Comic Book Legends Revealed #551

Welcome to the five hundred and fifty-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 Marvel nearly have Northstar die of AIDs in the 1980s? What odd reason was there for Hobgoblin debuting BEFORE the Green Goblin on the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon series? And was Archie's pal, Jughead, meant to be Native American originally?

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: Northstar was going to die of AIDs in the 1980s.

STATUS: True

Last month, I did a piece about how Marvel revealed that their only gay superhero, Northstar, was an elf, in a really weird story. At the time I mentioned a legend about what writer Bill Mantlo's original plans were for Northstar and now I can confirm said legend.

In Alpha Flight #42, it first became clear that something was seriously wrong with Northstar...

In Alpha Flight #44, things got even worse...

In an interview with The Advocate in 1987, writer Bill Mantlo explained that he wanted to do the storyline with Northstar dying from AIDS because "It would give me the opportunity to deal with a frightening, sad, controversial topic in a comic book - which I had always understood Marel was about.

In an excellent article by Andy Mangels in Amazing Heroes #76, Carl Potts, editor of Alpha Flight, explained his problem with the storyline:

Some people, including readers, believed we were making too broad a statement. We had never openly declared that Northstar was gay. Now we had the only fairly popular Marvel character generally acknowledged as being gay and he was dying of AIDS. You shouldn't equate one with the other.

Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter sided with Potts and the storyline was changed to Northstar being revealed to being a magical being and then he was written out of the book. Mantlo got some what of a kick out of the irony that Northstar "couldn't live as a gay character in comics because it was too controversial, and he couldn't die as one because it was too controversial."

Obviously, there was a vigorous conflict between Mantlo and Shooter over whether it was Northstar being gay that was the problem or whether the storyline itself was the problem. Mantlo said the former while Shooter said the latter.

Thanks to Andy Mangels, Carl Potts, Bill Mantlo, and all the commenters on that past column, who wrote in to confirm the legend (Peter David wrote a column once where he mentioned that that was what happened to the Northstar story, as well), including Michael, Shahriar, Morten and ed2962.

Check out some entertainment and sports legends from Legends Revealed:

Does Marvel Not Own the Rights to Make an Incredible Hulk Film?

Were Some of Shel Silverstein’s Poems for Children Originally Published in Playboy?

Was E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Originally Going to be a Horror Film?

Did Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory Originally Have a Typical Sexual Appetite?

COMIC LEGEND: Hobgoblin debuted on the 1990s Spider-Man cartoon show before the Green Goblin because of a toy deal.

STATUS: True

I've written a number of times about the heavy interference John Semper and the crew of the 1990s Spider-Man Animated Series had to go through while doing the series. Like how the Sinister Six couldn't be called that because the word "Sinister" was too harsh (seriously?!) or how an X-Men crossover had to be mostly scrapped because the show couldn't afford to fly the voice actors out to record their lines.

Today, then, we look at why Semper was stuck using the Hobgoblin BEFORE the Green Goblin!

You see, when Semper took over the project, there already had been some developments on the show, and the original developers on the show wanted to use Hobgoblin as a main villain. Semper, however, as a big Spider-Man fan, thought that that was silly, since the Hobgoblin was obviously based off of the Green Goblin, so why not just use the original guy first?

The problem was that Toy Biz already had a line of toys being made based on the original version of the show, and Hobgoblin was one of those toys...

So Semper had to go this route...

At least he eventually got the opportunity to use Norman Osborn as the Green Goblin later on, in one of the more memorable episodes of the series...

Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Did How I Met Your Mother really create a Canadian Sex Acts website?

COMIC LEGEND: Jughead was originally supposed to be Native American.

STATUS: I'm Going With False

Reader Shad D. wrote in with the following that he said he saw on TV Tropes:

Here's something most readers of Archie Comics and likely many of the people who produce them nowadays are unaware of: Jughead Jones is Native American. Or, at least he was. In his initial appearances, he was depicted in the stereotypical stoic, chiseled look typical of the 1940s. This quickly gave way to his familiar look by the early 1950s, but scattered references to his original ethnicity persisted, amazingly, until at least the 1980s. Some of it could just be chalked up to Jughead's Cloudcuckoolander nature (in one story he whips up a rain dance, causing a thunderstorm just to get out of work), but other references were harder to ignore; Reggie in particular was fond of giving Jughead nicknames such as "Big Chief Gross Beak" and "my Aboriginal amigo", which made no sense to people unfamiliar with the character's background.

It IS true that in a 1986 comic, we learn that Jughead has some Native American ancestry, but even that was pretty clearly played as a joke...

But early on? No way.

Here are Jughead's first three appearances, from Pep Comics #22-24...

There's nothing there. Jughead did have a distinct face, but all of the early Archie characters had oddly distinct faces. Archie looks nothing like "classic" Archie, either. That's just how Bob Montana drew people.

Still, I asked current Archie writer Mark Waid, who I know is a big time Archie historian, as well, and he told me that he has read pretty much every Archie comic from the start to around 1990 and he states that there is no evidence of this position. I agree with Mark. There's nothing here.

Thanks for the suggestion, Shad!

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!

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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!).

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