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Post by foxley on Jun 22, 2020 3:19:03 GMT -5
As a kid a read an Australian reprint of a Green Arrow story that I now know to be "The 13 Superstition Arrows" from Adventure Comics #247. The plot was typical late 50s GA fluff. To secure a $5,000,000 bequest to charity, Green Arrow must use 13 trick arrows with gimmicks associated with bad luck. Apparently a Star City millionaire wanted to demonstrate to the youth of the city that superstition was bunk, and he decided that the best way to do that was to have GA catch crooks using arrows associated with bad luck. This entails the usual contrived situations where one of the superstition arrows is exactly what is needed to foil a criminal, such as using the spilled salt arrow to weaken the ice ahead of some crooks who are fleeing across a frozen river.
But there is one aspect that has been bugging me for 40 years. As the story is only six pages long, we don't get to see all the superstition in action. Instead, the narration mentions arrows that are used to catch crooks between panels. And one of these was the 'Three-On-A-Match' arrow. Even as kid, I was wondering what would a 'Three-On-A-Match' look like and do, and how on earth could you use it to catch a crook?!
Please DC. Hire Kurt Busiek to write a story explaining this perplexing plot element!
So my question, what offhand mentions in stories have caught your imagination and/or driven you crazy?
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Post by Icctrombone on Jun 22, 2020 6:44:13 GMT -5
I remember in a Captain America Annual Sharon Carter was killed in a video from the past. Off panel events happen often in books that go through creative changes , also.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 22, 2020 10:55:16 GMT -5
I remember the Flash having some self-time on a treadmill and in the space of a few panels of thought, the distance he clocks is like running from Earth to Alpha Centauri.
Umm....how is he that much faster than light?
And what bugs me....I can't remember where I read it.
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Post by MWGallaher on Jun 22, 2020 13:37:32 GMT -5
A 'Three-on-a-match' arrow, I presume, would light three different fires with one arrow. My first thought would be an arrow that create flames at three different spots, say the arrowhead, the shaft, and the fletching or nock. But to be useful, it would have to be aimed at three targets that coincidentally happened to be spaced at the same distances as those parts of the arrow. Now that's certainly not too coincidental to preclude happening in a vintage Green Arrow story, my second thought seems more potentially useful: an arrow that flames while in flight, then reignites after seeming to be extinguished, then relights a third and final time. A third possibility is that it's a single flaming arrow that splits into three in flight, setting three things alight with a single shot. As for tantalizing off-hand mentions, here's a classic from JLA #83:  What made this particularly frustrating was that {Spoiler}the Spectre was killed off in that same issue, so readers probably felt that they would be in for quite a wait--possibly forever--to get the untold story behind the Spectre's entombment. Was Jim Corrigan dead?
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Post by badwolf on Jun 22, 2020 17:14:20 GMT -5
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Post by rberman on Jun 24, 2020 12:09:14 GMT -5
One I could think of was this mystery adventure from John Byrne's Alpha Flight #12:  Byrne never told this story and later revealed that he never had an actual story; it was just an interesting MacGuffin name, along the lines of the Maltese Falcon:  Note that Byrne initially misremembered the name as "Bronze Bishop." It wasn't supposed to be a person, like the Hellfire Club's Black Bishop and White Bishop. However, Simon Furman made up a Chess-themed villain team led by a character named "The Brass Bishop" for Alpha Flight #121.  |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jun 24, 2020 13:21:38 GMT -5
MWGallaher, there's also a neat Easter Egg there, with Dr. Fate referring to the Spectre as "ghost who walks," which everyone knew/ knows is the famous epithet of the Phantom.
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