Welcome to the four hundred and ninety-second 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 ninety-one. This week is a special theme week! In honor of the debut of Season 5 of the Walking Dead this Sunday, it's all legends involving the Walking Dead! Did Andrea accidentally switch faces with her dead sister? Did Robert Kirkman accidentally spoil a major character's death more than ten issues before the character actually died? And which major couple was originally going to split up early on in the series' run?

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: Andrea accidentally took on the facial features of her dead sister.

STATUS: Basically True

The great Charlie Adlard is the artist most associated with The Walking Dead, having drawn every issue since #7. However, it was Tony Moore who was the original artist on the series. And in the changeover from Moore to Adlard, it looks like a pretty notable mix-up occurred.

You see, early in the series we meet sisters Amy and Andrea.



Andrea, even early on, was shown to be a crack shot...



Amy is tragically killed by a zombie in The Walking Dead #5.



Andrea went on to become one of the most prominent characters in the series (also the TV series...but for other, more annoying reasons).





However, as our own Kelly Thompson discussed a few years back, when Charlie Adlard took over from Tony Moore, Andrea took on the visual characteristics of her sister Amy.

Kelly even did a nice little visual display for us all...



I asked Adlard about it, and he noted that he DID intentionally try to have Andrea take on certain characteristics of her sister, like wearing her hair like Amy after Amy's death. However, yeah, freckles don't transfer and since he had a very short deadline on that first issue (just two weeks!), he concedes that he might have just switched the faces on the two characters. That seems pretty clear to be the case.

I think it makes Andrea look more distinctive and I think it definitely works, so it certainly is not a big deal at all (I like that Kelly named her image "Nerd Alert") but it is still interesting!

Thanks to Kelly Thompson and Charlie Adlard for the information!

Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Did Kevin Smith write a decoy script for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice?

COMIC LEGEND: Robert Kirkman accidentally spoiled the death of a major character a dozen issues before the character actually died.

STATUS: I'm Going to Go With False

Following the lead of other independent comic book creators (like Erik Larsen, Brian Michael Bendis and John Byrne, to name three), the letter columns of The Walking Dead is always an interesting read, as Robert Kirkman (and whoever his editor is at that point in time) answers each letter individually and he'll often reveal interesting things about the series and his process.

In the letter pages of The Walking Dead #88, there was an interesting letter (The bolded responses are from Sina Grace, then editor of the series, and the italicized response is from Kirkman)...



Naturally, a few fans thought, "Huh? But Glenn isn't DEAD."

Well, in issue #100, they figured out what Kirkman was referring to...





So the rumor then began that Kirkman accidentally forgot that he had not yet KILLED Glenn when he made that comment, as obviously at the time he would have been writing replies in the #88 letter column he would have been working on stories from after #100.

However, in the next issue's letter column, Kirkman discussed it...



Obviously, it is a close call whether he just made a mistake and is joking about it now or whether it was intentional, but after reading that, I lean enough towards intentional that I'm going with intentional. It's a cool story either way!

On the next page, which major Walking Dead couple almost broke up very early on in the series?

COMIC LEGEND: Rick and Lori were originally going to break up in Walking Dead #18.

STATUS: True

When the Walking Dead launched, it was primarily the story of a man, Rick Grimes, trying to keep his family safe after the zombie apocalypse. Thus, his wife, Lori, and his son, Carl, were major players in the series. The opening arc of the series involved Rick reuniting with his family and discovering that his wife had begun a relationship with Shane, Rick's former partner in the sheriff's department (everyone believed Rick was dead, as he had been in a coma when the zombie apocalypse began due to a criminal shooting him in the line of duty). When Lori becomes pregnant early in the series, there is some doubt as to whether Rick or Shane is the baby's father.

Anyhow, interestingly enough, while the Rick/Lori relationship was a major solidifying force in the first few years of the comic, Kirkman originally intended to have the couple SPLIT early on, in issue #18!

This was during the time that the survivors were just getting settled in to living in a prison. In #16, two young girls in the group were horrifically murdered. Andrea is then attacked by one of the prisoners. She manages to escape in #17 and when Rick sees her running from the prisoner (Thomas), he goes nuts...





Rick, naturally enough, had a hard time dealing with the stress of leading all of the survivors in the zombie apocalypse, and he would often have moments where he sort of snapped under the pressure like this.

Well, originally, the following issue was going to have Lori break up with Rick because of it all. Instead, we got the following scene...









At the end of the issue, Kirkman wrote...



Later on, in an interview with Michael Patrick Sullivan at Comic Book Resources, Kirkman explained what he was referring to at the end of #18...

There was a point in issue #18, I believe, where right up to the last minute Lori and Rick were plotted to get into a big argument and decide to split up. That was the plan for them since the beginning of the series. I was writing the pages and I was trying to steer the dialogue to where the plot needed it to go. I'd type Rick saying something and then Lori reacting and vice versa and I just could not get them to a place where splitting up was logical. It was like I wanted two people to break up--and they started being rational and agreeable to each other right in front of my eyes... and the scene came to a close with them still together. Weird stuff.”

Fascinating. It really makes you wonder how differently the book would have gone if Lori and Rick HAD split there. Does she still stick around the prison? Maybe she'd still be out there with her daughter. Maybe she would have stuck around and dated someone else. In any event, it was a major change to Kirkman's plans - and I find it really interesting how he works with his characters like that.

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

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 original content from me, as well!

Also, be sure to check out my website, Urban Legends Revealed, where I look into urban legends about the worlds of entertainment and sports, which you can find here, at urbanlegendsrevealed.com.

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)...



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!