The proposal gained fame after surfacing on the internet in the 1990s where its status as a lost work by one of the superstars of the medium, as well as its dark treatment of superheroes, garnered much attention.
[1] Various web sources preface the proposal by claiming that it originated in 1987, after Moore had made a name for himself with comics such as Swamp Thing before his departure from DC.
[2] The proposal itself is prefaced with a disquisition in which Moore talks about his thoughts on the superhero genre, the problems of crossovers as a marketing and storytelling device, and his overall goals with the project.
He felt that this prevented superheroes from achieving the iconic status that they might otherwise acquire and praised Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns as an effort to provide such an end point for at least one DC hero.
The hook through which the series would connect with other titles is the attempts of the two time travelers to recruit others into their quest to alter the future through warning them of upcoming events.
However, the series would also have been a significantly darker take on DC characters than had previously been published, with many of the future versions of the heroes depicted as murderers, perverts, and tyrants.
The series was never commissioned, but copies of Moore's detailed notes have appeared on the Internet and in print, despite the efforts of DC, which considers the proposal its property.