Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and sixty-eighth 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 Part 1 of this week's 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:

Haywire was going to be killed when the Squadron Supreme returned to their world in 1998.

STATUS:

True

I recently wrote about the story of how Haywire of the Squadron Supreme lost his spot on the team due to him not being a Justice League analogue, but he almost lost more than just his spot on the team!

Let me recap Haywire's story....

As you likely know by now, the Squadron Supreme was introduced as analogues of the Justice League so that Marvel could cheekily have the Avengers fight against the Justice League.

The Squadron live on Earth in an alternate reality. In the classic Squadron Supreme maxiseries by Mark Greenwald, Bob Hall, Paul Ryan, John Beatty and Bud de La Rosa, the team basically decide to turn their world into a Utopia, even if it requires them to suspend some civil liberties in the process.

Nighthawk of the Squadron couldn't live with what his team was doing, so he put together a resistance squad. We see these renegades in Squadron Supreme #10.

One of the people on the team was a hero named Haywire...

In the next issue, Haywire is one of a bunch of Nighthawk's allies who secretly join the Squadron as new recruits...

They surreptitiously reverse the brainwashing that the Squadron had done to some of the Squadron's older victims...

However, Haywire and his girlfriend, Inertia, do admit that they're having a good time with the Squadron...

However, in the final issue, they agree to still stay loyal to Nighthawk...

The battle between the two teams is a bloodbath, with seven heroes killed.

A couple of years later, Gruenwald and Ryan returned to the Squadron for a graphic novel (Al Williamson inked Ryan) that saw the heroes reunite to save the planet/universe.

In the process, Inertia is killed....

Haywire never quite got over it.

At the end of that story, they save the universe, but found themselves trapped in a new universe... the main Marvel Universe!

After seven or so years of trying to get home, they finally returned for the Len Kaminski/Anthony Williams graphic novel, New World Order..

The problem is that Kaminski wanted to go back to the Justice League pastiche of the team and Haywire, who had no Justice League had no analogue.

As Kurt Busiek explained on his website, "Len Kaminski had planned to kill him off in the opening pages of New World Order, largely because Len was trying to shift the Squadron back to something more resembling the classic JLA, albeit in an altered-enough setting to avoid DC’s ire. I thought Haywire was worth saving, so I had him stay behind rather than go off and get killed, and sent him off on another “get him off-stage but dynamically” thing."

So Haywire was left behind in the Avengers Annual that led into New World Order...

Amusingly enough, three years later, Steve Englehart used him in an Avengers: Celestial Quest miniseries, where Haywire tries to bring Inertia back to life and when that fails, he just sacrifices himself, as well...

Busiek talked about that story, as well, noting, "If it was his death, though, at least it stemmed from his own character motivations, and not just out of team membership bookkeeping."

Agreed, Kurt!

Thanks to Kurt Busiek for the information!

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In the latest TV Legends Revealed - Was the Tom Hanks sitcom, Bosom Buddies, originally NOT about two guys masquerading as women to get a cheap apartment?

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Feel free to suggest ideas for future legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com!