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

Click here for Part 1 of this week's legends. Click here for Part 2 of this week's legends.

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COMIC LEGEND:

Erik Larsen wasn't told for a few issues that the Wolverine that he was writing had been replaced with a Skrull.

STATUS:

False

A couple of months back, a reader wrote in to ask me specifically what issues featuring Wolverine were actually examples of "Skrullverine," the Skrull impostor of Wolverine who starred in a handful of X-Men stories before being dramatically killed off in Astonishing X-Men #3 by Apocalypse's new Horseman, Death (who turned out to be the REAL Wolverine, brainwashed into becoming Death).

In Uncanny X-Men #375, an autopsy reveals that "Wolverine" is a Skrull, hence "Skrullverine."

Anyhow, among the issues where "Skrullverine" starred in were a few issues of Wolverine's ongoing series, which was written by Erik Larsen at the time...

Larsen also wrote a guest appearance of Wolverine in Hulk #8...

In any event, reader Kevin G. wrote in in response to that article, "I seem to recall Erik Larsen saying he either didn't know or wasn't consulted about the fact that most of his run as writer of Wolverine would feature an impostor. I can't imagine that went over well. Imagine being given one of Marvel's most popular characters, then finding out you were writing a fake!"

That would be quite nuts!

So I asked Erik about it and he explained, "No, no--I knew.

I couldn't do the big reveal without knowing. I had the real Wolverine (as villain) show up in Hulk #8 because I wanted the real Wolverine to at least appear in that issue."

So there ya go!

Thanks for the suggestion, Kevin and thanks to Erik Larsen for the answer!


Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed - Who was going to be a Skrull in the original Guardians of the Galaxy film?


OK, that's it for this week!

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!

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batshark

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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...

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Was Superman a Spy?: And Other Comic Book Legends Revealed

See you all next week!