Welcome to the 947th installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, a column where we examine three comic book myths, rumors and legends and confirm or debunk them. In this second legend of an all-Wolverine installment of Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn why a planned Wolverine/ALF crossover never came about!
Launching in 1986, ALF was a sitcom that aired on NBC from the Fall of 1986 until the Spring of 1990, about an alien (named Gordon Shumway) who crash landed on Earth after his home planet of Melmac was destroyed and was taken in by an otherwise typical suburban family, the Tanners, who hid ALF in their home to prevent him being captured by the government and experimented on. The name, ALF, stands for “Alien Life Form.” ALF was a puppet that was voiced and operated by Paul Fusco, who was also the creator of the series (I recently did a bit examining how many sitcom cliches ALF hit during its run).
ALF was so popular that NBC then launched an ALF cartoon in 1987, showing Gordon’s adventures before he crash-landed on Earth…
THAT cartoon was so popular that he even had a SPINOFF cartoon (which obviously was extremely rare) called ALF Tales, where Gordon would star in stories based on famous fables and the like…
And, of course, ALF was so popular that he then even received his own Marvel comic book in 1988 (as per comic book tradition, there wasn’t a comic book until the fad had almost run out)…
Written by Michael Gallagher and drawn by Dave Manak and Marie Severin, the comic book was a surprise hit, running for 50 issues, thus lasting a couple of years longer than the TV show that it was based upon! Heck, it also outlasted Marvel’s children’s comic book line of books known as Star Comics.
Since it WAS at Marvel, you’d think it would have been well-primed for crossovers, but as it turned out, a planned ALF/Wolverine crossover comic was squelched at the last moment!
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When was ALF going to team-up with Wolverine?
In 1988, Marvel had a crossover throughout its Annuals called The Evolutionary War, about the High Evolutionary trying to evolve all of humanity. So therefore, when ALF received his first comic book annual that year, sure enough, it had the Evolutionary War trade dress on it!
In the fifth ALF story in the volume, the young boy in the family (ALF’s best friend), Brian, goes to camp. ALF mistakenly thinks that it is a bad place (he thinks it is basically Stalag 17) so he tries to rescue young Brian. On the way to the camp (he’s mailed himself with a Fed-Ex like company) he is contacted by none other than the High Evolutionary!!!
(Notice the joking reference about there being THREE Spider-Man Annuals. People really used to think it was excessive when there were three Spider-Man titles. Oh, how little they knew was coming).
The High Evolutionary wants information from ALF, but obviously, he is busy on his camp adventure, so he is able to get the Evolutionary to back off for a little bit and agree to contact him later on…
Alf is then contacted again by the High Evolutionary later in the annual, as the Evolutionary is interested in the history of ALF’s home planet, Melmac, but he is sad to learn that the planet has been destroyed (Evolutionary automatically assumes that it was Dark Phoenix who destroyed it)…
He finally leaves ALF with a warning not to try to mess with human evolution while he is here…
The story cleverly suggests that it could have just been a dream, driven by ALF reading all of those many annual tie-ins, but it also clearly COULD have happened.
That was the first time that ALF had a clear-cut crossover with the Marvel Universe, but it sure seemed like it worked well, and honestly, ALF worked well as a contrast with other people PERIOD. It’s why he was such a good character on the 1980s version of the Hollywood Squares, since he really played off people well (that was also the great irony of the TV series, which is that ALF worked best when he was interacting with other people, but the TV series’ plot was designed so that ALF specifically COULDN’T interact with other people), so there was a plan for ALF to cross over with one of Marvel’s most notable superheroes, Wolverine!
This was after Spider-Man had already teamed up with the Transformers AND with Top Dog, ANOTHER Star Comics character (an original character).
So Marvel was going to have ANOTHER ALF/Marvel crossover in the 1989 ALF Spring Special, but it never happened, and for an unusual reason!
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Why didn’t ALF cross over with Wolverine?
As it turned out, it was the producers of ALF, Lorimar who objected to the crossover, as explained in Amazing Heroes #160, so Marvel had to do a different concept for the Spring Special…
I don’t know the specifics of why Lorimar felt it didn’t work. Amusingly, Lorimar was totally cool with ALF doing X-Men PARODIES instead, and so ALF had a number of X-Men parodies over the course of the series…
Man, that would have been a cool crossover!
Check Out a Movie Legends Revealed
In the latest Movie Legends Revealed – Was Tony Danza Nearly Cast as Superman?
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.
