Finally! A board for discussing generally unbelievable things about comics without worrying about going off-topic over at the Animated Batman Suspension Of Disbelief board. Woo-hoo!

I thought ALL aspects of comic books were unbelievable. Latent mutant ability, indeed.

Might as well bring up the ol' "Black stuff around my eyes completely hide my identity" stuff.

Batman has a mask that covers almost his entire face, and has special contour changing pieces.

Spider-man has a mask that completely covers his face.

Superman slicks back his hair and takes of his glasses.

What's wrong with that picture?

Ok, I recall someone said that in one issue, it was shown that Clark's glasses created a hypnotic field or somesuch malarky.

Robin: Black stuff around the eyes. THAT'S it. And he frequently encounters people he knows both as Robin and Tim Drake.

Spider-man and Batman are two superheros who I can see having a secret identity. Robin and Superman just make no sense.

What is so unbelievable about the entire Superman
Mythos is that it took Lois Lane THAT long to
figure out that Supes and Clark were one and
the same.Of course in the current time line it
took Linda Danvers to 'fess up to her folks and
Supes and the Kents that she was also Supergirl,
'cept she had a better excuse;Clark and Supes
look alike but except for the blue eyes Linda
and Supergirl don't look anything alike!

I guess the fact Clark wore boxer shorts with a big red S on them was the giveaway.

The most unbelievable thing(s)...
How many times can the X-Men save the World on live TV before anti-mutant sentiment rolls over and dies!?
How many times will Spider-Man save lives and stop super criminals before people realise he's not a crook/public menace?
How many times can Reed Richards cure Ben Grimm before it works!?

How come Hawkeye hasn't been given a good kicking by the other Avengers?

Forgot this one.

Jack Kirby being considered a genius!

"Jack Kirby being considered a genius!" - King Mob

Uh. Sorry, but Kirby was a genius. Granted his work decllined from the mid-70s on, but Jack's work from the 60s on back helped set the standards for comic art to this day. Kirby helped develop the language of comics art. He was the co-creator (at least) of The Fantastic Four, Thor, The Hulk, Iron Man, the X-Men and many of Marvel's other characters. I certainly am proud to say that I had the privilige of meeting "The King" and saying thanks for the books he drew.

Kirby didn't have a hand in Spider-Man though!

I can't think of him as any kind of genius due to a god who dresses like a cowboy, and of course Vykin The Black!

I got into Marvel in 1976, via UK reprints of Romita's Spider-Man and Buscema's Avengers, Kirby just couldn't compare to them in my eyes.
Maybe Kirby's a taste I never acquired.

I believe Kirby designed the look of Spidey & drew the cover for Amazing Fantasy #15 (Spidey's first appearance.)

Also he did claim that the Spider-Man idea came from a script that he & Joe Simon had been working on called The Silver Spider for Crestwood publications before it went out of business.

You really should look at Kirby's pre-70s work to get a better understanding of the guy's contributions to comics. He wasn't the best artist, he wasn't the best writer, but if you remove all of his stuff from the history of comics... Yikes!

As for the anti-mutant sentiment, I've always wondered how most of the prejudice is focused on mutants, but ignores aliens & non-mutant superheroes. (Yeah, there've been some stories spreading the hate around to the non-mutants, but for the most part it's all directed at the mutants.)

As far as I know, the Kirby Spider-Man concepts went on to become Fly-Man(?) over at Mighty Comics(?

0bviously his contributions can't be removed, except Devil Dinosaur perchance? But, somehow he's held in higher esteem than strictly necessary.
As I said, I got into Marvel via Buscema, Romita snr and Gil Kane, and Kirby's work on Thor couldn't compare.

I found his sense of anatomy strange, stranger even than Liefeld's several years later.

Sometimes, it's almost as if the general consensus is that Marvel had no decent artists after Kirby's departure, which isn't true.

Yes, just occasionally the Avengers get a taste of hysteria, most recently due to the Triunes manipulation, or the FF come under fire for some reason. "Days Of Future Present" comes to mind as particularly unbelievable, I have this vision of the Skrulls successfully invading Earth in 2014, because there's no-one to prevent it, or Owen Reese turning the Sentinels into apples thirty seconds after the genocide begins, "Right, that's that, oooh, time for 'Gomer Pyle'!":-)

Devil Dinosaur was a late '70s book when Kirby was past his prime.

I do understand your point of view. I couldn't understand all the raves over Kirby when he was producing 'ugly pictures' & 'weird stories', back in the '70s. Oddly enough I did have & enjoyed reading copies of some of his Challengers Of The Unknown (late '50s/early60s?) stories & his Marvel work from the '60s (Fantastic Four among others), maybe even a few of his Monster stories he did for Atlas (pre-Marvel). It wasn't until around the time he died & Comics Scene magazine did some articles about him & his work that I began to consider his output as a whole that I began to understand why so many people considered him to be King.

Actually I think Stan "The Man" Lee coined the term Jack "King" Kirby in a Fantastic Four credit box. Although DC capitalized on the name when their advertising hailed "The King's" return to DC in the early '70s. (I wonder how Stan felt about that? ;-)

I was amused by your "no decent artists after Kirby's departure" comment, since several years ago I heard a, possibly, apochryphal story that in the '60s DC couldn't understand why Marvel was selling so well when they had these badly drawn comics. So they started hiring bad artists as well.

Anyway, you may enjoy these two Gone & Forgotten articles bashing some of the King's work, 2001: A Space Odyssey & Dingbats Of Danger Street

From what I've heard, in the sixties, DC couldn't understand Marvel's success on any level, and dismissed the whole thing as a passing fad!:-) The notion of character, audience identification and character development just passed them by.

There's a charming story that Superman and Batman were forbidden from appearances on JLA covers in the sixties, because their editors feared it would detract from sales! Good thing Marvel didn't think that way with the Avengers:-) The covers would have been mostly blank!

Oh yeah, 'Gone and Forgotten', a site which had me in stitches, esp. the history of Atlas Comics!

I’d like to add further To KAM’s comments about Jack Kirby.

I think what separated Kirby’s work from the others of his time was the unbridled energy, enthusiasm and exuberance found in his work. Certainly the artists at EC (particularly on MAD magazine), Will Eisner’s work on The Spirit and Carl Bark in his Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics showed similar energy, but rarely was such seen in superhero books. And almost certainly not at DC, which was kinda like a prim and proper maiden aunt compared to the work Kirby & Steve Ditko were putting out Marvel.

One amusing Kirby story is that when he worked for DC in the early Seventies, TPTB had Curt Swan redraw Superman's face whenever Jack drew the Man of Steel.

Incidentally, the cover to Amazing Fantasy #15 was indeed drawn by Jack Kirby.

As far the “Mutant Menace” situation, what gets me is if there is such fear and prejudice against mutants, why would anyone confess to being one? I mean, surely, say Logan, could say, “Me? A mutant? Naw, I got bit by a radioactive wolverine.” Or Nightcrawler, “I got bit by a radioactive elf.” Or Storm, “I got bit by a radioactive thundercloud.” Or Colossus, “I got bit by a radioactive bar of steel.” Heck, it works for Spider-Man! No one accuses him of being a mutie. I mean, c’mon, if the human race so hates and despises mutants and I was one, I’d lie about it. I’d come up with some kind of origin story. Any kind of origin story.

Just for the record, if memory serves, I believe we have Mr. Roy “What did the Neanderthal say to the first Cro-Magnon” Thomas to blame for the mutant hysteria cliché. One more sin to lay at the Rascally One’s doorstep.

Actually Spidey was accused of being a mutant in an early issue of X-Factor (back when the original ex-X-Men were pretending to be X-Terminators). Jolly Jonah hired them to deal with Spider-Man.

Also a Power Pack storyline had some guy chasing after the Power children believing them to be mutants. At least until his "mutant detector" showed they weren't mutants. (Of course if mutants can be detected by devices why not build anti-mutant detectors to give the machines a false reading?)

One of the things that made me smirk during the 'Onslaught Saga' was the Vision saying "We have always regarded Xavier as a friend"! Yeah, right.
Like during 'Secret Wars', certain Avengers weren't stirring it for the X-Men all through the series, and how many times did we get the "We-can't-get-help-from-the-Avengers-or-the-FF-because-they'd-arrest-us-on-sight" sequence? I imagine the fact that Xavier is an ally must have come as a surprise to the X-Men.

Of course I realise that having the other teams away on missions is a plot device to spin out the story, otherwise they'd be over in two pages!

After "The Fall Of The Mutants", when the X-Men saved the entire planet, and X-Factor saved New York, the 'Mutant menace' thing should have been quietly buried. Instead, after a few months, someone pushes 'reset' and it's back to square one. How I gnashed my teeth when Xavier's legs were broken again after 100 issues of him walking, and Magneto becomes a villain again ('Krusty style groan')
At least J. Jonah Jameson knows deep inside that Spidey is good, even if he won't admit it.

I'm not sure how pervasive this is in the DC Universe, but it is something that holds true about the Marvel Universe. In the M.U., you've got all these superhero scientists - Reed Richards, Bruce Banner, Hank Pym, Tony Stark (not necessarily a scientist, but he deserves a mention here), the Lethal Leader, Doctor Octopus, Doctor Doom and even Peter Parker - who invent all these really, really advanced technological miracles. Time travel machines, anti-gravity devices, teleporter devices, etc., etc. What bothers me is the fact that you never see these any of these miracle machines being used in any form by the ordinary people of the Marvel Universe. I mean, c'mon! It's often mentioned that Reed Richards and Tony Stark do patent these inventions. Presumably they have some sort of licensing option that allows these patents to be exploited so that Fantastic Four, Inc. and Stark Industries can make money off of them. Yet, if they are marketing any form of these inventions, you never see them in use by the general public. The average citizen in the Marvel Universe is technologically no different than the average person in our Universe. I don't buy that.

On the other hand, whatever else you may want to say about The Watchmen, at least Ozymandias did make his creations available to the public at at large.

I think part of it is that they want the illusion of being set in the everyday world rather than an SF/Fantasy world that would develop if these inventions were really developed.

One thing about patents is that they only exist for a set period of time, then become public domain, so if the inventions of Stark & Reed are not being exploited by them then after 14 (?) years anyone can manufacture them.

If they wanted to keep how these things work a secret on the other hand they shouldn't patent them.
WD-40's formula is unknown to other manufacturer's because the company that makes it decided NOT to file a patent.

The DC universe does have it's share of fantastic inventions/no trickle down to the public-at-large.
Although occasionally they do make exceptions. I believe a few years ago Luthor, using Brainiac 13, transformed Metropolis into the City of Tomorrow, complete with flying cars. That ended during the Our Worlds At War storyline when Brainiac 13 attempted to take control. Afterwards the flying cars became history.

"I think part of it is that they want the illusion of being set in the everyday world rather than an SF/Fantasy world that would develop if these inventions were really developed." - KAM

Oh, I'm sure that's the rationale behind it. It's just that I don't see it happening in real life. In real life, those inventions, or components of them, would have found their way into the private sector. If only to generate money for their creators.

"One thing about patents is that they only exist for a set period of time, then become public domain, so if the inventions of Stark & Reed are not being exploited by them then after 14 (?) years anyone can manufacture them." - KAM

I'm not how much time is supposed to have elapsed in the Marvel Universe these days. At one point in the 80s, I think it was, TPTB were saying that only 6 years had transpired in the M.U. (Three or four Presidents of the United States in that time frame. Talk about term limits!) At any rate, I don't think 14 years have come and gone, so any patents Reed and Tony have should remain in their names. Except, I think I remember reading where Reed sold some to help finance the F.F.

A gender flipped version of A Christmas Carol, with the lead being Elizabeth Scrooge:


https://readallcomics.com/a-christmas-carol-a-ghost-story-2022/


Were women allowed to own businesses in the 1840's? Remember, in those days, they couldn't even vote.

If it's gender flipped shouldn't it be called A Christmas Carl? ;-)

For some reason I think there has been an earlier gender flipped version, but I'm not sure.

I think women could inherit their husband's business and there were women running businesses at times when they were mostly male owned.

So there is a possibility, albeit remote.

Of course, they could have avoided this problem by setting the story in modern times.

tere is tis old comic called Moon Girl tat I found online ere: https://readcomiconline.li/

Moon Girl's secret identity is Claire Lune, a schoolteacher. Yet, wen Claire goes into action as Moon Girl, she as a costume, but that's it. Nothing covers her face, and she doesn't put on a wig.

Yet NO ONE realizes that Claire and Moon Girl are the same person.

Duhhhhhh...

She's in good company. Clark Kent and Superman, Kara Danvers and Supergirl, Prince Adam and He-Man, Diana Prince and Wonder Woman, to name a few.

In the comics, Supergirl wore a brunette wig when she assumed her secret identity of Linda Lee Danvers.

Superman wore glasses and slightly altered is voice as Clark.

Diana wore glasses....yeah, I'll give you that one. John Lang would often rant about the later episodes of the TV sow, where Diana more or less abandoned the glasses.

Tim - Moon Girl's secret identity is Claire Lune, a schoolteacher.
Yet NO ONE realizes that Claire and Moon Girl are the same person.

Because schoolteachers are so famous... ;-)

I'm reminded of a scene from the Justice League Unlimited cartoon where Luthor & Flash have had their minds switched & Luthor unmasks 'himself' in front of a mirror... and doesn't recognize Wally's face.

Francois - She's in good company.

Aquaman never even bothered hiding his secret identity! 8-o Then again, he rarely used it, soooo... ;-)

Well, didn't Aquaman have to go back into the water once an our had passed?

Yes, although one story had Aquaman drink a glass of water to meet the requirement. *shrug*

And then there's the 3-part 'Batman' story that has Bruce and Dick visiting England along with Commissioner Gordon and Barbara Gordon, and low and behold, Batman, Robin, and Batgirl also appear in England!

You mean the Lord Fog episodes. Where they kept calling London "Londinium" (the old Roman name for the city), for some reason.

And they said that they drove there from Gotham. They drove from North America to England. Uh, isn't there an ocean in the way?

I've seen comics that feature characters who are supposedly descendants of Wyatt Earp, Harry Houdini, and H. P. Lovecraft.

A neat trick, considering that none of those men had any children.

Parallel realities are your friends.

I wonder if the estates of these men ever tried to put a stop to it.