Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and thirty-eighth 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 of this week's legends.

COMIC LEGEND:

A classic episode of Justice League Unlimited was originally about the Birds of Prey.

STATUS:

True

Episode six of the second season of Justice League Unlimited was a classic episode called "Double Date," which featured Green Arrow and Black Canary and Huntress and Question where the first couple tried to protect a mob boss in federal custody from the second couple and, along the way, each couple got...more involved...

However, originally, the episode was going to still feature Black Canary and Huntress, but in a special one-off episode that would recreate the Birds of Prey!

Here are the Birds of Prey by DC animated legend, Bruce Timm...

The gist of the episode was that Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) would be injured and unable to follow through on a case due to Batman telling her she had to sit out due to her injury. So she would then create a brand-new identity, Oracle, and contact Huntress and Black Canary to work as her operatives in completing her mission without revealing who she really was.

It sounded like a really clever way of working the Birds of Prey concept into the DC animated universe without actually doing the whole "Barbara Gordon gets paralyzed" angle. However, there was an embargo on Bat-universe characters (outside of Batman) at the time, so the story was not allowed. So the story was re-written into "Double Date."


Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed - Which 10 (somewhat surprising) comic book properties did Marvel risk losing when they launched Marvel Studios?


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!

Here's my most recent book, Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? The cover is by Kevin Hopgood (the fellow who designed War Machine's armor).

batshark

If you want to order a copy, ordering it here gives me a referral fee.

Follow Comics Should Be Good on Twitter and on Facebook (also, feel free to share Comic Book Legends Revealed on our Facebook page!). Not only will you get updates when new blog posts show up on both Twitter and Facebook, but you'll get some original content from me, as well!

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...

If you'd like to order it, you can use the following code if you'd like to send me a bit of a referral fee...

Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed

See you all next week!