Comic Book Resources

Interesting that you’d bring up that bit about Byrne’s predictions, however, in 5 years, we will be coming up on 2013. Which is the year of the famous “Days of Future Past”.

I wonder what MARVEL is going to deal with this two-parter, now that the time is almost upon us.
Keeping in mind that NONE of the X-men is, well, any older than they were when Uncanny X-men # 141-142 appeared.

They’ll probably simply ignore it, the same way they ignore Reed Richards and Ben Grimm’s having served in World War II and Peter Parker having attended the premiere of the first Star Trek movie. All direct date references in comics are eventually unofficially retconned by the sliding timescale.

Hopefully nothing. The last thing I want is more post-apocalyptic stories with boring personality-less robots as antagonists. right now.

Maybe instead of “Byrne is sometimes believed to possess ” it should read “Byrne sometimes believes he possesses…”

Weird. I was reading NXM #125 earlier today… do I, in fact, have a Byrne-like gift for predicting the topics of Brian’s Urban Legends?

…

No.

…

That’d be cool, though.

Not-so-gay-Beast was my favorite character subplot that year.

Ultimate Beast had a great subplot at the same time… Hank gets duped by a ‘girl’ he meets on the internet into revealing that Magneto is still alive. Turns out the girl is Blob.

Sorry Mr Byrne, (can’t believe I’m saying this) but I just read the bit where he himself disproves the theory…

I’m reminded of Grant Morrison and Mark Millar’s seemingly uncanny prediction of British political events when they featured John Smith’s heart attack and Tony Blair being Prime Minister in Zenith and Maniac 5 respectively.

The byrne story reminds me of an urban legend about the british comic 2000ad, in the 80s or 90s they ran a strip called bradley about a typical kid/hooligan and one of the storylines was having him try to break into the music business by meeting such famous bands/singers as the Sisters of Mercy and Jason Donovan, anyway as i recall within a few months of the story every band/singer featured in it either split up or left their record company.

John Byrne predicts the future! That’s why, when I was all alone on Christmas, a Brood attacked me, and I had to burn it with my SR-71 jet engine in the basement. Tough holiday.

I’m not bothered so much by the possibility of Beast being gay (other than it being out of character) than by the context in which it was said.

It was a petty comeback. It was basically “Oh, NOW you want to come back to me? Too bad, because I don’t like girls anymore. Or humans.” Ok, so even the best person has off moments- but that just doesn’t sound well, and Morrison should’ve known he would get in trouble for it. Not that Morrison ever admits he’s wrong, or does he?

I think it’s so funny that Morrison mentioned he was satirizing the current trend to have a gay character in team books - because at the time he said that, his fellow Uncanny writer Chuck Austen was doing that very thing with Northstar (who he brought on the book amidst hype of good things, but then proceeded to remind us every issue that he was gay, gay, GAY). I usually don’t like when creators take swipes at each other, but I don’t mind if it’s Austen.

There was that X-Force issue in which the World Trade Center was attacked, too. I think that speaks more to the visibility and prominence of the WTC than any psychic ability on the part of the writers.

The one X-character who’s visibly older now than at the time of ‘X-Men’ 141-142 is Shadowcat.

With the Beast, what would have been funnier is if he could have had Beast so comfortable with his sexuality he could have had some more fun with the gay references and really ham it up…

have him doing come on’s to Scott or making references to how good he looks in his skintight costumes…

“Yeah Scott, you didn’t know I liked man-ass? After all of those group showers??”

maybe thats a bit too subversive for mainstream tho…lol..

I think that off all the actors who were paid not to appear in movies (Dana Carvey and Jon Lovitz getting paid not to be the “Bad Boys” is a famously weird example) Nic Cage got the biggest payday (upwards of 20 million?) not to be Superman. If they had replaced him with someone better than Routh, I would have said they’d got their money’s worth.

“Our Worlds at War” and the “Dark Knight” sequel are, of course, the more immediate examples of predicting the fall of the towers.

In fact, “Our Worlds at War” was truly uncanny. Starting in early 2000 here: first they had a blatantly immoral businessman run for president, seize the presidency through fraud in November, get exposed as corrupt and see his popularity plummet throughout the following year… Then, in Septermber 2001, he has his ass hauled out the fire by a sudden attack that destroys the tallest buildings in America’s biggest east coast city. He regains his popularity by ordering a massive armed retaliation (Of course, in the comic book, he retaliated against the people who actually attacked us. That shows how unrealistic comics are.) For a while, he coasts on high numbers again, allowing him to do his evil deeds in secret… Then, a few years later, the country realizes just how corrupt he is and turns on him once and for all.

And each of these events happened just BEFORE they happened in real life. That has to be the most startlingly prescient series of comics even published, right?

I inspired an Urban Legends Reveale! Woohoo!

Thank you Psych class!

Remember kids, learning is fun cause knowledge is power!

Re: the Billy Dee Williams example. In Hollywood parlance, that practice is known as “play-or-pay,” meaning that you get paid whether or not you do the project. It’s a common practice.

Interesting stuff, as always. The coincidence one was pretty amusing, though I’d like to fix one thing about it:

“In EVERY YEAR, Japan is struck with a number of earthquakes.”

Don’t be silly — of course Byrne doesn’t predict these huge international tragedies. He causes them. All this time spent reading superhero comics, and you don’t recognize a real-life supervillain when the evidence is staring you in the face.

Parodied in the Animaniacs’ theme song, where they have “pay-or-play” contracts, meaning they won’t make new cartoons (which would annoy/embarrass WB executives) as long as they’re paid.

Not to be nit-picky, but from what I understand, De Palma had intended for De Niro to be Capone the entire time. There were scheduling conflicts, and so De Palma cast Hoskins; De Niro became available again, and De Palma– who had worked with De Niro before either of them became “big”– recast him. Hoskins was paid in full. (At least, this is according to the Behind-the-Scenes Untouchables documentary. De Palma could be misremembering, though.)

To be slightly more nit-picky– and this is something that’s bugged me for a long time but that I’ve been able to ignore hitherto– this was the one-hundred sixty-eighth in a series, not one-hundred and sixty-eighth. When talking about numbers, “and” is only used to separate whole numbers and decimals, or dollars and cents. It’s something that, admittedly, a lot of people do– like people who say “literally” when they mean “figuratively”– and, personally, I blame Disney and their Dalmations.

“Jeff Ryan
John Byrne predicts the future! That’s why, when I was all alone on Christmas, a Brood attacked me, and I had to burn it with my SR-71 jet engine in the basement. Tough holiday.”

Sorry Jeff, and I really hate to break it to you, but there’s no such thing as Christmas Brood. That was just your Uncle Bob in a suit.

Still a tough holiday, though, since you incinerated him.

I don’t recall Luthor “seizing the Presidency through fraud” in the “Lex 2000″ storyline. My recollection is that he stepped in to bail out the earthquake-devastated Gotham City at the end of “No Man’s Land” and rode into the White House largely on the basis of that deed. “Hey, look, I saved this city when the previous guy just wrote it off, vote for me!”

Here’s a controversial notion that DC will never address: In the DCU, by all rights, the World Trade Center should still be standing and Osama Bin Laden should be in prison, and there should be no coalition forces in Iraq. Why? Because a) there are so many metas in or around NYC in the DCU (or there were in 2001, at least) that by the time the second plane came into view it could have been intercepted and diverted, so no impact on the South Tower; b) said metas could have quickly extinguished the fires in the North Tower, so no collapse; c) Luthor would NEVER have allowed Bin Laden’s relatives to leave the country without being questioned, and, in all likelihood, required to provide DNA samples; d) Luthor would have dispatched Team Luthor agents to Afghanistan with scanners designed to track down individuals matching those DNA samples; and finally e) Luthor didn’t have a personal beef with Saddam Hussein, so no invasion of Iraq.

Now, given that time doesn’t pass for the characters in the DCU the way it does for us, we’re fast coming up on the point where 2001 would fall into the period between the disbanding of the JSA and the emergence of the modern wave of heroes, so that would be the explanation for metas not responding to the 9/11 attacks. As it stands, though, seven years ago the DCU had Superman, a couple of Flashes, at least two Earth-based Green Lanterns and enough magic-users and fliers to make a significant difference in the way things ended up on that terrible day.

(Some may bring up The Boys #21 as another possible outcome, but I tend to think the JLA, JSA, Titans and others are a LOT smarter than the Seven and have numerous members who KNOW HOW A PLANE WORKS and KNOW HOW TO FLY ONE.)

And then there’s the question of whether 9/11 would carry the weight in the DCU that it does today, given that there have been a couple of U.S. cities attacked and/or destroyed by nukes or other WMDs there (Coast City destroyed by Mongul during the Return of Superman storyline, Kansas City destroyed in “Our Worlds At War,” a nuclear explosion outside Fawcett City in The Power of Shazam, Bludhaven destroyed by Chemo and I’ll bet there are more that haven’t been Superboy-punched away)–plus two entire middle-eastern countries wiped out by supervillians (Cheshire and Black Adam have both destroyed countries–Cheshire with a nuke and Black Adam with his bare hands).

Anyway. I’m overthinking this as usual.

They may have been better off with Billy Dee Williams in Batman Forever.

“Interesting stuff, as always. The coincidence one was pretty amusing, though I’d like to fix one thing about it:

“In EVERY YEAR, Japan is struck with a number of earthquakes.” ”

A good point, this – predicting an earthquake for a country that averages approximately 1500 earthquakes per year is nearly as difficult as predicting that the sun will come up tomorrow.

Forever still would have sucked, but at least Two-Face would have been more velvety.

Aww, yeah.

One might make similar arguments regarding 9/11 in the Marvel Universe.

And of course more Marvel characters are in New York City proper.

“All direct date references in comics are eventually unofficially retconned by the sliding timescale.”

Apart from Vietnam Punisher in Punisher Max. Go, Punisher Max! Wooo!

(Except that they panicked and removed his DOB or whatever it was from the front of one of the covers. Doh).

I can see it now- lando mackin’ on th’ ladiez.. even with a crusty head, he still gets more ‘tang than nasa.

i would very much like to have those stupid ‘PREVIOUSLY’ pages for Final Crisis…

Hey, you guys, I just remembered that wasn’t a Christmas Brood, that was a Christmas N’Garai that Kitty blasted with the jet! The Brood hadn’t been introduced yet! Duh.

Re: Luthor election fraud: To be fair, I was just skimming the comics at the time. I thought I remembered some sort of chicanery. I could be mis-remembering.

(checking wikipedia, I see that there was some question of whether or not Luthor had a hand in causing the Gotham cataclysm in the first place. That wouldn’t be the “let’s not count all the votes” type of fraud, that would be more the “let’s make a secret deal with Ayatollah to not release the hostages yet” kind of fraud, but still…)

(I also see on wikipedia that America later learned that President Luthor had previously known that Imperiex was determined to strike, yet did nothing to deter it, so there’s another parallel…)

wasn’t Marlon Wayans also paid NOT to play Robin in Batman Returns?

RJ, I’m sad to say that it wasn’t a Brood or a N’garai. it was (sigh) my uncle Bob.

But on the plus side, my unlce Bob was the Ultra-Humanite. So it all balances out.

R. J. Sterling: Yes, one might, what with frickin’ Avengers Mansion AND the Baxter Building being right there on Manhattan.

Bat, I paid Marlon Wayans not to be Robin in Batman Returns out of my own pocket.

I can’t be the only one who wonders how Quasar figured into Jeff Ryan’s Christmas misadventure.

The real irony of the Byrne UL is that John Byrne doesn’t believe (and rather outspokenly) in using coincidence *in comic book stories.* For him, almost any coincidence is unbelievable - like the guy Spider-Man fails to stop just happening to be Uncle Ben’s future killer, for instance. Which is why he had this whole convoluted setup for why it *wasn’t* just a coincidence in “Spider-Man Year One.” And that’s just one example.

That Byrne thing reminds me of Back to the Future II, which predicted that Miami would have a baseball team (which it didn’t at the time). And now they do; the Marlins. True.

Of course, subsequent iterations and embellishments of this fact have been falsified:
http://www.snopes.com/sports/baseball/bttf2.asp

Tom Russell wrote:
“To be slightly more nit-picky– and this is something that’s bugged me for a long time but that I’ve been able to ignore hitherto– this was the one-hundred sixty-eighth in a series, not one-hundred and sixty-eighth.”

One hundred AND sixty eighth is perfect English. As in England. I think that’s why I enjoy Cronin’s column so much, he speaks my language

Ditto!

BTW - I checked the Oxford English Dictionary for the pronunciation of “Magneto”..

Apparently it’s a third way - “Mag - nitt - oh ”

Seriously…

I hated it when they started referencing 9-11 in the universes of both DC and Marvel. It just cheapened it. The biggest example I can remember is in X Men when Austen was “writing” it and Havok wakes up, and they start explaining to him everything that’s happened in the past few years, and included the towers. A billion people died in Genosha. Skrulls did some horrible stuff. Angel has a sword and is making out with a teenage girl. The towers fell. Magneto leveled New York City. Just completely gross.

Sorry Jeff, I didn’t want to be the ruiner of youthful fantasy.

If it makes you feel any better, my Uncle Bob showed up on Christmas dressed as Gladiator, and he tried to kidnap my family to save the Shi’Ar, even after I punched him across the city. They showed up again a few weeks later, dressed in horrible spandex bodysuits.

Then we incinerated him.

http://www.uncannyxmen.net/db/issues/showquestion.asp?fldAuto=218

You know, Morrison raises a strong point.

Those “Previously” pages are incredibly pointless and ugly. They should be chucked in favor of more story per issue.

Also, Brian, you will be getting to the bottom of the Psyche/Psylocke pun debate, won’t you? I have faith in you, man.

Luthor’s awareness of Imperiex’ coming was the wedge that started his downfall as President.

Lex legitimately (as far as we know) won the presidency, but the chicanery was when Braniac’s B-12 virus wiped out all records of his criminal activity from all electronic storage media (why no one bothered to look at old newspapers instead is a question, though) at the start of 2000.

And except for the usual fundraiser special, 9/11 does not seem to have occurred in the DCU (maybe because Luthor did NOT ignore the briefings left behind by the Clinton people?).

Grant’s whole “gay” dialog looks to me like a riff on the subtext of mutants as stand-ins for gays in the X-Men movies. Remember when one of the X-Men’s parents asked, “Couldn’t you just NOT be a mutant for us?”

“One might make similar arguments regarding 9/11 in the Marvel Universe.”

Don’t bring that up, you’ll just make Doom cry again.

The part about Byrne reminded me of this. I was working on an animated commercial for a pizza company and we had a scene were the space shuttle delivered a pizza to astronauts on the moon. Someone came in the room one day and said in a very matter of fact way “Well the space shuttle just blew up.” I thought they meant they had dropped the animation cels and destroyed days of work that would need redone. No. It was the day Challenger blew up.

I think the explanation about Billy Dee Williams is a little bit off. I’ve read that Tim Burton planned to have Two-Face as one of the villains in Batman Returns, but his characters was written out of the script and Williams’ contract was bought out during the production of Batman Returns, way before Joel Schumacher replaced Tim Burton. (Remember that Billy Dee Williams was not in Batman Returns.)

http://www.geocities.com/burtonsbatman3/rumors.html

Okay, that’s Magnitto. What about the Sub-Mareener? And Gladiator did what to the Ultra-Humanite in the Alien suit now?

And, it’s funny, the first time I read that X-Men story, I didn’t know who Grant Morrison was, and I thought, “Oh, this is just another stupid ‘Let’s have a gay on the team’ moment.”

Its a hard thing to want to keep relevant issues with the real world while juxtaposing them with what are pretty commonplace events in the MU. In Bru’s Cap, the Red Skull detonated a WMD in Philadelphia- outside of that book, there’s virtually no reference to it I can remember in recent dates. Plus during Kang’s invasion New York was basically leveled (by both Kang hitting it and converting portions into a prison camp if I remember correctly and The Master’s fortifications)- all damage from which has been shrugged off and ignored- sometimes in other hero books where the timeline is the same! There have been many other instances of mass destruction in MU’s NY, but hey, what are you going to do? Real world events supercede fictional ones, especially when writers and artists are trying to cope with those events just like the rest of us.

Speaking of strange occurrences, does any remember being chilled when they went to the comic book store the day after 9-11, only to find how unnerving that issue of Joe Casey and Mike Wieringo’s issue of Superman was…with that first page image of burning twin buildings? Superman even had that “black shield” on his chest to honor all that had fallen in “Our World’s at War”…

Speaking of Beast, I remember being a bit disappointed that he didn’t end up being more sexually fluid, like, an example of post traditional gender identity…I mean mutants are the next step, I think it would make sense if more were not gay or straight, but bi-sexual. But I did find that scene with him and Trish super cute.

And coming from a straight man who does look more than a lot flamboyant, and having many gay male friends, I really appreciated how Austen handled the Iceman-Northstar friendship. Sometimes feelings get a little hurt, but you can have a good friendship nonetheless.

The Destroyer novels have a fairly good prediction ratio for current events as well. They wrote a story about the Shah of Iran falling sick and needing the protection of the Master of Sinanju that came out months before the events of Iran began. They used both Roy Orbison and Carl Sagan in major roles shortly before they passed on.

I recall a Science Fiction story that gave a fairly solid explanation of how an atom bomb would work - several years before the Manhattan Project went public. The author got a very interested visit from men in black suits.

Heck, China Syndrome - the single greatest bit of timing for a movie in the history of film.

It’s just sheer chance - when you write about current events and try to figure out what will happen next, then write a story about it, you’re occasionally right.

As much a Morrison supporter as I am, I disagree. I’d rather “What Happened Last Time” be summarized neatly outside the story, rather than crammed in as exposition.

I’ve got to second kushiro’s bit about earthquakes in Japan. It’s a bit like writing about an earthquake in California - more of a cliché than a surprise.

That would have been a stupid pizza commercial. The space shuttle was designed to work in low Earth orbit and could never reach Luna.

As to the Japanese stuff, I believe Byrne was referring to one of the particularly large earthquakes that struck Japan in 1978, either the Miyagi-Oki one or the Izu one.

Whenever New York (or anywhere in the US) is levelled in the Marvel U, Damage Control fix it!
Usually witin a day or so!!

I think in the DCU, it tends to be done by the JSA or the Titans…?

Morrison’s X-Men is amazing. I don’t know why that “is Beast gay” thing needed explanation, I thought it was perfectly clear in the comic.

In a 1993 issue of UN Force, they showed an attack on the Twin Towers the same month it happened, which generated a lot of press coverage.

There was an issue of Superman where he battled tornadoes in the mid west, I got it a few days after there was a tornado in Nebraska.

A 1940s Superman strip dealt with atomic weapons that caused a stir with the government.

John Byrne wasn’t the first and its doubtful he’ll be the last.

I remember standing in line to meet an artist at a convention, listening to two people talk about how Morrison’s X-Men was “stupid” because he “turned the Beast gay.” This was *after* the issue with the Cyclops conversation was published.

True Blackjak- very true- not much Damage Control can’t handle, and yes, DCU heroes actually do pitch in and rebuild infrastructure (I think they actually gave that explanation - convenient though it was- showing a fully intact Metropolis… after Metropolis as a whole had been completely leveled merely a single issue or two prior by Luthor’s “Scorched Earth Policy” being enacted which brought down whatever Doomsday didn’t in prior issues soooome time ago). I just kind of sat there looking at that page, raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and continued on with the story thinking “ok, a bit lazy, but I guess somebody wanted a full return to tradition as quickly and cleanly as possible without dealing with the interesting ramifications”. Let Batman deal with a completely trashed city, right?

Oh and BRiAN, I’m with you- not only did I “get” what Morrison was doing, I thought it was pretty hilarious- Beast lending some much needed levity during a pretty intense situation, and simply continuing the goof for a bit. If anything, Cyclops couldn’t get the joke, and I think most fans took a cue from him forgetting what a rascal Henry can be. Hell, I have an openly gay family member who is also into comics who was always touting how great it was that Beast “came out” and I had to be the one to clue him in to the debunk a few panels down the road. And this was after the TPB of those issues was out. Whoops!

The DC superheroes tried to stop the planes in 9/11, but Bin Laden had the Spear of Destiny.

Blackjak wrote:

“Whenever New York (or anywhere in the US) is levelled in the Marvel U, Damage Control fix it!
Usually witin a day or so!!”

Totally right, they had the “superfund” to do that, and in New York is easy because “There’s been so much damage caused by super hero battles over the years, the city of New York was legally declared a perpetual disaster area”. If you don’t believe me, read WWH: Damage Control. Peace.

“Ok, so even the best person has off moments- but that just doesn’t sound well, and Morrison should’ve known he would get in trouble for it.”–I thought it was totally high-five-at-the-bar-later-worthy.

“Here’s a controversial notion that DC will never address: In the DCU, by all rights, the World Trade Center should still be standing and Osama Bin Laden should be in prison, and there should be no coalition forces in Iraq. Why? Because a) there are so many metas in or around NYC in the DCU (or there were in 2001, at least) that by the time the second plane came into view it could have been intercepted and diverted, so no impact on the South Tower; b) said metas could have quickly extinguished the fires in the North Tower, so no collapse; c) Luthor would NEVER have allowed Bin Laden’s relatives to leave the country without being questioned, and, in all likelihood, required to provide DNA samples; d) Luthor would have dispatched Team Luthor agents to Afghanistan with scanners designed to track down individuals matching those DNA samples; and finally e) Luthor didn’t have a personal beef with Saddam Hussein, so no invasion of Iraq.”–a) DCU metahumans aren’t as concentrated in NYC as Marvel U. metahumans are/were at that time. DCU metahumans have always been more spread out. b) I’m sure that in both the DCU and the MU, the casualties were far less. I’m not even sure that it happened in the DCU. Did it? c) Why? Luthor’s the same sort of corrupt capitalist that Bush is. Everyone makes Bush this weird pariah, as if he’s the ONLY ONE, but all business leaders are like him. They all sold out our country a long time ago, they’re all sociopathic, they’re all real-life supervillains, and Luthor’s no different. d) Not if he didn’t want bin Laden found. Why do you think Bush has “failed” to catch the guy? e) Neither did Bush. This was an invasion plan that his cronies laid out in 1996 at Project for a New American Century.

The phrase “is sometimes believed” is what Wikipedia refers to as “weasel words”. . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_words

“I hated it when they started referencing 9-11 in the universes of both DC and Marvel. It just cheapened it. The biggest example I can remember is in X Men when Austen was “writing” it and Havok wakes up, and they start explaining to him everything that’s happened in the past few years, and included the towers. A billion people died in Genosha. Skrulls did some horrible stuff. Angel has a sword and is making out with a teenage girl. The towers fell. Magneto leveled New York City. Just completely gross.”–9/11 was cheapened by the media and the Republican Party and big businesses and the military and flag salesmen long before that scene.

We can add the loss of Billy Dee Williams acting like a lunatic in half-make-up to Schumacher’s list of infractions.

This isn’t Wikipedia and there are no editorial rules for the style used in comments. One of Wikipedia’s sillier rules, by the way, out of a legion of silly rules…

Also, “weasel words” sounds like a pejorative that Jerry Pournelle would use…

Hmmm…. Spear of Destiny would’ve been a cool explanation, but he wielder of the spear would’ve had to have been in the U.S. in order for that to work, since the spear doesn’t control people from a long distance. Also, if the person had the Spear of Destiny, and was close enough to influence those susceptible to magic, the wielder would’ve had Superman and others destroy the towers, not save them.

Maybe that mad genius Bin Laden broke up the Spear of Destiny in many little pieces, not as powerful as the whole thing, but able to stop and control superhumans in a more modest radius, and it’s required for most card-carrying Al-Qaeda members to carry a piece of it in important missions.

(And that was tongue-in-cheek, if anyone is wondering)

Damn, Brian, you’re as fast as lightning!

Ouch, being paid NOT to be in the film. It sounds good until you realize that’s his job and it doesn’t do him anygood in the long run. Just like the Nicolas Cage thing when he was supposed to play Superman (no, really) and it wasn’t going to happen, but he would of been paid anyway. But he gave the money back because in principle he wasn’t working he wasn’t taking the money he could of easily of kept it.

I saw part of the Batman and Robin film (the George Clooney one). Good lord!

Seeing as Bin Laden originally stated that he had nothing to do with 9/11, and hasn’t been seen since 2001 I seriously doubt he had the Spear of Destiny. (1.) I doubt he had anything to do with the World Trade Center bombings. And (2.) I’m pretty sure Bin Laden has been dead for about seven years.

All the confusion about Beast’s joke is a perfect example of how X-fans were not smart or sophisticated back then.

And then there are the people who thought No-Girl was an actual character.

Of course OBL didn’t have the Spear of Destiny. It’s in a museum, where it’s been since the end of WWII, when Patton took it– oh, shoot, that’s OUR Earth, and not the one in the DCU.

btw, according to the legend of the Spear of Destiny, relinquishing it would mean death. Oh well.

but wouldn’t that be a great concept? The Spear of Destiny could control one half of the heroes in the DCU U.S., and they could have this big war where the heroes fight each other to prevent the 9/11 attacks, and then when the Twin Towers fell, the leader of the one camp could suddenly realize the devastation that their fighting cost, and surrender to the authorities… ah, never mind… that story would never work in comics… too lame.

Was it really the Challenger that Superman was going to save in Man Of Steel? Every other version of this story I’ve seen has just identified it as “a space shuttle”. It seems far more likely to me that Byrne would’ve used a fictional name for his space shuttle. Perhaps you’re mixing this up with Samaritan in Astro City, who DID save the Challenger?

And personally, I think they should’ve had Billy Dee Willaims play the handsome side of Two-Face and Tommy Lee Jones play the scarred side.

COMICS DUFFER
“Lex legitimately (as far as we know) won the presidency, but the chicanery was when Braniac’s B-12 virus wiped out all records of his criminal activity from all electronic storage media (why no one bothered to look at old newspapers instead is a question, though) at the start of 2000.”

Heck yeah! Take Spider-Man for instance, he unmasked and uh…the video, no no, the old newspapers….no I mean the YouTube vids….

Ah screw it…Lex did no wrong, or the Media would have a record of it…ain’t that right Spidey…

I’d actually disqualify two of the “Byrne coincidences”, to be honest; blackouts were common in NYC at the time, and earthquakes have always been common in Japan. The inspiration for those stories came from frequent real-life occurrences, and the fact that they continued to occur after the story was published doesn’t make it an “eerie coincidence”, just a normal event.

If I wrote a story with a sunrise in it, and the sun rose the day it was published, would that be an “eerie coincidence”?

[…] – If one examines Man Of Steel #1, one might notice that, from certain angles, the Constitution looks a whole lot like a Space Shuttle orbiter. Alan Kistler states that the Constitution’s look was altered “at the last minute” following the January 1986 explosion of the shuttle Challenger. There may be a Byrne-board post on this topic, but I haven’t found it.  [UPDATE:  With thanks to commenter Vinnie B, here’s some more info from the latest “Urban Legends Revealed.”] […]

Morrison must have missed the memo on those recap pages: they were supposed to be catch up for the readers so that they WOULDN’T have to read the same stuff over and over and over when it got put into the trade afterwards. Some writers know how to slip it in, but most don’t.

Unless your Joe Quesada, that is. Then you just write in Mephisto changes time and everything you’ve never liked has never happened. (By the way: in the Faustian deal, the deal maker always dies a quick and horrible death — so when is Joe Q. finally gonna pony up