Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio. This week, Bennett looks at April Fool’s Day in comics.
Usually, I'm perfectly happy to celebrate any occasion that they've got going, but have always drawn the line at April Fool’s Day. Dedicating an entire day to pulling pranks and just generally messing with people's heads always seemed cruel. But then, growing up it always seemed like if I wasn't making a fool out of myself there was always someone willing to make one out of me. When you're always the butt of the joke, every day is April Fool’s Day.
So it's kind of ironic I learned about April Fool’s Day from a story I found in a battered copy of Superman I somehow came across. I speak, of course, of the classic “The Night of March 31st” from Superman Vol. 1 #145 from 1961. Written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, it was an imaginary story where, among other things, Lana Lang attempted to kill Superman with Kryptonite, but he was saved by Luthor, Bizarro, and Brainiac. But on the final page, the reader was informed that March 31st is also April 1st, a.k.a. April Fool’s Day.
It's considered a classic and was even included in the book The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told. Lesser-known is Action Comics Vol. 1 #388 from 1970. The cover, full of DC characters looking and acting wildly out of character, declared "This Is Not An April Fool's Story!" and featured "Puzzle of the Wild World," written by Cary Bates. To give them credit, it isn’t an April Fool’s story, or an imaginary story. It concerned the wonderfully named Professor Farlow Nurd (the character’s actual name and not a misspelling), who somehow creates a weirdly distorted duplicate Earth where WWII is still being fought and Sgt. Rock was once Superman's rival for the affections of Lois Lane.
DC has never done a story like that again, but this year the publisher did take the time to try and fool their fans by sending out a fake press release, or as the headline of a piece from the Comicbook site says, “
DC Trolls Fans By Announcing All Super Heroes Will Get Trunks.” The press release read:
"With the Man of Steel returning to his classic look in this spring’s Action Comics #1000, DC is proud to announce a line-wide initiative that returns its characters to their classic trunks look. DC’s tireless artists have created trunks for a variety of future storylines, including Mecha-Trunks and Omega Beam Trunks."
Back in 2016 (see “
Confession of a Comic Book Guy -- Sadly, This Is How The Old Year Passes”), I wrote that I really didn’t “get” the incredible popularity of Harley Quinn. Part of the problem probably had a lot to do with the fact that DC never seems to know exactly what to do with the character. Then I read the piece on
i09, “
Harley Quinn Is Heading to Apokolips to Do Battle With the New Gods.” It’s an absolutely ridiculous, wonderfully audacious new direction for the character, one which should never work, but which I must admit I find oddly appealing. Harley should get along splendidly with Jack Kirby’s Female Furies, especially Mad Harriet, the crazy one with the razor-sharp claws.
As a very long time fan, I was of course well pleased when I read that Marvel would once again be publishing
Fantastic Four comics (see
“‘Fantastic Four’ Return To Comics”). The series will be written by Dan Slott and drawn by Sara Pichelli, and while Mr. Slott certainly needs no advice from me, I would very humbly like to ask him if he could please, please bring back Uatu the Watcher. Not because I’m a big fan of the character, although I absolutely am (see
“Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--Watch This”), but because his supposed “death” in 2014’s
Original Sin never made any sense.
I just can’t believe for a second that one of the oldest and most advanced beings in the Marvel Universe, effectively immortal and possessing vast psionic powers, could be killed by anyone, let alone Nick Fury. But if you need further proof; they never found his body. As we all know from decades of reading comic books, if you don't see the body, they’re not necessarily dead. Me, I believe Uatu faked his own death so he could once again passively observe and record events without being constantly bothered by Marvel characters forever dropping by unannounced. But, any way you want to deal with it is just fine with me, Mr. Slott. Maybe you could say it had just been an April Fool’s joke.
*For the youngs among us, this a reference to the theme song of the safety shorts featuring Jiminy Cricket made for The Mickey Mouse Club back in the 1950’s. The lyrics went:
Oh, I'm no fool, no siree
I want to live to be 93
I play safe for you and me
'Cause I'm no fool.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
