Aha, so I wasn't just imagining things. Strange Tales #115. Not sure if Reed's karate skills are also at "world's greatest expert" level. 

zuckyd1 wrote:

Aha, so I wasn't just imagining things. Strange Tales #115. Not sure if Reed's karate skills are also at "world's greatest expert" level. 

Yes, I'd say neither this nor Sue's statement confirm Reed to be a martial arts master, not without further evidence to back it up. He's clearly got some level of knowledge of it, and has tried to teach some fighting skills to Sue and Johnny, but given how he's failed to demonstrate this supposed skill himself on panel, even in instances where he'd been depowered and so martial arts could have been useful, my best bet is that he's probably only average, despite his loving (then-)girlfriend bigging him up while fighting Reed's rival. Maybe Reed learned as part of his training for his wartime spy days in Sin-Cong, maybe he self-taught himself upon realizing he'd inevitably end up in fights as part of the F4, but regardless, unless we get further evidence, I'd say he's able to handle himself well enough not to embarrass himself in a fight, but we've got nothing to say he's a true expert (sorry Sue), and assuming black belts is a jump. 

Related to my previous post: Lockjaw (Earth-616) is A) a dog, B) is exceptionally intelligent for one, and C) a member of Pet Avengers. To the best of my knowledge, the correct answers are A) his species is inconclusive, B) he possesses human level intelligence, have demonstrated so several times, and C) no, since the Pet Avengers takes place on Earth-97161 (although they have crossed over to -616). I've pointed these out, and even backed them up with official source material, but gets the reply that gets is that Wikipedia/common knowledge says otherwise, so I'm the one who's wrong.

This bit of misinformation is from Marvel's own marketers: titles that didn't last very long such as Night Nurse have been promoted as miniseries/limited series, such as when they're reprinted. A miniseries or limited series was only intended to run a specific number of issues; that's different from a series that was meant to be ongoing but ended really quickly. Night Nurse etc were simply commercial failures. That doesn't necessarily mean they were failures creatively (their audience might not have been around or had the series promoted to them properly if they were around) but the sales just weren't there. I think a better way to market such series would be to say, "This series may not have been a hit when it was first published, but we like it and want to give everyone a second chance to read it."

For a long time there's been theories that Franklin Richards is the cause of Marvel's floating timeline, using his powers to slow down time to keep his family and friends young and healthy for as long as possible. I've even seen claims some stories actually outright imply it. Is there any truth to this, or just fans asserting that their theories have more meat than they actually do, as often happens?

Sidney Osinga wrote:

Related to my previous post: Lockjaw (Earth-616) is A) a dog, B) is exceptionally intelligent for one, and C) a member of Pet Avengers. To the best of my knowledge, the correct answers are A) his species is inconclusive, B) he possesses human level intelligence, have demonstrated so several times, and C) no, since the Pet Avengers takes place on Earth-97161 (although they have crossed over to -616). I've pointed these out, and even backed them up with official source material, but gets the reply that gets is that Wikipedia/common knowledge says otherwise, so I'm the one who's wrong.

Working in reverse - Wiki/common knowledge. Blech. Way too often wrong.

Writers have gone back and forth. We've no evidence afaik of Terrigen working on any species other than Inhumans (or else the recentish release of Terrigen worldwide would have far greater impact on life on Earth), which really makes the idea that Lockjaw was a dog to begin with somewhat suspect. He's definitely human level intelligence, though there's occasional evidence that this fluctuates down at times (basically, some writers have ignored or been unaware of the early stories where he was clearly very smart and have depicted him as having only dog level intelligence). Pet Avengers isn't 616, per editorial instruction; however, not every writer seems to get that or else their editors aren't passing that instruction on, so I could see that being undone someday when some undeniably 616 story refers to them as being in-universe.

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

This bit of misinformation is from Marvel's own marketers: titles that didn't last very long such as Night Nurse have been promoted as miniseries/limited series, such as when they're reprinted. A miniseries or limited series was only intended to run a specific number of issues; that's different from a series that was meant to be ongoing but ended really quickly. Night Nurse etc were simply commercial failures. That doesn't necessarily mean they were failures creatively (their audience might not have been around or had the series promoted to them properly if they were around) but the sales just weren't there. I think a better way to market such series would be to say, "This series may not have been a hit when it was first published, but we like it and want to give everyone a second chance to read it."

Yeah. Some revisionist history going on there.

Pinball_Lizard wrote:

For a long time there's been theories that Franklin Richards is the cause of Marvel's floating timeline, using his powers to slow down time to keep his family and friends young and healthy for as long as possible. I've even seen claims some stories actually outright imply it. Is there any truth to this, or just fans asserting that their theories have more meat than they actually do, as often happens?

Without having read every single story and recalling them all perfectly I can't absolutely state that it's never been implied in-story, but I'm not aware of such an instance off the top of my head, and the onus is on anyone who claims that it has to provide the issue where it happened. It's like me claiming that (to pull an extremely silly example out of the ether) in a non-US comic there was a story where Wolverine slept with Aunt May. That'd be virtually impossible to actively disprove, because you'd have to show that you've checked every single non-US story, and I could always claim it must be in one you overlooked, because I've provided no way to narrow the search down to within reasonable parameters. 

The onus for any claims should always be to prove by providing evidence of where and when it happened in at least one checkable story, not to disprove by providing evidence that it never happened across literally tens of thousands of stories.

Another one: Due to the continuity snarls particular with season 6, some people are insisting that Agents of SHIELD isn't canon to the MCU and some even go so far as to claim it never was. The continuity is certainly problematic and there clearly was a lack of communication between the movie and TV people, but I believe from Marvel's standpoint it's still canon. Certainly Kevin Feige, who's in charge of the movies has never declared the show to no longer be canon.

Just found another one, and this one has even made it onto an imdb page:

Incorrect: Super-Axis and Battle Axis are the same team.
Truth: They are two completely separate teams that happen to have been on the same side during World War II.

It wouldn't surprise me if this error came from Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Golden Age 2004 giving them a shared entry. This may have caused people to assume they were one and the same. I'm guessing the real reason was limited space.
 

I'm bemused. On Facebook I posted the following in a response to a Comicbook.com article which linked to another article claiming Isaiah Bradley was the first Captain America, and came before Steve Rogers. I just got notified that the post got blocked because it "violates Facebook's community standards on spam and fraud. I'm genuinely confused as to what spam or fraud they think they see in the post. Judge for yourselves:

It'd be nice if Comicbook.com would use people who know how to do research. The article links to another of their articles from a couple of days ago where they state that Isaiah became Cap "long before" Steve. Except that he didn't. He was a victim of experiments to recreate the formula, and was experimented on after Steve became Cap. Five seconds on Wikipedia would have revealed this, or, even better, reading the actual comics that Isaiah has appeared in.

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

Ironically even though you weren't being complimentary, it might be the link that being seen as spam. I had trouble on CBR, which uses Facebook for comments, responding to Brian Cronin's criticisms of the Handbooks until I stopped linking to this site and otherwise downplayed promoting this site. The automatic spam catcher might be triggered by the Comicbook.com link.

Ironically, I didn't put the link in - I just typed the site name and it automatically turned it into a link. Given the post I was responding to was MADE by Comicbook.com and had a link to their article, I find it bizarre that Facebook decided to reject the post on that basis.

I assume one of the reasons for the "Isaiah came before Steve" was comments made before the series came out in Wizard Magazine, at least. I remember an article saying something like "the army would test the serum on a black guy before giving it to a blond haired, blue eyed kid like Steve". That could have A) been part of the original pitch which was changed, or B) that's realistically what would have happened. However, what many people with only casual knowledge ignore, is that That was not what ended up being published. (Also, Jack Windmere, the African-American man who was a candidate along side of Steve, never gets mentioned.

Sidney Osinga wrote:

I assume one of the reasons for the "Isaiah came before Steve" was comments made before the series came out in Wizard Magazine, at least. I remember an article saying something like "the army would test the serum on a black guy before giving it to a blond haired, blue eyed kid like Steve". That could have A) been part of the original pitch which was changed, or B) that's realistically what would have happened. However, what many people with only casual knowledge ignore, is that That was not what ended up being published.

Yeah, that certainly wouldn't have helped. We see a lot of "but Comic XX says this" where we go "yes, but comic YY then retconned that." You've got to read all the relevant stories. That's why I'll often answer questions about stuff with a caveat of "unless it's been retconned in a recent comic."

Sidney Osinga wrote:

(Also, Jack Windmere, the African-American man who was a candidate along side of Steve, never gets mentioned.

Very true. 

Another one that comes up quite a bit on one largely comic book related site, especially of late:

Incorrect: MCU refers to the Marvel movies and shows set in the same universe that first appeared in Iron Man 2008, as well as comic book characters and other concepts that have counterparts in the above universe
Truth: MCU refers only to the Marvel movies and shows set in the same universe that first appeared in Iron Man 2008; so just the one reality.

It's possible that the writers of that site know this but use the MCU term more freely for click bait reasons.