Welcome to the five hundred and eighty-ninth 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, how did the Spider-Man movie lead to Spider-Man Unlimited being created? Did John Byrne originally intend to transform the Vision back into the original Human Torch? And how did Mike Grell being late give us the Rocketeer?

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: Sony doing a Spider-Man film led to the creation of Spider-Man Unlimited.

STATUS: Basically True

Early last year, I did a Comic Book Legends Revealed about Spider-Man Unlimited and how it was specifically created as part of a deal between Marvel and Fox where they had to create a Spider-Man cartoon that was unlike the Spider-Man comic book series (that legend was about whether it was intended to be a sequel series to the original 1990s Spider-Man series). Reader Matt G. (who also was the one who wrote to me about the Russian on the Sopranos, which led to this week's TV Legends Revealed) wrote in about that column to ask, in effect, why was it that Marvel could not do a normal Spider-Man TV show on Fox when they had just finished a popular Spider-Man show...on Fox?

As it turns out, it was due to the Spider-Man movie that came out in 2002. Sony closed the deal on the film in 1999, and part of that deal involved a deal for a tie-in cartoon series, and the cartoon series was, naturally enough, to draw from the same source material as the film, which was the basic Spider-Man comic book stories.

You might ask, then, then why did Fox even want to continue doing a Spider-Man series if they couldn't actually use Spider-Man in their series?

It was because of a contract they had with Marvel where if they put out another season of Spider-Man cartoons, it would lock in their rights to keep airing the previous Spider-Man series on Fox Kids for X amount of time (I don't know the exact length of time). This was a valuable piece of property to Fox to include as part of their "Fox Kids" brand, so they definitely wanted to keep them. Typically, the producers of cartoons try to make as little episodes as possible to sell the series. So when Fox had to make MORE, their original idea was to just have Saban (the production company that made the cartoon for Fox) cheaply convert classic issues of Amazing Spider-Man to film, almost like the old school 1960s Marvel cartoons. Put as little money into it as possible.

The great Will Meugniot started designing said series...



But then the Sony deal closed, and Fox had to make Saban scrap those plans, as those rights were now firmly with Sony, not Fox. So this, then, led to the idea that eventually became Spider-Man Unlimited...





Meugniot recently shared his entire original treatment for Spider-Man Unlimited at his website here (him doing that is what inspired me to use Matt's suggestion this week).

The cartoon Sony ended up doing in 2003, Spider-Man: The New Animated Series, wasn decent enough, but it wasn't great...



and it wasn't like it was a long-running series (I believe it was just one season), so I would have loved to have seen what Meugniot could have done with the classic Spider-Man stories. As he noted in the above piece, the plan was to pick 13 of the best stories from the first 26 issues of Amazing Spider-Man. There were a lot of great stories to pick from.

Anyhow, that's the answer, Matt! Thanks for the question and thanks to the awesome Will Meugniot for all that interesting information!

Check out some entertainment and sports legends from Legends Revealed:

Did M.A.S.H. Really Never Show Radar O’Reilly’s Left Hand on the Show?

Was There Nearly a Love Triangle Between Spider-Man, Mary Jane and DOCTOR OCTOPUS in Spider-Man 2?

Did an Olympic Fencer Cheat By Using a Rigged Epee?

Did the U.S. Military Buy A Hundred Thousand Viewmasters During World War II?

On the next page, was John Byrne going to turn the Vision back into the Human Torch?

COMIC LEGEND: John Byrne originally intended to have the Vision return to being the original Human Torch.

STATUS: False

After a bunch of hints over the years, in Avengers #133-135, it was revealed that the Vision's body was that of the original Human Torch!















During John Byrne's first storyline on Avengers West Coast, however, he revealed that that was not the case.





However, the original house ad advertising Byrne's debut story, "Vision Quest", sure makes it look like Byrne was going to have the Vision returned to being the Human Torch, doesn't it?



That's what a reader thought, so he wrote in to ask me about it (he didn't want his name used):

Was his original intention to turn Vision back into the Torch? The house ads promoting Byrne's run show the covers from WCA #42-46. With #46, you see the Torch. However, WCA #46, the published version, showcased the Great Lakes Avengers.

I can't tell you why they used such a misleading ad (the cover to Avengers West Coast #43 also ended up being different



) but Byrne always intended to reveal that the Vision and the Human Torch were two separate beings. In fact, when Howard Mackie asked Byrne if he was willing to take over West Coast Avengers when Byrne returned to Marvel in 1988, he took the assignment in part so that he COULD tell his Vision/Human Torch story.

So no, the whole reason he did the book was to separate the Vision and the Human Torch, so he was never planning on having the Vision become the Human Torch, even though admittedly that IS what the ad sort of suggests. Although, one of Byrne's reasons for splitting the two apart was that it allowed the Marvel Universe to have both characters available, so he was always going to bring the Human Torch back in Avengers West Coast, so I he was just going to have the Human Torch return in Avengers West Coast Avengers #46 at first, but then decided to put it off until Avengers West Coast #50.



Instead, Vision Quest ended at #45 and #46 introduced the Great Lakes Avengers...



so everyone is better off because of that!

Thanks to the unnamed reader for the suggestion!

Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online, the aforementioned Were they ever going to reveal what happened to the missing Russian on the Sopranos?

On the next page, how did Mike Grell's lateness give us the Rocketeer!

COMIC LEGEND: The Rocketeer was created due to Mike Grell being late on a book.

STATUS: Basically True

Last week, I did a legend about Dave Stevens' The Rocketeer.

That reminded me that there is a fascinating story of how the Rockeeteer even came about existing!

Pacific Comics was an independent comic book company that debuted in the early 1980s created by retailer Bill and Steve Schanes. Their original intent was to get top creators and give them better royalties than they would get from DC and Marvel AND allow them to own their own properties, which would thus get these creators to bring their new creations to Pacific. The very first person that they signed was Mike Grell, who was planning on doing a book called Starslayer for DC Comics, but he brought it to Pacific instead.

The next person they signed was Jack Kirby. Kirby being Kirby, his books came out before Grell's did.

When Grell's Starslayer #1 finally came out...



Grell was already behind schedule a bit. The Schanes gave their creators pretty much total freedom, but in this case, Grell was going to be short on pages for Starslayer #2 and Starslayer #3, so the Schanes needed something to fill the book. Enter Dave Stevens!

From the classic Comic Book Artist #15 interview with Jon B. Cooke:

Dave: I came into Pacific Comics right after Jack had done his first issue of Captain Victory and Mike Grell had done his first issue of Starslayer. The only reason I was even approached was because Grell's second issue was shy a few pages and they had to fill those pages with something and they knew that I drew...

CBA: Did you frequent the Schanes brothers' store?

Dave: Yeah, I was a customer when I lived in San Diego, five years earlier. So, at the San Diego Comic-Con in 1981, they made the offer: "Do whatever you want, but we need two installments of six pages." So I said I'd see what I could come up with and went home and started kicking around some ideas.

CBA: Did they seek you out or was this a casual conversation?

Dave: Just a casual conversation. I think they were trying to decide how best to fill that spot and I was around, so either Steve or Bill mentioned it to me. I really didn't regard it as anything important at the time; just "filler" material.

So when Starslayer #2 came out...



it had a back-up story in it...







And the rest, as they say, is history.

Thanks to the late, great Dave Stevens and the just plain great Jon B. Cooke for the information!

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).

batshark

If you want to order a copy, ordering it here

gives me a referral fee.

Follow Comics Should Be Good on Twitter and on Facebook (also, feel free to share Comic Book Legends Revealed on our Facebook page!). Not only will you get updates when new blog posts show up on both Twitter and Facebook, but you'll get original content from me, as well!

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)...



If you'd like to order it, you can use the following code if you'd like to send me a bit of a referral fee...

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

See you all next week!