Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and ninety-sixth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.

As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for part one of this installment's legends. Click here for part two of this installment's legends.

NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!

COMIC LEGEND:

An early issue of Conan the Barbarian had verbal coloring clues to help sneak some violence past the Comics Code.

STATUS:

True

IN HONOR OF CONAN THE BARBARIAN'S 50TH ANNIVERSARY IN COMICS, THIS INSTALLMENT (LIKE LAST ONE) WILL BE ALL CONAN LEGENDS!

As you might imagine, Conan the Barbarian, being a comic book about, you know, a barbarian, often found itself pushed up against the edge with the Comics Code Authority. The Comics Code Authority would oversee the pages of the comic books as they were produced, so the Comics Code, for instance, would have access to things like coloring notes. Therefore, you couldn't very well make a note on the page to the colorist to do something that the Comics Code would object to and, of course, noting in the captions or whatever could call attention to stuff that the Comics Code wouldn't be cool with you including.

Therefore, for the most part, when things were "hidden" from the Comics Code, it would typically involve drawings. You know, stuff meant to look one way so that you couldn't see that it was REALLY supposed to look like something else entirely (something quite sexual in nature).

In Conan the Barbarian #37 (as I covered in this old Comic Book Legends Revealed), artist Neal Adams decided, on his own, to make the mouth of a monster in the story to appear like female genitalia. He did it on his own, but of course writer Roy Thomas knew what he was trying and just decided to let Adams try to get away with it (and they did)...

Thomas then had some fun himself by "answering" Adams' drawing by having John Buscema draw a monster with these appendages that got cut off by Conan that were meant to look like a man's testes...

Hey, whatever you can do to make yourself laugh, right?

Anyhow, early on in the series, the book was colored by Maddy Cohen (who went by the name Mimi Gold at the time) from Conan the Barbarian #2 through #11. Cohen was dating Barry Smith and so he was able to communicate her without having to actually put any coloring notes on the pages.

And in Conan the Barbarian #9, Smith, Thomas and Cohen conspired to have some fun with the Comics Code (as related by Cohen in an excellent interview by Richard Arndt in TwoMorrows' Alter Ego #155)

Conan's female companion was kidnapped by a winged being and taken back to his home. Conan tracked them down and came across the place, which had really high towers (winged beings, after all), and the place was surrounded by these flowers that could attack you!

Conan thinks that the bad guy is throwing out his girlfriend, but it is actually just some other villager and check out what happens...

See? Thomas and Smith told Cohen in person to have the flowers go from white to pink to red as they are covered by the blood of the guy that they just devoured! It's super subtle and you will notice that the captions in the comic do not make any reference to the flowers actually devouring the guy. It just mentions that his screams stop. Therefore, if you're the Comics Code employee checking these pages, there is no way that you would be able to tell what is going on. It was only evident when Cohen later colored the pages. And since there was no verbal reference, Thomas and Smith could also avoid getting in trouble from Stan Lee, as well, as, again, there was no record of their mischief.

Very clever stuff.

Thanks to Maddy Cohen, Richard Arndt and Roy Thomas for the information!

CHECK OUT A TV LEGENDS REVEALED!

In the latest TV Legends Revealed - Why did the Munsters have a motion picture released the same year that their TV show was canceled after just two seasons?

MORE LEGENDS STUFF!

OK, that's it for this installment!

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually use on the CBR editions of this column, but I do use them when I collect them all on legendsrevealed.com!

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 most recent book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know And Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books.

If you want to order a copy, ordering it here gives me a referral fee.

Here's my second 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.

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...

If you'd like to order it, you can use this code if you'd like to send me a bit of 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 some original content from me, as well!

See you all next time!