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

As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.

NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I'll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!

COMIC LEGEND:

Marvel had an official ranking of their characters' importance and Quicksilver was at the bottom.

STATUS:

True

Along with Eileen Gonzalez, I have a bit where we discuss each issue of the Avengers in chronological order. We're currently at the point where Hank Pym and the Wasp have finally returned to the team after it had become Cap's Kooky Quartet for a year or so, where the team was reshaped around Captain America and three former supervillains, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye.

In the most recent installment (discussing Avengers #29), we noted that upon Goliath and Wasp rejoining the team, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were beginning to be squeezed out of the book a bit. Already, a recurring theme we have come across is that even among the members of Cap's Kooky Quartet, Quicksilver gets the least amount of attention by far. A common plot is him getting separated from the rest of the team. The big problem is that Quicksilver's tempestuous nature is often his major character trait, but with Cap's Kooky Quartet, Hawkeye had the role of the tempestuous one and he and Cap were constantly arguing and there wasn't room for ANOTHER hothead, so Quicksilver was just sort of, well, there.

Eventually, he and Scarlet Witch were written out of the book...

They then came back into the series a couple of years later...

Then writer Roy Thomas started a romance between the Vision and Scarlet Witch, but the problem there is that they now had a plot for her, but not for her brother.

So in 1972's Avengers #102, Scarlet Witch gets captured and Quicksilver decides to go rogue and rescue her himself...

As it turns out, though, the Avengers and Quicksilver end up at the same place where Quicksilver is badly injured, but the Avengers didn't even know he was there!

He then is found by Crystal of the Inhumans and they get married, but mostly he was now in limbo for the rest of the decade.

The reason for that probably has to do with a 1972 internal memo from Marvel Comics that Sean Howe (author of the excellent Marvel Comics: The Untold Story) shared on his great website here...

The memo ranks Marvel's characters of the era in terms of their importance, with three stars being very important, two stars being important and one star being not as important. As you might imagine, pretty much everyone is considered very important.

On the entire list, only FOUR characters were deemed "not as important," and two of them, Ringo Kid and the Western Ghost Rider, were minor western characters. The third was the Watcher, who was just a background character, of course. The fourth is the only superhero on the list and that is, of course, Quicksilver!

No wonder that guy kept turning evil....

He got no respect, not even from the company who published him!

Thanks to reader David L. for suggesting that I run this one! And thanks to Sean Howe again for sharing it! What a hilariously awesome piece of history.

Check out some other legends from Legends Revealed:

1. Were the Little House on the Prairie Sets Destroyed So That No One Else Could Use Them?

2. What Famous Talk Show Host Wouldn’t Appear on the Simpsons if They Made Fun of Him?

3. Does the Band Name Stone Temple Pilots Stand for Something Much More Lewd?

4. Did a Popular Radio Show Change the Name of the Show and the Lead Character Because of the Blacklist?

Check back soon for part 2 of this installment'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!