I guess you'd guys would prefer a note at the beginning of every comic that says "The following events take place last Tuesday at 10 pm Mountain Standard time."

I don't know where you could have read that (and I have my doubts) but it's completely untrue. Not only does the Savage Dragon NOT have "Triton's skin" (Savage Dragon has body hair, after all--not scales) but at no point had I ever considered giving the character to Marvel Comics.

As noted by others in this thread--the Savage Dragon-inspired character from Marvel Comics Presents was unnamed. He was a visual tip-of-the-hat to Savage Dragon but he was a throwaway parody character that was never intended to have any life beyond a few panels in those couple issues.

And yes--I was not accusing Brian Bendis of stealing my "Elektra was a Skrull" idea. The idea was, however, rejected by Ralph Macchio who went on to edit Ultimate Spider-Man and work with Bendis so it's not impossible. It's most likely a coincidence, worth noting only because it was the same idea that had been rejected earlier.

"Actually, Secret Invasion seems to be a mash of ideas that have been presented before - Millenium, the Shrinking Violet/Durlan story, the SW6 Legionnaires when they were first introduced…"

I may be misremembering, but I think at some point Bendis himself had cited his inspiration for Secret Invasion being the Cylon infiltration of humanity in the current Battlestar Galactica series. In fact, the "final five" Cylon subplot had (up to a point), beings exactly like the current "classic" heros who aren't even aware they are skrulls.

Also, worth noting that the main Google campus is named the Googleplex, after, of course, a googolplex. At the second company HQ (currently on the third), buildings were named (in order) 0, 1, e, and pi, after variious mathematical numbers. And if you look at the IPO for Google, you'll note that the various numbers with respect to number of shares, amount to be raised, etc., are obvious multiples of things like the square root of two and e. In general, at least from the Larry and Sergey level, you'll see a lot more math references than comics references. Although I think there's still some Will Eisner references in some of the Google Desktop documentation, courtesy of myself.

Finally wrapping this up I wanted to congratulate Brian Cronin, for many things. The quality and dedication of his work here and on the top comic runs, which is what I read, and his strong analytical sense, plus the hugely significant bonuses of being able to contact several authors to verify/discuss some of the urban legends make this a great column to read . I would buy tp´s of this urban legends, or magazines, if only to support you and any collaborator to keep up good analytical work on the huge venue for creativity that comics are, and all the rich underlying topics, stories that exist, as well as the symbolical importance of a lot of characters and ideas that appeared in this often underestimated medium.

So… keep up the great work, and keep moving people to dedicate time to reflect on more than one side and aspect that anyone can grasp from general comics!

Thanks, Semsu!

No need to be defensive, Brian

Hey, you stole my point!

Rapture had electrical powers, also. I guess that's still a form of energy projection, so that's just splitting hairs, but as characters they couldn't be more different. Powerhouse was a one-off, one dimensional foil. Rapture was far more developed than that.

I'll fix it!

1983: Dragon first appears in Megaton #3.
1990: Savage Fin appears in Marvel Comics Presents.
1992: Dragon appears in Savage Dragon #1.

Granted, the MCP story predates the Image book, but still...?

Semi-interesting note:
The character called Savage Fin was in fact NOT named in the Marvel Comics Presents serial. The guys at the Unoffial Appendix to the Marvel Universe website called him "savage fin" in quotations, just to have something to refer to him by. When the guys who maintain the website pretty much became the guys that write the current Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe books they "officially" named the character Savage Fin in a text passage somewhere. However, Erik Larsen called the character FishFace - in the letters page of an issue of Savage Dragon, someone asks Larsen to list all the characters he had created at the "Big Two." On that list (among numerous others), the character is called FishFace.

Pardon my ignorance, but wasn´t Miller the first person to bring her back in "Elektra Lives" GN?

The Marvel character that isa SPAWN RIP-OFF was NIGHTWATCH.
He had his own series (blessedly short-lived) after he spun out an appearance in Spider-Man.

EVERYTHING about his look was ripped off of Spawn.

Prowler, of the other hand, WAS created by John Romita. But it was John Romita JR as a young boy.
He did a drawing that his dad thought was great.
Then SR asked JR if he'd like to see him become a Marvel character.
What little kid would say no?

I loved those old Romita SR era Spidey's (even the newspaper strip when SR was drawing it)

~P~
P-TOR