In Amazing Spider-Man #157 (1976), Spidey is in pursuit of Doctor Octopus, when Octavius manages to elude the wallcrawler with a brilliant tactical maneuver:
Yes, he ducked. Whoever could have anticipated that? Oh, Peter...Anyway, this sends Spider-Man crashing through an apartment window, which would be traumatizing enough for the tenant...but there's a special reason to be extra upset:
Uhhh...well...um...I think I'll let you guys insert your own punchlines here...best one wins a D'oh-Prize.In #161, Marvel printed a notice on the letters page explaining that this really wasn't their fault, but the printer's:
So, the bare-assed Spider-Man wasn't Glynis Wein's fault. That, however, makes it no less funny...
3 comments:
Time to pull out my professional graphic designer credentials and call "BULL#$%@" on Marvel's "explanation".
Here's the deal:
If the blue (or "cyan") plate was indeed "omitted", then none of the blue coloring you see on that panel, the page it appeared on, and the large grouping of pages that print together (called a "signature") would have appeared as well. In other words, if the cat, blue shorts, and blue accents of Spidey's costume appear blue (which they do), the cyan ink was definitely not "omitted". This appears to be a case where the colorist, or the person following her instructions for cutting the proper screens for the color values, simply overlooked Spidey's legs and it went all the way through printing without anyone catching the error. Or, if they did catch the error, it was too far along in the process to change without spending a gob of money for new printing plates and all of the attendant (and costly) production delays.
Nice try, Marvel....but you can't fool me!
By the way, I still remember seeing that panel for the first time as a kid and thinking it was probably the funniest thing I'd ever seen to that point. Not understanding the reason behind such a gaffe, I thought it was done on purpose. YIKES!
Oops...almost forgot my punchline...
"It's that Spider-guy wanted by the police! Looks like he could use a shave, too!"
Or....
"It's that Spider-guy wanted by the police! Attack him, my miniature pet black panther that looks nothing like an actual house cat!"
I have to say, Mark, the Bullpen's explanation never made a lot of sense to me, but I just chalked it up to my ignorance of the printing industry. Thanks for the expert testimony!
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