Thursday 9 April 2015

HARRY PALMER? NO - PETER PALMER...


Image copyright MARVEL COMICS

STAN LEE's poor memory is well-known.  One of the reasons he gave his characters alliterative names was to make them easier to remember, but even then, he sometimes slipped up.  We all know about BOB BANNER instead of BRUCE (FF #25), and we also probably all know about PETER PALMER instead of PARKER (ASM #1), but I thought it would be interesting to show the latter error from a British printing in the POW! Annual for 1968.  Just look at that awful colouring - a white THING, for crying out loud.

Strangely, the name had been corrected to Parker when the tale was printed earlier in Pow! #2 in January 1967, so why it got overlooked in the Annual (released August/September '67) is a bit of a mystery.  Well, no it isn't - it's because of poor proof-reading on the part of the editor, but I was trying not to say so.  (Failed.)

Sometimes I think I would've preferred Peter's surname being Palmer, so it's nice to see 'what might have been', captured in the pages of a British publication from the 1960s.  Unless one happened to own ASM #1 (which I do), this little slice of history would probably have been unknown to U.K. readers until many years after-the-fact.  Anyway, you may have heard of this slip-up before, but now you can actually see it for yourself.

7 comments:

TC said...

IIRC, an Avengers story (it may have been issue #5, where they fought the Lava Men) also referred to the Hulk's alter ego as "Bob Banner." Later, Stan came up with the explanation that the scientist's full name was Robert Bruce Banner.

ASM #1, where "Peter Palmer" tries to join the Fantastic Four "to make some money," makes no sense. He assumes, without any reason, that membership in the FF is a paying job. The villain makes the same assumption, and also assumes that Spider-Man needs money and will therefore try to join the FF. The bad guy doesn't know Spider-Man's secret identity; for all he knows, Spidey could be Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne, or the president of the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Anonymous said...

Kid, I didn't know you owned #1 of Amazing Spider-Man !! Do you remember that in the '80s the boss of British Rail was called Peter Parker ? Something to make us Marvel fans chuckle unknown to the public-at-large.

Kid said...

Indeed, TC, it's nonsense, isn't it. I covered that very thing in my post entitled: Oh No! Spare Us From Another Of Those 'Loopy Lapses In Logic Dept.' Posts... back in 2012.

******

Got quite a few Silver Age first issues and appearances, CJ - Thor, X-Men, Iron Man, Silver Surfer, Avengers, Daredevil, etc. I do indeed remember BR's PP - I wonder if there are any real life counterparts to Don Blake, Matt Murdoch, Reed Richards, or any other superhero characters. Has there ever been a real Clark Kent?

John Pitt said...

I didn't he was Bob in Avengers #5, as well, TC! ( the first ish I discovered was#11 ).
I shall now search for scans!

John Pitt said...

I remember that, now you've mentioned it. I would say something appropriate whenever his name was mentioned on the news, but the missus didn't 'get it'! :-)

John Pitt said...

Never seen this before, Kid. The only Power annual I had was the first Fantastic.
I was once talking to a lad in a comic shop who confessed that he had previously taken a bin bag of comics, including TAS-M #1 to the tip! Whattamistakatomaka!!

Kid said...

Bet he was kicking himself when he found out what they were worth, JP.



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