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In The AVENGERS #6, there's quite a few to choose from. First is on page 7, where IRON MAN is interrupted while trying to free CAPTAIN AMERICA's knee from BARON ZEMO's Adhesive X, meaning that he should still have one patella stuck to the ground. (Especially as he said he can't move.) Yet a few panels later on page 8, his knee is free, though both feet are stuck fast to a section of cutaway concrete. (And the space between Cap and GIANT-MAN and their position in relation to each other also changes.)
Then on page 9, Iron Man warns THOR that the BLACK KNIGHT's lance is a "dangerous weapon" that can "fire all sorts of missiles". However, on page 15, during a subsequent encounter, the Black Knight says to Thor "You didn't suspect my innocent-looking lance is in reality a most deadly arsenal of weapons!" He didn't have to suspect - Iron Man had already told him several pages back.
On page 5, RICK JONES is named correctly, but on pages 13 and 19 (no need to show the relevant pics - I'm sure you'll take my word for it), he's renamed as Rick BROWN. (Maybe his mother had remarried in the interim? Nah, can't be that - he's an orphan, isn't he?) We'll ignore Baron Zemo being renamed Dr. Zemo on page 19, as it's entirely possible to be a baron and a doctor at the same time.
Anyway, that's quite a number of boo-boos for one issue, but we'll forgive ol' Stanley because we love 'im. Besides, considering that he was scripting everything in sight at the time, it's a miracle there weren't more given his workload!
I love the look of the villainous Black Knight- but not quite as much as I love the sight of Iron Man driving a lorry!
ReplyDeleteIncidentally Kid, I took McScotty's tip and went to look at A1's 3-for-a-tenner trade paperbacks- got a Superman vs Mongul collection by Len Wein, Jim Starlin, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, a Superman Adventures volunteer, and a collection of Wein and Gibbons' Green Lantern- I have most of the original GL issues but have never got round the getting the two issues I'm missing, so was delighted to find it.
Thanks for the heads-up, McScotty!
And to think that some people say this blog serves no useful purpose, eh, DS? You and McS have proved them wrong. Three volumes for a tenner is a good deal, but they'll probably be all gone by whenever I next manage into Glasgow, 'cos it'll be a while.
ReplyDeleteI've no idea why my phone replaced the word "collection" with "volunteer" in that previous post,
ReplyDeleteI think your blog serves, for a lot of us, a very useful purpose in that it's not just about comics, it's about the feelings and memories they evoke. That is more appealing to me.
I suspect you meant to type 'volume', DS, and perhaps auto-correct anticipated you incorrectly.
ReplyDeleteComics, feelings, and memories - they're all intertwined at the end of the day, I suppose. Anyway, glad you enjoy my humble efforts.
I hadn't noticed these particular mistakes, but Stan and his artists have a long list of goofs, so none of them come as any big surprise. I'm nerd enough to point out that the mistake with Cap's knee was probably Kirby's, and Stan probably let it go because it was too much trouble to correct.
ReplyDeleteStan did sometimes cover up artists' mistakes with some fancy footwork, though. In FANTASTIC FOUR #73, there's a scene in which Mister Fantastic and the Thing are trying to capture Daredevil, whom they believe to be Doctor Doom in disguise. (Don't ask.) Kirby drew a scene in which Daredevil, being held in place by Reed, kicks out at the Thing, and the Thing falls back. Stan, knowing that some readers would call BS on an ordinary man being able to budge a powerhouse like Ben, tossed in a goofy bit of dialogue, claiming that Mr. Fantastic had zapped his buddy with an unseen ray to keep him from mangling Daredevil-- or something like that.
I remember seeing a similar scene in another comic, GP (perhaps The Hulk), where someone knocks a character off his feet, and it's put down to him being off-balance at the time, because otherwise he's too tough to be toppled. Stan was always covering visual mistakes by the artists, but he made quite a few scripting ones himself. But hey - it's only a comic, eh?
ReplyDeleteHas there ever been a vote on Stan Lee's worst stories? My vote would be the wedding of Reed and Sue in Fantastic Four Annual #3. I was only a young teenager when I read it, but I remember laughing at how ridiculous it was. It's far fetched that Doctor Doom's emotion changing machine makes all of the Fantastic Four's enemies attack at once, but most ridiculous of all is that it makes Kang attack from 1000 years in the future. Why just 1000 years? It could also have attracted Kank 1001 years in the future, and 1002 years, etc. The machine could have brought 50 or 100 Kangs back from the future. Then the Watcher's sub-atronic time displacer sends all the villains back into the past, to the moment before they attacked... except for Kang, who's sent 1000 years into the future. "Its power is unimaginable", says the Watcher. I agree.
ReplyDeleteMy second choice would be Fantastic Four #98, when the Fantastic Four assist the USA's first Moon landing. Why do they bother? The Fantastic Four already flew to the Moon in FF #13, and in FF #92 Reed Richards hurriedly built a spaceship capable of flying to a planet in the Skrull galaxy within a couple of hours. Assuming it's a nearby galaxy, that would be a speed of 75 million times the speed of light, or in Star Trek terms Warp Speed 420.
Another thing that bugged me no end in Stan Lee's comics is that various super-villains had screens on which they could watch anything happening anywhere on Earth. Didn't they need cameras? In some cases this leads to illogical consequences. For instance, the Mandarin had a super viewing screen, but he still didn't know that Iron Man was Tony Stark (Iron Man #10 and #11).
I think Stan supplied only the barest outline of a plot to Jack before they both discussed it further, then Jack threw in a lot more - so chances are that it was Jack who came up with some of the more 'fantastic' ideas. Stan usually diluted them somewhat to more reasonable levels, but not always. And time travel never makes much sense anyway, because if the future has already happened, we're already dead. To Kang, 1,000 years in our future, it's his 'present', and the more you think about it, the more confusing it gets.
ReplyDeleteWithout getting out my back issues to check, I think it was Kurrgo's ship that Reed, Sue and Johnny used to travel to the Skrull galaxy, though I seem to remember it being erroneously identified as the ship that the four Skrulls used in FF #2. As for the all-seeing view-screens, even James Bond movies made that mistake. Remember in YOLT a helicopter using a giant magnet to lift a car chasing Bond and dumping it in the ocean - while JB watches it on a screen in his car? Where were the cameras?
Yes, on FF #92 page 6 it's claimed that Reed modified a spaceship captured from the Skrulls in FF #2.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to know whether that boo-boo was based on Jack identifying it as such in his margin notes on the art (his memory was as bad as Stan's), or it was Stan's faulty memory on its own. Regardless, it's definitely one of Kurrgo's spaceships from FF #7. It was also seen in FF #11, and Ben describes it as the ship from Planet X (Kurggo's planet.)
ReplyDeleteJust bought the Masters of Evil after work and read it on the bus home. I think It's worth pointing out that the copy on the original cover does promise "...and more super-bonehead mistakes than ever...", so perhaps they were spotted, but too late? It's a shame that they've left that humorous blurb off the reprint cover but saw fit to include that awful new logo!
ReplyDeletePerhaps, HS, but I suspect that was just Stan covering himself in case there were mistakes he missed. Who knows though. Yeah, that Masters Of Evil logo is awful, but at least the insides are untouched.
ReplyDelete