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View Full Version : The Return of WHICH COMIC BOOK PLOT IS FAKE?


Kalel21
06/17/2009, 09:08
Two of these comic book plots are real. One is fake. Which is the fake?


1) Spider Man and Jonah Jamison are both captured by a mad scientist with a grudge against them both. They are shackled together with an explosive device set to go off in 24 hours. The bomb will also go off if the shackles are broken or removed. Spidey contacts Curt Conners, but neither he nor a police Bomb Squad guy can figure out how to safely detach the shackles. More time is lost when Spidey/Jonah are attacked by a super villain, but Spidey eventually figures out that there is a remote power source to the shackles back at the mad scientist's lair. Freezing the power source with liquid oxygen allows Spidey to snap the shackles off without detonating the device.


2) Superman and Green Lantern are working together to evacuate a small colony of alien settlers from a planet before the sun goes nova. G.L. gets the settlers away, but the exploding sun catches Superman and tosses him into another dimension. This dimension is made up entirely of red suns, so Superman is trapped on a small planet without his powers. He is befriended by a native farmer of the planet and is soon using his own knowledge of farming to help his new friend get a better crop. He starts thinking that, though he misses his home, he can make a good life here helping people--it doesn't matter that he's lost his powers as long as he can still do good. Meanwhile, G.L. has enlisted a STAR labs scientist to track Superman down. Opening a dimensional doorway with his ring, he brings Superman home. Superman is indeed happy to be home, but lets out a soft sigh of regret when he thinks about the new friends he left behind in the other dimension.


3) Ant Man and the Wasp are on vacation in the Greek islands when they are attacked by a giant Cyclops. Soon, it turns out that the Cyclops is a robot being used by invading aliens to gain a foothold on Earth. The Cyclops at first seems to powerful for the two tiny heroes to handle, but Ant Man soon gets the better of it by getting inside it, then reprogramming it to turn on its alien masters. The aliens are chased off Earth in ignoble defeat.

Ignatz_Mouse
06/17/2009, 09:15
I'll say #2. Reasons to be given upon reveal.

Thawmus
06/17/2009, 09:33
I want #2 to be fake, and therefore choose #2.

It's like the Superman version of Survivor.

wintremute
06/17/2009, 11:17
I say #3 is fake, because I think I read #2.

Kalel21
06/17/2009, 11:21
I'll post the correct answer at 2 pm Eastern time, so anyone else who wants to play has a couple of hours yet to jump in.

batfink
06/17/2009, 11:25
I'll also vote #2.
Always trust IM in the ways of Green Lantern.

BudPalmer
06/17/2009, 11:28
I'm picking #1. It just seems too believable (plus it guarantees that someone will be right!)!

Ignatz_Mouse
06/17/2009, 12:38
I'll also vote #2.
Always trust IM in the ways of Green Lantern.

I will also brag about my past track record....

Kalel21
06/17/2009, 13:29
Well, I only fooled 40% of you.


#1 is real, from Amazing Spider Man #192 or thereabouts.


#3 is real--it's one of the original Ant Man tales from Tales to Astonish published in the early 1960s.

So #2 is the fake. Superman never was stranded in a dimension of Red Suns working as a farmer. But he coulda been, by golly!!!!

Ignatz_Mouse
06/17/2009, 13:46
Reasoning:

First, all three sound legit. Nothing stoof out as erroneous or weird. However, #2 had two strikes that made me look closer.

1) It's an homage to a very famous story, "Superman Under the Red Sun."
2) It's a GL/Superman team-up, and I think I've read almost all of those.

So that got me looking more closely, and from there:
- a whole universe of red suns? Even if true, how would such a fact make it into the story?
- ostensibly a team-up, but really just Superman. Not impossible, but odd. I would expect some other Superman-family cast member to fulfill the secondary character role if it weren't a formal team-up story. Oddly, this is more likely in modern comics, but that's less likely for a KalEl question.

Ignatz_Mouse
06/17/2009, 13:56
By the way, I still love these and have missed them. They're pretty labor intensive to make, though!

Kalel21
06/17/2009, 13:57
- a whole universe of red suns? Even if true, how would such a fact make it into the story?.

He could have found out from an astronomer on the planet he was stranded on.

Gee whiz, I thought the "whole universe of red suns" was needed to explain why Supes couldn't get back to his own dimension even if he escaped from that particular planet--but instead it was a giveaway that the story was fake!!!! :(

Ignatz_Mouse
06/17/2009, 14:02
I learned stars aging cycles from silver age comics-- they get a lot of stuff wrong, but that seemed the most "off" to me!

Like I said, that might pass in a later-era story, but the rest of it seemed solidly Bronze or earlier.