Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and seventy-fifth week where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
NOTE: I noticed that the the CSBG Twitter page was nearing 10,000 followers. If we hit 10,050 followers on the the CSBG Twitter page then I'll do a BONUS edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed during the week that we hit 10,050. So three more legends! Sounds like a great deal, right?
In honor of the release of my new book, 100 Things X-Men Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die, on April 15th, every legend until that point will be about the X-Men!
Click here for Part 1 of this week's legends.
COMIC LEGEND:
Chris Claremont was setting up a love triangle between Scott Summers, Colleen Wing and Jean Grey
STATUS:
False Enough for a False
As you may or may not know, the first time that Chris Claremont and John Byrne worked together regularly was in the pages of Iron Fist, where Colleen Wing was a regular supporting cast member. Like this storyline where she was brainwashed into fighting against her good friend, Iron Fist...
So eventually Iron Fist was merged with Power Man to form Power Man and Iron Fist. Claremont believed that he was going to be the writer of that combined series, as seen from this bit from Power Man and Iron Fist #50...
However, Claremont was then pushed off of the book (I love the idea of someone telling Chris Claremont that he couldn't write Power Man and Iron Fist. Can you imagine that five or so years later?) and Ed Hannigan was given the assignment.
So Claremont says to Hannigan, "Do you have plans for Colleen Wing or Misty Knight?" and Hannigan says, "Nope." So Claremont asked if he could bring them over to X-Men and Hannigan said, "Sure."
So Claremont brought them to X-Men, where Cyclops was currently believing that Jean Grey was dead. So Colleen makes the moves on him HARD...
But then it was dropped suddenly.
Why was this?
Well, while Ed Hannigan didn't care about Colleen and Misty...
He was then replaced by Jo Duffy...
And she wanted to use them in the book, which makes sense, as they were pretty clearly supporting cast members of that book...
Claremont obliged, but that meant dropping the Colleen/Cyclops plot.
However, while many folks figured that that meant that Claremont missed out on a love triangle, that did not appear to be his original intent.
He explained to Peter Sanderson in the X-Men Companion,
“Someone like Scott would internalize the grief, would shut it away, would ignore it, and by ignoring it would ignore his own feelings toward Jean. What I wanted to do with the Colleen Wing relationship was to show him growing up, show him getting in touch with his emotions, his feelings, his needs, his fears, his loves, his hates, his griefs, his joys, so that when he finally found Jean again they could experience their love in the fullest measure."
As Claremont was also quick to point out to The Comics Journal, "The intention was always just to broaden his horizons. They were never going to fall in love. Everyone says, 'How dare Scott throw over Jean for Colleen,' but if you read those issues, the only person who refers to a possibility of a relationship is Colleen. Scott never picks up on it. He was going to, but events forestalled it. In retrospect, I’m glad they did. It works out better this way.”
So yeah, this wasn't a forestalled love triangle, just sort of a different take on Cyclops' mental state for the time.
Thanks to Peter Sanderson and Chris Claremont for the information!
Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed - Which classic early episode of The Simpsons was nearly turned into a Simpsons movie, 25 years before the actual Simpsons Movie came out?
Check back late tonight for Part 3 of this week's legends! Feel free to write in with suggestions for future legends to either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com!