Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and tenth installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
Click here for Part 1 of this week's legends. Click here for Part 2 of this week's legends.
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COMIC LEGEND:
Green Flame and Ice Maiden were originally intended to be members of Justice League Europe.
STATUS:
True
In 1989, DC Comics' popular Justice League International series spun off a second Justice League title, taking the International theme further by having it set in Paris, as the book was Justice League Europe (Justice League International was then re-named Justice League America).
However, you might notice that the Ukranian member, Rocket Red, is the only member of this group of heroes who is actually FROM Europe.
That was something people noticed at the time, as well, and interestingly, Keith Giffen and Andy Helfer originally had a plan in place to get some more European members, but things went a different direction.
According to an interview in Comics Interview #66 between Pat O'Neill and Helfer (the editor of the Justice League books) and Giffen (the plotter of the Justice League books), when Green Flame and Ice Maiden were introduced into the series in Justice League International #12...
The plans were already in place to launch Justice League Europe, and so these two new heroes (only one of which was European), were going to be members of JLE.
However, at the time, Black Canary was still on the main Justice League team...
And by the time Green Flame and Ice Maiden got to the Justice League in Justice League International #14...
The series had lost Black Canary...
And I suspect that they realized that they needed some more female cast members then, or perhaps they just changed their mind one they saw Green Flame and Ice Maiden interact with the rest of the team...
In any event, the two heroes (who soon re-named themselves Fire and Ice), became longtime members of the main Justice League team...
And it is hard to imagine the series without them. Still, it's fascinating to think how things would have developed differently if they HAD made it into Justice League Europe instead of Justice League America.
Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed - Did a Roman Numeral typo accidentally make the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special public domain?
OK, that's it for this week!
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!
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Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed
See you all next week!