Welcome to the five hundred and thirteenth 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, who or what is Batman Junior? Has Alex Ross really never drawn Kyle Rayner? Finally, how did Secret Wars lead to the Punisher finally getting his own series?

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: Alex Ross pitched a mini-series written and penciled by him featuring Batman's son.

STATUS: True

Alex Ross has always been quite open with how much he is affected by nostalgia towards the comics of his early youth (Ross was born in 1970). Much of his solo projects have been aimed at comic properties from the late 1960s and early to mid 1970s. "His" Justice League is indubitably the satellite era...



and "his" Green Lantern is always Hal Jordan...



Another early 1970s concept that caught young Alex's eye was the Bob Haney Super-Sons stories, featuring the sons of Batman and Superman...



I've spotlighted the Super-Sons concept before (as I explained how DC tried to write off the idea).

In any event, a little over a decade ago, Ross was pitching DC Comics on a few ideas for new projects. Ultimately, the idea they went with was Justice, a maxi-series written by Ross and Jim Krueger with pencils by Doug Braithwaite that Ross would then paint over.



However, an alternate idea that he pitched DC was a prestige format mini-series called Batboy, which would star the son of Batman...





In this futuristic world, everyone grows up and things turn out pretty great. Here is the Titans all grown up as the new Justice League...



There is even a flying Batmobile (flown by grown-up Dick Grayson) before it showed up in Morrison/Quitely's Batman and Robin!



Ross would have written the story and also, interestingly enough, penciled it (and not painted it). As you can see here, his pencils are great just on their own, even if they are different from his normal art style.

But here's the craziest twist...the whole series would be revealed to be a tie-in with none other than ZERO HOUR!

Remember how Hal Jordan wanted to create a new, nicer world in Zero Hour?



Well, THIS would BE that world!

But obviously DC passed and Ross did Justice instead.

Thanks to Alex Ross for the information from the book Rough Justice: The DC Comics Sketches of Alex Ross

Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Was Spock originally supposed to have RED skin on Star Trek? And if so, why didn't they go that route?

On the next page, we continue discussing Alex Ross by learning whether he actually has managed to avoid ever drawing Kyle Rayner...

COMIC LEGEND: Alex Ross has never drawn Kyle Rayner.

STATUS: False

As I noted before, Ross is heavily influenced by the comics he read as a young child.

And a result, when he draws, say, the Justice League, he has a very specific view of the League in mind...











Likewise, as I noted earlier today, Ross is a big Hal Jordan fan.

So the legend over the year is that Ross hates everything by DC after, say, 1980 and won't draw it. And more specifically, that he will never drawn Kyle Rayner, the Green Lantern who replaced Hal Jordan after Jordan went nuts during the 1990s.

And there is a BIT of truth to that, in the sense that he PREFERS to draw stuff from the era he enjoys the most. In addition, as I have featured in an old Comic Book Legend, Ross specifically did NOT want to use Kyle Rayner in Kingdom Come (Alan Scott became the compromise). So yes, Ross was not a fan of Hal Jordan going nuts and Kyle Rayner taking over for him. So he doesn't like to draw him. Which I think is fair enough. The guy is allowed to do what he wants and he is such a great artist, DC is more than willing to let him do so.

However, Ross HAS drawn Kyle at least once, for a 1994 DC Universe poster...



Similarly, Ross has drawn Nightwing (another character people think he dislikes) on a Batman cover...



and has painted Firestorm (another character people think he dislikes) over George Perez's pencils for the Crisis on Infinite Earths cover...



So while yes, he isn't much of a fan of newer takes on characters, it isn't like he literally has never drawn them.

Thanks to a bunch of different readers who have asked me this about Ross over the years. And thanks to Kit Walker for correctly noting where the DCU poster came from!

On the next page, learn how Secret Wars led to the Punisher finally getting his own series!

COMIC LEGEND: The success of Secret Wars led to the Punisher finally getting his own series.

STATUS: True

The Punisher made his debut in 1973...



And despite a few notable spotlights around that time...



It was not until 1985 that he finally got his own series!



And oddly enough, he basically owes it all to, of all things, the original Marvel Secret Wars!

Steven Grant explained the story to David Gutierrez at DVDVerdict:

[I]t started in 1976, when I was at a comics convention in New York City over Christmas break. I was in the middle of college then. I was staying with a guy named Duffy Vohland, who was then working in Marvel's production department. (He has since died, sadly.) I wasn't prepared to, and hadn't even considered it, but Duffy exhorted me to pitch to Marvel and got me an interview with then-editor-in-chief Marv Wolfman, who I've since become pretty good friends with and who doesn't remember it at all. I sat at Duffy's typewriter for a day and knocked out three ideas; one involved the Black Knight and one was the Punisher, since those were characters I liked that not much was being done with then. Except the Punisher was being used at the time, before I knew it, as the lead character in a black and white magazine. Archie Goodwin was writing it. Marv pretty much just said, well, they're using them, and that was that. I didn't really expect Marvel to hire me as a writer then, so I wasn't terribly disappointed, since I still had to finish college and this was when people in comics were concentrated around New York rather than spread all over like they are now. A couple years later I did start writing for Marvel after another friend, Roger Stern, became an editor there and asked me for something. A year after that, '79 I think, Marvel started talking about doing mini-series, something I'd been pushing for a long time. I started pushing a Punisher mini-series then, but nobody was interested. The Punisher wasn't considered a character anyone would care about. So every time a new editor would come in, I'd run the pitch -- it was essentially the same pitch as I'd hit Marv with back when -- and they'd just sort of look at me and eventually mumble no, and that'd be the end of it. Along the way, I did a Marvel Team-Up with Mike Zeck but didn't really have any personal contact with him due to it, we met in the offices once or twice. In the meantime, Mike became artist on Marvel's first big crossover series, Secret Wars, which, though he hated drawing it, made him a valuable commodity in the offices. At the time, editors were thinking in terms of "stables," talent that worked for them alone.



A new editor, Carl Potts, was looking for projects and I wanted to do the Punisher, so I got the bright idea of asking Mike, who had just finished Secret Wars, if he wanted to draw it, since I thought his style would be perfect for the character. I called him, he remembered me, and when I brought up the Punisher he just started laughing; he and his friend and inker John Beatty had been sitting in his living room trying to figure out a project to do next and not seconds before I called one of them had said, "Hey, how about The Punisher?" We tossed the package at Carl, who snapped it up (though I've always suspected his main objective was to get Mike into his stable, but I don't really care), and that was pretty much it. Carl was very strong supporter of the book, over much objection from Marvel management, which ended up telling him okay, he could do a Punisher mini if he wanted, but he bore responsibility for it. And that was that. Nine or so years in the making. What we ended up with was considerably different plotwise from what I began with, but the underlying concept never changed.

And thus, the Punisher's explosion in popularity began...



Isn't that bizarre? That Marvel suddenly saw a character so popular that he was eventually carrying THREE ongoing series (and then three movies based on him)? And they didn't want to do anything with the character until they were "forced" to do so? It's weird how things work out.

Thanks to David Gutierrez and Steven Grant for the information (he's told this story a number of times over the years, but obviously this Gutierrez interview is the one I chose to use specifically)!

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!