In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover which iconic comic book artist went uncredited for his detailed layouts for a classic Batman vampire comic book story.

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and fifty-fifth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first legend of this installment. Click here for the second legend of this installment.

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:

Bernie Wrightson did uncredited layouts for "Heart of a Vampire" in Detective Comics #455.

STATUS:

True

One of the unsung Batman comic books of the 1970s is the 1975 Halloween issue of Detective Comics, Detective Comics #445 and its lead story, "Heart of a Vampire."

detective-comics-455-0

Besides just being a really good vampire story by Elliot S! Maggin, the issue was also notable because it was, in effect, a try-out for the great Mike Grell. Grell, you see, had more than made a name for himself at DC as the artist on the Legion of Super-Heroes, but whenever an artist begins to excel on one feature, you always wonder if they could be used on the higher priority titles, and while this was nominally just a one-off gig for Grell, the possibility for more work on a main DC hero was definitely in the air when he did this issue and, sure enough, he passed his quasi-audition with flying colors, and in 1977, he drew Batman #287-290.

RELATED: How a Missed Art Correction Broke a Fascinating All-Star Squadron Hawkman Streak

Amusingly, though, when interviewed by Dewey Cassell's Mike Grell: Life is Drawing Without an Eraser from TwoMorrows, Grell noted that they hadn't talked about hsi work on Batman yet in the interview, "Probably for a good reason. I always felt that I had done kind of a crappy job on Batman while I was on the book." Grell is mistaken, but he's probably fair to say that his Batman work was probably not AS good as his other work. It was still very good.

However, Grell went on to note about Detective Comics #455, probably the most acclaimed Grell Batman issue, "There was one particular story that had to do with a vampire, and that one was probably the best of my Batman in the 1970s, but I can't really take credit for it because the story had been plotted and broken down by Bernie Wrightson."

RELATED: How Close Did Thanos Come to Becoming a Regular Iron Man Villain?

That's a fascinating piece of information because Wrighton is not credited in the story at all...

detective-comics-455-1

Grell explained further:

Bernie had done thumbnails of every page, and by thumbnails I mean serious thumbnails. They were maybe two inches wide by three inches high, something like that, but so clearly drawn and the story told so beautifully in those tiny little panels that really all I had to do was re-pencil his thumbnails and do the finishes over the top. I followed his layouts on virtually every panel, and I got credit for it, and Bernie didn't, which I thought really stunk.

Wrightson's splash page was later shown somewhere, perhaps for a comic book convention?

bernie-wrightson-heart-of-a-vampire-1

It really is amazing how detailed Wrightson's thumbnails were. How odd that he didn't get credited for them at all.

There's some more from Grell on this particular issue that I'll save for another Comic Book Legends Revealed.

Thanks so much to Mike Grell and Dewey Cassell for that great piece of comic book history (Michael Kronenberg and Michael Eury also covered this story in their excellent Batcave Companion from TwoMorrows, as well)

CHECK OUT A TV LEGENDS REVEALED!

In the latest TV Legends Revealed - How did the sitcom Schooled handle a break-up of its main couple when it suddenly couldn't use one half of the couple in an episode?

MORE LEGENDS STUFF!

OK, that's it for this installment!

Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it's fair enough to still thank him, I think.

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is cronb01@aol.com. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well! Also, if you have a correction or a comment, feel free to also e-mail me. CBR sometimes e-mails me with e-mails they get about CBLR and that's fair enough, but the quickest way to get a correction through is to just e-mail me directly, honest. I don't mind corrections. Always best to get things accurate!

Here's my most recent book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know And Do Before They Die, from Triumph Books.

If you want to order a copy, ordering it here gives me a referral fee.

Here's my second book, Why Does Batman Carry Shark Repellent? The cover is by Kevin Hopgood (the fellow who designed War Machine's armor).

If you want to order a copy, ordering it here gives me a referral fee.

Here's my book of Comic Book Legends (130 legends. -- half of them are re-worked classic legends I've featured on the blog and half of them are legends never published on the blog!).

The cover is by artist Mickey Duzyj. He did a great job on it...

If you'd like to order it, you can use this code if you'd like to send me a bit of a referral fee.

Follow Comics Should Be Good on Twitter, and on Facebook (also, feel free to share Comic Book Legends Revealed suggestions on our Facebook page!). Not only will you get updates when new blog posts show up on both Twitter and Facebook, but you'll get some original content from me, as well!

See you next time!!