CBR Live! Archive
Comic Book Legends Revealed History II
#156 - Actor Bill Hader got his breakout film role due to his interest in Sandman comics.
Alice the Goon was the inspiration for the word "goon"
Marvel put out a somewhat racy comic magazine in the 1960s.
#157 - Johnny Carson apologized to Jack Kirby on the air of the Tonight Show after insulting Kirby on the show
The Blackhawks were inspired by the Flying Tigers
The inker "Crusty Bunkers" was really a group of artists.
#158 - Neil Gaiman reworked his Phantom Stranger proposal into Sandman.
Chris Claremont modeled an X-Men character after a translator he once had.
John Byrne drew She-Hulk's nipples in a Marvel Graphic Novel.
Stan Lee owns a trademark on the word "Excelsior," keeping Marvel from using the name for a comic book.
Jack Kirby was involved in faking a movie for the CIA.
Frank Miller was not originally going to leave Daredevil after Born Again.
Alan Moore created John Constantine BECAUSE he looked like Sting
#159 - Ronin was going to be revealed fairly early in the New Avengers #5 or #6, but the reveal was pushed back because everyone guessed it was Daredevil, so they had to find a replacement.
Paramount canceled DC's first Star Trek series and relaunched without Peter David because his new creations were more popular than the Paramount characters.
Crossgen colorist Justin Thyme did not actually exist.
#160 - Comic book artist Jim Sherman designed the logo for Major League Baseball.
Marvel produced three issues of a comic without obtaining all the rights to the characters in the comic.
Jerry Siegel came up with Superman's secret identity based on the elements directly above Krypton in the periodic table
#161 - Jim Shooter wrote a Dazzler film treatment working in roles for Cher, Rodney Dangerfield, KISS, Robin Williams, Donna Summer, the Village People and both Michael McKean and David Lander!.
Chris Claremont and John Byrne had some involvement in the creation/design of Dazzler
Dazzler was originally going to be the fifth member of X-Factor.
#162 - Mr. America beat the Shield to the rights of being the first patriotic hero.
DC bought a summer crossover series proposal from Alan Moore and then chose not to use it!
Steve Englehart reworked Madame Xanadu for a comic at Eclipse.
#163 - At one point, Crime Does Not Pay was selling five times as many copies as the highest sales Superman ever had
Sting in Harbinger was originally intended to be gay.
Grant Morrison ghost-wrote an issue of Mark Millar's The Authority.
#164 - A female character's genitalia was exposed in an issue of Action Comics.
Longshot was going to have a follow-up mini-series by Ann Nocenti and Art Adams.
To make a point, Peter David once wrote a Star Trek comic under the pseudonym "David Banner."
#165 - Strikeforce: Morituri was originally intended to be a New Universe title.
Geoff Johns once had an Avengers script sent back because it had "too much story."
Legion of Superheroes character M'rissey is named after Legion fan Rich Morrissey.
#166 - Jim Starlin accidentally killed off the wrong character in the first Shang-Chi story.
Steve Gerber was going to write a new Howard the Duck ongoing series in the 80s, but it was denied due to how he wanted to explain away Howard's other comic book appearances.
Rob Liefeld and Fabian Nicieza created Shatterstar and Domino because they were denied the use of Longshot and Black Widow, respectively.
#167 - An Uncle Sam comic book featuring Pearl Harbor being bombed was released...in November of 1941!!
Mike Grell's wife ghost-wrote a number of issues of Warlord for him.
A Marvel artist tried to sneak a sexuality reference into an Excalibur cover.
#168 - Writer/Artist John Byrne has been involved in an inordinate amount of eerie coincidences.
Billy Dee Williams was paid to NOT be Two-Face in Batman Forever.
Grant Morrison intended for the Beast to be gay during his New X-Men run.
#169 - Marvel sold all the copyrights to their characters to a separate company, Marvel Characters, Inc.
Peter David was planning on killing off Aquaman during his run on the title.
Chuck Dixon and Jackson Guice were in the middle of a Wild Wild West movie adaptation before learning that they didn't have all the rights needed for the book.
#170 - Peter David's Aquaman run was delayed due to a religious misunderstanding.
Multiple artists ghost-penciled some of Marvel Superheroes: Secret Wars.
A fairly offensive joke was snuck into the background of a Marvel comic.
#171 - An artist stopped working on his comics without informing anyone, including the editors on the books he was drawing.
The DC Multiverse had an Earth-B.
Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy were going to do an Elric comic book for Marvel.
#172 - Joe Madureira snuck a complaint about Roger Cruz into an issue of Uncanny X-Men.
Michael Golden disappeared from comics for a time while he was on the lam.
Snapper Carr was named after George Lucas.
#173 - Howard Mackie and John Byrne had also planned on erasing the marriage between Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson.
Most of the famous early Batman drawings by Bob Kane consisted of swipes of other artists.
Watchmen was originally going to be a six-issue mini-series before its success led to an extension to a twelve-issue series.
#174 - Bob Kane was still a teenager when Batman was invented.
For a time, Mephisto was going to be behind the Clone Saga, as well!
Rick Leonardi and Chris Claremont began work on a Phoenix mini-series that never saw the light of day.
#175 - The design for Spider-Man's black costume was based on an earlier design for Spider-Woman II's costume.
A Star Wars comic book writer came up with a character name as a joke but then saw the joke name make it into print.
Jan and Dean released a Batman-themed album.
#176 - The writers of New Mutants had to re-write a finished comic book at the last moment because Marvel decided not to publish the original story, which involved a gay student killing himself.
There was a popular song in the 60s of a guy whistling a song about Batman.
Jor-El was not named in the comic books until 1945, and it was not even in the pages of Superman or Action Comics!
#177 - Siegel and Shuster had a character named Jor-L in comic books...in 1936!!
DC took Marv Wolfman's character, The Monitor, and moved him from his original purpose into being a major character in Crisis.
The 1938 Academy Award for Best Actor was awarded to Dick Tracy.
#178 - Steve Vai did the theme song for the X-Men animated series
The X-Men appeared on a 60s cartoon series.
The first two episodes of the X-Men animated series aired before they were ready.
#179 - Marlon Wayans was paid to not be Robin in Batman Returns and Batman Forever
A Batman-like character named the Black Bat debuted practically simultaneously with Batman
Steve Englehart had to change the Shroud's origins to make him less like Batman
#180 - An apparent murder in Belgium involved the popular manga series Death Note.
Neil Gaiman based Sandman: Dream Hunters on some specific older folk stories.
Chuck Dixon had a proposal for a series using Marvel's "horror" characters together prior to Midnight Sons basically doing the same thing.
#181 - John Byrne based aspects of a Fantastic Four antagonist on Neal Adams.
Marvel once "adapted" a Tom Wolfe story in an issue of the Incredible Hulk.
Gambit was originally meant to be Longshot
#182 - Marvel once did a special G.I. Joe comic made up of a comic by Todd McFarlane that was deemed unacceptable by Marvel only a few years earlier!
The Madelyne Pryor in Avengers Annual #10 was the first appearance of the Madelyne Pryor who married Cyclops.
Various other Madelyne Pryor legends.
#183 - Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Black Panther pre-dated the Black Panther Party.
The Fantastic Four fought against "Triton" because of a rights problem with Sub-Mariner
The SW6 Legionnaires were named as such after the mailing address of a Legion of Superheroes fan.
#184 - Neil Gaiman was inspired by the Bob Dylan song "Mr. Tambourine Man" to create the main character in Sandman.
The Fantastic Four's mailman was featured in comics over a year before the Fantastic Four were!
The Transformers character Circuit Breaker was introduced in the pages of Secret Wars II so Marvel could gain the rights to the character.
#185 - Mark Waid and Alex Ross were forced to use Alan Scott instead of Hal Jordan in Kingdom Come.
The Kang who appeared in Waid's second run on Captain America was originally meant to be the actual Kang.
Waid's original origin for Onslaught was that he was simply the evil side of Professor X.
#186 - Jughead got his name from his hat!
False in the way that we would typically look at the question
Marvel had pseudonymous inkers in the Crusty Bunker tradition called D. Hands and M. Hands.
#187 - Batman and TinTin had a team-up!
Timely Comics came up with a character's name to justify the title of a comic book.
The Post-Zero Hour R.J. Brande was intended to be J'onn J'onzz.
#188 - D.G. Chichester was going to make Matt Murdock the Mayor of New York City.
There is no explanation for the S that Jughead wears on his shirt.
Roger Stern left a book that he created for Marvel before the first issue!
#189 - Jack Kirby based the face of Etrigan the Demon on a mask from an old Prince Valiant story by Hal Foster.
Outside of guest appearances in comics, Silver Surfer was once reserved for only Stan Lee to write.
There was never an explanation in the comics as to why Jughead had an "S" on his sweater.
#190 - J. Michael Straczynski did not intend to have Doctor Doom cry in Amazing Spider-Man #36.
The story behind the name on the Bristol board that Marvel artists use.
Paul Tobin went by the pseudonym Root Nibot.
#191 - Due to the unwritten rule that only Stan Lee could write Silver Surfer solo stories, there were no solo Surfer stories until Steve Englehart's series in 1987.
Dick Grayson was originally going to be killed in Infinite Crisis.
Namor was not revealed to be from Atlantis (and perhaps was NOT actually from Atlantis) until AFTER Aquaman was!
Ta da!
- Posted on June 23, 2005 @ 02:27 PM
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11 Comments
Ununnilium
July 6, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Ah, i see. Interesting.
Ununnilium
July 6, 2008 at 11:54 pm
...except 162 isn't on here.
Brian Cronin
July 7, 2008 at 9:54 am
The latest ones never are! Not until the next week's column goes up (because until then, they're not archived - they're fresh!
)
Callum
October 14, 2008 at 5:42 am
And 175. Now I'm done and guess I'll get back to work where the only urban legends revolve around food theft from the company fridge. Wheee!
James Lynch
November 1, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Umm, the entry for #178 just goes back to #177. I really want to know about the X-Men cartoon!
John
November 4, 2008 at 2:57 pm
#178 loads a blank page for me. All the links appear on the right, but there's no "Legends Revealed" text.
I really want to read about the X-Men cartoon also.
Brian Cronin
November 4, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Aha, I see the issue - the slight name change messed the code up a bit. The links work now!
ESE150
November 16, 2008 at 7:09 pm
#180 mistakenly shows the "description" of #179 in this page.
Dimitris Sakaridis
January 16, 2009 at 4:07 pm
The link for #189 has the date wrong. It is 2009/01/01, when it should be 2009/01/08.
Ray
March 30, 2009 at 6:55 am
So is Comic Book Legends Revealed done for? Haven't seen an update in quite a while now.
Brian Cronin
March 30, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Whatever bug that caused me to have to set up a History II was fixed, so the archive is back at the original html.
http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2005/06/23/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-history/