Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and forty-sixth week where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
Click here for Part 1 of this week's legends. Click here for Part 2.
COMIC LEGEND:
Huntress was going to be the Queen of Checkmate
STATUS:
True
My pal, Devon Sanders, of the blog "Seven Hells!", wrote in to ask about an old story he had once covered on his blog.
The Huntress after working with Batman to find the whereabouts of his former bodyguard and love interest stumbles across a world-spanning plot involving Checkmate. At the end of Batman: Gotham Knights #38 after months of working with The BatFamily, she leaves to become Checkmate's Black Queen. The ending was shocking because for years she'd done everything she could to gain their trust. She wasn't seen again for months and the next time she appears, she re-emerged as a Bird of Prey with no mention of her time in Checkmate. As we know, Sasha went on to become Black Queen within Greg Rucka's Checkmate series. Was there ever a plan in place for The Huntress to become Queen beyond Batman: Gotham Knights?
The story took place in Batman: Gotham Knights #37-40, as Huntres is kidnapped but then recruited by Checkmate to be their new Queen. She makes a daring escape, turning their offer down...
But she ultimately accepts, but only due to Batman telling her to do so...
So was there more planned there? I asked the great Scott Beatty, who wrote this arc, and he explained that yes, he planned on returning to the story in future issues, but then Huntress was claimed for Birds of Prey...
and Greg Rucka had plans for Checkmate leading up to Infinite Crisis, so both of them were now off-limits, so Beatty never got a chance to return to the story.
So there ya go, Devon! Thanks for the suggestion and thanks to Scott Beatty for the awesome information!
Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed - Did Peter "Chewbacca" Mayhew need special protection while filming in the Redwood forests of California to make sure people didn't shoot him, thinking he was Big Foot?
OK, that's it for this week!
Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo!
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well!
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Here's my book of Comic Book Legends (130 legends. -- half of them are re-worked classic legends I've featured on the blog and half of them are legends never published on the blog!).
The cover is by artist Mickey Duzyj. He did a great job on it...
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Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed
See you all next week!