Comic Book Legends Revealed #497

Welcome to the four hundred and ninety-seventh in a series of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of the previous four hundred and ninety-six. This week, did a personal tragedy lead to the death of the Hulk's wife? Discover the secret Teen Titans crossover! Finally, did Marvel almost spoil the classic Thunderbolts reveal before the first issue even came out?

Let's begin!

NOTE: The column is on three pages, a page for each legend. There's a little "next" button on the top of the page and the bottom of the page to take you to the next page (and you can navigate between each page by just clicking on the little 1, 2 and 3 on the top and the bottom, as well).

COMIC LEGEND: Peter David killed off Betty Banner because someone close to him passed away.

STATUS: False

Reader Ahmed S. wrote in a few years back to ask:

Hello, I've been reading your Legends revealed and really enjoying the stuff you've been writing about, and I had some questions I wanted to ask though ATM I can only remember one- Is it true that Peter David killed off Betty in the Hulk comic, during his run in the 90s, because someone close to him died?

Ahmed is referring to Incredible Hulk #465 and Incredible Hulk #466, the third and second to last issues of Peter David's twelve-year run on Incredible Hulk.

After things seemingly were going well with Bruce and Betty Banner in #465, things took a sudden turn for the worse...

And they did not get better in #466...

Until finally...

So was David influenced by the death of someone he was close to?

I'll let David explain the story himself, via an essay he wrote for Entertainment Weekly a couple of years ago:

I actually didn’t know I was going to be leaving The Incredible Hulk when I did go. What happened was that my editor at the time, Bobbie Chase...had suggested — when we were kicking around future plot directions — that I kill off the Hulk’s wife, Betty Banner. Betty had always been my wife’s favorite character and because of that I’d always sworn nothing bad would happen to her. But then my wife left me so that she could go off and do other things like, I dunno, not be married to me. On that basis, Betty’s safety measure was gone. When Bobbie suggested we plug her, I said, “Sure, why not?” So I killed her off. This got Marvel all excited. See, when I’d started on the book and, over years, doubled sales on it, it caused people to suddenly start paying attention. With the death of Betty, this prompted Marvel to have a Brilliant Idea. Mourning the loss of his wife, the Hulk would now go dead silent, stop talking to anyone, and run around the Marvel universe smashing everything in sight.

When I was told the new plan, I objected. I told them it was out of character with the psychologically complex giant I’d created over the years. I said I wouldn’t write that. And the editorial higher-ups (none of whom still work for the company) said that I shouldn’t hesitate to avoid having the door hit me on the way out.

And that was that. After twelve years, I was gone.

So not only wasn't it because of a death in his life, I think it is not necessarily fair to say (as I have also seen it said) that Peter David killed off Betty Banner because of his own divorce. As he notes, it was not HIS idea to kill off Betty period.

Anyhow, there ya go, Ahmed! Thanks for the question and thanks to Peter David for the info!

Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Did Superman Returns use CGI to reduce the size of Brandon Routh's crotch when he was in his Superman costume?

On the next page, learn about a secret Teen Titans crossover!

COMIC LEGEND: The Teen Titans had a secret crossover with the DNAgents.

STATUS: True

Unofficial crossovers have popped up frequently in Comic Book Legends Revealed over the years. One of the first one I wrote about, the Justice League/Avengers "crossover" of 1970, was cited just yesterday in a spotlight piece on how bizarre the Justice League Half of the "crossover" was (and the amazing thing is that the bizarre aspect of the issue had nothing to do with it being an unofficial crossover comic). I also wrote about the Freedom Fighters and the Invaders having a "crossover," plus a Quantum and Woody/Black Panther "crossover" that ended up not working out (although it worked out a whole lot better than a Dreadstar/Star Trek "crossover" that never actually got around to taking place). I've been meaning to spotlight the Teen Titans/DNAgents crossover since about 2007 but for whatever reason, I never got around to it...until now!

In the summer of 1984, Mark Evanier and Marv Wolfman worked out an unofficial crossover between Evanier's creator-owned indepedent series, DNAgents and Wolfman's DC series, New Teen Titans.

The crossover took place in DNAgents #14 and Tales of the New Teen Titans #48...

What happened is that each title created analogues for the other team (RECCOMbatants for DNAgents and Project: Younglood for Teen Titans, which is especially amusing since Rob Liefeld later did a comic book called Youngblood that began its life as a Teen Titans spin-off book, as I noted in the second-ever Comic Book Legends Revealed!) and then they each told the story from their side's perspectives.

Here's DNAgents #14 (by Mark Evanier, Wills Meugniot and Blyburg)...

And here's Tales of the Teen Titans #48 (by Marv Wolfman and Guest-Artists Steve Rude and Al Gordon)...

Pretty neat, huh?

Thanks to Mark Black, Tales of the Boojum and JosephW for suggesting I feature this one over the years!

On the next page, learn how Thunderbolts #1 was nearly spoiled by Marvel themselves before it even came out!

COMIC LEGEND: Marvel nearly spoiled the Thunderbolts reveal in the solicitations for the issue of Hulk they first appeared in.

STATUS: True

Speaking of Peter David's Hulk run...

One of the all-time great reveals was at the end of Thunderbolts #1, where the whole issue saw a new group of heroes seemingly step into the void left by the disappearance (and supposed deaths) of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.

But, of course, they were not REALLY new heroes, but OLD villains, as so wonderfully explained at the end of the issue...

The moment finished in the Top 15 of our recent countdown of the 75 Most Memorable Moments in Marvel Comics History.

However, their first appearance wasn't in Thunderbolts #1, but rather in the pages of the Incredible Hulk #449, where David and artist Mike Deodato Jr. helped Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley set up the Thunderbolts by featuring them first in the Hulk to establish them in the Marvel Universe to give the reveal of Busiek and Bagley in Thunderbolts #1 even more force.

Amazingly enough, though, in his Comic Buyers Guide column, David revealed that the original solicitation for Incredible Hulk #449 read as follows:

“The Hulk battles the Thunderbolts, a new team of heroes who are actually a group of super-villains in disguise.”

As David recalls:

You think the end of Thunderbolts #1 shocked you? I can tell you with some degree of confidence that, whatever you experienced in reading that issue is nothing compared to what I went through reading that solicit info for Hulk several months earlier. I was on the phone to Marvel in a heartbeat, practically shouting into the phone, “Tell me this hasn’t gone out yet!” Fortunately enough it hadn’t, and I immediately dictated a rewrite of it, eliminating the offending passage.

Thousands of comic book fans owe David thanks for that move! And I thank him for the info for this legend!

Okay, 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 newest book, Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? The cover is by Kevin Hopgood (the fellow who designed War Machine's armor).

If you want to order a copy, ordering it here

gives me a referral fee.

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Also, be sure to check out my website, Urban Legends Revealed, where I look into urban legends about the worlds of entertainment and sports, which you can find here, at urbanlegendsrevealed.com.

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...(click to enlarge)...