Over the Edge (of the Spider-Verse)

Also, when is a prize not a prize?

Wednesday was a good day - I stopped by East Side Mags, my local comic store, to pick up a copy of EDGE OF SPIDERVERSE #2. It felt really cool to be able to buy a Spider-Man book with my name on it.

I’d obviously seen the final story before it went to print, but it was the first time I’d gotten to hold the story in my hands (Marvel will send me comp copies, but they don’t always arrive by the time the book is out.) It was just really cool.

Flipping through the book, I also saw this really nice note about the issue from editor Nick Lowe:

It’s always nice to see your work praised, especially when it’s from an editor you’re working with. And I can say working with Nick was great - he was super encouraging throughout the whole process, and his notes really tightened up the story we were telling. And I agree with him 100% about the amazing work Edgar Salazar, Victor Olazaba, and Alex Sinclair did bringing it to life!

You might have noticed that Nick is asking for letters about the issue to hear what you thought of it - you can write to SPIDEYOFFICE@marvel.com to let him know if you enjoyed it.

I love letter columns - as a reader, I have a lot of fond memories of seeing the back and forth between editors and passionate fans - Marvel letter columns were especially fun because they were often filled with readers poring over the books trying to win a No-Prize.

For those who don’t know, a No-Prize was Marvel’s answer to nitpicky fans taking them to task over continuity errors, and it was honestly a genius way to deal with it.

Even back in the 80s and 90s, a typical Marvel character had 20 years of stories behind them, by various writers and artists, under different editorial direction, and vastly different eras when it came to sensibilities. But, taken together, they were supposed to read as one big, continuous story - like everything that happened in Amazing Spider-Man #1 was part of the backstory of Amazing Spider-Man #238, even though you’ve literally got 20 years in between those issues.

And you had fans who would get really obsessive about that - people who had been collecting the comic all those years and knew every story, every panel by heart, calling Marvel out when inconsistencies would pop up - which they did (and do), with regularity.

Letters pages were often filled with complaints like “In issue #304, Spider-Man orders his coffee black, when it was clearly established in issue #20 he likes it with cream. Why aren’t you doing your job as an editor?!”

I imagine it got really frustrating - because editing for continuity is definitely part of the job, but squaring every single detail in a story with decades of stories that came before it is practically impossible.

So Marvel pulled an awesome move of mental jiu-jitsu, and turned it right back on the nitpickers. Marvel doesn’t make mistakes, they said - if you know continuity so well, you know there’s an explanation for every so-called inconsistency - and if you manage to explain it, we’ll send you a coveted, secret award - a no-prize!

So you’d get these letters with hilarious, convoluted explanations trying to square things - like, to use the previous (fictional) example, someone might write in conjecturing that after Spidey fought a villainous cow in Issue #175 (he didn’t), he lost his taste for cream, and takes his coffee black now.

And if you wrote in with something like that, and it made sense, you got a no-prize! What was a no-prize? Nobody knew! There wasn’t an internet you could just look this stuff up on, and the editors were cheekily coy about with anyone who wrote in to ask.

Turns out, it was (spoiler) an empty envelope.

Thanks, internet.

I love a good, harmless troll, and this is maybe my favorite example of a real-life one. But beyond the humor, the no-prize is a great example of how passionate comic readers are, and how great things can happen when they communicate that passion with the people making them.

We live in an era today where we are more connected than ever, in theory - between email, social media, and instant messages, there are about a million ways you can get a hold of someone - but in reality it feels like somehow, all this connection is driving us apart.

Maybe it’s just the sheer volume, but it feels like it’s harder than ever to make yourself actually heard. The thing with letter columns back in the day was, they always said they couldn’t respond to every letter they got, but they did read them all. I’m not sure that’s even possible nowadays, to read every email, tweet, and message they get.

And as for no-prizes, I’m pretty sure they stopped sending the physical ones out a long time ago - and as the readership has evolved (and the timelines have grown more complicated), there’s way less “gotcha” continuity policing. So no-prizes aren’t as much of a hot ticket anymore. And I never won one myself.

But I did love those letter columns, and the fact that they’re still doing them means that they’re doing their best to read the feedback they get, even if it is a mountain of work on top of their already full plates. You gotta respect that!

Alright, thanks for indulging my in this little trip down comics memory lane… if Marvel history is interesting to you, I recommend you check out longtime Marvel Editor Tom Brevoort’s newsletter, Man with a Hat, as he deftly delves into the comic book lore of yesteryear with regularity.

Until next time, friends, and I’ll end this newsletter the same way Stan Lee used to end his letter columns.

Excelsior!

- Rich