Table of Contents
A PLUME BOOK
Was Superman a SPY?
BRIAN CRONIN is the writer and producer of the Comics Should Be Good blog at Comic Book Resources (www.cbr.cc). He has been writing the online column Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed since June 2005. He has a JD from Fordham Law School and is a practicing attorney in the state of New York. He lives in New York, where he enjoys writing about himself in the third person. For more legends about the world of sports and pop culture, check out www.legendsrevealed.com.
For my grandfather, Bernard Flynn
Knowledge is the food of the soul.
PLATO
Acknowledgments
Love and thanks to Meredith, my parents, and my siblings for their love and support.
Thanks to my agent, Rick Broadhead; my editor, John Mihaly; my editor at Plume, Branda C. Maholtz; Rob Williams; Joanne Lue; Celly Ryan; the Grand Comic Book Database for supplying cover images (www.comics.org); Jonah Weiland and Comic Book Resources; and the rest of my gang at Comics Should Be Good! (the Gregs, Brad, Bill, Mark, Pol, and Danielle).
Thanks specifically to the following people who helped suggest or provide information for the stories in this book: John McDonagh (easily the number one reader for suggesting legends), Mark Evanier, Roy Thomas, Michael Eury, J. M. DeMatteis (the most generous creator I know), Paul Newell, Todd VerBeek, Jason, Marc, Linda Burns, Greg Theakston, Reilly Brown, Jim MacQuarrie, Daniel Best, TVs Grady, Hoosier X, Michael Bailey, Tom DeFalco, RAB, Michael Grabois, Todd Gilchrist, Randall Bytwerk, Jeremy Goldstone, Glen Cadigan, Robert Pincombe, LtMarvel, Mark Arnold, Tony Isabella, Roger Stern, Jim Shooter, Michael E, Mark Seddon, Danil van Eijmeren, Joe Simon, Randy Schueller, David Gerstein, Scott Rowland, Jakob, Matthew Johnson, Jim, and Edward Summer.
Finally, thanks to all my English teachers and professors for getting me this far: Eleanor Spillett, Kevin Kavanah, Lizabeth Cooke, Ann Slocum, Randall Craig, Teresa Ebert, Jonathan Schiff, Donald Faulkner, Mike Hill, Carolyn Yalkut, and Judith Fetterley.
Introduction
A musingly enough, it all began with falling for an urban legend myself. A few years ago, I wrote on my comic blog, Comics Should Be Good! about comic writer-artist Walter Simonsons run on the comic book title Fantastic Four in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I made a comment regarding Simonsons distaste for the ways some writers had handled the Fantastic Fours most famous villain, Doctor Doom, over the years. Simonson had written a story that could explain away many of these appearances as having been made by impostors. I had read more than once that Simonson privately kept a list of the characters appearances that he specifically felt should be ignored. Well, sometime after my comments were published, I received an e-mail fromwho else?Walter Simonson!
Simonson kindly pointed out that he had never made any such list but that he repeatedly had heard people refer to the supposed list! Simonson specifically noted how bemused he was at the fact that he himself was the subject of an urban legend. While chagrined over my error, it occurred to me that there were plenty of comic-book-related stories out there that have been passed around for years without being checked out, so I decided it would be a great idea to either confirm or debunk them. In June 2005 I began a weekly column on the topic.
Three years and over 500 urban legends later, here we are with a collection of 130 comic book stories65 of my favorite legends from the column plus 65 brand-new legends! Some of them are false and some of them are true, but all of them demonstrate the fascinating history of comic books.
In an effort to make it easier to find the legend youre looking for, Ive split them into three parts: one for legends related to DC Comics, one for those related to Marvel Comics, and one for legends related to all the other great comic book companies out there.
I had a lot of fun compiling these stories, and I hope you have a lot of fun reading them!
Part One
DC COMICS
DC Comics began in 1937 as a deal between pulp magazine publisher Harry Donenfeld and comic book publisher Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, who needed Donenfelds financing to publish his latest project, Detective Comics #1 (hence the DC part of DC Comics). Donenfeld owned DC Comics and had a partnership with Wheeler-Nicholsons original comic book company, National Allied Publications, as well as with Max Gainess All-American Publications. (Another early comic innovator, Gaines may have been the very first person to actually think of charging for comic booksthe earliest comic books were designed as promotional giveaways.)
All three companies published together under a loose partnership, calling themselves National Comics. Donenfeld soon bought out Wheeler-Nicholson, and in 1944 he bought out All-American Publications as well. By this time, while officially going by the name National Publications, the company was known colloquially as DC Comics, and DC is what appeared on the logos of the books. The company would not take the name officially, though, until the late 1970s.
Donenfeld and his former accountant Jack Liebowitz ran the company (though Donenfelds son, Irwin Donenfeld, eventually took over for his father) until, in 1967, it was purchased by Kinney National Services, which quickly changed its name to Warner Bros. after it acquired the famed Warner Bros. movie studio as well. DC Comics is currently a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which has turned a number of its comic book properties into films and television series.
1
SUPERMAN
Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, two teenagers from Cleveland, had pitched their idea for a comic strip called Superman to a number of different comic strip distributors, but to no avail. Their story about an alien who came to Earth from a dying world and (while secretly pretending to be a meek newspaper reporter) became a hero thanks to the extraordinary powers he possessed did not seem to have a place on the market at the time. However, in 1938 National Publications was starting a new, ongoing comic book anthology called Action Comics, and they were desperate for features. An editor-acquaintance recalls rejecting the comic strip pitch and recommending Superman to National. After some changes were made (Siegel and Shuster had to turn their comic strip samples into a thirteen-page comic book story, which required some cutting and pasting), Superman was ready to be the lead feature in Action Comics #1, and the comic book industry was never the same again.
Superman was soon one of the highest-selling publications in the whole country, selling over a million copies a month, and in no time every comic book company was rushing to put out its own superhero comic book. Siegel and Shuster went from being a pair of unknown teens trying to break into the comics industry to being two of the most famous creators in the United States. Eventually, though, they began to resent the fact that they had sold the rights to their character for only $130, while
