Comic Book Legends Revealed #531

Welcome to the five 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 first five hundred (I actually haven't been able to update it in a while). This week, did Frank Miller want to make a creative personnel change in the middle of The Dark Knight Returns? Was Walter Simonson given approval of using Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman in his Avengers run only to have that approval rescinded as soon as he began using them? And do we know of twenty-five "lucky" fans who tore a page out of Action Comics #1?

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: Frank Miller didn't want Klaus Janson inking him on Dark Knight Returns.

STATUS: False

With the news coming out of San Diego Comic Con that Klaus Janson will be the inker on the third volume of Frank Miller's Dark Knight trilogy over penciler Andy Kubert, I figured it was a good time to feature a legend about Janson and Dark Knight Returns that reader Dean Hacker sent in a few months back, when I mentioned that it was interesting that Janson, who had inked Frank Miller throughout Miller's run on Daredevil and then eventually began doing finishes on Miller's layouts and then finally full pencils and inks over Miller's breakdowns, did NOT ink Miller on Miller's last issue of his initial Daredevil run (Terry Austin did). Dean wrote that he had heard a legend that Miller did not like Janson's inks over his pencils and that had tried to get him removed from inking him on Dark Knight Returns.

That is false, but I have a very good idea of what actual story about Dark Knight Returns that Dean is thinking of.

First off, Miller specifically asked for Janson for the project, so obviously he liked Janson's inks over his pencils.

However, it is true that Miller eventually DID have a problem with Janson on the series, to the point where he actually DID ask for Janson to leave the book!

Here is Janson on the incident, soon after the series was published:

Frank and I had a complete falling out on Dark Knight. We’re not going to work together any more; the falling out was that extensive. Frank was not happy with the inking job that I did on the third book. By my own admission, it’s not the best job I’ve ever done, but it also wasn’t the worst thing I`ve ever done. He wanted me to quit. But I wouldn't quit because I didn’t think that I had any reason to quit. My feeling was that I wouldn’t quit, but if somebody were to fire me I would accept that. In a nutshell, cooler heads prevailed and I inked the fourth book. Don’t get me wrong. I don`t want to sell what Frank was doing short. I think he did a great job on the writing. I think Lynn [Varley] did a tremendous job on the coloring. And Dark Knight was a very good project for me in the sense that it was, obviously, extremely lucrative. I don`t regret any of it. What I regret is that I wasn’t able to show perhaps more of what I'm capable of doing, that it was artistically restricted because it was a writer’s book rather than an artist’s work. Artistically, it wasn’t my most flashy work.

The third issue featured the famous Joker sequence...

I personally didn't see anything off about that issue. I though it looked good, but obviously it is fair enough for Miller to have a different viewpoint on the topic.

Luckily, after nearly thirty years have passed, Miller has obviously gotten over it, which is awesome, as I'm pumped about having Janson on this new volume of Dark Knight.

Thanks to Daniel Best for the Janson quote! And thanks to Dean for the suggestion!

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

Did Kevin Smith Write a Decoy Screenplay for Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice?

Did Barack Obama Personally Squelch a Saturday Night Live Sketch?

Did the Stanford Student Body Vote to Name Their Football Team the “Robber Barons”?

Was the Dixie Cups’ Hit Song “Iko Iko” Recorded Without Their Knowledge?

COMIC LEGEND: Walter Simonson was given permission to have Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman join the Avengers and had that approval taken away just as he had them join the team.

STATUS: True

Our streak of legends about Walter Simonson hits back-to-back weeks!

A few weeks back, I did an Abandoned Love about how Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman joined the Avengers in Avengers #300 and then were almost instantaneously written out of the book (Walter Simonson also left the title at the same time).

At the time, I said I'd get around later to explaining the behind-the-scenes reason behind Simonson's departure in a future CBLR, and so now here we are!

Simonson explained the situation in TwoMorrows' Modern Masters: Walter Simonson. As it turns out, he was already having trouble on his run as Avengers writer as he felt he was having to deal with too much editorial interference. But the final straw was when he noted that Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman had been written out of Steve Englehart's Fantastic Four run, so he thought it would be interesting to see them join the Avengers.

I got permission to do this six months in advance. I got to issue #300, where I was going to do a new team, and I was told right about then, "Oh, by the way, we're putting Reed and Sue back in the FF. You can use them for an issue, and that's it." End of story.

So that was it for Simonson and he left the title. Amusingly enough, that was right when Englehart was leaving Fantastic Four, as well, so Simonson was then offered the job on Fantastic Four! He then had Iron Man and Thor guest-star in his first big arc and just used the initial story idea he had for Avengers, only in the pages of the Fantastic Four now!

He also amusingly noted that he had an easier time using Iron Man and Thor as GUEST STARS than he did using them as regular members of the Avengers.

It is hilarious how this stuff works out sometimes.

Thanks to TwoMorrows and Walter Simonson for the information!

Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Was Mr. Smithers on The Simpsons originally black AND married with kids?

COMIC LEGEND: Action Comics #1 had a contest that involved entrants having to tear out a page from the first appearance of Superman to enter!

STATUS: True

Action Comics #1 is obviously one of the most famous comic books of all-time - the first appearance of Superman!

However, the book had an interesting contest in it that not many fans are aware of. Here is the ad for the contest...

Okay, fair enough, right? Well, here's that first page of the Chuck Dawson strip...

Okay, still fair enough. However, look what was on the OPPOSITE side of that first page...

Gary Dunaier figured that that means that we would have a list of at least twenty-five people who we know not only bought Action Comics #1 NEW but that then also tore out a page from the Superman strip!

Here, from Action Comics #4, is that list of people...

Here are their names, if you can't read that page:

Judson G. Banks, Jr., Sedalia, Missouri

Edward Bielski, Saginaw, Michigan

Roland Chin, San Francisco, California

Kitty Connelly, Brooklyn, New York

June Dunn, Lowell, Massachusetts

G. Preston Hatcher, Texarkana, Texas

Ralph Kay, Honolulu, Hawaii

J. D. Johnson, Baron Rouge, Louisiana

Jim Tom Jones, San Antonio, Texas

George Lebarton, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Marguerite Maker, Windsor, Canada

Sam Maurizio, Los Angeles, California

Jimmy McEntee, Newark, New Jersey

David McLaughlin, Toronto, Canada

Alfred Oakes, Arlington, Virginia

Bill Peckham, Little Rock, Arkansas

Doris Peterson, Winterset, Iowa

Marjorie Robinson, Bismarck, North Dakota

Harold Silverman, Brooklyn, New York

Jane Smith, Seattle, Washington

Stanley Stanilewicz, New York, New York

James Traylor, Montgomery, Alabama

Harold Van Gorden, Middleburg, Ohio

Bill Whitelaw, Jacksonville, Florida

Richard Wimmer, St. Cloud, Minnesota

Amazing.

Thanks to Gary for this awesome piece of comic book history! Check out his blog here!

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)...