How an Unused Story Starring an Irish Marvel Hero Ended Up in a Doctor Strange Issue

Welcome to the 922nd installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. In the third legend of this installment, learn how an unused comic book story starring Marvel’s Irish superhero, Shamrock, was cannibalized into an issue of Doctor Strange.

Way back in the early days of Comic Book Legends Revealed (back when it was still called Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed), one of the legends I liked the best was the story of how Marvel put together a Special Treasury Edition for the 1980 Winter Olympics. Written by Mark Gruenwald, Steven Grant, Bill Mantlo (with art by Herb Trimpe and Bruce Patterson), the story depicted a battle between the Mole Man and Kala over the control of the de-aging waters under Mole Man’s control. Kala kidnapped a number of Olympic Athletes and gave them weapons based on their skills, and forced them to battle for her against Mole Man’s super-powered servants.

The story then teased that it would be followed by a Treasury Edition for the 1980 SUMMER Olympics, with the plan to having the heroes of the world compete against each other. As part of this concept, Steven Grant, Mark Gruenwald and Bill Mantlo (and artists John Romita Jr. and Pablo Marcos) had to invent a few new international superheroes, since, you know, Marvel didn’t really have many at all. However, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States boycotted the Summer Olympics, so this Treasury Edition wasn’t released. Instead, Marvel then cannibalized it, and ran it a couple of years later as The Contest of Champions (one of the most awesome pieces of editing of the original story involved Ms. Marvel, who had lost her powers, being replaced in the story by…She-Hulk?!)

In any event, one of the new international heroes introduced was Shamrock, an Irish superhero. Here she is with a few of the other new international heroes, including the Peregine, from France…

Amusingly, as she debuted in a story that was cannibalized into a different story, Shamrock would later star in ANOTHER comic book story that was cannibalized into a different comic book story, one where she didn’t end up appearing in at all!

What was this untold Shamrock Marvel story?

When Terry Kavanagh was given the job of launching a new bi-weekly comic book anthology for Marvel, Marvel Comics Presents, he was given a Wolverine lead feature by Chris Claremont and John Buscema to work with (which would lead into a Wolverine ongoing series by those same creators), but the series was a bit open beyond the idea that the main feature of the book would always be an X-Men character (that eventually became “always be Wolverine” when the other X-Men lead characters didn’t really work, sales-wise. Colossus and Havok sadly weren’t carrying a book by themselves, ya know?), and Kavanagh took a really cool approach where he reunited classic Marvel comic book creators with their classic characters who weren’t quite popular enough at the time to merit their own series. The original series launched with Doug Moench returning to Shang-Chi and Steve Gerber returning to Man-Thing…

After the initial Shang-Chi series ended, Kavanagh then brought in Don McGregor to return to the Black Panther in Marvel Comics Presents #13 (Steve Ditko also did a Machine Man story, but admittedly, that run was a bit less of a “classic” Marvel run, ya know?). That was a really cool approach by Kavanagh, and another thing he did that was cool was to try to do new stories featuring some of the more obscure Marvel superheroes, including the Contest of Champions heroes.

Shamrock received a spotlight story in Marvel Comics Presents #24 by Scott Lobdell, Dennis Jensen, and Dan Adkins…

Kavanagh really was doing a lot of cool stuff with that book, before he was kind of forced into doing more and more stories starring major Marvel heroes. Around that point in time, Kavanagh bought a script by Jean-Marc Lofficier for a four-part story teaming up two of the Contest of Champions characters, Shamrock and Peregine, in which they would become a couple.

After being purchased, though, the story was dropped due to the aforementioned pressure on Kavanagh to STOP doing less-famous heroes. Lofficier shared the entire story at the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

How was the unused Shamrock story adapted into an issue of Doctor Strange?

A few years later, Lofficier and his wife, Randy, had been doing some back-up stories and stuff for Roy Thomas’ Doctor Strange: Sorcerer Supreme comic book series.

Well, in Doctor Strange #37 (which was the first issue on the series by Geof Isherwood, who had a nice, long run on the book), the comic book tied Doctor Strange in with the history of Marvel’s take on the Frankenstein story…

As it turns out, Lofficier’s Shamrock/Peregine story involved the history of Marvel’s various Von Frankenstein characters (a number of different Marvel writers had revisited the iconic Mary Shelley story over the years, and thus introduced their own versions of Von Frankenstein), and so Lofficier just pretty much snipped that part of the story out, and it became a flashback in the Doctor Strange issue…

Isn’t that awesome? How resourceful!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone!

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That’s it for Comic Book Legends Revealed #922! Check back soon for the next installment! Be sure to check out my Entertainment Legends Revealed for more urban legends about the world of film and TV. Plus, Pop Culture References also has some brand-new Entertainment and Sports Legends Revealeds!

Feel free to send suggestions for future comic legends to me at either cronb01@aol.com or brianc@cbr.com.