In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn the surprising inspiration for Thunderbolt Ross having a mushroom cloud portrait over his fireplace.
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and thirty-ninth 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 the first part of this installment's legends. Click here for the second part of this installment's legends.
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COMIC LEGEND:
Roy Thomas specifically had a portrait of a mushroom cloud over Thunderbolt Ross' fireplace based on a Colonel he once met.
STATUS:
True
This is a funny one. This one got ALL THE WAY away from me. You see, initially, my buddy Chris Nowlin wrote to me to say that the great inker (and comic book historian) Bob Almond had pointed out on the Marvel a Day Facebook group (sounds like a fun group. Someone should invite me!) that there is an odd little bit in Incredible Hulk #124 that was somewhat puzzling, so Chris wanted my thoughts on it. Let me first set the odd bit up, and then I'll explain how I almost got way off track on it.
It is kind of fascinating how often new status quos were introduced and dropped in the pages of Incredible Hulk. In Incredible Hulk #123 (by Roy Thomas and Herb Trimpe), Bruce Banner and Reed Richards teamed up to seemingly cure Bruce Banner of being forced into becoming the Hulk, but the cure had a second added benefit - it wouldn't keep Bruce from EVER being the Hulk, he could just now CONTROL the transformation...
However, while fighting against the Leader AS the Hulk later in the issue, Bruce almost lost control and killed the Leader, so he vowed to never become the Hulk again...
In the following issue (Sal Buscema now inking Trimpe), Bruce, now free of his Hulk persona, proposes to Betsy Ross and her father, Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross, who had previously hunted down Banner as the Hulk, is now willing to not only welcome Bruce into the family, but he even offers up his home, the place Betsy grew up, as the venue for the wedding...
This being a superhero comic book, though, the nuptials are interrupted by that jerk, the Leader, who blasts Banner with a special ray gun of the Leader's invention...
and it turns Banner back into the rampaging Hulk, sad day for everyone (but the villains, I guess)...
Okay, but here's the funny thing that Bob pointed out and Chris then shared with me. Earlier in the issue, as the wedding begins, look at the background behind the minister - Ross has a portrait of a mushroom cloud on his mantle!
Why does he have such a thing over his MANTLE?
That was the question Chris posed to me and I instantly assumed that the answer would have been with the late Herb Trimpe. Herb was a great guy and he was quick with an answer whenever I had a question, but sadly he passed away seven years ago. So I thought that there was no REAL answer, which gave me a fun idea. I would contact some of the best writers I know who have had history writing Thunderbolt Ross and ask what their explanation was for Ross having such a portrait in his home. A lot of the writers were willing to play along and thanks to much to guys like Al Ewing, Gerry Duggan, Jeph Loeb and Daniel Way for responding.
However, I also wrote Roy Thomas, who scripted the issue, and as it turns out, there WAS a "real" answer for the portrait, as it was ROY who had specifically ASKED Trimpe to draw it! Roy explained:
Around 1963, I became friends with a recent college graduate (and future attorney, I believe) named Bob Barney, whose mother was Puerto Rican and whose father was Col. Barney, who in the 1960s had been in charge of what was called "air weather" for the famous H-bomb blast at the atoll of Eniwetok. In 1963 he was in charge of a major USAF base in Illinois... was it Scott? I forget then name, but it was just an hour or so's drive from the St. Louis area. Bob invited me to come with him to visit his father for a weekend, staying at the sumptuous home he and his second wife had on the base. Col. Barney was an affable soul in his way, but also was almost a caricature of the upper career military officer, who spoke in terms of mega-deaths (like Buck Turgid in "Strangelove," re a nuclear exchange: "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But it'd be 20 or 30 million death, tops!") and "there's red ants and there's black ants, and they're always gonna fight" and routinely referring to various political figures, such as Avriel Harriman, as traitors. But the most memorable thing about the weekend was the moment after I walked in his front door and saw, in the large living room area, above a brick mantle, a huge, beautifully framed color photograph--of that 1960s H-bomb explosion. Clearly, Col. Barney was proud of his work at that atomic test... and I'm not saying he should have been ashamed of it, but somehow a photo of it over the mantle seemed perhaps a bit much. So when it came time to the wedding at Thunderbolt Ross' house, I had Herb Trimpe draw that painting... though I don't think it's quite as large in the comicbook as it was in real life. Naturally, we got letters from a few people saying we'd gone over the top with that bit of set decoration, and that no one in a military command would actually do such a thing. Not for the first time, the critics were wrong.
As I told Roy, that's an amazing story!
Thanks so much to Roy Thomas for this awesome piece of comic book history and thanks to Al Ewing, Gerry Duggan, Jeph Loeb and Daniel Way for being willing to play along before I had a "real" answer!
CHECK OUT A TV LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest TV Legends Revealed - Was there nearly an animated TV series in the 1980s based on Michael Jackson's...pets?!
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that's it for this installment!
Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it's fair enough to still thank him, I think.
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! Also, if you have a correction or a comment, feel free to also e-mail me. CBR sometimes e-mails me with e-mails they get about CBLR and that's fair enough, but the quickest way to get a correction through is to just e-mail me directly, honest. I don't mind corrections. Always best to get things accurate!
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