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Look at the above panel from X-MEN #11, in which SCOTT SUMMERS (alias CYCLOPS) gets his ruby quartz glasses pulled off and his power beam seems to be beyond his control - even with his eyes tightly shut. Yet a few pages later (panel below), there he is apparently able to control his beam to a hairsbreadth without his glasses or visor on.
And as we can see in issue #14 (below), he can actually keep his beam under control with his eyes closed (and not that tightly either). Hey, MARVEL - pick one and stick with it, willya?!
WERNER ROTH (under the pen name of JAY GAVIN) was pencilling over JACK KIRBY layouts in the above tier, but who was responsible for Cyclops extra-long nose - was it Roth or Kirby? Whad'ya think, frantic ones?
If I was trying to win a No-Prize for best explanation of a Marvel goofup, I would write, "Cyclops has to really concentrate in advance before either taking off his atomic specs or opening his eyes, and if he has time to do so, he can control his eye-beams with minute precision."
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, he loses control when the cops surprise him by whipping off his shades, though I pointed out somewhere on my blog that it was singularly dopey for a private citizen to waltz up to two New York cops and try to wangle info from them. THAT bit of goofiness seems to admit of no explanation I can think of.
That's a fair explanation, GP, and not without merit. Also, how about he can control his beam better when it's weaker, after expending it earlier? Wait - I've got it. Jack Kirby was just making it up as he went along (after talking things over with Stan of course) and often didn't think things through.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right - walking up to two cops when you're wearing dodgy-looking shades isn't the smartest thing to do.
I should add that it would've been more in character for Scott Summers-- supposedly the "cool head" of the X=Men-- to discreetly listen to the cops in order to find out more about the supposed mutant anomaly, but it would not have been particularly ENTERTAINING. Jack Kirby was all about getting the most excitement out of every situation, because excitement was what young readers would pay for.
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, from FF #1 on, how many times did the FF-members create all sorts of chaos responding to their signal, purely as a means of displaying the characters' powers for the delectation of readers?
Yes, it was a device to clue-in the readers, GP, and we wouldn't have noticed such contrivances as kids, but they sort of jump off the page now. I did a post on the blog about how silly such things were when you thought about it. It's called Heroes Or Halfwits? You Decide... There are also a series of posts called Loopy Lapses In Logic Dept.
ReplyDeleteI thought I would share a “Dynamic DC Dumbness” with you. I just reread Detective Comics 526, supposedly Batman’s 500th appearance in that title, and for the occasion Gerry Conway scripted a story where a bunch of Batman villains team up to kill him (wow, what a surprise). The adventure starts out with the Penguin arriving late to the meeting— and, after some complications, the villains split up to execute their scheme. Except Conway loses track of the very malefactor with whom he began the tale, for Penguin disappears from the story with no explanation.
ReplyDeleteI've got that issue somewhere, GP, so when I find where I've put it, I'll re-read it and wonder why I didn't spot that little boo-boo. In my Loopy Lapses In Logic series, there's more than one instance of DC getting it wrong.
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