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Post by Icctrombone on May 20, 2024 4:15:23 GMT -5
This appearance seemed random  |
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Post by k7p5v on May 20, 2024 7:00:59 GMT -5
They did the same thing with Iron Man guest-starring in the last couple of issues of Werewolf by Night - and also tried to bring Jack Russell into the superhero world by giving him some control over his changing into a werewolf, which I always thought was a really stupid idea: "What's his superpower?" "He bites you and slashes you to pieces with his claws!". I wonder what it was about Iron Man that made him one of the go-to characters for this kind of thing on more than one occasion? I'm guessing that Iron man was a person that had flight thus making it easy for him to appear at different locales. Isn't it a problem when Spider-man shows up in a place that's not New York? LOL! It didn't stop TPTB from having Spidey take a flight across the country to San Francisco just for a guest-starring role in Venom: Lethal Protector '93   |
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Post by MDG on May 20, 2024 12:48:22 GMT -5
DC felt that this toy-based book needed something familiar on the cover ( and the scene takes place in the book):  |
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Post by nairb73 on May 20, 2024 14:25:52 GMT -5
After she got her traditional costume back, DC still felt Wonder Woman needed a boost once in a while.  For about a dozen issues in a row, with a different JLA member on the cover each time. WW's book was a mess for most of the '70s. The JLA members were 'monitoring her progress' towards 'earning' her way back into the League, in some sort of parallel to the labors of Hercules. When that was all said and done, she...decided not to rejoin...yet. That finally happened in 1976. By '77, the Wonder Woman TV show had aired its first season, with episodes set during World War II. DC decided that the comic should match the show, so they had the Dianas of two Earths meet(for the first time), as the Earth-1 version visited Earth-2 in the '40s...and when she returned home, the story remained focused on the original. Ironically, by the time DC had switched to stories set in the past, the TV show had switched networks(from ABC to CBS), and announced a new fornat of...stories set in the present. During that 1976-77 period, the only place to see the Earth-1 character was in the JLA's title. Fortunately,Steve Englehart spotlighted her when she appeared. The Earth-2 version even had a regular feature in World's Finest, before DC switched back to Earth-1 stories, in early 1978. |
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Post by tonebone on May 20, 2024 14:27:49 GMT -5
When DIDN'T they do this?
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Post by spoon on May 20, 2024 19:43:15 GMT -5
 Nightcrawler is always popping up in unexpected places. |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 20, 2024 21:45:22 GMT -5
For as long as I can remember, there has been a void in my life shaped like a comic book featuring superhero Uri Geller.
I was following the Daredevil series around this time but didn't read this particular issue for one reason or another - most likely because of the usual distribution inconsistencies. But I did read the letters page commenting on it an issue or two later: I remember there was some questioning of Geller's appearance as a character in the story but can't recall Wolfman's response. I had never heard of Geller myself until then, but I gathered that his claims and "feats" were considered suspicious by many even at the time and I think I remember hearing years afterwards that they were decisively debunked at some point. It does feel like an odd lapse in judgement on the part of Wolfman, who wrote one of the more intelligent Marvel series of the 70s in Tomb of Dracula.
Geller was debunked on the Tonight Show, when he couldn't pull off a trick, thanks to Johnny Carson knowing he was a fraud and consulting with magician James Randi (The Amazing Randi) to figure out how he was doing his trick. Randi advised them on how to set up controls to prevent Geller from hoodwinking them and he failed completely on his appearance. Randi later produced a book exposing all of Geller's frauds. Geller sued him for libel 3 times and lost each case. Geller had been a stage magician, in Israel, before the psychic con and everything he did was little more than a jazzed up carny routine...same with all of the rest, like The Amazing Kreskin, John Edwards, Sylvia Browne and faith healers, like Peter Popoff and Ernest Angley, both of whom he exposed as frauds. Popoff he exposed with a radio receiver that picked up an assistant feeding him information through and earpiece receiver. He exposed alleged psychic James Hydick, on That's My Line. Like Houdini, Randi went after frauds who were bilking people out of hard-earned money, with claims of psychic abilities, especially scum like Popoff and psychic surgeons (which is nothing more than palming chicken innards and smearing a bit of blood around the body, while curling the hand, while covering with the opposite hand, to make it look like it penetrates the skin). The 70s were a big decade for all kinds of quackery and nonsense, though later decades produced their own flim-flam. Stan probably saw Geller perform or met him at a party and was too gullible to spot the con. Or, didn't care and thought he had enough name recognition to sell comics. Randi has also exposed psychic research, revealing poor methodology and gullibility, by infiltrating two fakes into research projects. I once watched a Nova episode, on PBS, with Randi, where he debunked various psychic ideas and things like horoscopes, then went with a documentary crew to Eastern Europe to test claims made at several clinics, claiming holistic and psychic healing. None of them could reproduce their alleged results under controlled conditions. |
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Post by codystarbuck on May 20, 2024 22:18:06 GMT -5
ps In the Nova special, Randi speaks to a class of college students and hands out a description of them, based on their zodialogical sign. He asks them to read them and then asks, by show of hands, how many are accurate. pretty much the entire class raises their hand. He then instructs them to pass their sheet to a neighbor. He then has them read the new sheet and they all discover that every sheet handed out was identical in content. They were vague statements that could apply to most people and then the reader read themselves into the description, particularly the positive attributes. That is pretty much what astrology is, feeding people vague statements, which they then give meaning....much the same as alleged prophesy. Nostradmaus' writings were not specific statements, but vague quatrains, into which people read all kinds of meanings, based on their own prejudices and experiences.
When I worked for Barnes & Noble, in the 90s, there was a book called The Bible Code, which claimed all kinds of hidden messages, based on a computer analysis of of the Hebrew Bible. Not long after, a university study applied the same flawed methodology to other works of literature and produced other "hidden messages." The flaw was that the computer made interpretations of Hebrew words, lacking vowels in the writings, which could be interpreted in multiple ways.
There is film footage out there of the sisters who pulled off the Cottington Faery trickery, that was declared genuine by others of the day, showing how they did it (take photos of alleged faeries which looked "real:) and it was pretty simple. Same with films of crop circles being created. The British show QI even had one custom made and then footage was shown of the people creating it.
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Post by berkley on May 21, 2024 0:18:58 GMT -5
I have a soft spot for Kreskin as he had a tv show back in the early 70s that I remember watching as a kid. Totally from those distant memories, my impression is that he never claimed any special "psychic" powers or anything like that, but rather claimed he was able to do his tricks by such things as close observation of body language, etc. Of course I imagine that even if that was true most of his tricks would have to be at least partially staged, because how could you be sure of getting it right every single time. But at least he never tried to say he could do crazy things like telekinesis (in which category Geller's spoon-bending would fall) or levitation (who was that again?), etc - or such is my memory, anyway.
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 21, 2024 7:23:40 GMT -5
They did the same thing with Iron Man guest-starring in the last couple of issues of Werewolf by Night - and also tried to bring Jack Russell into the superhero world by giving him some control over his changing into a werewolf, which I always thought was a really stupid idea: "What's his superpower?" "He bites you and slashes you to pieces with his claws!". I wonder what it was about Iron Man that made him one of the go-to characters for this kind of thing on more than one occasion? I'm guessing that Iron man was a person that had flight thus making it easy for him to appear at different locales. Isn't it a problem when Spider-man shows up in a place that's not New York? Plus, 80s Stark Enterprises was pretty much infinite as far as how many 'branches' or 'factories' it had, so it was the perfect excuse to have Iron Man turn up anywhere without risking his secret identity. |
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Post by wildfire2099 on May 21, 2024 7:34:11 GMT -5
 Poor New Warriors.. even when THEY are the guest star they don't get to be on the cover. Incidently, the whole purpose of Acts of Vengeance was to have different characters on the cover! (Also, Driver's favorite event I bet, since he loves those unusual matchups!) |
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Post by driver1980 on May 21, 2024 7:34:16 GMT -5
Maybe not so much helping a book to survive, but a cynical sales ploy:  |
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Post by tarkintino on May 21, 2024 8:51:24 GMT -5
Plus, 80s Stark Enterprises was pretty much infinite as far as how many 'branches' or 'factories' it had, so it was the perfect excuse to have Iron Man turn up anywhere without risking his secret identity. Perhaos the most plausible explanation for a superhero being able to appear at several locations in a window of time that would be a physical impossibility. |
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Post by driver1980 on May 21, 2024 9:00:42 GMT -5
ps In the Nova special, Randi speaks to a class of college students and hands out a description of them, based on their zodialogical sign. He asks them to read them and then asks, by show of hands, how many are accurate. pretty much the entire class raises their hand. He then instructs them to pass their sheet to a neighbor. He then has them read the new sheet and they all discover that every sheet handed out was identical in content. They were vague statements that could apply to most people and then the reader read themselves into the description, particularly the positive attributes. That is pretty much what astrology is, feeding people vague statements, which they then give meaning....much the same as alleged prophesy. Nostradmaus' writings were not specific statements, but vague quatrains, into which people read all kinds of meanings, based on their own prejudices and experiences. When I worked for Barnes & Noble, in the 90s, there was a book called The Bible Code, which claimed all kinds of hidden messages, based on a computer analysis of of the Hebrew Bible. Not long after, a university study applied the same flawed methodology to other works of literature and produced other "hidden messages." The flaw was that the computer made interpretations of Hebrew words, lacking vowels in the writings, which could be interpreted in multiple ways. There is film footage out there of the sisters who pulled off the Cottington Faery trickery, that was declared genuine by others of the day, showing how they did it (take photos of alleged faeries which looked "real:) and it was pretty simple. Same with films of crop circles being created. The British show QI even had one custom made and then footage was shown of the people creating it. The ‘predictions’ of Nostradamus have become a cottage industry for journalists who need something to discuss on a slow news day. His ‘predictions’ applied to 1999. Until they didn’t. No, he meant 2000. No, he meant 2001. Sorry, he meant 2012. But a recent tabloid headline mentioned a vague future date (before 2030, I think). No doubt in 2040, someone will write a book about how he actually meant 2050. I read once that someone believed Lewis Carroll had “confessed” to being Jack the Ripper, via some words - anagrams to be precise - in one of his books. And with the correct methodology, we could see that for ourselves. However, it transpired that someone put the same methodology to use looking for anagrams in a Winnie the Pooh book, thus ‘proving’ that A. A. Milne was actually Jack the Ripper. I guess people see what they want to see. |
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Post by tonebone on May 21, 2024 9:06:29 GMT -5
I was following the Daredevil series around this time but didn't read this particular issue for one reason or another - most likely because of the usual distribution inconsistencies. But I did read the letters page commenting on it an issue or two later: I remember there was some questioning of Geller's appearance as a character in the story but can't recall Wolfman's response. I had never heard of Geller myself until then, but I gathered that his claims and "feats" were considered suspicious by many even at the time and I think I remember hearing years afterwards that they were decisively debunked at some point. It does feel like an odd lapse in judgement on the part of Wolfman, who wrote one of the more intelligent Marvel series of the 70s in Tomb of Dracula.
Geller was debunked on the Tonight Show, when he couldn't pull off a trick, thanks to Johnny Carson knowing he was a fraud and consulting with magician James Randi (The Amazing Randi) to figure out how he was doing his trick. Randi advised them on how to set up controls to prevent Geller from hoodwinking them and he failed completely on his appearance. Randi later produced a book exposing all of Geller's frauds. Geller sued him for libel 3 times and lost each case. Geller had been a stage magician, in Israel, before the psychic con and everything he did was little more than a jazzed up carny routine...same with all of the rest, like The Amazing Kreskin, John Edwards, Sylvia Browne and faith healers, like Peter Popoff and Ernest Angley, both of whom he exposed as frauds. Popoff he exposed with a radio receiver that picked up an assistant feeding him information through and earpiece receiver. He exposed alleged psychic James Hydick, on That's My Line. Like Houdini, Randi went after frauds who were bilking people out of hard-earned money, with claims of psychic abilities, especially scum like Popoff and psychic surgeons (which is nothing more than palming chicken innards and smearing a bit of blood around the body, while curling the hand, while covering with the opposite hand, to make it look like it penetrates the skin). The 70s were a big decade for all kinds of quackery and nonsense, though later decades produced their own flim-flam. Stan probably saw Geller perform or met him at a party and was too gullible to spot the con. Or, didn't care and thought he had enough name recognition to sell comics. Randi has also exposed psychic research, revealing poor methodology and gullibility, by infiltrating two fakes into research projects. I once watched a Nova episode, on PBS, with Randi, where he debunked various psychic ideas and things like horoscopes, then went with a documentary crew to Eastern Europe to test claims made at several clinics, claiming holistic and psychic healing. None of them could reproduce their alleged results under controlled conditions. Hydick at the barber shop: "Give me the Jim Shooter, but Prince Valiant length." |
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