Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and sixtieth 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 three legends.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
Gail Simone developed Ryan Choi based on Grant Morrison's outline for the character.
STATUS:
False
With the Ryan Choi Atom making his Arrowverse debut as part of the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, I thought it would be a good time to resolve some confusion over the creation of the character.
Gail Simone has always been linked to the creation of the character, but it has been misleading just HOW involved she was in the creation of the character.
It mostly boils down to how the character was introduced in the one-shot, Brave New World, that followed Infinite Crisis and helped launch a bunch of new titles.
One of those series was the All-New Atom, starring Ryan Choi, Ray Palmer's successor as the Atom.
Gail Simone wrote the series with art by John Byrne and Trevor Scott.
The introductory story included a note at the bottom, "Based on ideas and concepts developed by Grant Morrison"...
When All-New Atom #1 came out...
That note remained...
However, it was dropped with the second issue of the series and didn't return...
The initial presence, though, has made it so that it appears like Grant Morrison created the character and Gail Simone then just picked it up from there.
That's not the case, though, as Simone explained on her Facebook page a couple of years back:
Grant Morrison did NOT create Ryan Choi. I envisioned him, developed him and named him.
I was given some rough story ideas by Grant, I am sure they were brilliant, but I didn’t read them. My entire Atom pitch was lifted from a pitch I wrote for Impulse that did not get used. I added every character, with one exception.
I took two things from the part of Grant’s pitch that I read.
1: The character of Panda Potter was all Grant’s idea.
2: The plot for the short story that appeared before the monthly book. Again, totally from Grant’s springboard.
I love Grant, but every other word and character and plot was mine, and the weirdness was a tribute to Steve Gerber.
Grant’s brilliant. He was asked to create an Atom book for someone else to write. I read the first bit of his outline and did the rest from material I had mostly already envisioned. The proof is in that original document, none of which (except for the two things mentioned above), were used in the book. To this day, I don’t even know what it says.
Grant’s a friend, but I have plenty of weird myself and that book reflects my sensibilities pretty clearly.
That about resolves that, huh?
Thanks to Gail Simone for the information!
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Check out some legends from Legends Revealed:
1. Did the Actress Who Played Judy on Family Matters Later Work in Adult Films?
2. Were Walt Disney’s Last Written Words Really “Kurt Russell”?
3. Was the Cookie Monster Originally Invented for a Cheese Snack Commercial?
4. Did Carly Simon Auction Off the Identity of Who “You’re So Vain” Was About for $50,000?
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Check back soon for part 2 of this (now no longer Fred Van Lente Day related) installment'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!