Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and twenty-eighth installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
Here is part one of this week's legends.
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COMIC LEGEND:
Stan Lee received permission to use the name Daredevil from Charlie Biro and Lev Gleason
STATUS:
I'm Going With False
Daredevil was a superhero character created by Jack Binder and Jack Cole for Lev Gleason's comic book company for a one-shot where he battled Hitler...
It was a huge sales success, so the character got his own series...
Eventually, a group of young sidekicks known as the Little Wise Guys were added to the series...
Eventually, they took over the book from Daredevil and when the series was finally canceled in the mid-1950s, they were actually the outright leads of the book...
Eight years after the book ended in 1956, Marvel launched their own Daredevil in 1964...
Reader Mike J. wrote in to say that he had read on Facebook that Lee had actually received permission from Lev Gleason (and/or Charlie Biro, the main writer on the series who also drew the book for a long period) to launch their own version of Daredevil.
It does not appear so, Mike. Stan Lee has had a number of different versions of how Marvel's Daredevil began (a few of them ignored the existence of Lev Gleason's Daredevil period), but the most common version (and the same one that other creators have told) is that Martin Goodman decided that Marvel should take advantage of the name not being used and that they should do a version of the character.
I've read six different takes on the character's origin from Lee and none of them mentioned asking for permission. It also would not have been the custom of the time. So I think it is fair to go with a false here.
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Check back soon for the final part of last week's Comic Book Legends Revealed!