Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and sixty-third 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:

Mystique was initially created by Dave Cockrum as simply a drawing of a beautiful blue woman.

STATUS:

True

As an aside, do you know how hard it is to come up with a good featured image of Mystique? None of Dave Cockrum's drawings of the character work, except for a black and white one and those look weird on the main site with all of the color drawings. So Jim Lee's Mystique it is! EDITED TO ADD: I was later sent the colored version, so had I had that, I would have used that one. Oh well!

Okay, something you should know about Dave Cockrum is that he liked to draw beautiful woman. In his spare time, he would often do pictures at his desk in the Marvel bullpen of beautiful women.

This would be around the time that Cockrum worked on a Dejah Thoris spotlight in Marvel's John Carter, Warlord of Mars...

There's only one page of the issue that Cockrum inked himself, and it is this one...

So yeah, he liked to draw beautiful women.

Around the time of that John Carter issue, Cockrum began drawing a beautiful woman in a mysterious looking outfit. Cockrum was hanging out in the Marvel offices with his future wife, Paty Cockrum (then Paty Greer, also a Marvel staffer) and Marvel colorist Andy Yanchus.

Yanchus and Greer got together and decide to color this beautiful woman in an unusual fashion, with blue skin, red hair and yellow eyes. They then hung the finished drawing up on the wall of Cockrum's office (or AN office, I have no idea if Cockrum had his own office). Here is that drawing...

When Chris Claremont walked in, Paty recalled to my pal George Khoury in his TwoMorrows book, Comic Book Fever, he instantly told Cockrum, "I want her! Who is she? What's her name? What does she do?" All Cockrum could tell Claremont was that she was a pretty lady.

Claremont came up with the name Mystique and the shapeshifting abilities and quickly had her included in Ms. Marvel #18, drawn by Jim Mooney (she is in #16, too, but not in her Mystique design)...

When Ms. Marvel was canceled soon after this, Claremont brought Mystique over to the pages of Uncanny X-Men.

And all just over a drawing of a pretty lady!

Thanks to George and Paty Cockrum for the information! Thanks to Nathan Adler for the colored version of the drawing! Thanks to Darci S. for Paty Cockrum's pre-marriage last name.

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Check out some entertainment legends from Legends Revealed:

1. Was Nearly All of Toy Story 2 Accidentally Deleted Nine Months In Due to a Pair of Computer Errors?

2. Does Vanna White Seriously Have a Trademark on Revealing Letters on a Gameboard in a Dress?

3. Did FedEx Not Actually Pay For Product Placement in the Film Cast Away?

4. Are the Trees From Joshua Tree and “One Tree Hill” Really BOTH Dead?

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Check back soon for part 2 of this installment's legends!