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Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed History

Posted by Brian Cronin, Thursday, June 23rd, 2005 1:37 AM

Posted In Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed


77 Responses to “Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed History”

  1. on 12 Jun 2006 at 1:38 pm  1.Steven Schwab said …

    Great column, Brian.

    I really enjoy getting the scoop on these comic book urban legends. While this question is not directly related to comics it is in the ballpark and would certainly be of interest to lots of readers, myself included.

    Is it true that the TV show Lost In Space was created by some CBS executives after they heard Gene Roddenbery’s pitch for Star Trek and decided to rip him off and create their own outer space series without him?

    I hope you can set the record straight on this.

    All the best,
    Steven

  2. on 12 Jun 2006 at 5:22 pm  2.Brian Cronin said …

    That’s what William Shatner claimed in his auto-biography, Steven!

    Thanks for the well wishes.

  3. on 21 Jun 2006 at 12:19 pm  3.Ted Watson said …

    Re: Lost in Space

    It’s not true, though. LIS was developed from a Gold Key comic book called “Space Family Robinson,” which even changed it’s title to incorporate the phrase “Lost in Space” when the TV show took off.

  4. on 24 Jun 2006 at 7:02 pm  4.jrvandore said …

    No, the story on the Space Family Robinson / Lost in Space connection is that there isn’t one. It’s one of those Man-Thing / Swamp Thing, or Brady Bunch / Yours, Mine, and Ours things; i.e., two people with the same idea around the same time. My understanding is that Gold Key’s SFR came first and that Gold Key/Western came to an understanding with the TV production company that allowed them to use the words Lost in Space later on in their run of the comic. I may have read this in the Gold Key issue of Comic Book Artist.

  5. on 25 Jun 2006 at 11:41 am  5.Ted Watson said …

    Space Family Robinson was on the stands almost exactly two years before Lost In Space was on the air. Compare Overstreet with any authoritative TV source. No “around the same time” here at all. Also, Yours, Mine and Ours was (or at least claimed to be) dramatizing a true story. Don’t shoot off your keyboard without doing your research.

  6. on 25 Jun 2006 at 2:35 pm  6.jrvandore said …

    Hey Ted, here are some links that don’t agree with your version of events, first for Space Family Robinson/Lost in Space:

    http://www.geocities.com/area51/shire/9680/aboutlis.html

    Seems I read this story in Alter Ego, not Comic Book Artist.

    Here is Sherwood Schwartz’ take on the Brady Bunch/Yours, Mine, Ours connection:

    http://www.bradyworld.com/cover/begin.htm

    I think these fairly well reflect what I originally said.

    Do you have anything to back up your versions other than a really snotty attitude?

  7. on 26 Jun 2006 at 12:48 am  7.Bob Dobalena said …

    Another suggestion for your column, if it hasn’t been covered already, how about the DC’s Barry Allen is alive…in the Marvel Universe!

    See Quaser #17 & 55.

  8. on 26 Jun 2006 at 1:49 pm  8.Ted Watson said …

    I clicked on the link for the SFR/LIS story, and if jrvandore thinks it agrees more with him than with me, he has problems. It says that the two projects were NOT approximately simultaneous, and that the only reason there was no copyright/trademark infringement lawsuit against Irwin Allen was the fact that the two companies were already working together on a comic version of his Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea series so they easily settled. (The statement that Allen was unaware of the SFR comic is the sort of thing that is invariably said when such a dispute ends with a no-harm-no-foul settlement, and consequently has no evidentiary credibility.) I admit that the TV show wasn’t a direct, licensed adaptation of the comic, but it damned sure wasn’t a Swamp Thing/Man-Thing situation, wherein DC and Marvel pretty much ignored each other’s similar characters, either. As for the YMO/BB deal, I neither said much nor care much–and have no reason to believe jrvandore’s description of it reflecting what HE said, as the other sure didn’t–so I didn’t go look. As far as having anything to back up my versions, I SAID check out Overstreet and any authoritative TV reference work to see the dates yourself! If I was the moderator here, that indefensible “anything other than a snotty attitude” remark would have gotten you banned.

    New business: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, DC published quality format reprints of some of their old comics of varying giant sizes, and made up some actually new collections in those old formats. Most of these–called faux replica editions by some–had a new inside-cover text piece that admitted they were newly assembled. and in fact generally gave the game away by including at least one item that had actually been reprinted in the era of that format, or in some cases had been ORIGINALLY published at that time. One neither made any such admission nor included any such tell-tale content, the Green Lantern giant. It in fact reeked of being a replica of a genuine old issue, but there never was one. Was it prepared and, at the last minute, scrapped, leaving the stats or whatever on a shelf at DC until the recent practice of replica and faux replica editions was begun? Any ideas, Brian–or anyone else for that matter?

  9. on 26 Jun 2006 at 6:47 pm  9.jrvandore said …

    Hey Ted, look for the word simultaneous in my original post. You won’t find it. I said “around the same time.” That was intentionally vague.

    I challenged your original assertion that the TV show Lost is Space was “developed” [your word] from the Gold Key comic book Space Family Robinson. Your only evidence for this is that the comic precedes the TV show. You need more than that to prove your assertion.

    I tend to believe that Irwin Allen wasn’t aware of the comic as the article asserted. Why would he be?

    If I were moderator I might kick you out for your rude “Don’t shoot off your keyboard without doing your research” comment. I showed you my research as politely as I could muster.

  10. on 27 Jun 2006 at 1:00 pm  10.Ted Watson said …

    1. “Around the same time” is NOT vague enough to allow for a difference of TWO YEARS.

    2. You showed NO research, just assertions to the contrary of mine, in your first denial of my comments. It’s right up above for all to see. When the two years difference invalidated the Man-Thing/Swamp Thing analogy, that alone meant you had NOT done sufficient research, hence my warning that you shouldn’t tell somebody he’s wrong without checking your facts. Your accusing me of having a “snotty attitude” and nothing else as support when I cited Overstreet and any good TV reference work, was itself a snotty attitude, indicating you don’t like being told you’re wrong, even when you are.

    3. The fact that “the comic precedes the TV show” was NOT my only evidence, as I also pointed out the FACT that the comic adopted the show’s title, requiring a legal arrangement of some sort.

    4. What I said about Allen’s awareness of the comic’s existence was that in the context of the legal settlement the statement of denial had no evidentiary value (admittedly, I said “credibility” before, but this is a more appropriate word), and it doesn’t.

    Look, jrvandore, the main fact here is that the source you cited in your defense and as contradicting me was more consistent with my statements than yours, and that’s pretty bad. Refusing to admit that fact when it’s pointed out is even worse.

  11. on 27 Jun 2006 at 2:44 pm  11.jrvandore said …

    I said I wouldn’t respond to any more to this topic, and I would understand if the moderator didn’t approve this post, but here goes…

    “1. “Around the same time” is NOT vague enough to allow for a difference of TWO YEARS.”

    As you define it only. And in any case it is less than 2 years, unless you think a television show creator has an idea and it becomes an aired television show the next day.

    “2. You showed NO research, just assertions to the contrary of mine, in your first denial of my comments. It’s right up above for all to see. When the two years difference invalidated the Man-Thing/Swamp Thing analogy, that alone meant you had NOT done sufficient research, hence my warning that you shouldn’t tell somebody he’s wrong without checking your facts. ”

    Just because I did not cite references in my first post does not mean I did not do it.

    And if the point of the Swamp Thing/Man-Thing analogy was that they were conceived at the same time, then I could understand your continual emphasis on this, but it was not. It was the dependence of one concept on the other, which you asserted. The evidence I provided supports that they were independently conceived, as Man-Thing and Swamp Thing were.

    “Your accusing me of having a “snotty attitude” and nothing else as support when I cited Overstreet and any good TV reference work, was itself a snotty attitude, indicating you don’t like being told you’re wrong, even when you are.”

    I have yet to be proven wrong, though. Where is your evidence that there is a direct causal connection between Space Family Robinson and Lost in Space? That one precedes the other is not evidence of a causal relationship.

    “4. What I said about Allen’s awareness of the comic’s existence was that in the context of the legal settlement the statement of denial had no evidentiary value (admittedly, I said “credibility” before, but this is a more appropriate word), and it doesn’t.”

    So Allen may have been aware of the comic book at the time of the agreement made between Space Family Robinson and Lost in Space. Again that does not in any way indicate that he was aware of the comic when he created the show.

    Your original statement: “LIS was developed from a Gold Key comic book called “Space Family Robinson,” which even changed it’s title to incorporate the phrase “Lost in Space” when the TV show took off.”

    You have yet to show any causal relationship between the comic and the creation of the TV show, which is what you originally asserted. I will admit I am wrong when you produce any evidence of this causal relationship.

  12. on 28 Jun 2006 at 12:17 pm  12.Ted Watson said …

    jrvandore:

    “…unless you think a television creator has an idea and it becomes an aired television show the next day.” The ONLY possible way you can feel that this is an appropriate thing to say is if you believe that it does not apply to comic book creation, that they CAN go from conception to the stores overnight, which is nothing less than insane. Literally. I can refute almost everything else you said just as well, but I have done that enough times to no effect that I won’t waste any more time with further efforts. I don’t know when you said you “wouldn’t respond to any more to [sic.] this topic,” but I can’t find it HERE. However, *I* now say that I am done with you.

  13. on 28 Jun 2006 at 1:57 pm  13.Ted Watson said …

    OOPS! MY BAD! Of course, Allen could not be influenced by the comic until it was on the market. My most humble apologies (You see, I am FULLY capable of admitting I’m wrong when I am). So let me refute something else.

    “Just because I did not cite references in my first post does not mean I did not do it.” But you WERE accusing me of not having support when in fact I DID cite Overstreet and any authoritative TV reference work to see how much earlier the comic was out than the TV show. Whether it was fully two years or somewhere between one and two does not change the fact that one was out well ahead of the other. And the source YOU linked as support of your no-more-story-there-than-Swamp Thing/Man-Thing claim stated specifically that there could easily have been a big lawsuit if not for the already-in-place relationship for Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, the TV debut of which post-dates SFR’s by about a year, so that comic probably came out later than that. The main point is that what you presented as support for your claim of total coincidence did not do so. And the facts of: 1)the TV show launching two full years after the comic did, 2)the former adopting the latter’s title, and 3)no publicized legal battle, justified drawing the conclusion that the second was a licensed if loose adaptation of the first. Furthermore, the first two directly contradict the “Things” analogy, where the two projects came out almost literally simultaneously and no lawsuit was possible. Deny it if you will, but THAT was what you were trying to claim. Maybe now that I’ve admitted that I logically deduced “adaptation”–and I certainly should have done so much earlier, apologies for that as well–we can bury the hatchet and move on. Neither of us was 100% accurate. Truce?

  14. on 28 Jun 2006 at 2:41 pm  14.jrvandore said …

    1)the TV show launching two full years after the comic did

    Does nothing to establish a causal relationship between the two

    2)the former adopting the latter’s title

    Means that Irwin Allen allowed the use of the title, but does nothing to establish that Irwin Allen “developed” Lost in Space from Space Family Robinson

    3)no publicized legal battle, justified drawing the conclusion that the second was a licensed if loose adaptation of the first

    Not true. There are legal battles every day that aren’t publicized. And if Lost in Space was a “licensed if loose adaptation” it would have to say it was licensed on the product.

    You can keep saying the point of my analogy was temporal when it was actually causal and in response to your causal argument. But your saying it doesn’t make it so.

    From the webpage I referenced: “It didn’t appear that Allen was at all aware of the comic. His focus appeared to be on emulating his peers in Hollywood, and his conception of Space Family Robinson seemed to be inspired more by a combination of Disney’s version of the Wyss novel, intertwined with imagery of the current US space program and further reinforced with visions from most of the classic space flight pictures of the 1950s.”

    Therefore I stand by what I said all along: Lost in Space was not “developed” from Space Family Robinson, as you asserted, and that the two properties were created spearately.

  15. on 29 Jun 2006 at 1:01 pm  15.Ted Watson said …

    What you said was:

    “The story on the Space Family Robinson/Lost in Space connection is that there isn’t one.” And, relevant to your linked “support,” “I think these [linked articles] fairly well reflect what I originally said.” A threatened lawsuit, a settlement/agreement/whatever-you-want-to-call-it IS a connection, and a statement maintaining in the wake of such a dispute that Irwin Allen had no knowledge of the comic IS a standard and in and of itself valueless act. The Swamp Thing/Man-Thing situation had no legal action the least bit possible, so is not analogous. To claim in retrospect that all you meant to compare was the concept of two separate entities developing very similar properties independently of each other is quite lame when the threat of legal action by one against the other that resulted in at least one concesion in the favor of the comic–i.e., that they could put the TV show’s name on their comic–in the “Space” case invalidates THAT comparison. The linked article did NOT “fairly well reflect” what you previously said. Now either admit you were at least partially wrong in what you initially said, or do what you earlier claimed to have said you were going to do, and SHUT UP!

  16. on 29 Jun 2006 at 2:12 pm  16.jrvandore said …

    There is no connection between Lost in Space and Space Family Robinson in their origin. That they at some point afterwards were “connected” does not negate that they originated without connection to each other. This was the point of my original post in response to your assertion that one was “developed” [your word] from the other.

    If you want to say that what you originally intended was that at some point after their creations Irwin Allen and Gold Key came to some sort of agreement and that you were saying this through “LIS was developed from a Gold Key comic book called “Space Family Robinson” you can, but then you made a very poor choice of words. But if that is what you mean, then I can agree. That is: At some point after their creations arrangement was likely made for them to co-exist and for the Space Family Robinson comic to include the words “Lost in Space” on the cover.

    You may also want to be more careful about the “threatened lawsuit” or “the threat of legal action by one against the other that resulted in at least one concesion ” you keep talking about. Dan Spiegle says that there COULD have been a lawsuit, not that there WAS one. We don’t even know if there was a written agreement establishing Gold Key’s authority to use the words “Lost in Space” on the cover of Space Family Robinson.

    You can keep saying that my original point of comparison wasn’t independent creation, but that doesn’t make it so.

    From my original post: “My understanding is that Gold Key’s SFR came first and that Gold Key/Western came to an understanding with the TV production company that allowed them to use the words Lost in Space later on in their run of the comic.”

    See, I acknowledge a temporal disparity between the two. It’s right there. I even mention, thus acknowledge, an “understanding” involving the use of the words “Lost in Space” between the two entities. Its in the first post.

    This can all be over if you say: “I never meant that Lost in Space was initially derived from Space Family Robinson, just that Gold Key probably came to some sort of agreement with Irwin Allen that allowed them to use the words Lost in Space later on.” If you make that statement, I will agree to a truce and shut up.

  17. on 30 Jun 2006 at 1:49 pm  17.Ted Watson said …

    “We don’t even know if there was a written agreement establishing Gold Key’s authority to use the words ‘Lost in Space’ on the cover of Space Family Robinson.”

    Maybe we don’t have any DIRECT documentation of it, but there is no way under US jurisprudence that it would have happened without one. Both sides’ legal departments would not have allowed otherwise.

    “This can be all be over if you say: ‘I never meant that Lost in Space was initially derived from Space Family Robinson….’”

    I would be lying if I said that, for that is exactly what I meant to say and DID say at the outset. Yes, I was wrong to do so. In my posting where I offered the truce, I attempted to apologize for not having said so earlier, and I now apologize for having definitely fallen short then of saying that I was wrong. The statement you suggest would be the self-revisionist B.S. you SEEM to have been doing, and I won’t be the hypocritical liar you APPEAR to be [Emphases intentional and meaningful; keep reading]. You said there was no connection between the comic and the program, with no further clarification or qualification of terms, and the name of the TV show appearing on the comic directly contradicts that–there WAS a connection, just not the one I claimed–and, as I say for the umpteenth time, it invalidates the Swamp Thing/Man-Thing analogy (your defending it by defining it very narrowly doesn’t fly). One more time, I was wrong to say that LIS was a licensed adaptation of SFR from the git-go–and I should have acknowledged that much earlier than I did–but that fact does not in any way shape or form exonerate you of the criticisms I levelled at you. If YOU want to admit to making lousy term choices and having not reasonably represented your intent in your early postings here, as opposed to willfully changing your story to evade admitting error [there’s the meaning of those earlier emphases, as promised], THEN I can agree to a truce.

  18. on 30 Jun 2006 at 3:16 pm  18.jrvandore said …

    First post: “My understanding is that Gold Key’s SFR came first and that Gold Key/Western came to an understanding with the TV production company that allowed them to use the words Lost in Space later on in their run of the comic.”

    That is an acknowledgment of a connection. Right there. In my first post.

    I’m not revising anything.

  19. on 01 Jul 2006 at 1:59 pm  19.Ted Watson said …

    I didn’t specify just WHERE you pulled that revising B.S., and THAT wasn’t it. There IS a lot of other stuff in my last posting that you didn’t deal with, presumably because you couldn’t come up with a defense against it at all. You are obviously psychologically disturbed to the point of being incapable of admitting you made any kind of mistake no matter what the clear facts are, and I am through with you. Goodbye.

  20. on 02 Jul 2006 at 9:36 am  20.jrvandore said …

    I’ll respond to any reasonable, concise, based in actual-words-of-mine problems you have. I won’t respond to insults.

    What elements of your last post would you have me respond to?

    You are right that there was likely a written agreement. And I said as much. However, I don’t like to assert things as fact that I don’t know based on some concrete evidence. But I have said this before. Therefore I didn’t respond to that point.

    You also seem stuck on my saying that there really wasn’t a connection between the two properties, even though within the same post I immediately went on to qualify what I meant by that. You said I didn’t qualify it, I quoted where I did. That point I addressed, since it seemed the most pertinent.

    Your other point in that post that I didn’t respond to was your accusation that I made poor term choices and did not reasonably represent my intent. I believe I did; you do not. No arguing will convince you, so I chose not to argue that.

    In any case, I woud guess we have made it clear precisely what connection there is between the two properties, so if you don’t address me again, I won’t respond again.

  21. on 02 Jul 2006 at 1:17 pm  21.Ted Watson said …

    “You are right that there was likely a written agreement. And I said as much.”

    Got you. That’s a damned lie I can’t let go by. You said no such thing in that post, or in any other, only once in a much earlier post that “the two companies came to an understanding,” but that does not admit to a high probability of it being in writing any more than the post wherein you specifically suggested it might not be in writing did. Let me make this clear: While we do both concede that there was some sort of agreement between Gold Key/Western and Allen Prods./Fox Studios about the comic using the TV name, your posting of 29 June categorically asserts the possibility that it was not in writing, and the quote directly above is the only statement by you that expressly (and that’s what “said as much” means, expressly stated) allows that it may have been, and it further specifically claims that you flatly said so previously, which you did not. I repeat, the second sentence in the above quote IS A LIE (And I hope I have closed all semantic technicalities and other loopholes).

    And since despite my “goodbye” I am posting again anyway, here’s another part of my post that I’d like you to respond to: How about my pointing out that you suggested “This can all be over if” I were to make a statement you laid out in quotes that would blatantly be a damned lie on my part if I were to say it? Deal with that accurately and reasonably, and I might well revise my opinion of you, but given your record here so far, your doing so would come as quite a shock.

    Then there’s my accusation that, as you phrased it, “[You] made poor term choices and did not reasonably represent [your] intent.” Here’s another quote from your most recent posting: “I don’t like to assert things as fact that I don’t know based on concrete evidence.” Include that in a paper for a high school English/composition class, and you’ll get some points knocked off your grade. Don’t misunderstand me, I myself get your point here, and I freely concede it’s a good one. Indeed, my first posting should have been longer and stated that, given the time difference and the TV title being subsequently added to the comic, I BELIEVE the one is an adaptation of the other–and of course I know better now. However, in actuality I didn’t really mean it, but was just nicely trying to give you an out to avoid categorically admitting that the Swamp Thing/Man-Thing comparison was inappropriate, as there was no possibility of legal action there due to the virtual simultaneity of those two projects (I maintain that, especially given the initial claim here that LIS was hurriedly thrown together to beat Star Trek onto the air [which I still do not concede–after all, the only indicated source is Trek actor William Shatner, and how would HE know? {serious question; if we were still discussing THAT, I’d be open to an answer to it, and for that matter citings of other sources}–but that’s a whole ‘nother debate NOW; maybe later], and what that says about the chronology, that the phrase “around the same time” is NOT vague enough to apply to the situation, and further deny that this is not “as [I] define it only” [your words]; indeed, I submit that you would be hard pressed to find somebody who, fully understanding the entire context and with no standing as a friend or something of yours, agrees with YOUR definition of it).

    Last chance.

    Please notice several concessions of mine here, and note my past apologies, which have seemingly been ignored by you, other than your statement in this most recent posting of yours that we do agree on just what the connection between SFR and LIS was and was not. Somebody reading THAT posting and nothing else would have no serious suspicion that I had been flat wrong in THE point of my initial posting here and, more to my point here, had both admitted to, and apologized for, it. You give no acknowledgement of my directly admitting and apologizing for my original error or my apology for taking so long to do so. That, by the way, was the result of my being so outraged by your, in some cases, less-than-accurate specific statements, and “snotty” tone (your word about me, I admit, but yours was, IMO, worse than mine), that I forgot to acknowledge the validity of your bottom-line point. For you to have at least acknowledged my apologies for that would have been BIG points in your favor. You certainly had those apologies coming, and they were not offered merely as diplomatic concessions.

    Anxiously awaiting the response.

  22. on 03 Jul 2006 at 5:23 pm  22.CutterMike said …

    …Soo-o-o-o…

    Am I the only one who is laughing his @$$ off at these two yutzim…?

  23. on 03 Jul 2006 at 8:42 pm  23.Andrew Perron said …

    Yeah, I don’t think this is such a burning issue that it requires 50 pages of carefully footnoted debate. Let it go, guys, or at least take it to private email.

  24. on 04 Jul 2006 at 6:38 pm  24.jrvandore said …

    Sorry, guys. I probably should have let it go from the start. I usual do with these sorts of online things. I thought in a column whose intent was to set the record straight on comics history, Ted’s original comment shouldn’t go unchallenged. But then I suppose I should have given up long ago.

  25. on 06 Jul 2006 at 12:58 pm  25.Ted Watson said …

    Yeah, J., give it up, but it’s because I left you with no way to defend your position!

  26. on 08 Jul 2006 at 7:25 am  26.jrvandore said …

    I would be happy to continue the discussion about Lost in Space/Space Family Robinson in private.

    I decided not to respond on the webpage to your last post because I was embarassed that I had let such a thing go on so long in public. I attempted to email you this reponse, but could not find a valid email address. So, once more into the breach…

    You are right. I did not say that there must be an agreement between the two companies, and again my reason for not saying is that I simply don’t know for a fact that there was one. I try not to assert things
    as facts for which I have no proof.

    I said that they came to an understanding in my original response because that is what the article I read said, and I referenced it, vaguely I will admit. But in my next post I gave you the correct reference.

    I personally think a damned lie is that there was no holocaust, not the difference between “there likely was a written agreement” (my actual position) and “there was an agreement” (what I mistakenly implied to be my position). You can feel triumphant in that catch. Bravo.

    My suggested statement of June 29 was what I thought your position was at the time. It was not a trap. At that point I thought we were just misunderstanding the real agreement we had.

    You can bash my ability to communicate all you want. How am I supposed to respond? “Ya-huh, I write good!!” If I don’t make myself clear, I attempt to clarify. To you that is changing my story. I cannot change the way you choose to read me. I graduated from a Big 10 university
    with a degree in English, cum laude. I am reasonably confident in my ability to communicate my intentions.

    That you continue to hold onto this Swamp Thing/Man-Thing comparison baffles me. You asserted derivation of Lost in Space from Space Family Robinson. I disputed derivation, plain and simple. You interpreted that I was making some point about the time element, I made myself
    clearer. That is all I can do.

    I don’t know anything about Star Trek and never mentioned Star Trek in any of my posts. Anything you have to say about Star Trek is irrelevant to our conversation. I just wanted to make sure I responded, so you didn’t feel I was ignoring a point you made because I was scared of
    it. It’s just not relevant.

    “Around the same time” is another element of the discussion you just can’t let go. It’s vague. Not vague enough for your taste and all the hypothetical people who aren’t friends of mine. Fine. Let it go. You aren’t going to convince me on this point and I am not going to
    convince you.

    I noticed your concessions. Whoop-de-ding-dong-doo. I also noticed continual insults directed my way which I also ignored. I called you snotty once. I probably shouldn’t have, even though I think that does fairly reflect the tone of your first post directed at me. I could have made a snotty remark about your use of [sic.], but I didn’t. (FYI: it’s [sic], no period. It’s not an abbreviation. It’s a Latin word meaning “thus.”) You also told me to SHUT UP, in all capital letters yet.
    Would you consider that polite discussion? You called my arguments self-revisionist B.S. and called me a seeming hypocritical liar. You called me obviously psychologically disturbed. I didn’t respond to any of
    this. This kind of rhetoric overwhelmed any desire I might have had to celebrate and acknowledge your concessions. Consider this your parade.

    You accuse me of having a snotty tone. I believe I was incredibly reserved in my responses to you, no matter how much bile you unloaded on me.

    My position from the beginning was that LIS was not derived from SFR; that they were independent creations; that at some point some sort of agreement was made to allow the comic to use the words Lost in Space. This is in my first post.

  27. on 08 Jul 2006 at 12:38 pm  27.Ted Watson said …

    “You are right. I did not say that there must be an agreement between the two companies.”

    But in your posting of 2 July 2006, you expressly claimed that you HAD DONE SO, yet here you try to make this sound like a DENIAL of having made some form of error.

    I never said YOU mentioned Star Trek. My words were, “…given the initial claim here that LIS was hurriedly thrown together to beat Star Trek onto the air….” Look up at the top of this entire thread and you will find that this was indeed the “initial” question.

    Damned thing has suddenly stopped letting me simply insert and deletes whatever is already there when I try to. Don’t know why that happens or why I can’t undo it. I’ll post this and start another to make the rest of my comments, since that’s the ONLY way I’ve found to make it stop. Happens more often, proportionately, in emails than on message boards.

  28. on 08 Jul 2006 at 1:01 pm  28.jrvandore said …

    TED! I am admitting error. Accept it and move on. I made an error. I shouldn’t have said what I said, since that does not accurately reflect my position. I was wrong to say “I said as much.”

    I only mentioned Star Trek because you have accused me of ignoring your points in the past.

  29. on 08 Jul 2006 at 1:09 pm  29.Ted Watson said …

    You dispute my usage of the phrase “damned lie” instead of dealing with the point I was making when I said it. Why? Because my point was irrefutable. I’ll repeat the whole thing, starting with your statement which inspired it.

    “This can be all over if you say, ‘I never meant to say Lost in Space was initially derived from Space Family Robinson….’”

    But this whole magilla between you and me began when I expressly made that very claim, and you posted a response that I was wrong (and, of course, I was, but you did a very poor job of it, which was what really got things going bad, but that’s irrelevant to the current point). You can’t possibly believe that my making your offered statement would be anything but a bald-faced lie on my part, unless you have serious mental problems. The way you have been repeatedly evading dealing with this certainly doesn’t earn you any respect. And you HAVE been doing just that, first by merely addressing a passing mention that I would by saying the above be committing self-revision as you had been (claiming one thing you hadn’t changed your position on constituted evidence that you had NEVER done so, which is absurd) and completely ignoring the actual point, then after you literally asked for it to be repeated (”What elements of your last post would you have me respond to?”) you indicate taking offense at my characterizing the offered statement as “a DAMNED lie,” (emphasis mine, because that was where your claimed problem was) and again ignore the actual point at hand. And you honestly feel YOU have been reasonable and I haven’t?

  30. on 08 Jul 2006 at 1:31 pm  30.jrvandore said …

    I’m going to assume you hadn’t been able to read my response before finishing yours.

    I didn’t take “offense” at your use of damned lie, I was only saying that it seemed an exaggeration. I’m not disputing it, just trying to say, come on, in the big picture…

    I thought “the damned lie” was my saying “I said as much.” I admitted above and admit again that was I was in error.

    Now, if I am reading you correctly “the damned lie” is the statement I proposed you assent to. I really, truly, sincerely thought that was your position at the time. I was wrong. (Again, did you really need to insult my mental state?)

    You keep accusing me of revision. I maintain I made the same essential points repeatedly. I will never agree that I have revised my position (independent creation, likely agreement).

    I will admit that I was not as explicit as I could have been at first, but I had no idea anyone would take such umbrage and no idea that anyone would read me in the way that you did.

    I really don’t know what response you want from me. What response would make you happy and not result in another personal attack on me?

  31. on 09 Jul 2006 at 12:59 pm  31.Ted Watson said …

    Again, I owe you and apology, as I DID use the term “damned lie” where you say, but also in describing the statement you offered as a way to end all this, and it would have been just that ON MY PART if I had indeed gone ahead and said it, as it was having me say I did not intend to say exactly what I had in fact intended to say, and I do not see how you could think THAT was a reasonable suggestion.

    Concerning self-revision, I just went back and reread the posts up to the point where I first accused you of that, and again, I apologize. You were only guilty of misrepresenting me so as to evade some of my points. You kept harping on my being wrong that LIS was from square one an adaptation of SFR (which of course we now agree it wasn’t), and avoiding my claim that the analogy to the Swamp Thing & Man-Thing situation was invalid–the fact that SFR added LIS to its title proves that there was a difference between the two incidents, as it constitutes direct evidence that an agreement between the earlier pair was reached and totally independent creation is NOT the official position, albeit declared so only retroactively. To insist repeatedly that the time difference was irrelevant to your comparison when it is a major part of what invalidates it was what I was complaining about, but you merely continued to deny–not refute, just deny–any relevancy of the time factor. I repeat, the legal arrangement between Gold Key and Irwin Allen Prods. when any claim between DC and Marvel–in either direction–would have gotten nowhere invalidates your comparison.

    In your posting of 8 July, 7:25 AM, you claim that my calling you obviously psychologically disturbed was a reason to ignore my “concessions.” First of all, they were APOLOGIES as well as concessions, and secondly, they were not in the posting with the “disturbed” comment, which was in fact partially inspired by your having ALREADY completely ignored them (making that no defense at all), as well as a number of other things, many of which I freely admit have been subsequently dealt with. It now does appear to have been an overestimation, but at the time it was intended seriously and literally, not merely as sarcasm/abuse/whatever, which is what you suggested.

    Back to the first parts for the bottom line: I do not see it the least bit reasonable or defensible to have offered that statement for me to have said as a resolution of our disagreement, or to have failed to see that I used the term “damned lie” in discussing two completely separate points, not just one of them.

  32. on 09 Jul 2006 at 1:36 pm  32.jrvandore said …

    Great. I think we are done.

    We agree that Lost in Space was not developed from Space Family Robinson, but that some sort of agreement was made later to allow their co-existence.

    The rest of it is all just extraneous. I will never convince you of what I meant with the Swamp Thing/Man-Thing analogy or the suggested agreement. Let’s just leave that difference of opinion and go on with our lives.

  33. on 10 Jul 2006 at 12:42 pm  33.Ted Watson said …

    The other stuff may well be extraneous to the original beef, but I still say it is very significant in and of itself, in what it says about you. However, it is obvious that you’re never going to truly deal with it, so, yeah, I guess there’s no point in going on with this. Bye.

  34. on 10 Jul 2006 at 12:45 pm  34.jrvandore said …

    And what does it say about me, Ted?

    How should I deal with it?

    Enlighten me.

  35. on 11 Jul 2006 at 12:46 pm  35.Ted Watson said …

    I almost didn’t check this board because I though we’d agreed to let it go, but as this is the CBUL’s archive page, it’s a plausible place to submit new ideas to Brian, so I did. Imagine my surprise. However, since you asked, be enlightened.

    Your harping on my being wrong about just what the situation between SFR and LIS was as if that fact exonerated you for anything you said and did, your refusals–some repeated–to deal with some of my points on their own terms, and your chopping off my hand when I held out an olive branch with the proviso that we both admit to being less than 100% accurate (something you subsequently and eventually admitted to on ONE point, but that only after being left with no room whatsoever to make a case otherwise, and even then you downplayed just what it was), tells me you have a serious problem with acknowledging errors on your part, at least more or less publicly.

    Can we let it go NOW?

  36. on 11 Jul 2006 at 1:47 pm  36.jrvandore said …

    You betcha.

  37. on 14 Jul 2006 at 7:26 am  37.J'onn J'onzz said …

    #58 has the distcription of #57 but links to #58.

  38. on 17 Aug 2006 at 9:18 am  38.Jim Morrow said …

    I don’t remember where I heard this (it was a long time ago), but somewhere along the line I heard a story about how Frank Miller had to change the third issue of “The Dark Knight Returns” because DC had a major conniption fit about the fate of Jason Todd.

    All throughout the story various characters keep commenting on “what happened to Jason,” but exactly what that means is never revealed. I read somewhere that Miller’s original plot for DKR#3 revealed that the Joker had captured Jason, sodomized him, killed him, butchered him, and mailed the pieces to Batman c/o Commissioner Gordon. Needless to say, DC said “no way in Hell.”

  39. on 19 Aug 2006 at 12:27 pm  39.Ted Watson said …

    For the second day in a row—I gave it a chance—the link for #63 doesn’t work, to put it mildly. See what you can do, please, Brian. Thanks.

  40. on 20 Aug 2006 at 11:28 am  40.Ted Watson said …

    Brian:

    Works now! Thank you!

  41. on 10 Sep 2006 at 11:38 am  41.Kid Kyoto said …

    Have you covered the story that Keith Giffen and Wally Wood conspired to make Power Girl’s breasts larger each issue until someone told them to stop?

    I’ve heard the story a lot of times, it rings true but can it be confirmed?

  42. on 10 Sep 2006 at 11:42 am  42.Brian Cronin said …

    Confirmation IS the key on that one. I’ve been unable to find any - I’d love it if I could, as it’s definitely a good one.

  43. on 10 Sep 2006 at 3:43 pm  43.Robert Pincombe said …

    Hi,

    Love this series! Inyour article on DC’s Red Fox being renamed, you mentioned that Alpha Flight’s Dream Queen was a lift from a British comic. I’ve heard that before. Can you tell me if it’s true and what charcter she’s taken from?

    Cheers,

    Robert

  44. on 10 Sep 2006 at 3:59 pm  44.Brian Cronin said …

    I’d love to, Robert!

  45. on 10 Sep 2006 at 5:39 pm  45.Robert Pincombe said …

    Wow!

    Thanks Brian!

    That’s a fast response! I just spent several hours pouring over your articles. Thanks for taking a unique approach to such fannish pursuits. You really make the seemingly trivial details add up to fun stories that capture moments in time. I look forward to finding out about Dreamqueen and anything else you can find.

    I already know the answer to this… but wasn’t there a story circulating that the comic Palookaville portrayed the life a of real New yorker cartoonist? And didn’t MIT steal the design of an Image character named Radix for a real-life super-soldier program?

    Feel free to contact me if you have any q’s!

    Cheers,

    Robert

  46. on 10 Sep 2006 at 7:08 pm  46.Brian Cronin said …

    But of course!

    And the Radix bit!! I totally forgot about that! That’s a really good one! I’m definitely going to use that!

  47. on 22 Sep 2006 at 9:47 am  47.Pat Nestor said …

    Hi Brian, I was wondering if you could find any info on the following I’ve heard more than once:

    The Giffen/DeMattis/Maguire mini-Series Formerly Known as The Justice League (and it’s follow up JLA:Classifed arc: I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Justice League) had tremendous sales figures and was slated to become an ongoing series, but Dan Didio’s dislike for the concept over-rode the financial success of the project and he killed it without explaination.

    Any idea of the truth (or lack thereof) of this?

  48. on 09 Oct 2006 at 7:15 pm  48.McBangle said …

    I’d like to know if there’s any truth to the rumor/suspicion that, before being cancelled by DC and moving to IDW, Peter David originally planned for Fallen Angel to really be Linda Danvers (of his Supergirl comic)?

  49. on 12 Oct 2006 at 12:54 pm  49.Robert McKinney said …

    Hi. Have you heard the story that in 1972 issues of the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series from the 1970’s were stolen by mobsters in order to sell them to fans later? I read that in The Superhero Book, but it didn’t really elaborate on it.

  50. on 28 Oct 2006 at 7:48 pm  50.Nemesis said …

    How about this one?

    Did Savage Dragon actually appear in a Spider-Man comic?

  51. on 05 Nov 2006 at 7:18 pm  51.loon said …

    hi brian

    great site! why is it buried so deeply inside cbr?

    i gather from various sources that the claremont-byrne split over x-men wasn’t pleasant.

    my question is were they taking pot shots at each other through the comics they were writing? claremont was still on x-men and byrne moved on to FF.

    byrne created an attractive android receptionist for the FF who could pass off as human.

    but in an issue of x-men when kitty pryde went over to the baxter building to seek the FF for help, she encountered a malfunctioning, obviously robotic receptionist.

    she also made some negative comments about the FF not being around to help.

    then there was the bit where reed richards spared galactus’ life which was commented on negatively in the x-men.

    which, i believe, led to the trial of reed richards where byrne defended reed’s actions.

    and byrne had a villain named ford fairmont ….

    these are vague recollections from way back. so i’m not sure how accurate they are. i just remembered feeling that these guys were sniping at each other.

    loon

  52. on 10 Nov 2006 at 8:39 am  52.Mark Kalet said …

    Here’s one:
    Who was the original X-Traitor in the 90’s X-books? I know it turned out to be Onlsaught/Prox f X, but I think they were originally going for someone else. They really wanted you to believe that it was Gambit but my money was always on Bishop himself, who, after being trapped in the past, had made it his mission to stop the traitor.

    Incidentally, the scene of Jean making the video recording about the traitor always reminded me of a Super Friends episode where aliens visit a dead Earth and see a final transmission from Superman explaining it was all their (the SFs) fault. Anyone remember which one that was?

  53. on 21 Dec 2006 at 3:22 pm  53.Anonymous said …

    I’d like to point out what I think is a little known but interesting silver age DC comic fact.
    But how do I do that without blowing the details in your ‘comments’ before you can post on the main site?

  54. on 21 Dec 2006 at 3:33 pm  54.Brian Cronin said …

    E-mail me! E-mail is always the coolest way to do things, for precisely the reason you mentioned. :)

    My e-mail addies are up on top, under the “Contact Us” section.

    But I can also tell you here - cronb01@aol.com

  55. on 01 Jan 2007 at 6:45 am  55.DiRT said …

    Why is Ted Watson such a dick?

  56. on 21 Jan 2007 at 10:47 am  56.Ununnilium said …

    You know the link to #85 doesn’t work, right? It only leads to #84.

  57. on 21 Jan 2007 at 11:07 am  57.Brian Cronin said …

    You know the link to #85 doesn’t work, right?

    That’s an interesting phrasing.

    Like I was just doing it to test you folks. ;)

  58. on 21 Jan 2007 at 11:43 am  58.Ununnilium said …

    Well obviously. Someone as omniscent as you could never have made a coding mistake! `-`

  59. on 21 Jan 2007 at 12:00 pm  59.Brian Cronin said …

    I like the way you think!

  60. on 01 Mar 2007 at 11:24 pm  60.Bryan Smith said …

    I have 2 questions.

    #1- The original Ghost Rider supporting character ‘The Friend’ was supposed to be Jesus Christ but marvel got cold feet and pulled the idea

    #2- The orginal ending of Civil War had Captain America dying

    thanks

  61. on 05 Mar 2007 at 11:44 pm  61.Robert Pincombe said …

    Hi Brian,

    I have a comic book urban legend that I haven’t been able to confirm as true yet. I’ll try to give you as much info as I can and see if maybe you can help me find out if it’s true!

    The comic book Reform School Girl was based a 1948 Diversey Digest pulp of the same name. It has the unforgettable image of a beautiful blonde in red, smoking and adjusting her garters. She’s the picture of innocence lost long , long ago. Even Wertham picked this book for some special attention in his book, Seduction of the Innocent (pg. 358) The caption reads. “Comic books are supposed to be like fairy tales.” Sounds more like an aging lament for those darn “kid’s today” not having the same taste.

    Anyway…

    The closest I could find to the full story was at

    http://sweetbooks.com/showcase2.htm

    The book is about a young girl named Daisy and her abusive father, Frank. The infamous cover girl is Marty Collins, who was supposedly a Canadian Figure Skate and model. Her father sued the publisher for fear readers would confuse the characters with himself and his daughter. Apparently, he won the case and the first page of text was removed from future editions.

    I have been looking for more about this case and Marty but cannot confirm the veracity of the story so far. I did find a picture of Marty in the Sat. Aug. 7th, 1948 issue of the Toronto Star newspaper! She is pictured in a bathing suit with Renee Kaye, having a snowball fight in the middle of summer. They were both competing in the Miss America pageant at the Chicago Railroad Fair. I assume she was actually competing to become Miss illinois since she isn’t listed as a 1948 competitor on the Miss America site. She must have lost to Viola Hutmacher.

    That, at least, places her in Chicago around the time the first edition of Reform School Girls was published and Diversy, the original publisher, was based in that very city. But that’s all I’ve uncovered so far.

    Any chance it’s all true?

    Robert Pincombe

  62. on 05 Mar 2007 at 11:48 pm  62.Robert Pincombe said …

    To follow-up…

    I suspect Marty Collins was born in Canada but she may have grown up in the staes and skated there!

    Cheers Again!

    Robert

  63. on 06 Mar 2007 at 1:15 am  63.Brian Cronin said …

    It’s definitely an interesting story, Robert. I’ll see what I can see, and if anyone else could help us with info, that’s be neat!

  64. on 09 Mar 2007 at 8:01 pm  64.Paulo Coxinha said …

    Eu ando achando a Emilia extremamente atraente. Eu não diria que ela é linda, mas é extremamente desejável. Uma personalidade boa, carinhosa, parecer gostar de mim…. se ela não fosse casada, eu casava com ela.

  65. on 28 Mar 2007 at 3:41 pm  65.Ted Watson said …

    BRIAN: I think you ought to get rid of #65 here!

  66. on 28 Mar 2007 at 3:55 pm  66.Carlos Tron said …

    This is not an urban legend, but I’ve always been curious about this: When Superman was relaunched in ‘86, I read that John Byrne’s proposal was the winner, meaning there were OTHER proposals for the man of steel’s revamp. any chance of finding out what these were an dwho wrote them? would be interesting to see what Superman could have been like had other idea been accepted. I hope you can help with this.
    Thanks, I enjoy your column alot. Keep up the good work.
    Carlos Tron

  67. on 28 Mar 2007 at 5:14 pm  67.Brian Cronin said …

    Good idea, Ted. :)

  68. on 29 Mar 2007 at 3:47 pm  68.Ted Watson said …

    Brian:

    Glad to have been of help. BTW, looking forward to CBULR #100; just know its going to be something really good.

  69. on 11 May 2007 at 1:35 am  69.pedar said …

    re this LIS dispute- I don’t mean to revive any kind of acrimony- but there is a an award winning (Writer’s Guild) book by Ed Shrifes abt the origins of the show- and possible plagiarism on the part of Irwin Allen from a Disney script in the early 60s- I haven’t read the book but it may cover the Space Family Robinson issue as well.
    Yes there’s no ’smoking gun’ that Allen stole the LIS idea from Gold Key-but I always found the resemblance of the costumes to be quite significant-.
    I should hasten to add that I mean no offense to any admirers (they are legion on the internet) of Allen- I’m just pointing out some facts-

  70. on 11 May 2007 at 3:10 am  70.Brian Cronin said …

    I’ll try to wrangle up a copy of that book, pedar!

  71. on 13 May 2007 at 1:37 pm  71.Ted Watson said …

    I still think that Gold Key putting “Lost In Space” on SFR’s covers is about as close to a smoking gun as we need to get. No doubt somebody at Western called up Fox and said something to the effect, “We have a problem here, and if you people aren’t willing to be reasonable about it, we’ll sue,” and the studio capitulated. Note also that once the TV title popped up on the comic, LIS went from being shipwrecked on one planet to flying from one to another, as SFR had apparently done from its outset (the latter according to info provided by jrvandore above, if via his linked–in article).

  72. on 17 May 2007 at 11:01 pm  72.Andy Vetromile said …

    Dear Mr. Cronin,

    Your site “The Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed history” at http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2005/06/23/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-history/ has been chosen as the Illuminated Site of the Week. This award recognizes those websites that, in one way or the other, illuminate the Big Picture . . . that show What Is Really Happening in our newly ordered world.

    We’ve featured you in today’s Daily Illuminator column, which you can reach by visiting http://www.sjgames.com/ill/. You’ll also be permanently listed in the Illuminated Site of the Week archives, at http://www.sjgames.com/ill/illsotw/.

    You are welcome to display the Illuminated Site of the Week award logo on your site. You (or your webmaster) can pick up the GIF file by using the following bit of code in your page, wherever you want the image to appear:

    for light-colored backgrounds:

    for dark-colored backgrounds:

    -Andy Vetromile, Sitekeeper,
    Illuminated Site of the Week

  73. on 18 May 2007 at 12:02 am  73.Brian Cronin said …

    Thanks, Andy!

  74. on 18 May 2007 at 12:57 pm  74.Ted Watson said …

    WOW! Congratulations, Brian!

  75. on 18 May 2007 at 2:11 pm  75.Brian Cronin said …

    Thank you, Ted.

  76. on 07 Jun 2007 at 10:29 am  76.Craig said …

    Potential Urban Legend:

    Is Joe Quesada the first Editor-in-Chief of Marvel comics to do work outside of the company (Painkiller Jane at Dynamite)? Has a DC EIC ever done so? Has an EIC ever worked for both of the Big Two at once?

  77. on 27 Jun 2007 at 2:46 pm  77.Angel Criado said …

    Hey, I’ve got 2 for you. Both Power Girl.
    1. The story is that Wally Wood started drawing PG with big “endowments” and continued to increase their size each month, to see if an editor would find out about it. This is why she’s always got to be endowed as she is now.
    2. Was PG based on Jayne Mansfield?

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