Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and seventy-third installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine 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:

Batman: Son of the Demon was always going to be out of continuity.

STATUS:

False

A week or so ago, I wrote about how the 1987 graphic novel, Batman: Son of the Demon, by Mike W. Barr and Jerry Bingham, was out of continuity for decades until Grant Morrison wrote it back into continuity with the introduction of Damian Wayne in 2006.

At the time, I noted that it was clear that it was out of continuity due to the fact that Batman marries and has sex with Talia Al Ghul....

Then Talia became pregnant with Batman's child...

Talia, though, realized that Batman was so obsessed with her safety (and the safety of their unborn child) that he was losing his cool, and she needed him as he was aiding her and her father in the hunt for the terrorist who killed Talia's mother years ago...

So first Talia fakes a miscarriage...

Then she breaks things off with Batman, because she has to hide the fact that she's still pregnant...

She has the child and puts the boy up for adoption....

Now, I was correct that the story WAS considered out of continuity at the time. However, the writer of the series, the great Mike W. Barr, wrote to me to let me know that his original intention was for the story to be IN continuity. He was even planning on doing later stories with the son of Batman (Barr was the writer on Detective Comics at the time, including an epic, but relatively short, run with artist Alan Davis).

However, Barr was then told that the higher-ups at Waner Bros. were irate that Batman had a child out of wedlock (despite Batman being married to Talia being a key part of the story) and that the story would never be referenced again. Barr noted that the fact that they reprinted the graphic novel after its first printing sold out sure didn't seem like they were THAT upset.

Of course, all pronouncements of things NEVER happening in comics tend to be quite maleable, and sure enough, less than twenty years later, Grant Morrison brought the story (that DC would NEVER let be part of continuity) into continuity in Batman #656 (by Morrison, Andy Kubert and Jesse Delperdang)...

Only now Morrison frames it as Talia taking advantage of Batman as opposed to consensual sex...

The result, though, is their son, Damian Wayne...

Fascinating stuff.

Thanks so much to Mike W. Barr for the information!

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Check out some entertainment legends from Legends Revealed:

1. Did the Original Lead Actresses of Carrie and Star Wars Swap Roles Over a Nudity Clause?

2. Which Simpsons Character Nearly Got a LIVE-ACTION Spin-Off Series?

3. Did Jimmy Page Play Lead Guitar on “You Really Got Me?

4. Did a Survivor of the Bombing of Hiroshima Meet One of the Men Who Dropped the Bomb on a Reality TV Show?

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Check back later for part 2 of this installment's legends!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com