Welcome to the five hundred and fifty-second 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, has Marvel banned the controversial "Ms. Marvel gives birth to her own rapist" Avengers #200 from ever being reprinted? Did Andy Warhol seriously direct a Batman movie? And what is the surprising reason behind Moon Knight's Jewish heritage?

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: Marvel has banned Avengers #200 from ever being reprinted.

STATUS: I'm Going With False

Avengers #200 is one of the most controversial comics Marvel has done, and one of those books where pretty much everyone involved has essentially said, "Sorry, our bad." The story involved Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers) getting pregnant out of nowhere. Circumstances took away the original resolution of the story (as detailed in this old Comic Book Legends Revealed), so the new plot was, well, pretty darn uncool. I go into it in further detail in this Things That Turned Out Bad, but in a nutshell, Ms. Marvel gives birth to a mystery baby and the baby is revealed as...





Time disturbances were appearing all over the world. Hawkeye, naturally, blames this guy and his machine so he destroys the machine. It turns out that the machine was the key to FIXING the disturbances.

The guy, Marcus, then reveals how he came to be born on this Earth...





So yeah, he used machines to make her have sex with him and then he used machines to make her pregnant with him so that he could be born on Earth so that they could be together. And the Avengers WERE TOTALLY COOL WITH THIS. Very quickly, the story was denounced in an Avengers Annual by Chris Claremont (after an excellent article by Carol A. Strickland pointing out how messed up Avengers #200 was).

The story in Avengers #200 has never been reprinted. This led reader Christopher M. to write in to ask:

Is it true that Avengers 198,199 & 200 have never been reprinted due to the infamous "Ms Marvel raped by Immortus' son story?"

I asked Tom Brevoort about it, and he explained that there is no policy at Marvel preventing them from reprinting #200. He did note, however, that #198 and #199 contain appearances by Red Ronin, who debuted in the licensed Marvel comic, Godzilla, and thus (depending on the agreements) there might be issues with the rights for those issues. But no, no company policy keeping them from reprinting Avengers #200.

That doesn't mean that there isn't a sort of quasi-ban in place in terms of no one being interested IN reprinting it, ya know? It's not like people are clamoring for such a controversial story to be reprinted. It just isn't some official Marvel company policy to never reprint it, that's all.

I trust Tom, so I'm going to go with a false here.

Thanks to Christopher for the suggestion and thanks to Tom for the answer!

EDITED TO ADD: My pal Michael P. notes that the stories WERE reprinted in black and white in Marvel Essentials. Christopher actually sent the question twice, the second time he made sure to say "in color," in case they were reprinted in black and white in an Essentials he hadn't seen. Patrick Joseph, though, notes that the issues are scheduled to be released in the next Marvel Masterworks for Ms. Marvel. So there ya go, false all the way around!

Check out some Christmas-related entertainment and sports legends from Legends Revealed:

Was the Original Ending to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Changed Due to Viewer Complaints?

Did the FBI Believe That It’s a Wonderful Life Was Communist Propaganda?

Was Jon Bon Jovi’s First Professional Recording a Star Wars Christmas Song?

Was the Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer TV Special Written Without Access to the Original Rudolph Picture Book?

On the next page, did Andy Warhol direct a Batman film?

COMIC LEGEND: Andy Warhol directed a Batman film.

STATUS: Oddly true.

As I have written about before in an older Comic Book Legends Revealed, one of the driving forces behind the 1966 Batman TV series even existing was the popularity of Batman among the "hip" crowds in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago in the early 1960s, like showing the old Bat

NOTman film serials at the Playboy Club.

Well, famed New York artist Andy Warhol was also obsessed with Batman at the time, and he even directed his own Batman film in 1964, Batman versus Dracula!

The full film is lost to the foggy ruins of time, but we DO have snippets from it still available, which you can check out here...

How awesome is that?

Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Did A Charlie Brown Christmas seriously drive aluminum Christmas trees out of business?

On the next page, for what odd reason was Moon Knight made Jewish in the comics?

COMIC LEGEND: Moon Knight was Jewish because the person he was named after was Jewish.

STATUS: True

Moon Knight was one of the very first openly Jewish superheroes (obviously eventually Ben Grimm was revealed to be Jewish), as you can see from Moon Knight #37 (by Alan Zelenetz and Bo Hampton)...





and later, he kicks some neo-nazi ass...





However, the ORIGIN of Moon Knight's Jewish heritage is peculiar.

As noted in the past, Doug Moench named a bunch of characters in Moon Knight after friends of his. This even led people to erroneously believe that one of Moon Knight's aliases was named after comic book writer Steven Grant (it wasn't, as shown in this old Comic Book Legends Revealed).

It was with this in mind that we see a discussion between Doug Moench and fellow Moon Knight writer (at the time, THE Moon Knight writer, Charlie Huston), in an awesome edition of my pal Tim Leong's Comics Foundry where they interview each other:

MOENCH: Getting back to how much was accidental and incremental, the other thing is, I had a habit of naming characters in stories after friends, and it started spreading. And soon I had people coming to me saying, “When are you going to name a character after me?” So I used to go to Ed Summer’s comic shop, I think it was called Comic Snipe? Something Snipe. It was the best comic shop in Manhattan at the time. And one of the guys that worked there was Marc Spector.

HUSTON: Great name.

MOENCH: And he was saying, “When are you going to name a character after me?” So then I was trying to figure out this villain for “Werewolf by Night.” What am I going to call him? I’ll name him after Marc Spector. Then it turned out Marc Spector was Jewish. Ah, I guess this is a Jewish name. Well, I guess I just made up the first Jewish costumed hero. So maybe I should research some Judaism and stuff about the Mideast and Mossad and all this other stuff, and that’s where all that stuff came from.

HUSTON: Oh, wow.

MOENCH: It was all an accident. I didn’t say, “I’m going to sit down and create a Jewish character.”

Fascinating stuff. Thanks for the information, Doug, Charlie and Tim!

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)...



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!