Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundredth 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. This time, there will be SIX legends! Click here for part one of this installment's legends. Click here for part two of this installment'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:

Alex Ross drew inspiration from Wallace Wood's "Superduperman" story from Mad for the Superman/Captain Marvel fight in Kingdom Come

STATUS:

True

For fans of Alex Ross and Mark Waid's brilliant Kingdom Come series, one of the moments that stands out the most is the amazing battle between Superman and a brainwashed Captain Marvel during the breakout at the super-gulag that the superheroes were using to keep the rogue superbeings in custody. The cliffhanger of #3 is one of the most iconic images of the era...

Their battle throughout #4 is one of the most beloved superhero fights of all-time. Years ago, we even did a vote for the top comic book battles and it was really high up there (you know, since we lost the results of that vote due to it being an infographic at the time, I think it would make sense to do a new vote for that poll. I mean, I have the results of the vote still, but you know what I mean, we don't have the write-ups still).

What's fascinating is that Alex Ross drew inspiration for the fight from an unusual source, and what's more interesting (and I'll touch on this in future Comic Book Legends Revealed columns) is that wasn't just Ross who drew inspiration from this comic book in a major work (again, though, that will be touched on in a future story).

The source was a short story in 1953's Mad #4 called "Superduperman" by Harvey Kurtzman and Wallace Wood, an iconic parody of Superman...

While a parody of Superman, the cartoon was a particularly sharp critique of the then-recent lawsuit settlement where Superman's owners sued Fawcett, the owners of Captain Marvel, and Fawcett agreed to no longer make Captain Marvel comic books (it was a copyright infringement suit). So Kurtzman and Wood had Superduperman fight against Captain Marbles...

That fight was a major influence on Ross when it came to him doing the big Superman/Captain Marvel fight in Kingdom Come, which he explained to WizardUniverse years ago (back when there was a WizardUniverse):

“This was emulating a lot of the Wally Wood stuff from that Superduperman story [in the original Mad Comics] where [a parody of] Captain Marvel faces off against Superduper-man, and the shape of his body is so muscular. He has huge calves. That was coming from Wood. So I was thinking about that kinda body shape and how kinda furious he seemed in that story. There’s a certain quality to Captain Marvel I always thought was vaguely sinister, or at least puckish in that way of his pointed eyebrows like Peter Pan. And the squint in the eyes. And the grin, like, ‘What is he smiling about?’

“I was definitely making [him larger than Superman] because the thought about Captain Marvel I’ve always had is that as much as he’s never gonna be the legend in people’s minds as Superman is, there’s always somebody who’s bigger and tougher than you are. You know, there’s a reason why Bizarro’s not in our story, because it would’ve subverted the role of what Captain Marvel needed to be. Captain Marvel is like Superman’s opposite number. It’s another version of him that is just slightly stronger.”

You really CAN see it in the Kingdom Come story, where Captain Marvel is really this sort of sinister creature just due to that creepy ass smile of his in the story. This is a perfect example of taking inspiration from one source but transforming it into something else entirely. Well done by Alex Ross.

CHECK OUT A TV LEGENDS REVEALED!

In the latest TV Legends Revealed - Discover how Webster was created by literally just adding Emmanuel Lewis to an already established sitcom.

MORE LEGENDS STUFF!

OK, we're halfway through this special #800 installment!

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database for this week's covers! And thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don't even actually use on the CBR editions of this column, but I do use them when I collect them all on legendsrevealed.com!

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!

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 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!

This 800th CBLR continues with a part FOUR!