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

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COMIC LEGEND:

Buzz from Supergirl was based on Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

STATUS:

False

Reader Kyle N. wrote in with this one as a question (he simply wanted to know who came first - Buzz or Spike), but while I looked into the question to answer it, I discovered that this was actually something that really used to bug Peter David, the writer of the very good Supergirl series of the late 1990s/early 2000s.

Buzz, you see, was a demon who was the initial villain in the Supergirl comic book. He was British and he got Linda Danvers into demon worship, until she was pretty much evil. It took the sacrifice of the Matrix version of Supergirl to redeem Linda by merging with her and saving her life, allowing Linda to turn into Supergirl and try to redeem herself as a superhero. In Supergirl #8 (by Peter David, Gary Frank and Cam Smith), Buzz shows up for dinner with Linda and her parents (they don't know he's a demon, of course)...

After a delightfully awkward dinner, Buzz abruptly went full evil...

Okay, so, in the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a British vampire named Spike showed up...

Spike then reluctantly was forced to become a hero, of sorts (or at least an anti-hero) and he slowly grew to like it, even winning back his soul so that he could possibly be with Buffy...

Around the same time, Buzz and Linda were forced to team-up, as well...

It caused a lot of confusion, even to this day, apparently, with Kyle's e-mail to me about it all.

Anyhow, Peter David has addressed it a few times, including this bit from his website:

I got SO sick of people claiming that I was ripping off “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” when I was writing the Supergirl comic. People declared that Buzz was a rip off of Spike even though his creation preceded Spike in the series. One guy declared that I ripped off an episode of Buffy that had aired THAT WEEK for the first time in an issue that came out the next day. Because I had no idea what to put in that issue and, after watching Buffy, I stole the story and we got the entire book written, drawn, colored, lettered and printed in 24 hours to make shipping.

So anyhow, yeah, Buzz came first and the whole "Buzz and Linda reluctantly team up" ALSO came before Spike was forced, via microchip, to occasionally help out Buffy and her friends.

Thanks for the question, Kyle, I didn't know it was a THING until you wrote in!

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In the latest TV Legends Revealed - How did the Grinch become green (he wasn't green in Dr. Seuss's original book about How the Grinch Stole Christmas)?

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