Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and seventy-seventh week where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.

As always, there will be three different posts for each legend this week!

NOTE: I noticed that the the CSBG Twitter page was nearing 10,000 followers. If we hit 10,050 followers on the the CSBG Twitter page then I'll do a BONUS edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed during the week that we hit 10,050. So three more legends! Sounds like a great deal, right?

COMIC LEGEND:

Infinity Gauntlet was originally just going to be a storyline in the pages of Silver Surfer.

STATUS:

True

In late 1989, Jim Starlin made a triumphant return to Marvel Comics to take over writing Silver Surfer with issue #34, working with artists Ron Lim and Tom Christopher. In that first issue, Starlin brought back Thanos, the famous evil Mad Titan that Starlin had written for years in the pages of Iron Man, Captain Marvel and Warlock before killing off (along with most of the rest of Warlock's supporting cast) in an odd crossover between an Avengers Annual and a Marvel Two-In-One Annual (basically, they just gave Starlin whatever space they could find for him to tell his "final" Thanos story).

In Silver Surfer #34, we see that Mistress Death has brought Thanos back from the dead so that he could achieve her goal of wiping out half of the universe...

The idea was that Thanos would then spend a lot of time in the pages of Silver Surfer trying to find out a way to do that. Eventually, he would figure out that the way to go was to collect all of the Infinity Gems (that previous writer Steve Englehart had revealed were now in the possession of the various Elders of the Universe).

However, Starlin's return to Marvel brought with it a lot of attention to Silver Surfer and the sales began to rise. Then, as Starlin told Chris Brennaman in Back Issue #82, things changed, "It all starts in the Silver Surfer run. When it was found out that the Surfer was selling well, they decided to squeeze everything they could out of it, and if something could be spun off, it was spun off. So that Thanos story was spun off."

So instead of Thanos looking for the Infinity Gems and collecting them within the Silver Surfer issues (as presumably a B-plot while Surfer was having his A-plots), this was turned into the two-book miniseries, Thanos Quest...

However, once he got the Infinity Gems, the plan was to return to Silver Surfer to continue the story. Heck, that IS what happens in Silver Surfer #44...

But this time, the pre-orders on Thanos Quest were so great that even before it was finished, they knew that it would be spun off again.

At the end of Thanos Quest, they promoted...

Here's the funny thing, Starlin was now so caught up on Infinity Gauntlet, which was now this big deal, that he had no time to keep writing Silver Surfer and had to leave that book! The book that this was all supposed to be taking place in in the first place!

Funny stuff.

Thanks to Jim Starlin and Chris Brennaman for the information!


In honor of Avengers: Infinity War, check out some Avengers legends from Legends Revealed:

Why Can’t Major Avengers Villain Kang Be in an Avengers Movie?

Did Joss Whedon Cast a Lead in a Film Based Just on One Scene in the Avengers Where She Was an Extra?

Did Black Widow Nearly Have Her Own Movie Before Iron Man or Thor?

Does Marvel Not Own the Rights to Make an Incredible Hulk Film?


Check back Saturday for part 2 of this week's legends!

And remember, if you have a legend that you're curious about, drop me a line at either brianc@cbr.com or cronb01@aol.com!