When Marvel Mistakenly Made a Real Insurance Company the Villain of a Comic
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and seventieth installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false.
As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends.
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COMIC LEGEND:
Marvel got into a little trouble when they used a real life insurance company as the villains of an issue of Captain America.
STATUS:
I'm Going With True
In Captain America #169 (by Steve Englehart, Mike Friedrich, Sal Buscema and Frank McLaughlin), Captain America ran afoul of an old enemy of his, the Tumbler...
Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start nowLater, he saw the Tumbler outside of his costume and this led to a short fight...
and suddenly, the Tumbler was killed!
This was part of the Secret Empire's plot to make the public turn on Captain America. He obviously eventually cleared his name.
Years later, in Captain America #291 (a fill-in issue by Bill Mantlo, Herb Trimpe and Jack Abel), Captain America runs into a NEW Tumbler, who was just breaking into an insurance building. They briefly fight and the Tumbler escapes, but leaves behind whatever he stole...
Cap discovers that they are documents from the Guardian Life Insurance company...
It turned out that the original Tumbler had a significant life insurance policy with Guardian Life, but they wouldn't honor it...
Cap agreed to help the Tumbler bring down the corrupt company...
They break into the headquarters of Guardian Life and discover that they've been doing this scam for a while. Take out big life insurance policies on supervillains and then, if the villains die, deny the coverage, assuming that the families of the villains won't go to the cops since, you know, their relatives are supervillains...
Cap and the Tumbler get the proof, escape and call the cops on Guardian Life...
The problem, though, is that Guardian Life is an actual insurance company...
My pal Ben Herman's father worked there in the early 1980s when the story came out and he explained to Ben that the company found out about the usage and were not pleased. Nothing major, just a basic, "Hey, don't do that again, Marvel" and Marvel agreed.
Thanks to Ben (and his father) for the information!
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In the latest Movie Legends Revealed - Did a fan poem help inspire the plot for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock?_______________________________________________________________________________
Feel free to suggest ideas for future legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com!
Source: www.cbr.com