Jimmy Olsen was at one point intended to die from AIDS.
Jim Starlin revealed during his panel at Nashville Comic & Horror Festival that DC Comics considered killing off the character in the '80s after an internal vote, reports ComicBook.com.
"When the AIDS epidemic first came to light, DC had this idea to do a book where one of their characters contracted AIDS and died from it," said the veteran writer.
"And so, being the nice sensitive subject that it is, they put out a suggestion box that you were supposed to drop in the name of the character that you thought should die from AIDS."
He joked: "This was in the office. So as soon as I heard about this, I stuffed it full of Robins. I was doing a lot of drugs back then, so it didn't occur to me that I should change my handwriting, so they threw those all out.
"In the end, the character that they voted most wanted to see have AIDS was Jimmy Olsen. I don't know why.
"But that idea got scuttled when somebody told them that the actor who played Jimmy Olsen in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies was actually gay in real life. And so they got scared, and they dropped the whole project at that point."
Starlin famously wrote Batman: A Death in the Family, which allowed readers to vote for who would be killed in the story.
The writer also teased a mystery project for Marvel Comics at the Nashville event.
