Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the six hundred and fifty-eighth week where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
Click here for Part 1 of this week’s legends.
Let’s begin!
COMIC LEGEND:
The Owl that was replaced by Apocalypse in the pages of X-Factor was going to be a brand-new version of the character.
STATUS:
False
Reader Brian H. wrote in about a question regarding which Owl, exactly, was going to be part of Bob Layton and Jackson Guice’s X-Factor run.
Everything started in X-Factor #2, when a new villain named Tower showed up and kidnapped the Beast…
In the next issue, the Beast was, in effect, double mutated…
And it resulted in him regaining his human appearance…
In the following issue, we met Frenzy, who was in a team called the Alliance of Evil with Tower, and they both served a mysterious master…
In X-Factor #5, the final page revealed their master to be a new villain named Apocalypse…
Who made his full debut the next issue (where Louise Simonson replaced Bob Layton as writer on the book) and, of course, became a famous villain.
Anyhow, as I revealed in a Comic Book Legends Revealed way back in the day (Holy crap, over TWELVE YEARS AGO), the original leader of the Alliance of Evil was going to be the Owl.
However, in the years since, there has been some confusion over whether it was literally going to be the Owl, as in the old Daredevil villain…
Or a NEW character by the same name.
I asked Bob Layton, and he explained the confusion people have had over this Owl being different:
In my story, set up to be sort of a Gothic thriller, he had been double-mutated, much like how Hank McCoy became the blue Beast. However, the second mutation turns him into a cannibalistic Nosferatu-like creature that feeds only on mutant flesh
So there ya go, that’s how the double-mutation plot was going to tie in.
Thanks to Bob for the answer and thanks to Brian H. for suggesting this one!
Check out my latest TV Legends Revealed – Did George Lucas really say that if he had a sledgehammer, he would destroy every copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special out there?
Part 3 will be up Sunday night! Feel free to write in with suggestions for future legends to either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com!