Welcome to the five hundred and seventieth 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, how close did we come to seeing the Black Panther debut in his own solo series FIFTY years ago? Did Nightwing almost get his own movie in the late 1990s? And did DC Comics prevent James Robinson from fulfilling the Hawkman prophecy in Starman?

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: Black Panther almost debuted in his own solo ongoing series in 1965!

STATUS: True

It's interesting to think about how you'll often see people complain about what they feel to be Marvel "shoehorning" the Inhumans into Marvel's other popular properties, because that is actually how the Inhumans first came about! Fans have always marveled over that crazy stretch of the Fantastic Four from late 1965 through mid 1966 where Jack Kirby and Stan Lee introduced the Inhumans, Silver Surfer and Galactus AND the Black Panther, all within one ten issue block of issues (with the classic one-off issue, "This Man, This Monster," worked in there, for good measure)...

[gallery columns="5" ids="207203,207204,207205,207206,207207,207208,207209,207210,207211,207212"]

That's a ton of new characters. And, as it turns out, it was more than even Kirby and Lee were intending to introduce!

You see, in 1965, there was a bit of a superhero boom period, with a number of comic book companies debuting their own superhero groups of titles, including Archie Comics and M.F. Enterprises. Marvel, too, wanted to expand their superhero lines. However, in the end, they were constrained by the distribution deal they were under where their chief competitor, DC Comics, kept their line of comics artificially low (as detailed in an oooooooooold Comic Book Legends Revealed).

In 1968, Marvel finally broke out of that deal, but they first tried in 1965, when all the other companies were debuting their superhero lines. When Marvel thought that they had a chance at having more new comics, two of the new titles were going to be the Inhumans and Black Panther (originally called Coal Tiger).

When DC wouldn't allow them to alter their deal, Kirby and Lee were forced instead to just have the characters debut in the pages of Fantastic Four instead, and therefore, the Black Panther debuted in Fantastic Four #52 instead...

Here is Kirby's initial take on the Black Panther, back when he was called Coal Tiger...

Can you imagine a superhero book starring a black character in 1965? That would have been quite an interesting change in comic book history.

Luckily, the Black Panther has had a number of ongoing titles in the years since, including a great new one by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brian Stelfreeze that debuted this week...

Thanks to the Jack Kirby Museum for the information about how close we came to comic book history.

Check out some entertainment and sports legends from Legends Revealed:

Did the Original Lead Actresses of Carrie and Star Wars Swap Roles Over a Conflict Over Nudity

Did the National Security Agency Think that Furbys Were Spying On Them?

Did the Coach of Harvard's Football team inspire them to defeat the Yale bulldogs by actually strangling a live bulldog in front of the team?

Which Simpsons Character Nearly Got a LIVE-ACTION Spin-Off Series?

On the next page, how close did we come to a Nightwing movie in the late 1990s?

COMIC LEGEND: Chris O'Donnell was originally going to get a Nightwing spin-off movie in the late 1990.

STATUS: True

There are many things to dislike about the 1997 film, Batman and Robin...

but one of them that you might not know about is that it kept us from getting a Nightwing movie!

Chris O'Donnell debuted as Robin in 1995's Batman Forever...

He returned to the role in Batman and Robin, along with a nipple-riffic costume that appeared more similar to the Nightwing costume than the Robin one...

And as O'Donnell revealed to Yahoo! Movies a few years ago, he was going to get his own spin-off after Batman and Robin, whether it was Robin or as Nightwing, but as he noted to them, as well, the relative failure of Batman and Robin ruined those plans:

They were going to do one back in the day. And then ['Batman & Robin'] was such a bomb, they were like, 'Scrap that! That was the end of that.

He elaborated to Entertainment Tonight:

You previously revealed that there was going to be a spin-off for Robin, but that didn’t end up happening.

Yeah there was at one point: Nightwing. When the reviews came out on Batman & Robin, that was shut down immediately. This has been a great opportunity for me and I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. It was an amazing opportunity and gave me incredible international exposure. And everyone dealt with it differently. Some people became very reclusive about it and freaked out by it. I thought George handled it great. He was like, “Well, we killed the franchise,” and funny about it. For me, I will always look back with fond memories. But of course, I’m not as proud of the second one as I was of the first one.

I don't even know if a Nightwing film would have been any GOOD, but it would have been interesting to see!

Thanks to Chris O'Donnell, Yahoo! Movies and Entertainment Tonight for the information!

Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Zack Snyder referenced Batman killing in Dark Knight Returns as a partial inspiration for Batman killing in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. But DID Batman kill in Dark Knight Returns?

On the next page, find out if DC Comics barred James Robinson from using Hawkman in his Starman series!

COMIC LEGEND: DC Comics prevented James Robinson from fulfilling the Hawkman prophecy from the early issues of Starman.

STATUS: False

In Starman #2 (by James Robinson, Tony Harris and Wade Von Grawbadger), there were a few prophecies regarding Starman's future...

They all came true, except for the "winged man" one, which was clearly a reference to Hawkman, who had just recently (at the time) had a confusing new status quo where he was merged together with both of the Hawkman characters of the time (the space cop, Katar Hol, and the Golden Age Hawkman, Carter Hall).

Well, fifteen issues later, the prophecy changed...

The new reference, of course, was to Captain Marvel, who Starman ended up meeting...

Reader Robert S. wanted to know if DC Comics prevented James Robinson from using Hawkman, leading to him changing the prophecy.

As it turned out, though, it was all Robinson. You see, a fan (Ed Homa Jr.) wrote a letter to Starman suggesting a Captain Marvel team-up and Robinson liked the idea a lot....

and he also was less and less interested in writing the overly complicated take on Hawkman, so he made the switch on his own accord.

He later told Michael Hutchison of Fanzing:

It's tough, with all the foreshadowing I chose to do in the book, when things change. Hawkman is a character I've always loved. I wanted to use him when he was still a fairly uncomplicated version of the horrible Hawkworld version that [existed] about then. However, as the time neared to use him, the character's continuity became such a mess I was scared away.

On

Years later, he got a chance to co-write a revamped Hawkman in an ongoing series with Geoff Johns!

So while Robinson certainly has run afoul of DC editorial fiat over the years, it wasn't the issue in this instance!

Thanks to Robert for the question! And thanks to Michael Hutchison and James Robinson for the information!

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!

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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!).

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

See you all next week!