaim kept marketing the book as a "funny" book, with "The World's Worst Super-Hero Team" as their major angle, which gave the uninitiated the impression Q&W was a parody book like The Inferior Five or Ambush Bug, and it may have polarized non-readers in that perception. Combined with Acclaim's across the board distribution troubles, well, we never stood much of a chance. The fact is, Q&W was a lot more like M.A.S.H. than Perfect Strangers. It was a sophisticated, multi-faceted drama, yes drama, about two best friends. While Q&W never became a commercial hit, it did reach a level of cult status with die-hard fans, and Acclaim has been repackaging the series into graphic novels and keeps fueling rumors of the book's return.

Thanks to everyone who loved and supported the book. Hopefully, you haven't seen the last of the boys yet.

Christopher J. Priest
September 2000

No spoilers
Based largely on a suggestion by artist MD "Doc" Bright, QUANTUM & WOODY resumed publishing, not with issue #18 where we left off, but with issue #32— the issue that would have been on sale when we resumed publishing. We decided to throw a special issue at the Q&W fans— the only people actually clamoring for the book's return— and included all manner of changes to the continuity (Woody was a black girl, the goat could fly, Quantum was fat, Holly was bald, Tempest was in a wheel chair, and the old Woody, our beloved Woody, was a villain who played acid guitar in a castle.

Fans wrote me from all over, wondering how these things could possibly be in continuity and how we'd manage to have these things plausibly happen over the course of the next year.

Piece of cake.

It puzzled Doc and I that so many people would wonder. After all, this is comics. Keeping the reader guessing is the name of the game. And we set upon the path of telling our screwy, extended yarn over the course of the next year. We had been assured that our budget for the book was secure at least through issue #34, the conclusion of the "arc" we invented (pretty much off the top of our heads) for the #32 stunt.

Then, something odd happened: Acclaim went away. Again. Right in the middle of our extended arc, and shortly after the introduction of the newest member of the Q&W supporting cast, my BLACK PANTHER boss Ruben Diaz.

Diaz was instrumental in arranging an unauthorized "crossover" between Q&W and PANTHER (whose style was largely derived from the Acclaim book). BP #15 was due to ship the same month as QW #20, wherein Woody discovers Marble Comics has created a comic book called Dark Kitty, based on Woody and his partner. The Dark Kitty pages included in QW #20 were nearly a panel-by-panel spoof of BLACK PANTHER #15, and should have helped promote both books.

Only, Acclaim did not ship their end for six weeks, which marked the beginning of the company's second withdrawal from the marketplace.

As the story went, an enraged Woody stormed the Marble offices and threatened to sue the company. There he met an editor named Ruben, whom Doc would have made a generic anyman hiding under a hat and sunglasses, but fill-in artist Oscar Jimenez (a good friend of Diaz's) brought to life with stunningly litigious accuracy.

Ruben also supervised the script and wrote many of his own lines. I enjoyed Ruben's cameo so much, I had "Ruben The Editor" join the cast, with Roo racing around with the goat and so forth until the gala one-and-one-half-sized 26th issue (Editor Omar Banmally thought having the special issue on the 26th issue would be a hoot, and rather than go double-sized, we go one-and-one-half sized).

Ruben's introduction, in QUANTUM & WOODY #21, was the last issue of the book that ever shipped. Doc and I have completed through issue #27, but, despite several assurances form the company that this stuff would see print, successive promises have produced no shipping schedule for the unreleased issues.

Not knowing what Acclaim's plans for this work may or may not be, I can't really spoil everything or post all the scripts or art. At the same time, I feel it's incredibly unfair to the fans who supported the book for three years to just dump them like that, without giving at least some idea of what we had in mind. So, in light of Acclaim's missing their latest promised ship date, and no news on the Q&W movie front, I figured I'd blab a little about what you might someday see, if the book ever comes back.

SPOILERS BELOW
Okay, the major thrust of the final issues, as with the entire series, was the love these two men had for each other. Eric Henderson and Woody Van Chelton were brothers in every sense of the word, and their familial bond was the dramatic undertow of the series. Most fans talked about the funnier and more outrageous moments, while missing the point QUANTUM & WOODY was not, in fact, a comedy book. Neither is PANTHER, and efforts to make PANTHER a "funny" book are extremely wrongheaded. Doc and I were determined to write a fun action book that happened to co-star a guy who saw humor in most everything.

Woody's transformation into a villain, as implausible as it sounded, had a very simple origin: in an attempt to save Quantum from himself, Woody became exposed to a great level of eldritch power and became the new Dr. Eclipse. Quantum, who gained god-like power at the end of issue #21 (our final issue) ultimately becomes a threat to the entire universe. Woody seeks help from the Eternal Warriors (whom he'd met in the SOLAR: HELL ON EARTH miniseries), only to find all of the Eternals are dead. But Turok, Woody's running buddy from H.O.E., introduces Woody to Shadowman, who is now a graveyard shift radio DJ in New Orleans. And Shadowman, in turn, introduces Woody to the one man who might be able to help him— Master Darque.

Darque cuts a deal with Woody to help Woody de-power the god-like Quantum (and, in so doing, save Q from himself), in exchange for Woody's immortal soul.  Woody, of course, thinks Darque is nuts, doesn't buy the whole "soul" claptrap, and thus agrees to the deal. Darque gives Woody a McGuffin, that I will selfishly decline to identify, that has the power to stop Quantum. Only, Woody comes to discover the McGuffin's power has, somehow, become a part of him. Thus, he no longer needs the object to stop Q, and can engage Q on his own.

The boys have a big aerial fight which causes a jetliner to crash into the East River, nearly destroying Q&W's headquarters in the process and seriously injuring Vincent Van Goat. This was to lead to a big stunt: 1-900 GOATlLIV or 1-900 GOATDIE. The proceeds from the stunt would have gone to the Humane Society, and the readers would decide Vincent's Ultimate fate. Thus, the goat who appears in issue #32 may be Vincent, and may not be Vincent.

And that is, pretty much, the gist of the missing issues: Quantum, now super-powered, becomes less and less human with each passing hour. Woody ends up teaming with one half of Solar (Sidne, the black lesbian woman), Ruben, Turok and eventually Tempest as they go up against Toyo Harada in an effort to thwart Harada's attempts to use Quantum for his own purposes. a lot of this tied into UNITY 2000, while U2K frigidly ignored us and resisted any logical attempts to tie into us (which included a sarcastic and hostile email from the U2K writer, who may or may not be under some delusion that he still has some clout in this town).

David "Dave" Warrant, meanwhile, is pushed to his limits by his spectacular failure to save the dying remnants of the Eternals on the moon (Warrant is stripped of his powers— courtesy of Harada's transference of all quantum power into Quantum— at a volatile point in his attempt to reorganize the energy on LunaWatch). Warrant concludes that Quantum is a threat and that he alone is capable of stopping Quantum before Quantum destroys the universe.

Thus, Warrant finally, ultimately, becomes a villain. He finally has every good reason, and every motivation, to take matters into his hands. He kidnaps Amy Fishbein in an effort to lure Quantum and Woody to him, and Doc had drawn the first rounds of Warrant's big showdown with Quantum when we got the phone call to stop work.

There's a lot more, of course, but this was the major thrust of our final issues. If those issues ever do see the light of day, you'll see how the goat flies (simple: Quantum willed it to be so), why Tempest was in the wheel chair (spinal injury from the plane near-miss in issue #25), who the black kid Woody is (Woody's daughter from a careless and long-forgotten liaison who arrives on Woody's ruined doorstep in issue #27 to find her dad is a villain and Eric takes her in), how Quantum got fat (he becomes increasingly bloated as a result of physiological side effects from his god experience). And on and on.  There would have been a lot of fun stuff.

I looked through my scripts, trying to decide what if anything to post here, and settled on issue #24. Not that #24 is so spectacular— it isn't—  but that there were some fun moments in there, and readers may not feel quite as lost as if I'd posted the double—  no, one and one half—  sized issue #26. If you'd like to download issue #24, click here. The script is in Microsoft Word 2000 format, but most any word processor should be able to open it.

Will we ever see these issues in print? I honestly have no idea, gang. I guess, if we haven't heard anything by the end of the year, meet me back here and I'll just post everything. Until then, please accept this gesture from Doc and I to all the fans who've supported this work, and made this book the cult oddity that it is.