Saturday, July 25, 2009

A Number By Any Other Name Would Still Be #600

Marvel foolishly restarted most of their big titles with new #1 issues back in the 1990s (several times, in the case of some of their titles).

Recently, though, Marvel has decided to re-renumber most of the titles, not too coincidentally just as they approach #600.

Or are they really approaching #600? Here, just to pick a month at random, are the numbers for some Marvel titles cover-dated April, 1989:

Fantastic Four #325
Amazing Spider-Man #314
Incredible Hulk #354
Captain America #352
Thor #402

OK, how about some September 2009 cover date issue numbers?

Fantastic Four #568
Amazing Spider-Man #600
Incredible Hulk #600
Captain America #601
Thor #602

Hmmm...Pretty odd how all those books that were so far away in issue numbers 10 years ago all just happened to hit #600 within 2 months of each other, eh? And kind of funny how the Fantastic Four, which has had its own title longer than any of those others, has been lapped and left in the dust. (Amazing Spider-Man has been publishing thrice monthly for over a year now, so there's a partial excuse in that case).

Marvel's been cooking the books, is all I'm sayin'.

So when does Iron Man, whose series has been going longer than Cap's, get the 600 treatment?

2 comments:

chiasaur11 said...

Um...

That's twenty years. The math's been fiddled with a fair deal, but it's semi kinda close to accurate.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure somebody in the Marvel offices adds in Cap's run from the forties which ran baout 76 issues. Then you count the 80 issues of Journey into Mystery before Thor appeared as issues of Thor. There are plenty of areas for the management to fudge numbers. Hulk had 6 issues of his original run, plus those issues of Tales to Astonish.