Syfy just announced their upcoming television development slate, including a  new Booster Gold series. Hopefully, Booster Gold will make it past his pilot,  but not all comic-to-TV adaptations do. In fact, for every Smallville,  there seems to be a Bruce Wayne that lies in the development afterlife,  never to appear in syndication. In some cases, TV audiences dodged a speeding  bullet, but a few of those series looked pretty promising. Here are 15  comic book-based series that didn’t get past their pilot, and a few  that didn’t even make it that far.

Mike  Mignola’s Dark Horse one-shot about a metallic Civil War-era secret agent with a  detachable head received a Sci Fi Channel pilot (back before it was Syfy) in  2006. The series boasted an impressive pedigree, with Pushing Daisies  creator Bryan Fuller co-writing the script, Paul Giamatti voicing Screw-On Head,  David Hyde Pierce as Emperor Zombie and Patton Oswalt as Screw-On’s butler Mr.  Groin. The Sci Fi Channel put it online with a number of other pilots, asking  viewers to vote on which series should be greenlit. Sadly, the station didn’t  pick up the series, so we’re left with just this little nugget of sepia-toned  wonder. Mignola claims he’s never watched the pilot himself; he says it’s too  difficult for him to watch something that’s based on his artistic style but is  artistically distinct from his work. We, however, can still watch the entire  pilot online.

The WB hoped to recapture the  success of Smallville with an Aquaman spinoff. Arthur Curry  arrived in Smallville during the show’s fifth season, around the same time that  HBO’s Entourage put its fictional movie star Vincent Chase in the  water-soaked tights. The series would follow young “AC” as he grew up in the  Florida Keys and discovered his destiny as king of Atlantis. TK reprised his Smallvillerole as AC for the pilot, and it looked like the aquatic  hero would be gracing the prime time schedule. However, Aquaman’s quest for  television dominance was thwarted when the WB and UPN merged, and the resulting  CW declined to pick up the series.

Another possible (and rather ill-conceived) Smallville companion  show was The Graysons, about Dick Grayson’s pre-Robin years. Another  handsome kid, some high-flying acrobatics — how could the CW lose? Well,  there’s that uncomfortable business about surrounding a show around a family  that’s doomed to die. Oh, and they were going to change Dick’s name to DJ (much  like AC), because apparently, no one wants a teen hunk named “Dick.” Warner  Bros. wisely scrapped the series, stating that “the concept doesn’t fit the  current strategy for the Batman franchise.” In other words, Robin was going to  make The Dark Knightseem way less cool.

Smallville actually has its roots in an older show, one that would have  revolved around a young Bruce Wayne. In 1999, Tim McCanlies, who directed the  movie Secondhand Lions and wrote the script for The Iron  Giant, pitched a series about Bruce Wayne’s “missing years” to  Tollin-Robbins Productions. We would have seen the early years of Bruce Wayne as  he put his life back together and embarked on his crime fighting training. The  show would show the dark side of proto-Batman, to the point where we wouldn’t be  sure if we should really root for the young vigilante. Tollin-Robbins loved the  pitch and so did Warner Bros., which was eager to pair the show with Angel once Buffy the Vampire Slayer went off the air. Shawn  Ashmore, who played Bobby Drake in the X-Men films, was rumored as the star.

So what happened? Well, it just so happened that the WB’s movie division was  already working on a Batman: Year One movie (before Christopher Nolan  started work on Batman Begins), and wasn’t willing to let a TV show  encroach on its territory. Eventually, the concept was reworked into the early  years of Clark Kent, and Smallville was born. After the Batman movie  was shelved, Tollin-Robbins tried to convince Warner Bros. to pick up Bruce  Wayne as a companion to Smallville, but were rebuffed. Eventually,  Nolan made Batman Begins, effectively burying any hopes for Bruce  Wayne, and Tollin-Robbins instead produced Birds of Prey. You can,  however, read  the Bruce Wayne script here.

Some series  ideas just look better on the drawing board. I’m sure someone at CBS thought  that Justice League of Americawas a surefire winner: established  characters, an ensemble cast, endless merchandising opportunities. But when the  80-minute TV movie and backdoor pilot aired in 1997, it seemed little thought  had been put into the execution. The cheesy special effects, numerous plot holes  and an oddly portly J’onn J’onzz meant that the highest praise it received was  “so bad it’s almost good.” Nobody wanted to see a full series, not even  ironically.

Of course, the recent big-name superhero not to land her own series is  Wonder Woman. David E. Kelley wanted to Ally McBealize Diana Themyscira/Diana  Prince, portraying the Amazonian princess in all of her facets: superhero, CEO  and ordinary woman. And maybe that could have worked if it was funny, smart and  paid homage to the character. When photos of Adrianne Palicki in those shiny  vinyl pants popped up, fans were worried. But questionable taste in costuming  was nothing compared to a Wonder Woman who tortures criminals and chatters about  the size of her action figure’s breasts. NBC passed, leaving us to hope that  Wonder Woman’s next trip to the screen — large or small — is a smoother, more  adventurous journey.

The  television adaptation about Warren Ellis’ comic about a covert intelligence  organization is one of those projects that keeps bouncing in and out of limbo.  The WB commissioned a Global Frequency pilot in 2005 with Survivor producer Mark Burnett at the helm, starring Michelle “Admiral  Cain” Forbes as Miranda Zero. When the pilot was leaked on BitTorrent, fans were  largely delighted with the show. But popular acclaim wasn’t enough to assuage  the higher-ups, who were upset enough by the leak to kill the project entirely.  Ellis told his email list, “It’s my current understanding that the bittorrenting  of ‘GLOBAL FREQUENCY’ has rendered it as dead as dead can get as a TV series.”  Ah yes, please, kill the show with critical buzz. That wasn’t the last of Global Frequency, however. In 2009, Ellis announced that the CW would  take a second crack at adapting the comic, with Scott Nimerfro scripting the  pilot. Nimerfro’s adaptation didn’t even make it to the pilot, however. In  August 2010, Ellis told MTV that that there was no further movement on the  project. It sounds like we’ll probably be seeing a different series from Ellis  very soon: Wastelanders, the web series he’s currently developing with  Joss Whedon.

Rather  relegate their projects to development hell, Marvel would frequently produce  them as TV movies that essentially served as backdoor pilots (see also: The  Trial of the Incredible Hulk and perhaps those Captain America  movies from 1979). In fact, 1977′s The Amazing Spider-Man started its  life as a two-hour TV movie on CBS. In 1996, Fox hoped to pair a Generation  X series with The X-Files, because the X-marketing just writes  itself. But the low-budget tale of Emma Frost and Banshee running their mutant  school wasn’t a hit with fans, and it didn’t help that Jubilee, our  point-of-view character, was played by Heather McComb, a white actress.

When most  non-comic readers picture Nick Fury, they picture Samuel L. Jackson as the man  behind the eyepatch. But if Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.had been a  ratings hit, David Hasselhoff would be our most enduring live-action image of  the man. This 1998 TV movie, scripted by David S. Goyer, served as another of  backdoor TV pilot, but fans voted with their eyeballs and said “No” to the  ‘Hoff.

An earlier  backdoor pilot was 1978′s Dr. Strange, starring Peter Hooten as the  Sorcerer Supreme and Jessica Walter (better known to modern audiences as Lucille  Bluth) as Morgan Le Fay. Stan Lee was a consultant on the show, and indicated he  had more involvement in that TV film than the others in the late ’70s. The film  wasn’t picked up for a full series, but Lee didn’t blame the quality of movie or  the audience demand for Dr. Strange. Rather, he blamed it on the time slot; Dr. Strange had the bad fortune of airing opposite Roots.

After failing to land the role of Wonder Woman, actress and model Angela  Bowie — who was at the time married to David Bowie — acquired the rights to  produce a Daredevil/Black Widow TV series in 1975. According to Ms. Bowie, the  show was considered too expensive to produce, and never found a production  company. But that didn’t stop her from taking some cheesy publicity shots with actor Ben  Carruthers, whom she hoped would play the man without fear. Is his mask just  painted on there?

Marvel and  DC aren’t the only publishers to use TV movies as backdoor pilots; in 1990, Archie: To Riverdale and Back Againaired on NBC. While so many  proposed superhero TV shows were prequel series, this was a sequel series, with  Archie Andrews returning to Riverdale 15 years after his high school graduation,  only to have Betty and Veronica renew their pursuit of him. The hope was that  nostalgic adults would gravitate toward a show featuring familiar characters in  contemporary situations, but the Archie TV movie ranked 51st in its time slot,  ending any hopes for this updated Riverdale.

Michael Kupperman’s limbless comedy duo made its TV debut on Adult Swim in  2009. The pilot featured the crime-solving, criminal beating talents of the  hissing Snake and factually accurate Bacon (“Wrap your dog’s pill in me.”), in  addition to surreal animated sequences about rabid district attorneys,  fruit-wearing teen grandpas and disembodied floating heads in love. Despite  featuring Kristen Schaal as a green fairy in a flapper outfit, the show wasn’t  picked up as a full series. You can still watch it now at Adult Swim.

Based on the Eltingville Comic-Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Role-Playing  Club comics from Evan Dorkin’s anthology series Dork!, Welcome  to Eltingville aired as a 22-minute pilot on Adult Swim in 2002. Before it  aired, Dorkin said he’d love to do a five-episode Eltingville  miniseries, but unfortunately, he never got the chance. Adult Swim didn’t pick  up the series, and it became one of those pilots they’d air on special occasions  alongside Korgoth of Barbaria.

The TV  version of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s fantasy horror series Locke & Key may not be dead, but it’s so bruised and battered it seems  unlikely to recover. 20th Century Fox greenlit the pilot, which was produced by  Dreamworks TV and written by Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles  show-runner Josh Friedman. Fox passed on series, apparently in favor of JJ  Abrams’ Alcatraz (grumble, grumble). The pilot had its bittersweet  debut at last summer’s San Diego Comic-Con, where it received enough acclaim to  turn the heads of MTV. Sadly, it seems MTV decided not to purchase the series,  and it’s already going down as one of those promising shows that never found a  home.