Welcome to the four hundred and ninety-ninth 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-eighth. This week, did a letterer on Amazing Spider-Man hide an insult of McFarlane on a page? Was She-Hulk going to be GOLD on TV? And was the classic comic character Mafalda created as part of an ad campaign?

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: The letterer on Amazing Spider-Man hid an insult of departing artist Todd McFarlane into an issue of Amazing Spider-Man.

STATUS: False

Reader James G. sent in one of the more detailed requests for a legend (which is fun for me, as I can just cut and paste James' original request):

I was recently reading the David Michelinie/Todd McFarlane spidey omnibus and I came across an interesting opening page. It's issue #325, part 6 of the AssassinNation Plot. On this page, some government official is denying Spider-Man security clearance and one of the pages in the file folder has the slightly obscured words, "It has -ttention that a McFarlane will no -- be doing Spider-Man after two years on the book. He felt the enormous size of his head combined with an extremely inflated ego could not allow him to see--"

I don't know whether this has been addressed before, but is this a letterer or someone taking a jab at McFarlane's complaints that he didn't want to draw anyone else's stories?

Here's the page...



And here's the detail...



So what's the deal? Was this really an attempt by Rick Parker, the letterer of the issue, to poke a little fun at McFarlane for his desire to write his own stories (which Marvel rewarded by giving him his own Spider-Man series)?



I asked Rick Parker about it, and he gave me a surprising answer. The "insult" was courtesy of McFarlane himself!

Yep, it was just McFarlane poking a little fun at some of the criticisms that he was hearing about himself at the time.

Very funny by McFarlane.

Thanks to James for the question and thanks to Rick Parker for the info!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Check out a couple of recent Music Legends Revealed:

Was the Song “Hey Man, Nice Shot” Inspired by Kurt Cobain’s suicide?

What surprisingly lewd phrase is the band name Stone Temple Pilots taking the place of?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

On the next page, did we almost get a GOLD She-Hulk on TV?

COMIC LEGEND: In the failed 1990 She-Hulk TV series, She-Hulk was going to be gold!

STATUS: True

A number of years ago (eight, to be precise), I did a Comic Book Legends Revealed about how Kenneth Johnson, the producer of the Incredible Hulk TV series, originally wanted the Hulk to be RED on the show and not green, since red was the color of anger.

Amusingly enough, a decade later, a DIFFERENT producer was coming to a somewhat similar approach about SHE-HULK!

In his great book, You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry: A Hulk Companion, Patrick A Jankiewicz interviewed the writer/producer of the failed She-Hulk TV series (a project I detailed earlier this week in my TV Legends Revealed feature at Spinoff Online), Jill Sherman Donner, and she explained why Gabrielle Reece (who was cast as She-Hulk) would have had GOLDEN skin with bright red hair and green eyes...



I made her golden instead of green because green isn't pretty. Changing her skin color made her seem more feminine, prettier and different than just making her green.

So perhaps it is a good thing that the project was never finished?

Thank to Patrick A Jankiewicz and Jill Sherman Donner for the information!

On the next page, what internationally famous comic strip character was originally invented as part of an ad campaign?

COMIC LEGEND: Mafalda was invented as an advertising gimmick.

STATUS: True

The precocious young girl, Mafalda, has been a very popular character in South America and the rest of the world ever since Joaquín Salvador Lavado (known for his penname, Quino) began her comic strip in 1964. The strip actually only lasted until 1973, but Mafalda continues to be a popular character, especially as Quino has licensed her out to a number of uses (like cartoons) and most notably, has allowed her to be used by UNICEF to get their message across.



The strips star Mafalda, her family and also her young friends. They're really sharp comics. Here are a few strips translated into English...









Now here's the amazing thing - the whole series was created as an ADVERTISING gimmick!

Fellow Argentine artist Miguel Brascó approached Quino with the idea of doing a comic strip that would secretly work as advertising. The idea was simple, the strip would advertise the "Mansfield" line of household appliance from the Argentine Siam Di Tella company by having a young girl and her family all shown using their various products throughout the strips. It would be product placement in the strip (plus, all of the characters' names would begin with M).

His clever ruse was quickly seen through and the strip was rejected. Some people, though, felt that the strip showed promise on its own merits and eventually Quino edited out the advertising aspects and began doing the strip straight and it became very popular.

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.

Follow Comics Should Be Good on Twitter and on Facebook (also, feel free to share Comic Book Legends Revealed on our Facebook page!). Not only will you get updates when new blog posts show up on both Twitter and Facebook, but you'll get original content from me, as well!

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)...



If you'd like to order it, you can use the following code if you'd like to send me a bit of a referral fee...

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

See you all next week!