No-Prizes!

Okay, I've always loved the Marvel "No-Prize" idea. For those of you who don't like reading letter pages from back in the day, a "no-prize" was an award Stan Lee gave out to letter writers who:

A). noticed a continuity error in a comic and then
B). proposed a clever reason to explain why the continuity error in such a way that there is no error.

An example, from Wikipedia: The Incredible Hulk #324 (Oct. 1986), in response to Hulk #321: ". . . On page 12, panel 5, Wonder Man's glasses are knocked off, but in following panels on the next page, he has them on. He didn’t have enough time to get them after they fell off, and Hawkeye’s explosive arrow probably would have destroyed them when it detonated on the Hulk. Never fear, though. I have the solution — while flying down to help Hawkeye, Wonder Man pulled out an extra pair he carries in case of just such emergencies." (Editor Bob Harras awarded the writer a No-Prize.)

These reasons have been given out have changed, and the practice disappeared and re-appeared over the years, but those are the general criteria. If you accomplished that, the editor of the book or Stan Lee, or Tom Breevort or whoever would send you an official Marvel envelope, that also happened to be empty; kind of a dick move, in my opinion; some little kids who didn't get the joke thought their prize had fallen out.

Anyways: this thread is going to be for that. Next time you spot a glaring continuity error in one of your favorite books (not just Marvel) post the error, and then attempt to come up with a reason why it's not actually an error at all! This should be fun!

To all continuity errors - "It was a Skrull/The Scarlet Witch did it"

😄

I've heard of these

Prime Punched at it

Dan Slott just used a perfect example.

Bendis, in "Dissambeled," mocked about thirty years of the continuity of Marvel's magic characters by having Dr. Strange state, "There is no such thing as chaos magic."

In "Mighty Avengers 23," which features the revived Cthon, the elder-god states, "They ended my feast not with a spell or a pact but with a lie. They said 'there is no god of chaos, there is no chaos magic.' " Since much of the power of gods is "belief" powered (IE, derived by the power they can draw from those who believe in them), if the various sorcerers of earth decided to act like chaos magic didn't exist, and stop drawing upon it, then Chthon lost a lot of power. It explains: A). Why Dr. Strange would claim that chaos magic doesn't exist and B). Why he stopped using it.

Good job, Dan Slott!

Originally posted by tjcoady
Dan Slott just used a perfect example.

Bendis, in "Dissambeled," mocked about thirty years of the continuity of Marvel's magic characters by having Dr. Strange state, "There is no such thing as chaos magic."

In "Mighty Avengers 23," which features the revived Cthon, the elder-god states, "They ended my feast not with a spell or a pact but with a lie. They said 'there is no god of chaos, there is no chaos magic.' " Since much of the power of gods is "belief" powered (IE, derived by the power they can draw from those who believe in them), if the various sorcerers of earth decided to act like chaos magic didn't exist, and stop drawing upon it, then Chthon lost a lot of power. It explains: A). Why Dr. Strange would claim that chaos magic doesn't exist and B). Why he stopped using it.

Good job, Dan Slott!

That makes sense but it seems very out of character for Strange to ignore the possibility that Wanda was using magic as opposed to mutant powers and thus end up on the wrong route to helping her......

But hey, I'm looking into it far too much, it's a decent explanation ✅

Originally posted by willRules
That makes sense but it seems very out of character for Strange to ignore the possibility that Wanda was using magic as opposed to mutant powers and thus end up on the wrong route to helping her......

But hey, I'm looking into it far too much, it's a decent explanation ✅

I always thought that a big part of Scarlet Witch was that she used both magic and a mutant powers: hence the training under Agatha Harkness.

Anyways, I've never really dug too deep into her continuity. She's not my favorite Avenger. Too-always-going-crazy.

This may be just a tiny continuity error but nevertheless during the flashback scenes in both Tales of The Sinestro Corps: Superman Prime and Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #3 that involve Prime's girlfriend Laurie, she is depicted as being a Blonde despite the fact that she has always been depicted as a Brunette.

Now one could say that "The Prime Punch" reset Earth-Prime's continuity so that Laurie was born a blonde instead of a brunette but that would mean that Earth-Prime would still have to exist...which it doesn't...thus there is no way to fix the error within actual continuity.

Originally posted by Prime
This may be just a tiny continuity error but nevertheless during the flashback scenes in both Tales of The Sinestro Corps: Superman Prime and Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds #3 that involve Prime's girlfriend Laurie, she is depicted as being a Blonde despite the fact that she has always been depicted as a Brunette.

Now one could say that "The Prime Punch" reset Earth-Prime's continuity so that Laurie was born a blonde instead of a brunette but that would mean that Earth-Prime would still have to exist...which it doesn't...thus there is no way to fix the error within actual continuity.

Plenty of ways: she got her hair dyed to check out what being a blonde is like, and the depiction we saw of her was during the week or so she had blonde hair.