WANNA TRADE ME FOR THIS COMIC?

ITEM! Thanks to Marvel Editor Tom Breevort, not to mention my own legendary generosity, you can now trade me for the pictured comic, complete with a certifiably authentic autograph from Yours Truly! I kid you not, bright-eyed one! Haul your tremblin’ web-browser over to Titanic Tom’s blog at Marvel.com and see how you can trade comics with Tom, your Uncle Stanley, and a massive multitude other Merry Marvel Madmen and Mavens — all to benefit the Hero Initiative! You can improve your comic book collection and your cosmic karma all in one fell swoop. Who says this isn’t the Marvel Age of Aligning Personal Self Interest with the Greater Good? Get thee hence for all the details...

Excelsior!

Smiley

A BRIEF NON-HISTORY OF THE NO-PRIZE

ITEM! As a rigorous reader recently pointed out, even an eagle-eyed editor such as Yours Truly has committed many a typographic misfire to the printed page. I called Bruce Banner “Bob” in so many early ishes of Marvel Comics we eventually just up and officially changed the poor man’s name to Robert Bruce Banner! And of course, there was the time I had Doc Ock call Spider-Man “Super-Man.” (The Amazing Spider-Man #3, July 1963). Say what you will, that hyphen probably saved us a lawsuit!

Ever intelligent and insightful, our readers were always quick to point out our editorial mishaps and continuity gaffes. Thus was invented the legendary No-Prize! First announced in Fantastic Four #26 (May 1964) and awarded for the first time ever in FF #31 (Oct. 1964), these essentially empty envelopes eventually became so popular that we had to tighten the requirements for receiving one! Just finding one of my memory-impaired mistakes (which let’s face it, is like shooting dish in a barrel) was no longer enough to qualify. One had to demonstrate or perform “Meritorious Service to the Cause of Marveldom!” Many were called, but only the lucky few were served!

So there you have it. The proud No-Prize tradition continued off-and-on after your Uncle Stan went out West, and even continues today in digital form via Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort. Is it just me, or does Tom’s name sound just like it came straight from a Tales to Astonish monster story? “I Challenged Brevoort, the Editor from Outer Space!” But I digress. If you want to learn more, Honest Irv has embedded one a’ those YouToobs deals below with more info on No-Prizes than you can shake a Groot at! Enjoy!

Excelsior!

Smiley

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS, THERE’S NOTHING HERE AMISS, OR CONTINUITY YOU’LL DEFY, THE FUNDAMENTAL THINGS APPLY AS TIME GOES BY...

ITEM! What type of question do Merry Marvelites ask Yours Truly more than any other? The most-asked questions are usually just different flavors of this one: “If Reed Richards and Ben Grimm served during World War II (Fantastic Four #11, 1963), then how come they aren’t both in their 80s now?” Or, “If Peter Parker graduated high school in the Spring of 1965 (The Amazing Spider-Man #28), shouldn’t he be at least 60 years old today?”

There are two ways to answer these kind of questions about reconciling the passage of time with continuity in the Marvel Universe. One way is at least as old as that employed by one of my all-time favorite writers, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Burroughs’ writing career spanned a long enough period of time that he felt it necessary to create customized storytelling solutions to keep John Carter of Mars and Tarzan ever-young in stories that appeared over a period of decades. Hence, in the Marvel Universe, we have things like Captain America staying frozen in a state of suspended animation from WWII until (by my math) sometime during the Clinton administration. Or Nick Fury taking a slug of the “Infinity Formula” every few years to stave off the effects of aging and being interested in women 50 years his junior. As Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort suggests in his excellent Blah Blah Blog, you’ll mainly just give your readers, your editors, and yourself a giant Galactus-sized headache worrying too much about things like this.

Moi personally, I just don’t address the issue at all. I consider it part of the whole “suspension of disbelief” notion that goes hand-in-pen-holding-hand with writing popular fiction. Should you or any other Frantic Ones really lose any sleep over how the passage of time in a comic book affects a hero who can stick to walls and spin webs? You see my point here. Still, if you absolutely, positively, have-to-have an all-encompassing continuity-embracing answer to this burning issue, then I guess it’s your Uncle Stanley to the rescue! You see, way back in 1941 (Captain America #6, to be exact) I created a little superhero called Father Time. The self-same Father Time that went on in modern Marvel mainstream comics to become one of the Elders of the Universe (Captain America #383, 1991, natch). Just blame any and all inconsistencies on that guy. He’s probably been constantly manipulating and readjusting the timeline since the early 1940s just so you True Believers could enjoy the very best in action-packed storytelling. And let’s face it... Peter Parker swinging from rooftops in his Depends undergarments, or Reed and Ben escaping the nursing home by way of the Negative Zone, would be no one’s idea of an “action-packed” story. Not even over at the Distinguished Conglomerate! And now it’s time for the continuity cosmology lesson to endeth.

Excelsior!

Smiley