Note how Lee has not been used as a source for any of these Urban Legends so far - the guy, great as he is, just doesn't have the best memory, and he seems to go by the theory of "If I don't remember it, let me just go with what sounds most interesting."

In this interview, Stan Lee himself, said the name 'Bruce' was changed because it sounded 'gay'.

--yo
went to school with Sara Stewart

On the other hand, they are in fact fictional characters and are better remembered with a snappy name, whether it's their real name or their super-hero name. I don't see what the problem is, especially when most of them are pretty common first and last names to begin with.

Fictional characters, particularly superheroes who have their "super" names for recognizability, are supposed to be everyday type people with everyday type names. There are some explicit exceptions, of course, but THEY are just that, exceptions.

If it works for entertainment industry figures, why doesn't it work for fictional characters?

It works for entertainment industry figures the way it allegedly worked for Stan, i.e., it makes the name easier to remember, and it's important to those folks that WE remember them. I still say such names sound silly in everyday life and, analogously, with fictional characters.

I don't think Bill Bryson considers alliterative initials silly. Or Mike Marts. Or Stephen Stills, Parker Posey, Robbie Robertson, Mike Myers, Joe Jackson, Jermaine Jackson, Janet Jackson, Geoff Johns (phonetic), Jack Johnson, Ben Browder, Claudia Christian, Alan Alda, Don Davis, Dom DeLouise, Mark Millar, Gary Groth, Helen Hunt, Holly Hunter, Chris Kattan, Kevin Keegan, Dana Delaney, Noel Neill, Barry Bonds, Bob Barker, Brigitte Bardot, Ted Turner...

I don't believe Stan actually made it to Nixon's enemies list. It sounded more like a little bureaucratic issue.

It's not really an urban legend as such, but I'd like to know whatever happened to the Doctor Strange series JMS was supposed to be doing, and which kept being footnoted and set-up in issues of Amazing Spider-Man, and ended up with Strange bing whisked off to stand on trial for crimes against the timestream in ASM #500, complete with a "To be continued in Doctor Strange #1". The subsequent orgin retelling that JMS co-wrote doesn't seem to have much to do with that plotline, so what happened to JMS' original series? Did it get cancelled, turned into the origin miniseries, or is it still on the way?

Was there a New Avengers tie-in issue that featured Daredevil as a member in previews, only to include "Ronin" when it was published? I don't remember which book it would be, but I recall it waas one of the third-tier titles, possibly one of the anthology books, and undoubtedly cancelled since.

Oh, and did Warren Ellis really [SPOILER!] tell fans that Planetary's Elijah Snow wasn't the "Fourth Man" because he'd made the mystery far too obvious?

That one's been nagging me for a while

Regards!

And yo, a price freeze may sound asinine now, but back in the day it was conventional wisdom that a Price and Wage Freeze was how you slowed down inflation. The little pokes and prods that the Central Banks do now are a result of a shift away from the model of freezes that were, while not common, thought to be one of the only ways to keep inflation under control back in the day. From an economic standpoint, it seems to make sense (since you're directly impacting the rising prices and rising wages which are the primary cause of inflation), but its a really heavy-handed intervention into the market that fell out of favor as the seventies progressed and inflation got worse regardless (mainly due to skyrocketing energy prices, which could only be controlled so much by a national price freeze, given that most oil was imported, even at the time.)

A pin-up?
Some gov't line?
A coupon for free gov't cheese?

What??

~P~
P-TOR

First, as I mentioned somewhere else (probably on the Kirby's--leaving--DC thread which was left on the old site), I liquidated a great deal of my library some years ago (specifically early 1994), so I couldn't even begin to track the statement down and list the citation, but I KNEW he had said it, and therefore felt it needed to be pointed out.
Second, what I meant was that NOBODY was saying anything about the alliteration in and of itself and not necessarily in connection with the Hulk TV show, not that you didn't do an update or something like that about Johnson. Of course, THAT's no longer true, either, I see. Thank you, Chris. Speaking of his comment, I wonder just how much Stan was actually writing then. After all, said huge quantity doesn't justify expressly depicting the Human Torch's true identity of Johnny Storm as a secret in his Strange Tales solo series, especially since Lee has claimed that he made the Fantastic Four's identities non--secret in the first place as a deliberate change of pace from most superhero comics. True, the GCD gives him only plot credit on the Torch stories with brother Larry Lieber scripting, but didn't the relevant volume of the old Marvel Comics Index series (my copy being among that aforementioned long--gone stuff, so I am truly ASKING) list Stan as THE writer?