Comic Book Legends Revealed #508

Welcome to the five hundred and eighth in a series of examinations of comic book legends and whether they are true or false. Click here for an archive of the first five hundred (I actually haven't been able to update it in a while). This week, did Benny Hill help create She-Hulk? Did John Byrne change a key part of the Dark Phoenix Saga? And was Doctor Voodoo supposed to be in Rick Remender's Uncanny Avengers from the start?

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 creation of She-Hulk was inspired by a female Hulk character in a sketch on Benny Hill's TV show.

STATUS: False

Reader Matt K. wrote in to ask if it was true that the Benny Hill Show indirectly led to the creation of She-Hulk.

Benny Hill was a British comedian best known for his extremely long-running sketch show, which ran in one form or another (with breaks here and there) from 1969 until 1990!

The show was especially known for its raunchy humor and its sped-up chase scenes (that have become a comedy staple ever since).

Anyhow, as the story goes:

The story is that Benny had a sketch, where a woman got angry, turned green and started smashing things up. Marvel saw this, and thought they were entitled to a bit of royalty on the character, but were told by their lawyers to drop it, because the character wasn't sufficiently similar to the Hulk. They also found out that CBS was looking at developing a show with a similar character, and again, they wouldn't be entitled to any payout.

So, Stan Lee quickly created the She hulk in the comics, so that it would be copywritten. He also rushed through Spider-woman, for the same reason

SUCH a detailed story!

First off, before getting into anything else, the notion that Marvel would think that they were owed a royalty for a sketch show parody is silly. But whatever, even if you buy into that notion, here's the key thing.

The scene, where a young woman is accosted at a bus stop...

before turning into a Hulk-like creature...

only to find that the men are into being punished (ending with, of course, a sped-up chase scene where she chases after them) is one of the more famous Benny Hill sketches.

And it also debuted in February 1981.

Over a YEAR after Savage She-Hulk #1 came out...

As I wrote years ago (almost nine years ago, to be precise), the rest of that story above is basically true, but just not the Benny Hill part.

Thanks to Mark for the suggestion!

Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Did the makers of Spam sue the Muppets for making fun of Spam?

COMIC LEGEND: Jean Grey destroying the D'Bari people was an idea John Byrne came up with after the story was originally plotted.

STATUS: True

Fantastic Four #48 is famous for having the first appearances of both the Silver Surfer and Galactus. However, it is ALSO famous for how Jack Kirby decided on his own to just add a herald for Galactus to the story, after he and Stan Lee conferred on a plot involving Galactus attacking Earth. Kirby figured that a being as powerful as Galactus must have a herald, so he added in a significant sub-plot to Fantastic Four #48 of the Surfer heading for Earth...

and then landing on Earth to notify Galactus.

This was not part of the original plot for the issue. It was just Kirby freestyling.

A similar situation happened in an issue of X-Men and it had a similarly significant effect on the Marvel Universe.

I have written a few times over the years about John Byrne's irritation during his run with Chris Claremont on X-Men where he and Claremont would agree to a plot point but then when the issue came out, things had changed.

Like Wolverine being re-drawn as Storm...or a change to the end of Days of Future Past...or an issue with Colossus and a stump.

However, reader Chris H. rightly pointed out that it was not as though Byrne never did similar things during their run together.

One particularly notable example took place in X-Men #135.

Originally, the story involved a Shi'ar ship attacking Jean Grey (in her Dark Phoenix form) and Jean responding by destroying the ship...

This would have forced the Shi'ar to get involved in the story. However, at the same time, it was also a pretty easily defensible position. THEY attacked HER, after all.

However, on the previous page, Jean destroyed a planet. That was part of the original plot. Byrne, though, decided to deviate and make it clear that the planet was POPULATED...

However, a big difference is that Byrne told Claremont about it before drawing it, so Claremont knew about it and was okay with the idea and scripted it very nicely (Claremont even came up with their name - the D'Bari. It was Roger Stern who suggested that Byrne use the aliens from Avengers #4...

). But this, of course, very much changed things. Suddenly she went from destroying a spaceship that attacked her and some nondescript planet to now wiping out billions of people just for the hell of it.

It was that destruction of the D'Bari people that led to the ending of the storyline changing from Jean Grey surviving to Jean Grey dying.

So it wasn't just Claremont who would change things from the initial plotting stages back then! Thanks for the reminder, Chris! Of course, I am sure Byrne would argue that there is a huge difference between changing something and then clearing it with your co-plotter (like here) and changing it after the fact (like those other examples I listed in the beginning of this legend).

COMIC LEGEND: Rick Remender tried to get Doctor Voodoo on to his original Uncanny Avengers roster.

STATUS: True

An interesting thing about comics is that if you have an idea and you stick around long enough on a title, you typically CAN eventually use that idea, even if you aren't able to use it the first time you wanted to do it.

This is definitely the case for Rick Remender. During Brian Michael Bendis' initial run on New Avengers, Bendis revamped Brother Voodoo, making him a bigger part of the Marvel supernatural landscape, including eventually making him the new Sorcerer Supreme.

Rick Remender wrote a really cool short-lived ongoing series starring Voodoo in 2009.

Years later, Bendis killed off Voodoo in the start of his New Avengers run (his second volume of New Avengers).

Soon after, Remender was given the chance to debut his OWN Avengers series, the Uncanny Avengers.

Remender had a number of offbeat requests for members of the team, but a few of his picks were not available to him. In a Reddit AMA in 2013, Remender recalled:

We went through a number of different iterations of the team. Initially I was trying to get characters like Fantomex, Psylocke, Storm, Brother Voodoo and a few oddball choices, but it was clear after number of conversations with editorial that Fantomex was a bad idea given his history, Psylocke was an assassin, Dr. Voodoo was dead and that Storm was very busy in too many other titles.

Well, just a couple of months ago, Remender had a chance to remedy Voodoo's death in the pages of his crossover, Axis...

And sure enough, when Uncanny Avengers #1 Volume 2 came out this week, guess who is right there on the team?

If you stick with it long enough, your original plans can eventually bear fruit!

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

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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)...