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

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COMIC LEGEND:

The Inferior Five was initially intended as a Fantastic Four parody.

STATUS:

True

In the last Comic Book Legends Revealed, I addressed the misconception that E. Nelson Bridwell and Joe Orlando's Inferior Five was a campy look at superheroes designed as a response to the success of the Batman TV series, since it debuted in 1966....

and The Inferior Five debuted later in 1966...

Obviously, that's not how things work, and you can't release a comic book in March that is a response to a TV show that debuted in January. The production lead time, especially back in the 1960s, was much larger than that, more like six months on the EARLY side of things.

In reality, the Inferior Five WAS created in response to another comic book property, but not a DC Comic at all, but rather the Fantastic Four!

You see, when DC hired E. Nelson Bridwell, his main claim to fame was his work for Mad Magazine (Bridwell is the guy who came up with the classic gag about the Lone Ranger and Tonto being surrounded and, well, check it out (Joe Orlando, the artist on Inferior Five, drew this gag in 1958's Mad #38)...

So editor Jack Miller thought that a parody series would be right up Bridwell's alley and so Miller told him to create a parody series of Marvel's then-hottest title, the Fantastic Four, then in the midst of one of the greatest peaks a comic book had ever had (from 1965 through 1966)...

(Those issues are also too late to be actual direct inspirations, since they came out in early 1966, I just like seeing them back to back like that).

Bridwell went off to do so, but he was inspired by an idea he once had for a Bizarro superhero team and soon he had an Inferior FIVE. He went to Miller and Miller thought the idea was good enough for him to drop the name and also the direct Fantastic Four parody idea.

Thanks to the the late, great Rich Morrissey for his spotlight on the characters in Amazing Heroes #35, where he got the information from Bridwell before Bridwell passed away in 1987.

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In the latest TV Legends Revealed - How did the Grinch become green (he wasn't green in Dr. Seuss's original book about How the Grinch Stole Christmas)?

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Feel free to write to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com if you have a suggestion for a future Comic Book Legends Revealed!