Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundredth 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. This time, there will be SIX legends! Click here for part one of this installment's legends. Click here for part two of this installment's legends. Click here for part three of this installment's legends. Click here for part four of this installment's legends. Click here for part five of this installment's legends.

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COMIC LEGEND:

Jerry Ordway was originally going to follow Mark Waid as the regular writer on Flash.

STATUS:

True

As you likely know by now, Mark Waid had a historic run on the Flash that lasted from 1992-2000 (he took a break for a year's worth of stories from 1997-98 and Grant Morrison and Mark Millar filled in. His initial editor on the series, Brian Augustyn, joined him as a co-writer in 1996 and they finished out the series together). He was then succeeded by Geoff Johns, who had his OWN historic run that lasted from 2000-2005. In last year's reader vote for your favorite comic book runs of all-time, BOTH of those runs made the Top 100.

However, as it turned out, Mark Waid was nearly succeeded by a whole other writer, the great Jerry Ordway!

Headed into 1999, Jerry Ordway was finishing his excellent run on Power of Shazam.

Initially, he was then going to take over writing duties on Adventures of Superman, but as I noted in a recent Comic Book Legends Revealed (the legend that I had to write before I could write this one), when Joey Cavalieri (who hired Ordway on Adventures of Superman) was replaced as editor by Eddie Berganza, Ordway was then fired from the book before his run even began!

Then things got kind of interesting, as Joey Cavalieri had moved from the Superman titles to take over editing duties on Flash, though, and he offered Ordway the gig on that series when Waid's run was over and Ordway accepted. Scott Kolins was hired to be the artist on the run. However, ultimately, Ordway was just too irritated at how the Berganza situation had been handled (where Executive Editor Mike Carlin had come in and canceled Ordway's firing, but not before Ordway had taken other assignments at Marvel) to feel right about working at DC at the time.

As Jerry explained to me when I asked him about the run, "I wrote a 6 month proposal/overview, rewrote it again with editorial input, and basically backed out. This was maybe too close after the editorial shuffle that had Eddie Berganza take over Superman, promise he was looking forward to working with me as writer of Adventures of Superman, and then fire me on a call that was supposed to be me pitching my ideas. I did my best to plan out some Flash story arcs, but the more I thought about things, it was hard to put the Superman incident aside."

What's interesting is that Jerry did not know that Kolins had been hired by Cavalieri to be the artist at the time. Kolins explained to Keith Dallas in TwoMorrows' The Flash Companion, "Joey Cavalieri called me up. out of the blue [to offer me the Flash]. I had no idea. I was stunned. Jerry Ordway was slated to be the writer, but something happened he wasn't happy about and a few days later he bowed out. A couple other names came around - but actually I campaigned for Geoff to come on board. I don't know much influence I had, but I got very lucky that day." When Dallas asked Kolins if he discussed the book with Ordway, he said no, but that he was a fan of Ordway (they both grew up in Wisconsin). As it turned out, Jerry didn't know Kolins was attached to the project. As he note to me, "I didn't realize that Scott Kolins was already set as artist. If I knew that, maybe would have been less likely to bail, out of a desire to not see him lose a month or more of work."

So after a fill-in arc by Johns and Angel Unzueta, Johns and Kolins began their run with inker Doug Hazelwood with Flash #170...

They remained on the book until #200 and, as noted before, it was a very well received run and was Johns' breakout hit for DC.

Jerry noted that he was happy that Johns had a hit with the book, but he would have liked to have followed Waid's run himself, as he admired Waid's run a lot.

Thanks so much to Jerry Ordway (and Keith Dallas and Scott Kolins) for the information! I, too, really liked the Johns/Kolins run, but I would have dug an Ordway/Kolins run, as well!

CHECK OUT A MOVIE LEGENDS REVEALED!

In the latest Movie Legends Revealed - Was Cruela de Vil originally going to be the villain in Disney's The Rescuers?

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!

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