Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and thirty-first installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

Here is part one of this week's legends. Click here for part two of this week's legends.

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COMIC LEGEND:

Brave and the Bold #86 was originally Strange Adventures #217

STATUS:

False, with a Little Truth In There

Deadman debuted in Strange Adventures #205...

Neal Adams soon took over the art duties on the feature and eventually, the writing duties, as well...

However, when Strange Adventures #216 came out....

The ending suggested a new batch of stories, with Deadman's erstwhile love interest, Lotus, returning to villainy after being purified by living in Nanda Parbat...

The only problem is that Strange Adventures #217 didn't have a Deadman story in it...

Neither did the next few issues. The feature had been dropped.

Luckily, Deadman then guest-starred in Brave and the Bold #86 (by Bob Haney and Neal Adams)...

The issue opens with Deadman trying to stalk Batman...

It then cuts to what appears to be a continuation of the plot from Strange Adventures #216...

The issue ends up with Deadman being stuck back in Nanda Parbat, but at least he was now alive again...

So Deadman had his plot wrapped up mostly. The theory over the years has been that Brave and the Bold #86 was what was originally Strange Adventures #217, just with a Batman bit added in the front.

Bob Haney, though, explained otherwise in Amazing Heroes #84. The issue began as Haney had scripted it, but then Adams went off script to try to wrap up Deadman's story as he wanted it. So it's true that Adams probably did work in a lot of what he would have included in Strange Adventures #217, but it was still a brand-new story, since he was not initially going to have Batman in it and it was not originally going to wrap up the entire series by the end of it.

Haney was always irked at the idea that it was Strange Adventures #217 under a different name, as that would have taken his involvement in the issue out of the equation.


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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, which I don't even actually use on the CBR editions of this column, but I do use them when I collect them all on legendsrevealed.com!

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batshark

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

See you all next week!