Welcome to the four hundred and thirty-first in a series of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of the previous four hundred and thirty. This week, we discover how close we came to a romance in the Justice League between Wonder Woman and...Hal Jordan?! Plus, did Marvel staffers really intentionally stack the deck against Jack Kirby in the letters columns of his titles when he returned to Marvel in the mid-70s? Finally, what is the "Secret Cobra Salute"?
Let's begin!
NOTE: The column is on three pages, a page for each legend. There's a little "next" button on the top of the page and the bottom of the page to take you to the next page (and you can navigate between each page by just clicking on the little 1, 2 and 3 on the top and the bottom, as well).
COMIC LEGEND: Wonder Woman and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) were going to date in the late 1970s.
STATUS: True
Over the years, Wonder Woman has had some flirtation with Superman...
and also Batman...
but it was not until just recently that she finally actually started dating one of her Justice League teammates, Superman...
Their relationship is even going to continue with a new Superman/Wonder Woman ongoing series...
However, amazingly enough, over thirty years ago, Wonder Woman was going to have a different romance with one of her teammates...Hal Jordan!!!
Despite the two not really having had a whole ton of personal interactions over the years, by the late 1970s, if Wonder Woman was going to have a relationship with a teammate, there wasn't a whole lot of options. Superman had Lois Lane, Green Arrow had Black Canary, Flash, Atom, Elongated Man and Hawkman were all married. The Avengers had broken new ground with human/android inter-relations, but I doubt DC was ready to go there with Red Tornado. So really it was either Batman or Green Lantern and at the time, Jack C. Harris was both writing Wonder Woman and editing Green Lantern, so it seemed like a perfect fit in terms of synchronization.
Apparently, though, a fan then wrote in suggesting that Wonder Woman and Green Lantern start dating and you know how comic book companies are if they feel like someone might claim that they stole an idea, so they backed off the plan. And then Harris was replaced as the writer on Wonder Woman and the whole plan fell apart.
I wonder if it went down if it would have survived Crisis. Would it have become so accepted that it would have made it to the Post-Crisis DC Universe as well?
Thanks to Xum Yukinori for suggesting this one and supplying the letter columns to Wonder Woman #253 and #259 where they laid out the aborted plans and why it didn't go down.
Here are the parts from the two letter columns dealing with it (the first is #253 the second is #259 - both replies by Jack C. Harris):
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Check out some Entertainment and Sports Urban Legends Revealed!
Was the Car Chase in The French Connection Seriously Filmed Without Any Permits?
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Was “Humpty Dumpty” in the Famous Nursery Rhyme Referring to a Notable Cannon?
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Speaking of letter columns, on the next page, were Marvel staffers intentionally printing negative letters to Jack Kirby comics when he returned to Marvel in the mid-1970s?
COMIC LEGEND: Marvel staffers intentionally included extra negative letters in the letter columns of Jack Kirby's titles in the mid-1970s.
STATUS: Appears to be False
Jack Kirby returned to Marvel at the end of 1975 after spending the previous five years at DC Comics.
His return to Marvel was not quite as successful as his last stint at the company, but the work he did was fine, especially his creation of the Eternals...
And when Kirby left Marvel, it was less an issue of the books not doing well and more of Kirby wanting to do other things, especially as the world of animation was calling.
However, it seems pretty clear that at the time there were a few Marvel staffers who were not pleased with Kirby's return. Perhaps not so much that they were irked that he was returning PERIOD but rather that they didn't think his new stories necessarily fit in with the then-current Marvel style of writing. Kirby's scripting definitely stood out from the rest of Marvel. I don't think that that was necessarily a bad thing, but clearly some folks DID.
Anyhow, a longstanding legend is that Marvel staffers did not like Kirby so much that they intentionally crafted letter columns for his titles filled with negative letters. Kirby himself believed so, calling them "knock letters" and he felt that these staffers felt that THEY should be writing the books, not Kirby.
When I first heard this, it seemed a bit hard for me to believe, as some of the folks on staff at the time included Roger Stern and Scott Edelman, people who I just didn't see as doing something so juvenile and mean (I could see people having issue with Kirby's mid-70s Marvel work, but not to the point where they'd intentionally make a negative letter column just to spit him). Early last year, I actually found an editorial that Stern had written in 1982 in Comics Feature.
He denied anything untoward was happening to Kirby's letter column, stating:
As for the idea that competing writers filled the pages of Jack's books with overly critical letters- 'knock letters' as Jack called them- well, nothing could be further from the truth. To the best of my recollection, the letters pages to Jack's books were assembled by then-staffer Scott Edelman and neo-writer David Anthony Kraft, though I put together a few myself. Certainly none of us coveted Mr. Kirby's assignments, nor were we in any position to have even dreamed of assuming them.
Not fully trusting my memory on this, I checked back over the old letters pages to see just how negative the printed mail was. In Captain America and Black Panther, I found that over two-thirds of the mail responses were out-and-out raves, an impressive statistic when one considers that the previous writers associated with those two series- Steve Englehart and Don McGregor- had such a rabid fan following. On the 2001 book, mail was about 75% positive. In the only letters page to run in Machine Man during Jack's tenure, mail was 100% positive. I could find only four negative letters in the entire run of the Eternals, and one of those was from a reader who felt the book raised troubling theological questions.
For whatever reason, I never ended up using this legend then (I don't recall why. I often plan on using a legend, then I put it down and the next thing I know it's a year later and I still haven't used it). But I figured, okay, I'll try it this week. I figured I'd see if anything new was written about this and sure enough, Scott Edelman actually did an extensive feature on this issue over at his neat blog.
Edelman, too, examining the letter columns could not find any evidence of the columns being filled with negative letters to Kirby (in addition, of course, he personally does not believe that he was doing anything of the sort at the time, despite his own personal view at the time that yes, he was not a big fan of Kirby's scripting). He even shared this bit that he wrote in response to a fan who specifically brought up Kirby's scripting and how Marvel fandom all wanted Steve Englehart back:
Do they, Jim? We don’t think so.
As we’ve said before, the difference between Kirby and Englehart is basically one of style. They each have their individual visions as to who Cap is, and both of their Caps are different in character then the way he originally appeared. We could argue forever about their respective merits and maladies, but there is nothing we can say about the book that the King can’t say for himself in his work.
We feel that most of our readers like Jack’s work, and whether we’re right, only time and sales will tell.
Check out the link to see scans of a bunch of letter columns.
I am not saying that there were not staffers at Marvel in the mid-1970s that had a problem with Jack Kirby but it sure does not appear as if said problem made its way into the letter columns.
Thanks to Roger Stern and Scott Edelman for the information!
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Check out some classic Comic Book Legends Revealed involving letter columns!
How and why did Steve Englehart and Frank Brunner fake a fan letter to their own comic book?
Did a change in postal laws lead to DC Comics eliminating their letter columns?
Did a man seriously write to DC to ask for permission to get plastic surgery to look like Superboy?
Did Larry Hama really respond to ever fan letter he received while writing G.I. Joe?
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On the next page, what is the "Secret Cobra Salute"?
COMIC LEGEND: Herb Trimpe snuck an amusing "salute" into an issue of G.I. Joe.
STATUS: I'm Going With True
Jared Osborn currently does Radiant Comics, which you can check out here.
Back in the early 1990s, though, he worked at Marvel as a production staffer. Recently, he wrote in with a hilarious story about his days as a staffer at Marvel, specifically about G.I. Joe #119, which was a rare G.I. Joe issue not written by Larry Hama (instead it was written, drawn and colored by the great Herb Trimpe).
I happened to be working in the Marvel Production bullpen at the time this issue was being worked on and the splash page came across my desk (it was my job to paste the lettering down). On page one I noticed a small figure at the end of the dock, about half an inch tall, who sure looked like he was giving the finger. We in the Bullpen had a good laugh over it but didn’t mention it to anyone in editorial just to see if anyone would notice. It’s real small. Sure enough it’s there in the printed book.
Here is the page...
Osborn continued...
Not only that but Trimpe, who also colored the book, put a yellow spotlight on the guy giving the finger. We referred to it as the “Secret Cobra Salute” after that.
Hilarious.
Thanks for the great story, Jared!
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Check out the latest edition of my weekly Movie/TV Legends Revealed Column at Spinoff Online: How did Nightmare on Elm Street, of all things, nearly lead to DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince starring in House Party?
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Okay, that's it for this week!
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Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed
See you all next week!