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| Copyright MARVEL COMICS |
In The SILVER SURFER #3, dated December 1968, the back-up strip was a TALES Of The WATCHER story called WHY WON'T THEY BELIEVE ME?, drawn by GENE COLAN and written by STAN LEE. This was a redrawn strip that first appeared in AMAZING ADULT FANTASY #7, dated December 1961 (which was actually the first renamed issue of AMAZING ADVENTURES), and originally illustrated by STEVE DITKO.
The 2nd version of the strip was reprinted in ASTONISHING TALES #31, dated August 1975, and in interesting error was made when the original 'next issue' caption box was omitted and the final panel 'drawn up' to fill the space the caption had inhabited. Take a look at the above picture and you can see that although the Martian has increased his size, it's clear that Professor CRATER is standing off to the side but is still slightly in the foreground. However, in the picture below, the prof looks as if he is standing just behind the alien, as a result of the 'touch-up' artist extending the Martian's leg in front of the prof's body.
Obviously, the prof's body should be in front of the Martian's leg, and I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why the reprint artist couldn't see this (or the editor, or the proofreader), as it now looks like the professor is ignoring the Martian and addressing the soldiers on the other side of the room. A trivial oversight to be sure, but one that should have been caught before it saw print.
It's still a very imaginative story with a great 'twist' ending though.
10 comments:
Y'know, I must've read that story a hundred times and never noticed that.
Perhaps I should get another hobby, PD? (My current one is spotting trivial mistakes.)
Yeah .You are dead right heh..the Prof looks like hes talking to the soldiers in the lower one whereas up top hes talking to the martian. Good spotting.
Ta, LH. Maybe the government should give me a grant to research mistakes in old comics? After all, they give research grants for all sorts of daft things these days.
What happened to Babe of the Day? I love that feature.
Just for you, TD, one will be posted shortly.
I guess if you were to apply for a grant enabling investigation for the benefit of the arts but in your case art I would expect them to grant you say around 50000 quid to get you started.
That'd do me nicely, TD - I'm not a greedy person. Where do I apply?
The really bad thing is that it would have been easier to draw it the other, proper, way - just a slightly off-vertical line to continue the edge of his coat.
You might have been slow to spot it, but you still got there first.
I don't remember now if I ever noticed back in 1975, but when I re-acquired the issue a few months back, the error jumped out at me right away. It's only because I couldn't think of anything else to post about that prompted me to bring it to readers' attention. However, it's quite a badly laid-out panel, making me wonder if Gene Colan drew it that way, or the soldiers were moved for its original printing to accommodate the caption box. We have to assume that the prof is on a lower level, with stairs leading up to a higher level where the soldiers are coming through the door. Help! I just can't help pondering such trivialities.
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