Also, the poor writing of Doug during her tenure didn't exactly show her as capable of writing the character. His powers had made Chris Claremont develop thought-out storylines to employ his powers. She tacked on a relationship with Rahne because she obviously needed to make his upcoming death more dramatic. Of course she missed that the whole Warlock/Cypher dynamic was loaded enough already.

So I don't think this is really accurately labelled an Urban Legend...its not like she brought the character back for the fans who were upset!

Yeah, I call B.S. on this one. I remember back around the time she first took over the title. I was a teenager and went to my first comic convention, where she was featured. Someone (probably Louise) had leaked that a New Mutant would die. I was a big Doug fan for reasons other people have stated--he was essentially an everyman character and it took some actual thought to work him into a storyline. He was the type of character readers could identify with. I stood in line to get her autograph and said something like, "It's not Doug who's going to die, is it?" She gave me this big "cat ate the canary" smile. It was clear to me at the time that it was Doug who was going to die and that it pleased her greatly. Not sure why, all these years later, that still bugs me--probably something about me being young and it being one of my first encounters with a comics pro. But it just seems like an example of taking the easy way out.

Back in the 70's I was hanging out with Steve Grant. It was week after Christmas, so we went stereo shopping and ran into Chris Claremont. We ended up going to Claremont's place, where he showed us (if I remember correctly) New Mutants #2 original art, which he was dialoging. He told us about this new character Doug Ramsey, who was going to save the day by reading the NORAD nuclear missle code, written in ADA, which Claremont mistakenly believed was a classified computer language (read totally top secret).

I pointed out that he didn't need to be able to translate ADA, since Doug could just go to McGraw-Hill Scientific Bookstore in Rockefellar Center and get ADA books. Poor Doug was never the same.

And that is my contribution to comic books. Well along with yelling at Peter Parker for falling asleep in my meeting at the Bugle, and being on Nexus's list of terrible people who need killing.

They would probably get into a heated argument over which one of them was the biggest playa. And the Tony Stark would show up, and they'd both realize they'd been totally outclassed

This is one of those powers which, in the context of superhero comic books, where you are supposed to have brutal throwdowns with costumed criminals each and every month, is pretty useless. But if someone had this in the real world, damn, it would be one of the most incredibly useful abilities ever.

Which is one more example of how trying to injet too many real-world sensibilities into superhero comic books just does not work.

Honest.

Ends up, I was wrong. Well, half wrong:

"The artists hated Doug because he never did anything!" Simonson laughs. "He wasn't fun to draw. He just stood around and hid behind a tree during a fight. And the only time he didn't hide he got killed. It just goes to show! Every artist who ever did him said 'Can't we kill this guy?' We would get letters from fans about how much they hated him. We never got any letters from people saying they liked him until he was dead."

I read that to mean he was killed because of artist demand. But she also brings up the fan letters. Add her quote from this Urban Legends and it clears everything up.

He did beat the Magus, though.

As for Cypher, realistically, that guy just had "casualty" written all over him. He was bound to be killed sooner rather than later. And there was something a little queer about wearing another team member as an armor, I think. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

With the exception of the one letter she named, did she really compare all the "Kill Doug" letters with the "How dare you kill Doug" letters to see if they were written by the same people?

There was an issue of the Dazzler/Beast miniseries "Beauty and the Beast" that included a scene set at a group home for mutants with lame powers. The only one I remember offhand (without fact-checking, mind you) was an older lady who could change the color of flowers.

(I assume when she needed a place to stay, the Island of Misfit Toys had its "No Vacancy" sign lit.)