Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and thirteenth installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the weekly three legends.
NOTE: If the CSBG Twitter page hits 11,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow the CSBG Twitter page!
COMIC LEGEND:
Mera was originally going to be killed off in the 1989 Aquaman miniseries.
STATUS:
True
Mera, of course, was introduced in Aquaman's 1962 series. She married Aquaman and they had a kid together.
She remained a cast member when Steve Skeates, Jim Aparo and Dick Giordano took over the series...
Tragically, Mera's child with Aquaman was murdered by Black Manta.
A decade later, Mera was not doing well and when some evil giant telepathic jellyfish tried to take over Atlantis, they took control of her mental instability over the loss of her child to set her upon Aquaman...
They have a big battle and in the end, she appears to have been killed...
In the following issue, however, we discover that her anatomy is so different from a typical Atlantean that the impaling did not actually kill her...
However, initially, that WAS meant to be her death! In a 1989 interview with Darwin McPherson for Amazing Heroes (and cited recently by my buddy, John Trumbull, in a great article he wrote about this era in Back Issue #108), Giffen explains that Mera's death was originally meant to be an ACTUAL death, but luckily for Mera, Dick Giordano (by then the Executive Editor of DC Comics) was a fan of her (presumably from his time on the Aquaman series in the late 1960s) and so he hinted to Giffen that perhaps Giffen should reconsider killing her. Giffen took the hint and so Mera was spared!
I would imagine that a later writer probably would have found a way to bring her back to life even if she HAD been killed off, but it's still an interesting possibility to see what might have been had it not been avoided.
Thanks to Darwin McPherson, Keith Giffen and John Trumbull for the information!
Check out some other death-themed entertainment legends from Legends Revealed:
Did Concerns Over Toy Sales Keep Han Solo From Being Killed Off in Return of the Jedi?
Was Omar Really Originally Meant to be Killed Off in the First Season of The Wire?
Did Leonard Nimoy Request For Spock to Be Killed Off in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?
Did MTV Cancel the Reality Show Fear Because a Contestant Died During the Filming of the Series?
Check back tomorrow for part 2 of this week's legends!
And remember, if you have a legend that you're curious about, drop me a line at either brianc@cbr.com or cronb01@aol.com!