Welcome to the five hundred and eighty-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, why did Wolverine REALLY stab his own teammate, Rachel? Was Magneto originally going to die in the first X-Men vs. Avengers mini-series? Was Peter David's first Star Trek: The Next Generation novel originally a story for the Star Trek comic book series?

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: Chris Claremont revealed the REAL reason Wolverine stabbed Rachel Summers four years after the stabbing.

STATUS: Basically True

Recently, I wrote an article for the main CBR site about superheroes who killed (or intended to kill) a fellow superhero for "the greater good." One of the examples I gave was Uncanny X-Men #207 (by Chris Claremont, John Romita Jr. and Dan Green).

In that story, Rachel Summers attempted to gain revenge upon Selene, the evil Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. Rachel was the daughter of Jean Grey from an alternate future and she encountered Selene when the evil mutant murdered a man who was friendly to Rachel at a time when she was still adjusting to living in the present. Following the events of "Secret Wars II" (where Rachel used her Phoenix-level powers to take some of the life essence of her X-Men teammates to help her destroy the Beyonder -- and the universe itself), Rachel was once again at odds with the world. She decided now was the time to kill Selene.





However, her thoughts were exposed to Wolverine through a connection created when she took some of his life essence...



and he kept popping up in her dreams, killing her for her "evil" thoughts...



Finally, Wolverine used that connection to track her down and told her that she could not kill Selene, as that would be cold-blooded murder. When she countered that the only way he could stop her was to kill her, he popped his claws right into her.







The only reason it didn't kill her is because she managed to use her telekinesis to keep herself alive long enough to be healed by Mojo's Body Shoppe.

For years, that moment has puzzled fans. "Killing is wrong, so I must kill you!" Even if you sort of kind of get where Wolverine's coming from, it's still a bit odd.

Well, reader Lance M. wrote in after reading the aforementioned CBR article and he asked if I knew that Chris Claremont years later gave Wolverine's "real" motivation for stabbing Rachel. I did not know that.

Anyhow, as it turns out, Claremont confirmed in a 1991 Comics Interview interview that Wolverine was afraid that killing Selene would trigger Rachel turning into Dark Phoenix, and thus he felt that he had to kill her to avoid the much worse fate of Rachel becoming Dark Phoenix. That honestly makes a lot of sense. It's not in the actual comic, but it DOES make a lot of sense.

Good to know! And now the rest of you know! Thanks for the suggestion, Lance!

EDITED TO ADD: Commenter Michael noted that Claremont had actually first given the "Dark Phoenix" explanation a year earlier in the 1990 Uncanny X-Men Annual, where Wolverine encountered Rachel for the first time since the stabbing (she was there with Franklin Richards from the future)...





Not quite as explicit as the interview, but pretty darn close. Still, it was four years after the fact, which is still very odd. Anyhow, thanks, Michael!

Check out some entertainment and sports legends from Legends Revealed:

Was Howard and Bernadette’s Pregnancy on Big Bang Theory an Accident?

Was Shaft Nearly Played by a White Actor in the First Shaft Film?

Were a Group of Ukrainian Prisoners Killed After Defeating Their Nazi Captors in a Game of Soccer?

Why Did the Writer of “Love Me Tender” Credit His Wife for Writing the Song Instead of Himself?

COMIC LEGEND: Magneto originally was going to die at the end of the first X-Men vs. Avengers mini-series.

STATUS: False

As I revealed years ago in an installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, Marvel changed the original ending for X-Men vs. Avengers and had a different writer write it (as original writer Roger Stern had no interest in doing the new ending after his original ending had been approved).

To recap, X-Men vs. the Avengers was a mini-series written by Roger Stern and drawn by Marc Silvestri (for the first three issues)

It involved the Avengers fighting the X-Men over Magneto.







Marvel stepped in and changed the original story and Tom DeFalco was tapped to write the NEW ending to the series, which has the status quo basically staying the same (Keith Pollard also took over on art for #4, but that was more about Silvestri getting "promoted" to the regular artist on Uncanny X-Men than anything else).



However, reader Derek B. wrote in recently to say that HE had heard that the original ending of the mini-series was not just that Magneto was going to become a villain, but that Magneto was going to DIE!

As it turned out, that was something that Rich Johnston had reported yeeeeeeeears ago, back in the days of usenet, and Roger Stern denied it back in 1997, explaining that no, the ending was only going to be, in Stern's words, "Magneto showing himself for the bastard he really was."

It was bold enough for Stern to reveal an X-Men character as a villain in an Avengers comic book, but can you imagine if he had KILLED Magneto? Woah.

Thanks to Derek for the suggestion, and thanks to Rich Johnston and Roger Stern for the information!

Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Did Ghostbusters II really originally have an ending in it involving Slimer flying from the Statue of Liberty?

COMIC LEGEND: Peter David's first Star Trek: The Next Generation novel was originally going to be a story for the Star Trek comic book series.

STATUS: True

Peter David was the writer at the end of DC's ongoing Star Trek comic book series in the mid-1980s. However, Paramount decided that they wanted to re-evaluate all of their licensed properties in 1988, so they canceled DC's license. They gave DC the license back very soon afterwards, with the second volume of Star Trek starting up the following year (Peter David returned to write it), but for a while there, the books were canceled.

David had just started a storyline and had to end it abruptly. David's tenure on the first volume of Star Trek was marked by interesting supporting characters that were only in the comic book, as this allowed David to do a lot with them (as he couldn't do any permanent changes to the main cast). This was the case on the title before David, as well, of course, but David was particularly well known for it.

Anyhow, one of these characters was a half-human/half-Klingon named Bernie...



But again, the license had been canceled, the book was seemingly done, so what would David do next? As it turned out, he would become a prolific and acclaimed Star Trek NOVELIST, that's what!

He explained to Kevin Dilmore how it all went down in a great interview for the Signature Edition of Imzada Forever:

Peter David: What had happened was that the Star Trek comic license had lapsed. So the comic story that I was writing just went away. It caught me somewhat off-guard, as I had started on a multiple-issue story line, which I was not able to finish. I got put together with Dave Stern, the editor [of Pocket Books' Star Trek line] at the time, who was a big fan of my work on the Star Trek comics. We got together for lunch, and he said he'd like to talk to me about writing Star Trek novels. I said to him, "Well, there's one I would love to do. I started a story for the Star Trek comic book, and I'd love to write an original Star Trek novel that continues and finishes up the story from the comic." Dave said to me, "Okay, here's the problem. I am booked up for original Star Trek novels for the next three years. However, we've just started up a '[Star Trek: The] Next Generation' line, and we need books for that. If you can write a novel quickly, I can have you on the stands in six months." And I said, "Did I say original Trek? I meant to say Next Generation."

Kevin Dilmore: Fast thinking.

David: I quickly took the entire story line that I originally intended to conclude as an original series story and converted it over into the Next Generation. I carried over one of the characters from the original comic book - and fortunately enough it was a Klingon, so I just aged him a bunch of years - and essentially told the same story but just dropped in the other characters. As a consequence, you might say that it was then very easily the longest continuining story in Star Trek because it jumped over the generations. That was the story that developed into Strike Zone.

Awesome.



Thanks to David and Dilmore for the info!

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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Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed

See you all next week!