Welcome to Close Reads! In this series, Leah Schnelbach and guest authors dig into the tiny, weird moments of pop culture—from books to theme songs to viral internet hits—that have burrowed into our minds, found rent-stabilized apartments, started community gardens, and refused to be forced out by corporate interests. This time out, Tobias Carroll asks if Marvel’s No-Prize will be humanity’s downfall.
Every few months, like clockwork, I’ll look at what’s trending on Twitter and see people debating whether or not Marvel’s television shows that predated Disney+ are canonical. It is an endless debate and I hate it, and I also hate both the fact that I hate it and the fact that I care enough to hate it. Reading an argument about how Mahershala Ali being cast as Blade means that Luke Cage is definitely out of continuity, or what the bit with the watch at the end of Hawkeye means for Agents of SHIELD, gives me a migraine—sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally.
This is a frustration that goes far beyond the hate-click economy, though. My frustration kicks in because of its implications for reading and watching things—that kind of uncanny projection that happens when everyone is now an expert in the continuities of various storylines. What it makes me think of, above all else, is that the Marvel Comics No-Prize is somehow responsible for this entire state of affairs.
Maybe you’re nodding along, or maybe you’re bewildered right now. Let me explain.
The No-Prize began as a way for Marvel to reward readers who noticed inconsistencies or typos in their comics. Over time, as Brian Cronin points out in his history of the No-Prize, grounds for receiving one—sometimes in the form of an empty envelope—involved noticing seeming inconsistencies in certain comics, and then coming up with a viable reason for why they weren’t inconsistent at all.
This system was in place by the mid-1980s, though the grounds for receiving a No-Prize varied from editor to editor. Cronin’s history includes two succinct descriptions of the No-Prize from editors Christopher Priest (“We only mail them out to people who send us the best possible explanations for important mistakes.”) and Ann Nocenti (“The spirit of the no-prize is not just to complain and nitpick but to offer an exciting solution.”).
Cronin’s overview cites one example of a No-Prize-winning theory: in Iron Man #203, Tony Stark’s armor goes from seemingly being open to covering his chest in the span of two panels where he’s threatened by an enemy with a gun. Crouton Jim Chapman wrote in to theorize that Stark noticed the threat and “activated the holographic projector in his suit to make his chest appear to be unprotected.” Chapman ended up winning a No-Prize for his trouble.
It’s probably worth noting here that the No-Prize has gone through several permutations over the decades, and something that won a No-Prize at one point in time might not have qualified for it at another. But this particular iteration lines up with my most intense period of reading superhero comics in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It’s also telling that Priest and Nocenti, cited above, edited the Spider-Man and X-Men lines of comics, respectively—which was where the bulk of my Marvel reading took place back then. I will also confess that I did my fair share of looking through issues for continuity errors so that I might win a No-Prize of my own, something which never quite worked out for me. But the biggest thing I took away from the No-Prize was the notion that someone might end up knowing the ins and outs of a story better than its author.
Death of the author theorizing aside, this isn’t exactly a controversial concept. In a 2017 interview, Robin Furth described her work for Stephen King as it pertained to the Dark Tower series as “[making] lists of characters and places so [King] could check the continuity of events.” And Elio M. García Jr. and Linda Antonsson founded the A Song of Ice and Fire community Westeros.org, and subsequently went on to collaborate with George R.R. Martin on the book The World of Ice and Fire. (It’s probably worth mentioning here that Martin’s early comics fandom is also inexorably connected with the history of the No-Prize. Time is a flat circle—one which Galactus is going to devour any minute now.)
Looking back on the No-Prize as it was in my formative years, I’m left with two conflicting conclusions. The first is that it encouraged a generation of readers to think like storytellers, which is an unabashedly good thing in my book. If you’re examining something and trying to find a solution for what appears to be an error within the internal boundaries of that narrative, that’s one way to get a foothold into telling compelling and internally consistent stories. They aren’t necessarily your stories, but it’s not hard to see where the step to that next level could emerge.
The second conclusion is a little more bleak. It’s that you can also find the inclination to stop looking at a narrative as a story and beginning to see it as a series of problems to be solved in the legacy of the No-Prize. (This, in turn, seems a close cousin to the school of criticism that involves boiling a work down to the tropes it contains.) Some of that is a matter of degree, of course.
To return to the example cited earlier, if someone looks at an Iron Man comic and comes up with a solution to a seeming inconsistency in the art, that process holds the potential of actually expanding the comic’s storyline—of adding an action that the creators may never have intended, but which is nonetheless in keeping with the themes of the book. (In this case, the idea that Tony Stark is resourceful and knows how to think on his feet.) It feels like a slightly more formalized headcanon, and it could lead to revelatory places.
But the idea of reading or watching something nominally for pleasure with the primary goal of finding errors and inconsistencies sounds like the furthest possible thing from pleasure one could imagine. Perhaps it’s for the best that the No-Prize moved on to honoring other things. We’re living in the pop culture world it made, for good or for ill.
Tobias Carroll is the managing editor of Vol.1 Brooklyn. He is the author of the short story collection Transitory (Civil Coping Mechanisms) and the novel Reel (Rare Bird Books).
I sort of hate to mention this, but the dates on all the comics panels are incorrect (1968 instead of 1986). I do not have a clever explanation for this.
@1 – Fixed, thanks!
The art in those Iron Man panels isn’t inconsistent, just misleading. The chestplate is swung open (hinged along Stark’s left side) so that the viewer is seeing it from the side, like the edge of an open door. The perspective is poorly rendered so it’s hard to tell the chestpiece is still there. (I remember this from one of Brian Cronin’s other columns. It took me a few moments to see it then, but I remember it now.)
As for the No-Prize, the thing to remember is that it doesn’t reward merely finding mistakes, but finding solutions for them. I think that’s in direct opposition to the laziness of fans who say “This is slightly inconsistent, therefore it has to be non-canonical/an alternate universe.” They see a problem and instantly give up, because they can’t be bothered to try imagining a solution. People like that would never win a No-Prize.
@3 – That explanation might have been enough to get you a No-Prize
When I was a kid (back when Spider-Man was first dating Gwen Stacey), I dearly wanted a No-Prize, but I never worked up the courage to question anything produced by the Mighty Marvel Bullpen.
The No-Prize was one of the many ways Stan Lee and company encouraged a feeling of engagement with the Marvel fans, in a way no one else at the time seemed to be able to duplicate.
Fiction isn’t reality and it isn’t going to be consistent. My read of the No-Prize is that it’s a whimsical and cheap way to handle cases of readers noticing the mistakes, but also to encourage readers to write around the mistakes for you. The down side is that it encouraged readers to write in about the mistakes and publicise them, although of course you could suppress those letters… pre internet. But it meant readers not writing in so much about how the stories were good.
I’ve been trying to remember a quote about reality, or reality as we perceive it, actually not being consistent, and if Terry Pratchett said it. This from “Wintersmith” isn’t it, but it’s similar. “People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.”
A professional writer getting good material out of a glitch… I may be stretching a point to point at Kurt Busiek dealing with the 1940s android called “The Human Torch” being still around in his own right but also being what “The Vision” was made out of, by saying a time traveler did it (in his “Avengers Forever”). J.R.R. Tolkien made interesting use of what I think he claimed was an accidental revision in “The Hobbit”: the original text, Bilbo Baggins was openly gifted a magic ring by a strange little man in a cave; Tolkien tried rewriting it as a more complicated episode, which wasn’t intended for publication? But it was published… And so in “The Lord of the Rings”, Bilbo had told some people that the ring was a present to him… and some of the some people rightly thought that that wasn’t likely, and they got a story closer to the truth from him.
Fiction isn’t reality and it isn’t going to be consistent. My read of the No-Prize is that it’s a whimsical and cheap way to handle cases of readers noticing the mistakes, but also to encourage readers to write around the mistakes for you. The down side is that it encouraged readers to write in about the mistakes and publicise them, although of course you could suppress those letters… pre internet. But it meant readers not writing in so much about how the stories were good.
I’ve been trying to remember a quote about reality, or reality as we perceive it, actually not being consistent, and if Terry Pratchett said it. This from “Wintersmith” isn’t it, but it’s similar. “People wanted the world to be a story, because stories had to sound right and they had to make sense. People wanted the world to make sense.”
A professional writer getting good material out of a glitch… I may be stretching a point to point at Kurt Busiek dealing with the 1940s android called “The Human Torch” being still around in his own right but also being what “The Vision” was made out of, by saying a time traveler did it (in his “Avengers Forever”). J.R.R. Tolkien made interesting use of what I think he claimed was an accidental revision in “The Hobbit”: the original text, Bilbo Baggins was openly gifted a magic ring by a strange little man in a cave; Tolkien tried rewriting it as a more complicated episode, which wasn’t intended for publication? But it was published… And so in “The Lord of the Rings”, Bilbo had told some people that the ring was a present to him… and some of the some people rightly thought that that wasn’t likely, and they got a story closer to the truth from him.
If Tony Stark turns around quickly, shouldn’t his chest plate swing closed? And there’s probably magnets or something.
@4/Bladrak: “That explanation might have been enough to get you a No-Prize”
No, because it’s not my own idea — it’s right there on the page if you look closely enough. It’s what the artist intended all along (as I believe the Cronin column I mentioned confirmed). It’s just hard to see because of the poor use of perspective in that panel. The chestplate is flipped open about 90 degrees relative to the viewer, so we’re seeing it directly from the side and can hardly tell it’s there.
@8/rja-carnegie: “If Tony Stark turns around quickly, shouldn’t his chest plate swing closed?”
Hmm, maybe that’s what’s happening there. He pivots to the right and stops, and then the plate continues its clockwise momentum and slams shut.
@1 – it was Kang the Conqueror changing the time line for some nefarious purpose
Interesting. That’s not the takeaway I had from the concept of a No-Prize.
Now, this may stem from a letters column (I think it was Iron Man, but I can’t recall exactly which one) where the creative team published a letter pointing out an inconsistency and demanding a No-Prize, and the team proceeded to kindly tell the letter writer they didn’t qualify for a No-Prize, and explained a No-Prize winner had to find an apparent mistake, inconsistency or contradiction, and then explain why it was only apparently that, by coming up with an in-universe reason that rationalises it away. That the creative teams on a comic book do their best to produce an entertaining story on a monthly schedule that’s free of mistakes, continuity errors, contradictions with other stories, etc, but they’re only human, so mistakes happen. When ‘fans’ do nothing more than point out their mistakes, it’s really demoralising.
The next letter was from someone who also pointed out something that could have been a mistake, but instead of demanding a No-Prize, said they thought it wasn’t a mistake, gave the reason they thought it wasn’t a mistake, and asked if they were right. The creative team replied to this letter thanking the letter writer, admitting it wasn’t intentional but that the letter writer’s explanation made a lot of sense. They thanked the letter-writer for being supportive, pointing out the difference between how the first seemed to be trying to score points off the creative team, whereas the second seemed to have the creative teams back, trying to think like they did, and came up with a creative solution to the problem they spotted. Obviously the second letter got a No-Prize.
I’m paraphrasing, because I read this decades ago, but it’s informed my fandom ever since. Stan Lee was a larger-than-life figure, so I’d never before thought about how the creative teams behind anything I enjoyed were human. They create under constraints, and sometimes they make mistakes. There’s an old adage about how those that can’t do, criticise. As a fan, I have the choice of finding fault and undermining the creative team, which seems to be a natural human inclination, or I can be supportive and creative, and try to reconcile flaws with in-universe headcanon that I’ll discuss with fellow fans.
That a slight but significant difference to the suggestion that the No-Prize just encourages creativity.
As to the suggestion that the No-Prize system somehow caused trained people to discuss the minutiae of a mythos and endlessly argue over canon and perceived mistakes, I’d argue that’s always been part of the human condition. Just looks at the constant academic bickering over the Ancient Greek classics, or Beowulf. If you want a modern example that predates Marvel’s No-Prize, look at the work of Tolkien and how the fandom dissect it. Within his lifetime, Tolkien was pestered with ‘fans’ telling him how the Eagles should have flown the Ring to Mount Doom. You can’t blame that on Marvel
I’m just amazed by Iron Man looking like a cross between Mark Spots and a 1970’s porn star. Sorry, no theory as to why.
I think the No-Prize (like a lot of modern fandom, come to think of it) was prefigured in some ways by the Sherlockians, trying to work out why John (or James) Watson’s wound was sometimes in his leg and sometimes in his shoulder.
@6: Maybe the quote you’re looking for is Tom Clancy’s “The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.”?
@11: “Just looks at the constant academic bickering over the Ancient Greek classics, or Beowulf.”
In an interview on his own adaptation of Beowulf, Neil Gaiman said:
“I know that we will get [hatemail from English peofessors] in quantity because if you think comics nerds can be obsessive, if you think comics people can go, “Excuse me, Jimmy Olsen’s bow tie is traditionally green with red spots, and you’re doing blue and yellow here, and you’ve just sort of betrayed the Superman mythos.” Given that they can do that, you just wait until you encounter the Anglo-Saxon nerds. When it was first announced that I was working with Roger on Beowulf, I got things coming in on my website that would begin, “I have written an essay on the Battle of Finnesburh as mentioned in Line 152, and I trust that you will read my essay, and, in your film, you will follow my theory and not that of Professor Wickham.” And you’re going, “Oh, my God! You people are obsessive on a level that makes comics fans look easygoing!” It’s astonishing.”
@15/Athreeren – yeah, Gaiman definitely went into that with his eyes wide open. The funniest thing about Angelo-Saxon nerds is it’s now *generational*, with masters indoctrinating apprentices into the lore of their interpretation… :)
While the No-Prize might be related to fandom behavior from people who became fans 1970-1995ish blame (or credit) for folks you came in since then can’t be laid at its feet. The No-Prize was getting phased out with the disappearance of letters pages after DeFalco’s term as EIC which was mid-90s. At the end of the day the source is that people like to nitpick and people like to head canon. Often the same people at different times or with different media. All the No-Prize did was add a system for people to nitpick and then apply a head canon.
If anything you could argue that the death of the public No-Prize spurs the development of lots of individual head canons to cover nitpicks and causes additional splits in the fandom. Fans may be willing to give ground on canon facts, but almost never give ground on head canon and some will actively stop interacting with the material if written canon comes out against their head canon.
I just want to note that a surprising amount of the Odyssey is devoted to explaining exactly why Menelaus wasn’t available to avenge his brother Agamemnon’s death, so that Orestes had to do it (which famously involved killing his own mother). And in that famous masterpiece of Greek tragedy known as The Bacchae, Euripides takes some time out to retcon the story of Dionysus having gestated inside Zeus’s thigh.