Comic Book Legends Revealed #487

Welcome to the four hundred and eighty-seventh 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 eighty-six. This week, was the Batman villain Anarky originally created to become the new Robin? Did Jack Kirby not know what color the Thing was going to be? And finally, did Iron Man really make an oddly sexual proposition to Captian America in a 1974 Cap issue?

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: Anarky was created with the intent of him becoming the new Robin.

STATUS: True

Commenter Jonathon Riddle wrote awhile back:

I read somewhere once that Anarky was created to be Jason Todd’s replacement as Robin. The idea was to be that Batman, impressed with Lonnie’s creativity, effectiveness in the field, and tactical mind, would train and mold the youngster into a force for altruism and a follower of Batman’s philosophies. When Tim Drake was introduced in Batman by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, Tim got the editorial approval and Anarchy fell into obscurity – at least until recently. I don’t know if that was Alan Grant’s plan for the character or not, but it gives that story an interesting dynamic if it is true.

Anarky was introduced in Detective Comics #608 by Alan Grant, Norm Breyfogle and Steve Mitchell (Anarky was created by Grant and Breyfogle). He was a vigilante who used rather extreme methods to punish "bad" people, like corrupt heads of corporations...

In the next issue, though, after Batman defeats Anarky, he discovers something shocking...

Despite Batman's protests at the end that he wasn't thinking of Robin, that's exactly what Alan Grant WAS thinking at the time.

He revealed in an interview with DC Leaguers (an Italian DC fan site) that:

I had originally hoped, when I wrote the first story that Anarky would eventually end up as the new Robin. But, unknown to me, Denny O'Neil was already working in secret with Marv Wolfman to create Tim Drake.

Grant and Breyfogle at least got the chance to introduce Tim Drake in his new Robin costume a year or so after that Anarky issue...

Grant also had some good rivalry stuff with Anarky and Tim Drake.

So it wasn't quite a matter of O'Neil choosing Tim Drake over Anarky so much as Tim Drake had already been decided on before Anarky was introduced, but otherwise, the story as Jonathon says it is true.

Thanks for the suggestion, Jonathon and thanks for the info, Alan Grant and DC Leaguers!

Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Did NO Simpsons fan correctly guess who shot Mr. Burns?

COMIC LEGEND: Jack Kirby didn't know what color the Thing was going to be when he designed him.

STATUS: I'm Tentatively Going With True

Earlier this week we lost one of the few remaining links we have to the beginning of the Marvel Age, as Stan Goldberg passed away. Goldberg is best known for his long tenure drawing Archie for Archie Comics, but he also played a key role in the start of the Marvel Age, as he was a freelance colorist for Marvel in the early 1960s and from 1961-1965 he was in charge of Marvel's color guides.

A couple of years back, Alex Dueben had an interesting interview with Goldberg on the main Comic Book Resources site. In it, Goldberg talked about his tenure as Marvel's coloring guru...

As far as coloring those books, it was all left up to me, really. If you look at those first five years, from 1961 to 1965, that's when I did all the books. Right after that I was just doing special books, but those five years I did practically everything. There might have been something Marie [Severin] had done, but I did ninety percent of creating all the color schemes for the heroes and the villains. If you look at the heroes you can see basic colors: reds and blues and a little bit of yellow. The reds and blues were very important for the superheroes. You really wanted them to pop out and those were colors that I could ensure that I was going to get. Place them in the right spots on the heroes, it worked. Jack made it easy. The first ["Fantastic Four"] didn't have any costumes but in the second book he put this long underwear on them with the number 4 on the chest and I figured just keep them blue. I've never given blue to a villain. Orange was a color that we used and The Thing wasn't a human being so I could have made him anything, but orange was the best color to work with for him. He looked like bricks or earth. I got word from Kirby that that worked out fine.

With Spider-Man, there's your red and blue, but even the blue on the early Spider-Mans was a deeper blue, a blue with a lot of red in it. In those days it had more of a deep purple-y blue instead of just a flat blue.

The villains were green and magenta and burnt umber and gray and everything else that went along with deep and dark muddy colors. If they couldn't come out that well, it was okay, because they were the bad guys. The heroes always got their red, yellows, and blues. I could go on with a lot of stories about why I did this and why I did that, but never in my wildest dreams did Stan and I imagine that we would talk about this for so many years.

Just as an aside, that reason he mentions about the deep, muddy colors not coming out well is the reason that the Hulk was changed from gray to green (as noted in one of the earliest Comic Book Legends Revealed).

But anyhow, while it is clear that Goldberg WAS in charge of determining color schemes of characters, did he seriously do it without input from the artists on the books? It's a tough one, as the only way to know for sure would be to hear from Jack Kirby, a fellow who passed away two decades ago.

However, after conferring with the always helpful Tom Brevoort (when I'm unsure about something involving early Marvel, Tom is always awesome to bounce an idea off of), I tentatively am willing to say that Goldberg likely DID determine, at the very least, what color the Thing would be. As Tom notes, Kirby would not have had any say in what color the monsters were in the old Marvel monster mags, so it seems unlikely that he would have looked at the coloring of the Thing any differently at the time. Coloring back then was in such a nascent stage that pencilers rarely concerned themselves with it (as it tended to be highly inconsistent back then. A character could be colored one way one issue and another way the next issue).

Tom is a bit doubtful, though, about Spider-Man's costume, and I tend to agree that it seems more likely to me that Ditko had the color scheme in mind when he designed Spider-Man's costume. From what I've read about Ditko's design for Spider-Man, it seems like he went a lot more in depth than a typical character design at the time, as Spider-Man had a longer development time than most, so I tend to believe that Goldberg didn't originate the colors for Spidey.

Thanks to Alex Dueben, Tom Brevoort and the late Stan Goldberg for the information!

COMIC LEGEND: Iron Man made a rather lewd proposition to Captain America in a 1974 issue of Captain America.

STATUS: False

Reader Ryan sent in a suggestion for I Love Ya But You're Strange:

The time Iron man offered Captain America some solid dick. I've seen this panel around the web where Iron man offers Captain America some solid dick, apparently it was slang to mean straight talk at the time the comic was published. I was wondering if there's any validity to this?

Here's the panel in question...

Somehow, people have been passing it around under the theory "wow, solid dick was slang for giving solid advice back in the day!" Seriously, people?

Here is the actual panel, from 1974's Captain America #176 by Steve Englehart and Sal Buscema...

The Mickey/Minnie one was just on this side of believable, but come on, this one was obviously fake!

Thanks to Ryan for the suggestion!

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

If you want to order a copy, ordering it here

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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...(click to enlarge)...