Comic Book Legends Revealed #552

Welcome to the five hundred and fifty-second 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 and DC almost make a trade of Storm for Wonder Woman? Why did DC not want people to learn the "Secret Origin" of the Legion of Superheroes' Clubhouse? What odd comic experiment led to the creation of the hit British comic book character, Nemesis the Warlock? BONUS: Did DC almost make a comic book based on The Wiz?

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). There is a special FOURTH legend this week.

COMIC LEGEND: DC and Marvel almost traded Wonder Woman for Storm after DC vs. Marvel

STATUS: False

One of the most famous fights in DC vs. Marvel was between Storm and Wonder Woman, a fight voted on by fans that irked a good number of readers...

Longtime reader Jeff Ryan wrote in to suggest a legend he had heard involving the two that would have likely driven fans even CRAZIER. Jeff asked if it was true that DC and Marvel considered temporarily swapping the two characters after DC vs. Marvel.

I addressed roughly the same legend many, many moons ago when the suggested traded heroes were Daredevil and Catwoman, and the answer now is the same as then, as Mike Carlin explained to me then:

Swapping a character each WAS discussed early on in the proceedings... but before we even homed in on specific characters to try to do this with, we decided that the legal department headaches (not just for issues the characters appeared in-- but for any reprints for all time) would not be worth it.

Wasn't the lawyers or higher-ups... [it] was Gruenwald and I... with Peter David and Ron Marz as the writers.

So that's a no!

Thanks for the suggestion, Jeff!

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

Were Luke and Leia Meant to be Siblings When They Kissed in Empire Strikes Back?

Did Phil Spector Do a Non-Christmas Version of “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)”?

Did a Major League baseball team's announcer come in to pitch the final game of the team's season after criticizing the team's pitching all year?

Was Waylon Smithers on The Simpsons Originally Going to be Black and Married with a Wife and Kids?

On the next page, why did DC not want us to see the Secret Origin of the Legion's Clubhouse?

COMIC LEGEND: DC canceled a secret origin of the Legion of Superheroes' Clubhouse due to changes in Superman continuity.

STATUS: True

In 1989's Secret Origin #46, there were origins for three notable DC Comics headquarters, including the Legion of Superheroes' Clubhouse, in a story by Gerard Jones, Curt Swan and Ty Templeton....

In the end, Fortress Lad saves the day but loses his entire mind and the Legion forget he ever existed. Daaark.

However, this was NOT the first version of this story!

Instead, the original story was penciled by Kurt Schaffenberger instead of Swan and it featured the original Legionnaires going to Smallville to investigate a mystery rocket...

They eventually learn that it was a rocket sent AFTER baby Kal-El was sent from Krypton...

They decide to make it their headquarters....

However, then-current DC Continuity had it that Superboy did not exist. And that that particular origin of baby Kal-El did not exist. Jones and Schaffenberger tried one attempt at trying to appease DC by positing this as an alternate history or something like that (maybe working in the Pocket Universe Superboy?), as seen in this alternate page...

but in the end, DC wouldn't allow it, so Jones had to go back to the drawing board. The original was later published in the Legion fanzine Interlac. Go to Cosmicteams.com here to read the whole original story!

Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Did Han Solo originally shoot first in Star Wars?

On the next page, what was the interesting comic book experiment that gave us Nemesis the Warlock?

COMIC LEGEND: Nemesis the Warlock's first appearance came in an experiment in basing comic book stories on rock songs.

STATUS: True

Back in October, I asked comic book creators whose work I enjoy to recommend some comic books that THEY are a fan of, and the great Al Ewing recommended Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill's epic space adventure, Nemesis the Warlock.

Reader Penfeather, though, wrote in to talk about the unique origin of Nemesis the Warlock. I was actually planning on doing this as a legend as soon as Al sent in his suggestion, but it's only fair to credit Penfeather, as HE didn't know that, ya know?

Anyhow, when Nemesis the Warlock debuted, he was not intended as an ongoing strip of his own. Instead, he debuted in a story as part of an interesting experiment running in 2000 A.D. where Pat Mills would write a serialized story based on rock songs. It was even flat out called "Comic Rock."

The first part was based on the Jam's awesome hit song, "Going Underground."

And that led into the great spaceship chase that gave us Nemesis' first appearance...

The second part of the story was inspired by the album Killer Watts, a then-current sampler album of "high voltage" rock songs...

The intro story proved popular enough that Mills and O'Neill just decided, "Hey, let's just make it its own strip," and Nemesis the Warlock was born!

Pretty darn cool.

Thanks for the suggestion, Penfeather!

On the next page, did DC Comics almost do a comic book based on The Wiz?

COMIC LEGEND: DC almost made a comic book based on The Wiz.

STATUS: True

The Wiz was a hit Broadway musical released in 1975 that was a retelling of The Wizard of Oz with an all-African-American cast. Universal and Motown got together to produce a 1978 big screen version with some major names as the main characters. Diana Ross as Dorothy and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow!

DC wanted in on the movie, which seemed like it would be a hit just like the musical, and DC thought it would be nice to try to sell comics to a whole different market. They were even planning on selling copies of the book in the lobbies of movie theaters showing the film. They initially were going to have Len Wein and Sergio Aragones do the book and then Aragones and writer Mark Evanier, but Aragones had recently split with DC over concerns about work-for-hire contracts. Aragones suggested to Mark Evanier to have Dan Spiegle, who Evanier had been working together on Hanna-Barbera comics for a few years at this point (for Gold Key and then Marvel Comics), draw the book. DC agreed, and as Evanier recalled on his website:

I had to trudge up to Universal Studios and see a rough cut of the movie and then write an adaptation

The only problem was that when Spiegle was about 25 pages in or so into the treasury format edition comic, DC got wind that the movie was probably going to bomb, so DC squelched the project.

If the NBC version of the show is a success, I wonder if DC would consider finishing the project! It'd be kind of neat!

Thanks to Dan Johnson's article on the topic in Back Issue #11 for the scan. Thanks to Travis Pelkie for suggesting I feature this one. I was already going to, but he didn't know that! And thank to Mark Evanier for all the information (from his own site and for Johnson's article)! Just yesterday, Mark put up a more in-depth version of the story 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).

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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)...