Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and sixteenth week of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

Here's Part 1 of this week's Comic Book Legends Revealed! And here's Part 2. Let's continue!

COMIC LEGEND:

Ray Bradbury wrote a screenplay for a "Little Nemo" film.

STATUS:

True

Ray Bradbury was one of the most respected and celebrated science fiction writers of the 20th Century. Heck, he probably was the most celebrated science fiction writer in the 20th Century.

Bradbury, of course, was no stranger to the world of comic books. EC famously did a number of official adaptations of his works in their comic (after doing a couple of UNofficial adaptations that Bradbury graciously called them out on in such a nice manner that he opened the door for them to OFFICIALLY adapt his work).

However, he once had an even MORE direct connection to one of the most acclaimed comic works ever!

In 1982, Bradbury was actually hired to adapt Winsor McCay's seminal comic masterpiece, "Little Nemo in Slumberland," (about a little boy who goes on adventures in his dreams) to film!

Yutaka Fujioka wanted to make an animated feature film adapting the story, and he actually tried to get George Lucas on board in 1977, but Lucas passed, but sent him to his producing friend Gary Kurtz, and it was Kurtz who hired Bradbury (as well as a writer friend of Lucas', Edward Summer, later on) to write a screenplay for the film. Kurtz left the project in 1984.

It wouldn't be until 1989 that the movie would actually get made, by which time it was a Chris Columbus screenplay that they went with (Columbus had to leave the project midway through, though, when he had a chance to direct his first film, "Adventures in Babysitting").

The movie was a flop in Japan, as well as in the United States when it was released here in 1992 (with new English-speaking actors for the voice roles)...

Bradbury's script was actually later printed as a standalone book in 2012, the year Bradbury passed away...


Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at CBR: Did Viggo Mortensen really have to use an actual sword to deflect an actual knife that was accidentally thrown at him during the filming of the first "Lord of the Rings" movie?

OK, 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 most recent 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.

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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...

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!