And another:
Incorrect: Isaiah was experimented on as part of Project Rebirth.
Correct: Project Rebirth was the one with Erskine, and died with him. Isaiah was part of the follow-up Project Super Soldier.

We see this in Truth#3:

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

This one might have been mentioned on the Capes (Optional) site. It's even made it to the Handbooks:

Incorrect: Phil Sheldon first appeared in Marvels #1
Truth: Phil Sheldon first appeared unidentified (one panel cameo) in Amazing Spider-Man #122 before being fully identified in Marvels #1

Yeah, there are a few cases where characters have been retconned to have been someone we saw in the background of an earlier comic but who wasn't identified at the time, or was identified as someone else.

Another non-Marvel one:

Incorrect: The Yellow Kid was the first merchandized comic strip character.
Truth: He was beaten on the merchandise front by Britain's Alley Sloper at the very least.

For a long time many early internet sites claimed Yellow Kid was the first ever comic strip character, but that myth gradually got beaten down by people pointing out the Kid's predecessors. However, it seems that the myth that he's the first one to get his own merchandise persists. Since the Yellow Kid debuted in 1895, and Ally Sloper had merchandise that predates this by at least a decade, the claim that the Kid was the first to have his own merchandise also falls down.

Sidney Osinga wrote:

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

This one might have been mentioned on the Capes (Optional) site. It's even made it to the Handbooks:

Incorrect: Phil Sheldon first appeared in Marvels #1
Truth: Phil Sheldon first appeared unidentified (one panel cameo) in Amazing Spider-Man #122 before being fully identified in Marvels #1

Related to this:

Incorrect: Venom (Eddie Brock)'s first appearance is Amazing Spider-Man #299 or 300
Truth: Venom first appeared in Web of Spider-Man #18. It was only a cameo, literally just an arm that pushes Peter into the path of a subway, but it was latter to be confirmed to be Venom.

Yep. "Secret cameo" and retcon first appearances catch a lot of people out - I lump them both together in this statement because it's often hard to tell them apart, but the basic rule of thumb is if the background character/person in shadows/only the arm shown appearance was always meant to be a given new character the it's the secret cameo (for want of a better term), and if the intention wasn't there at the time and was added later then it's a retcon.

Pinball_Lizard wrote:

I know you guys probably get this question a lot, but can you refresh my memory on the name origins for Venom's "children," because they've gotten a lot more prominent recently? I know Scream was named in the comics, some were named by their action figures, and some had fan nicknames that got canonized apparently by accident, but I can't for the life of me recall which are which.

Thanks.

First page of this thread covers it, though I'll grant that because it lost its formatting when it got moved to this newer forum the original posts can be hard to wade through. Here's the relevant bit verbatim:

More fake namery on Wiki sites: Venom's symbiote offspring. If you were to trust Wikipedia, you'd believe Venom's offspring included Scream, Lasher, Phage, Riot and Agony. A shout-out to Wikipedia user Crazy Penguin, who explains the truth very well (and so I'll quote and credit him, rather than paraphrasing him):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sy...)#LF_symbiotes

"Scream was never a fan name for the yellow symbiote character. She had an action figure produced in the Spider-Man: Venom: Planet of the Symbiotes toy line from 1996. The slim green symbiote character also had an action figure produced named Lasher. Unlike Scream, Lasher's name has never been used in a Marvel publication, but it still exists on an official Marvel product and so could still be considered his "real" name.

The other three Life Foundation symbiotes did not have action figures. There was an action figure called Riot, but that was a four-armed character who had never appeared in the comics and had a biography on the back of the box that made it clear he was not one of the five Life Foundation symbiotes.

Phage is short for Xenophage, an alien from the Venom comic books that is not a symbiote - it eats symbiotes. The Xenophage action figure was called Phage. I have absolutely no idea why a certain fan chose to use this name in reference to one of the Life Foundation symbiotes, it's a completely separate and unrelated character.

The name Agony comes from nowhere. It was just made up.

Allow me to reiterate, the only two Life Foundation symbiotes officially named were Scream (the yellow one) and Lasher (the green one), both in the action figure line. The only one to have their name carried over into the comic books and publications is Scream.

Officially the others do not have codenames until Marvel tells us otherwise."

Unfortunately Crazy Penguin appears to be outnumbered by the misinformed, as a glance at the history of the various symbiote pages (most of whom are listed under the fake, fan-cruft names) shows that whenever he (or anyone else) has tried to fix the pages, others have rushed to return them to being incorrect.

So, summarising. Scream is an official name. Lasher is not an official name, but, in the absence of an official name, does have some legitimacy for being used to clarify which symbiote is being discussed, based on it being used by the toy line. Riot, Phage and Agony are just plain wrong.

Later edit: And now those names have been used in comics for the new hosts of those symbiotes. However, it is important to note that doesn't retroactively make them canon for the previous hosts - Peter Parker did not gain the alias Venom just because that was the name the symbiote and new host Eddie Brock took for themselves.

Pinball_Lizard wrote:

Thanks muchly. Would be interesting to know where the "fake" names originated from.

Can't guarantee that this was the very first place it cropped up, but thanks to Wikipedia's history function I can confirm it was added to the Symbiotes page there on 6th December 2005 by IP address 12.5.1.207
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Symbiote_(comics)&diff=next&oldid=30263549

They would seem to be the person who came up with the names, assuming they didn't just copy it from another site. However, that's not automatically a safe assumption - Wikipedians have an annoying tendency to plagiarise and to not check if what they are copy/pasting is accurate, as evidenced by the fact that fake names got added to the Marvel fan wiki a year later.

Pinball_Lizard wrote:

So who was the original Riot then? A toy-exclusive character?

This was the original Riot:

who as you can see in no way resembles the symbiote fans then began calling Riot (centre of image):
Nor does the comics one fit the following bio information:

Assuming I've found the right bit of the video, I don't think he outright says Crystar was licensed, but instead mentions it in the same breath as other comics based on toys. But yes, you are correct to say that Crystar's comic was planned first, with the intent to license him for toys. As such it is kind of ironic that with all the current toys based on Marvel characters, there's not one for Crystar.

Too many characters too mention:

Incorrect/possibly incorrect: A character's counterpart (comics or other media) has the same real name as the 616/Prime version if not given in the source material.
Truth: That might very well be the case, but it cannot be assumed. We've seen minor spelling differences (I think the MCU Red Skull's surname is Schmidt), spelling differences leading to slight pronunciation differences (Ultimate Doctor Doom is Victor von Damme), and completely different real names (in The Marvel Superheroes, Anton Vanko's successor is Borok despite being a counterpart of Boris Turgenov). At best if the source material doesn't explcitly state it, the real name should be listed as "Unrevealed, possibly [616/Prime name]" (or "probably" if there is some evidence hinting at a shared real name).

One that was discussed on the Empyre Handbook thread, but needs adding here:

Incorrect: Sabretooth joined the Avengers Unity Squad.
Truth: Sabretooth worked with the Unity Squad, and because he was inverted at the time and thus heroic he did so willingly, but he was always considered a prisoner by them, not a member.

I've seen articles on various comic sites mentioning Sabretooth being a member of the Unity Squad, hence why I feel the need to reiterate this. While working on the most recent Avengers team handbook entry I wondered myself if Sabretooth had gained membership and asked editorial for confirmation one way or the other; I was told in no uncertain terms that no matter how helpful he was being, he was always considered a prisoner, not a member.

Now that this thread has been expanding in scope, I'm almost wondering if this should be reworked into a new section, with this thread for Marvel, and separate threads for DC, James Bond (I can think of a couple more there), and Miscellaneous. Thoughts?

zuckyd1 wrote:

At this point do we need more than just Marvel and non-Marvel/Miscellaneous? I think there have only been a handful in the latter category.

Hard to tell. I know I have some that I have been holding off on because they don't really fit here but I don't know if others have the same. But certainly in the short term I could create just a separate thread for non-Marvel, and if DC etc expand further then I could create a new section,
 

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

The next one is generally not an error among comic fans, but the mainstream media has gotten confused about this:
Incorrect: Stan Lee co-created Captain America.
Truth: Cap was co-created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. In fact, Lee's first published comics work was a text piece four issues into Captain America Comics.
 

Mainstream media seems to think Stan co-created every Marvel character. I've seen them attribute Deadpool to him too. It actually helps to prove the point that Stan wasn't the glory hog trying to steal everyone else's credit that some claim (notably some hard-line Kirbyites). If you check his various columns and interviews, Stan tended to be pretty good about crediting and "bigging up" the artists he worked with. Trouble is, if you are the face/voice that everyone sees, people tend to ignore the others involved, even if you credit them.

I've experienced this myself on a much smaller scale. When I was younger I helped organise some conventions. None of us were fond of getting up on stage in front of an audience, but since someone had to do so to introduce guests, that duty usually fell to me as the person in the team who suffered the least amount of stage fright (I hated it, but not as much as my fellow organisers, so I could force myself to do it). Trouble was, very quickly my fellow organisers told me that they noticed that all the attendees had come to assume I was the sole organiser, despite how often I mentioned the others to the audience.

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

Loki wrote:

Mainstream media seems to think Stan co-created every Marvel character. I've seen them attribute Deadpool to him too. It actually helps to prove the point that Stan wasn't the glory hog trying to steal everyone else's credit that some claim (notably some hard-line Kirbyites). If you check his various columns and interviews, Stan tended to be pretty good about crediting and "bigging up" the artists he worked with. Trouble is, if you are the face/voice that everyone sees, people tend to ignore the others involved, even if you credit them.

In fact in Son of Origins, Lee gave Kirby credit as the sole creator of Silver Surfer, even though the Surfer was obviously a favourite character of his.

And the fact that Lee came up with all the backstory that made the Surfer a more interesting character than (for example) the New Gods' Black Racer. That's the thing - I get why Lee considered himself the creator of Spider-Man. It's really down to how you interpret the word "creator."

If the creator is the person who came up with the initial concept, then Lee is the sole creator of Spider-Man and Kirby the sole creator of the Silver Surfer.

If the creators are anyone who made contributions to developing the character prior to publication, then Lee AND Ditko co-created Spider-Man, and Kirby AND Lee co-created the Surfer.

I don't think Stan was trying to do Ditko down in any way when he initially said he considered himself the creator of Spider-Man. He always acknowledged that without Ditko's design and art style Spidey would have ended up a different character from the one we ultimately got and that without Ditko's contribution the character would not have ended up as big as he did. But, from Stan's perspective, based on how he understood the word "creator," Ditko didn't qualify. Whether he was right on that point is debatable, but like I said, I don't believe Stan was saying it out of any sort of mean-minded attempt to hog all the credit. The very fact that he always made a big deal of Steve's contributions, and that Stan began calling Steve a co-creator as soon as he learned that not doing so was upsetting Steve, says otherwise.

I think we do writers and artists a disservice focusing so much on "creators." All due credit to Rob Liefeld for creating Deadpool, but let's be honest, the character would have remained a minor player had it not been for Joe Kelly taking up writing chores. Rob came up with the look, name and basic concept, and as a result gets cameos in the movies and acknowledged in the credits, but Joe came up with what made Deadpool distinctive and memorable, and gets none of the accolades. Both should be getting due recognition, but we focus on "creators" and not significant "developers."

I recall it being reported on some fan sites a few years back that Abby Brand was implied to be pregnant, the father presumably being Beast. Since this has never been followed up on, is this a whopper of a dropped plot thread or a fan misinterpretation from the beginning?

Pinball_Lizard wrote:

I recall it being reported on some fan sites a few years back that Abby Brand was implied to be pregnant, the father presumably being Beast. Since this has never been followed up on, is this a whopper of a dropped plot thread or a fan misinterpretation from the beginning?

Very belatedly spotting this. I'd need to check with the others on the team more up on this or else need to have a better idea what issues to check. In theory it might be either - storylines do get lost from time to time, but equally fans do get the wrong end of the stick a fair bit too.