Welcome to the five hundred and seventy-fourth 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, in honor of Captain America: Civil War, legends involving Captain America, Iron Man and, well, Civil War! Were Captain America and Iron Man initially on opposite sides for Marvel's original Civil War? Was the Mandarin banned as a villain in the Iron Man films? And what famous Captain America villain was inspired by...an ice cream sundae?!

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: Iron Man and Captain America were originally going to be on opposite sides during Marvel's Civil War.

STATUS: Technically True



Marvel's 2006 crossover event, Civil War, pitted Iron Man against Captain America as the leaders of two factions of superheroes. Iron Man's side argued in favor of a superhero registration act that would force superheroes to register with the government if they had superpowers, as their powers would be akin to a firearm, which also have to be registered. Captain America's side argued that forcing people to reveal their identities to the government violated their privacy and put the heroes in danger.

When you come up with a major event like this where heroes have to take specific sides of a contested issue, it is difficult figuring out which hero should take what side. Since this is fiction, you can make heroes take a side that others might not think appropriate for that character, but so long as you explain the logic of them taking said position, I don't mind it. I don't think heroes having earlier, contrary positions means that they cannot support an opposing viewpoint today. You just have to explain it.

One of the most controversial characters in all of this was Mister Fantastic for the Fantastic Four, who publicly testified in front of Congress in opposition to a similar Registration Act in the late 1980s but was in favor of the Superhuman Registration Act during Civil War, with different writers coming up with different justifications for the change in his stance. Really, from a consistency standpoint, the major issue was that different writers would come up with different arguments for their position, and some of them were better than others.

Anyhow, at the heart of the matter were two heroes, one of whom actually fought against the United States government to protect his private designs for his Iron Man armor...



But another one who, despite being dubbed Captain AMERICA, actually split from that persona twice because of his problems with the government...





So both men could easily be seen as willing to fight the government on this issue.

Originally, though, it was IRON MAN who was going to fight against the Superhero Registration Act and Captain America who would support it! But by "originally," I mean for just a few minutes. Here's Tom Brevoort, in Andy Mangels' brilliant Iron Man: Beneath the Armor, on the subject:

It's always easier to write a story where your guy is pushing against the omnipresent evil oppressive government than it is to push for your guy out there following what amounts to the rule of law in an unpopular situation. That was the balancing act that we tried to maintain throughout Civil War, and in some books we did it better than others...I certainly see where there have been readers who have been put off of this, and how on the simplest level you could think, Tony Stark should be the maverick and Cap should be the guy who toes the line. In point of fact, when we started the very first discussion about Civil War, that was where the initial instinct was to place them. Within twenty minutes of talking back and forth, and story building and throwing ideas around, we realized that really didn't work or make sense with who these characters are and what they believed and where they'd been all through the years. What we ended up doing was a little closer to what rang true for these guys.

Tom also made a compelling argument that Tony's actions during Armor Wars shows that he's a guy who will do anything if he believes his position is right, and he happened to think the Superhuman Registration Act was right.

Thanks to Tom and Andy for the great information!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Check out some entertainment and sports legends from Legends Revealed:

Was Splinter of the Mind’s Eye Originally Written as a Cheap Film Sequel to Star Wars?

How Did an 18-Year-Old Bookkeeper Who Had Never Played Organized Baseball Become a Hall of Famer?

Why Did “Woodstock” Songwriter Joni Mitchell Skip Going to Woodstock?

Did David Brenner Really Shave NINE Years Off His Age When He Started Doing Comedy?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

On the next page, was the Mandarin "banned" from appearing in Iron Man films?

COMIC LEGEND: The Mandarin was always essentially "banned" from appearing in Iron Man films.

STATUS: False

Reader Tony F. wrote in with a question about the Iron Man films. SPOILER WARNINGS FOR THE IRON MAN FILMS!

As most of you know, in Iron Man 3 it is revealed that the villainous Mandarin is actually an actor (played by Ben Kingley) PRETENDING to be the Mandarin...



As it turns out, the Mandarin was a "fake" villain, covering up the real criminal enterprises of Aldrich Killian, who ended up having a dragon tattoo of his own on his chest, thus sort of making HIM the "real" Mandarin of the film.



As the director and co-writer of the film, Shane Black, explained:

Ultimately we do give you the Mandarin, the real guy, but it's Guy Pearce in the end with the big dragon tattooed on his chest. Do they hand me a blank check and say, 'Go break something!' Or, 'Go violate some long-standing comic book treaty that fans have supported for years?' No, but they'll say: 'Let's break something together.' So it's okay to come up with these crazy things, these far out ideas … and they'll fly. It's just that the Marvel guys have to be in the room.

However, the other writer on the film, Drew Pearce (who actually was the one who came up with the actor idea), then did a Marvel One-Shot short film where we learn that perhaps there is another "real" Mandarin out there.

Anyhow, the main gist of Black and Pearce's idea was that they felt uncomfortable using the Mandarin, as he comes from a very specific time in pop culture history where it was totally cool to have basically a Fu Manchu villain...



Black himself has referred to the Mandarin as a "racist caricature." This leads to Tony's question, which is addressing the fact that the Mandarin did not appear in the first two Iron Man films, either, and whether that was Jon Favreau's position, as well, that the Mandarin was just too much of a racist caricature to use. Or I guess the easiest way of phrasing it is "Was the Mandarin always essentially banned from appearing in Iron Man films?"

As it turns out, though, Favreau actually originally intended on the Mandarin being the villain in the very first Iron Man film!



In a 2008 interview with SuperheroHype's Edward Douglas, Favreau explained how they ended up using Obidiah Stane as the villain in the first film:

SHH!: Why did you go with Obadiah Stane for this movie being that he’s not the most well-known Iron Man villain?

Favreau: No, it worked well, and we wanted a big suit and with Jeff Bridges and he was up for it, and in casting Jeff, that role really grew, and we went away from the Mandarin, because we really didn’t know what to do with him and it seemed too ambitious in the first one. Obadiah seemed like the right guy to do, and it just worked well with the suit.

And when asked about villains for the second and third film, Favreau replied, "I think Mandarin for sure."

Here is how Favreau saw the Mandarin:

We have the Ten Rings which is a tip of the hat to the Mandarin, which is the greater villain that is going to emerge; the guy who is the head of the bad guys is not somebody who is representing religious zealotry, but is instead really a warlord looking to conquer an empire.

So it looks like Favreau had an angle on the character. He further elaborated on those plans to Mania (now CBR)'s Rob Worley:

Q: How did you choose the villain for Iron Man?

Favreau: It's very hard to choose a villain for Iron Man. The big villain is the Mandarin, but the Mandarin is not the type of villain where, right off the bat, you could watch them squaring off.

You can't stay true to the books without putting off the mainstream audience without …as he's depicted in the books, I don't know if that depiction would work nowadays. Magical rings shooting, I don't know if that's the thing people are expecting.

I look at Mandarin more like how in Star Wars you had the Emperor, but Darth Vader is the guy you want to see him fight. Then you work your way to the time when lightning bolts are shooting out of the fingers and all that stuff could happen. But you can't have what happened in ['Return of the Jedi'] happen in 'A New Hope'. You just can't do it.

You can't have Sauron be the first person that Frodo meets up with.

You have to lay enough down in the storyline so that as the story unfolds you get there, but you also have to delve into the rogues gallery and see, in our depiction of the universe and the reality that we're dealing with, where there aren't other superheroes with other powers in this world.

I want everything to come out of the technology that Tony Stark developed and watch it grow out from there. And then as you cut the movie together and you see how it plays and you learn the personality of the film, you can then go deeper and deeper.

So there you go, Tony, the Mandarin was never banned from the Iron Man films. Quite the opposite! Favreau just never got the chance to finish his intended trilogy.

Thanks to Tony for the question, and thanks to Jon Favreau, Rob Worley and Edward Douglas for the information!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed at Spinoff Online: Did Spider-Man 2 nearly have a love triangle between Peter Parker, Mary Jane Watson and...Doctor Octopus?!?!

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

On the next page, which famous Captain America villain was inspired by...a hot fudge sundae?!?

COMIC LEGEND: Captain America's arch-rival, the Red Skull, was inspired by an ice cream sundae

STATUS: I'm Going With True

Due to the involvement of one of (if not the) best comic book artists of all-time, Jack Kirby, in Captain America's beginnings, people sometimes overlook what Joe Simon did for the character, as it was Joe Simon who came up with the original design for the character (as seen in this recent piece where I showed a number of original designs for famous comic book characters, like Cap, Wonder Woman and Wolverine)...



Simon had a great eye for design, and it was that very same great eye that led to him getting inspiration for one of Captain America's greatest villains in one of the oddest places imaginable.

Here is Simon from his classic book, Joe Simon: My Life in Comics, which was updated in 2011:

One day I was in Times Square at Childs Restaurant. It was a nice place to eat and to get away by myself for a while. I would go there for my lunch and desserts, and on this day I ordered a hot fudge sundae. Unlike Kirby, I could have eaten as many of those as I wanted. I was a pretty skinny guy - 153 pounds and six-feet-three - and I kept that weight pretty constant until I went into the service. Even sitting at lunch, I was always thinking about heroes and villains, with all sorts of ideas swimming around in my head. Next thing I know, I had a hot fudge sundae sitting in front of me, with the vanilla ice cream, and the hot fudge is running down the side. It was intriguing.

The hot fudge looked liked limbs - legs, feet, and hands - and I'm thinking to myself.



Gee, this'd make an interesting villain, I mused. We'll call him Hot Fudge...Just put a face on him, and have him ooze all over the place.

You have to be stupid to be in this business. Nevertheless, I did some sketches, right then and there.

And I looked at them.

Nah, I thought. Who would believe anything like that?

But I looked again at the sundae, and I saw the big cherry on top. The cherry looked like a skull.

"Wow, I said to myself. "Red Skull...that sounds good." And it made a lot more sense.



The Red Skull was only supposed to appear once. We killed him off in the very first story, and I never thought anybody would remember him. But they did - they clamored for us to bring him back.



And he's still around. Now he's going to be in a blockbuster movie.

The Red Skull was, indeed, the villain in 2011's Captain America: The First Avenger.

Red Skull Captain America: The Firs tAvenger



How lucky we were that Joe Simon was with us for so long to drop so much cool knowledge on us. Thank you, Joe Simon!

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!

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!