Which Two Heroes Could Phoenix Not Fight in X-Men?

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, now on-sale, every legend until that point will be about the X-Men!

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

COMIC LEGEND:

Marvel wouldn't allow PHoenix to fight against either Thor Silver Surfer.

STATUS:

I'm Going With True

After introducing the revamped version of Jean Grey in X-Men #101 as Phoenix...

Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum were eager to explore the nature of her new powers and the upper limits of her abilities. They were able to do so in X-Men #105, when the X-Men were attacked (in one of those classic misunderstandings that superhero comics are known all too well for) by the (literally) hotheaded former herald of Galactus, Firelord, and Phoenix has to step in to defend her teammates and take on a powerful character who still wields the Power Cosmic!

It's an impressive display of power by Phoenix (even more impressive is later in the issue where she uses her abilities to charge up an interstellar portal, which makes everyone stand around and think, "Whaaaaaa?"). However, initially the intent was to display her power in battle with more prominent powerful Marvel characters.

As the late Dave Cockrum revealed to Tom DeFalco in the amazing Comic Creators on X-Men, "When we first introduced Phoenix, we wanted her to fight Thor or the Silver Surfer, but [Whoever was in charge at the time - Cockrum incorrectly attributed the decision to Jim Shooter, who was not yet Marvel Editor-in-Chief, so it couldn't have been him - BC] wouldn’t allow it. He said no female is going to beat Thor or the Silver Surfer. We kind of sneaked around him by sending her up against Firelord, who had once fought Thor to a standstill. We established her power levels that way.”

It's really a rather elegant solution, isn't it?

Still, it would have been interesting to see Cockrum draw Phoenix versus either Thor or Silver Surfer, as well!

Thor, by the way, sure seemed to be where Cockrum and Claremont were going with Phoenix. They seemed to think of that basic power level for her, as their theory was that, hey, the Avengers managed to work Thor into their lineup without anyone saying, "He's too powerful!" so why not have the X-Men have Phoenix on their team?

Thanks to Tom DeFalco and the late, great Dave Cockrum 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?

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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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...