Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and seventy-first 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.
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:
Bill Mantlo stopped writing Marvel Team-Up mid-issue because he wanted nothing to do with the new black costume for Spider-Man
STATUS:
False (but a little Truthiness mixed in)
In 1984, the comic book world was shocked by Spider-Man suddenly debuting a new black costume!
We later got to see the costume debut in Secret Wars #8...
Anyhow, reader Dan Q. wrote in to ask about Marvel Team-Up #140, which was written by Tom DeFalco and Bill Mantlo....
The issue had a team-up with Spider-Man and Black Widow, but then, at the end of the issue, Spider-Man was drawn to a mysterious structure in Central Park that brought him to the pages of Secret Wars...
The next issue saw Spider-Man return, with the black costume in tow....
That issue was written by Tom DeFalco and Jim Owsley (now known as Christopher Priest).
So, the legend is that Bill Mantlo was originally assigned to write Marvel Team-Up #140, but he wanted nothing to do with the black costume part of the story, so Tom DeFalco was brought in to write that part of the comic because DeFalco was writing the main Amazing Spider-Man story involving the black costume already and then DeFalco wrote the next issue as well with Owsley.
I asked Tom about it and he said that no, DeFalco was assigned #140 FIRST. Mantlo was brought on to simply script it. Marvel Team-Up didn't really HAVE a regular writer at that point (Mantlo wrote a few issues in a row, but hadn't been on the book for a number of months before #140). DeFalco did note, though, that he DID recall that editor Danny Fingeroth had a little bit of a hard time getting people willing to write the black costume stuff, so that IS why DeFalco was brought in (Tom joked, "I don't know why he eventually turned to me, but I was already 'tainted' by the black costume and had nothing to lose") and since DeFalco was too busy on his other assignments to script the story, Owsley was given the chance to script #141.
So this sounds like one of those traditional "telephone" game legends, where "People weren't interested in writing the black costume" stuff turned into more dramatic stories involving a guy leaving a book mid-issue.
Thanks to Dan for the suggestion! And thanks, of course, to Tom DeFalco, for the great information!
_______________________________________________________________________________
Check out some entertainment legends from Legends Revealed:
1. Did Marty McFly Originally Travel Back to the Future in a Refrigerator?!
2. Did House Party Nearly Star DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince?!
3. Was Clair Huxtable Originally Going to be a Female Version of Ricky Ricardo?
4. Did England Once Try to Arrest the Creator of a Pseudonym for Stories He Didn’t Write?
_______________________________________________________________________________
Check back later for part 2 of this installment's legends!
Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com