Comic Book Legends Revealed #526

Welcome to the five hundred and twenty-sixth in a series of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of the first five hundred (I actually haven't been able to update it in a while). This week, did Marvel accidentally end a crossover the wrong way? See how Ms. Marvel was replaced by She-Hulk in a comic! Finally, does Don Rosa really hate DuckTales?

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: Marvel's Contest of Champions ended with a 3-1 win for one side when it actually depicted a tie instead!

STATUS: True

Today's the tenth anniversary of Comic Book Legends Revealed! Wow, that's old.

Anyhow, back in the very first year's worth of Comic Book Legends Revealed, I did a story about how Marvel was set to do a special one-shot involving the 1980 Summer Olympics. Once Jimmy Carter decided to boycott those games, however, the comic fell by the wayside, only to be dug back out once it was revealed that the inker on the storyline, Pablo Marcos, had continued working on the penciled pages sent to him by John Romita Jr. So Marvel had all of these finished pages in 1982 and no story. So Mark Gruenwald and Bill Mantlo (two-thirds of the original writing staff on the special, the third being Steven Grant) decided to re-work it as a three-issue mini-series called the Contest of Champions, with Mantlo re-scripting it and Bob Layton making a good chunk of art edits on the series for characters who had changed between 1980 and 1982.

This is why the Contest of Champions involved so many international heroes in it (heck, most of them were invented FOR the original Olympic story).

Anyhow, in Contest of Champions #1, the Grandmaster and his unknown opponent chose their teams...

So here were the results of the fights...

So the Grandmaster won, although he soon found out that it would have been better had he not won...

However, if you go back and check, he DIDN'T win! If you look at the sets of teams, Shamrock was on DEATH'S side! Thus, the fight was a tie!

Naturally, Marvel got a bunch of letters and Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter was not pleased.

Tom DeFalco and Steve Englehart eventually wrote the 1987 Avengers Annuals as sequels specifically to bring Grandmaster back to life, as he never should have died to begin with.

Thanks to reader Le Messor for the suggestion of this one!

Check out some entertainment and sports legends from this week at Legends Revealed:

Discover the amazing story of a TV trans woman pioneer, the first trans woman to win an Emmy!

Did the owners of Candyland have to sue a porn company for the right to the web domain, candyland.com?

Was the Season 1 Cagney from Cagney and Lacey replaced because TV execs felt she made the show seem like it was about a pair of lesbians?

Was Outkast sued by Rosa Parks over their hit song named after her?

COMIC LEGEND: She-Hulk's fight in Contest of Champions was originally drawn as a Ms. Marvel fight.

STATUS: True

As mentioned in the previous legend, Bob Layton had to do a lot of art edits in Contest of Champions, where scenes like this one...

became completely redrawn as this...

and pages like this one (where the heroes are replaced by Olympic athletes, as the story was originally Olympic themed)...

became this...

Amazing work by Layton.

Anyhow, luckily for him, the actual fights in the book were with characters who remained the same in 1982 as they were in 1980 (he was helped by the fact that a good chunk of them had not even been introduced in the comics yet).

However, Ms. Marvel had lost her powers by 1982 (in the famous Avengers Annual #10 follow-up to Avengers #200), so watch as Bob Layton masterfully (but not perfectly, as he was kind of stuck at times) turns Ms. Marvel into She-Hulk...

She-Hulk later loses to Iron Man in a fight worthy of The Wrong Side (whether it was She-Hulk or Ms. Marvel in the fight).

Impressive work by Layton!

Thanks to Dan Tandarich's excellent article on Contest in Champions in Back Issue #41 for the original art scans.

Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Was OJ Simpson really originally going to be the Terminator in the first "Terminator" film?

COMIC LEGEND: Don Rosa hates DuckTales.

STATUS: Basically False

The legendary Carl Barks is the most famous Walt Disney comic book creator. He is best known for his work on his creation, Uncle Scrooge (here is one of the famous Scrooge paintings that he did after he retired from active comic book work)...

Uncle Scrooge's adventures with his nephews Donald Duck and Huey, Dewey and Louie were so popular that Disney later made a hit TV series based on the comics, called DuckTales...

(DuckTales was recently in the news due to someone amusingly syncing the song up with the music video for Beyonce's "Single Ladies"...

)

Don Rosa is a legendary Disney artist, as well. He is a huge fan of Carl Barks' Duck comics, and has devoted a good chunk of his career to stories dedicated to the works of Barks, primarily in his famous work detailing Scrooge's life and times (based on various little mentions by Barks over the years)...

Anyhow, over the years, Rosa has developed a reputation as being a DuckTales hater.

Reader Chris G. wrote in to ask:

It's been often said that Don Rosa, as a die-hard fanboy of Carl Barks' comics, absolutely hated DuckTales. Any truth to this, or is it just something that had caught on and spread?

This is almost certainly based on the sign that Rosa puts on his table at comic conventions...

You'd certainly not be hard pressed to think that he hates DuckTales. In an interview with CBR's own awesome Alex Dueben, however, Rosa explained his stance regarding DuckTales:

Dueben: I did want to ask about this sign you had on your table which read that these comics are not "Duck Tales." I remember the show because it aired when I was in elementary school, but that was about 25 years ago. Do people still know the show?

Rosa: Every year, more than the last. People say, "Oh, 'Duck Tales.'" I'll say, no, and explain it to them. Half of them understand and they'll be curious, but the other half get mad at me -- because it's my fault that they're wrong. And they act like I'm purposely making it not "Duck Tales" just to spite them. That's why I made the sign. They still get mad at me, but I don't have to deal with them.

Dueben: They just keep walking by.

Rosa: They keep walking, but I hear them. I just smile. The other reaction is people who see the sign and laugh. I always ask why they're laughing, and they say, it's pathetic that you have to explain that to Americans that these characters, which are the world's most popular comic book characters -- and all they know of it is a kiddie TV show that appeared twenty-five years ago!

I get tired of reading on the Internet that Don Rosa hates "Duck Tales." I thought "Duck Tales" was probably the best kids animated TV show of the '80s, but that's not what I do. I try to tell people that "Superfriends" is to Superman and Batman what "Duck Tales" is to Carl Barks' actual Uncle Scrooge stuff.

Sounds fair enough to me, honestly.

Thanks to Chris G. for the question and thanks to Rosa and Alex for the answer!

Okay, that's it for this week!

Thanks to the Grand Comic Book 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.

As you likely know by now, at the end of April, my book finally came out!

Here is the cover by artist Mickey Duzyj. I think he did a very nice job (click to enlarge)...