Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and ninety-eighth installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
As always, there will be three different posts for each legend this week!
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COMIC LEGEND:
Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane were going to be married for real in 1966, but Mort Weisinger backed out mid-story
STATUS:
True
As I've written in a few legends, Mort Weisinger was in a weird place in his career in 1966. He had lost two of his most dependable writers in Jerry Siegel (fired when DC found out that he was planning on trying to get the rights to Superman back again when they were up for copyright renewal in 1967) and Edmund Hamilton (who retired mid-story due to health problems) and the entire comic book industry was changing. Bat-mania was making Batman briefly the #1 character at DC Comics and Marvel Comics' success was making everyone in comics question themselves.
Weisinger's response was to dramatically change the comic books that he was editing. He had Superboy and Supergirl leave the Legion of Super-Heroes!
He had Perry White leave the Daily Planet!
However, Weisinger was feeling so unsteady in himself that he questioned all of his moves and so he had the Legion story re-written in the middle of the issue. The Perry White change occurred, but was reversed within a matter of months.
When I wrote about the Perry White one, Mark Waid wrote in to tell me that there was a third major change in that same time period. The other was Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #100, which was going to feature the ACTUAL wedding of Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane!
The issue opens with Jimmy thinking about how he can't get Lucy to date him. He tries again and this time, it all goes according to plan...
The rest of the issue involves him thinking about all of his former loves. Then they are actually married, but something strange happens...
Every time Lucy and Jimmy kiss, something mutates Superman! We can only imagine what would have happened if they had consummated the marriage (hey, don't look at me, Mort Weisinger specifically talked about consummating marriages in the letter columns back in the day!)
Eventually, they learn that an imp from Mr. Mxyzptlk's dimension had fallen in love with Jimmy and so she was punishing Superman for Jimmy's marriage. So in the end, they decide to annul the marriage...
Originally, though, the issue was going to end with the wedding taking place, but once again, Weisinger changed his mind and that had the issue end the way that it did.
Crazy stuff.
Thanks for the suggestion, Mark!
Check out some wedding-themed legends from Legends Revealed:
Did an Episode of “How I Met Your Mother” Contain a REAL Wedding Proposal?
Was Robert Downey Jr. Written Out of His Own Character’s Wedding Episode on Ally McBeal?
Did Billy Idol Write “White Wedding” as a Put-Down Towards His Sister?
Check back tomorrow for part 2 of this week's legends!
And remember, if you have a legend that you're curious about, drop me a line at either brianc@cbr.com or cronb01@aol.com!