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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 10:18am | IP Logged | 1  

Some of you may recall a few years back when Marvel got into hot water for a caption in an X-Men title that identified Sabretooth as a "kike".

Aside from the fact that Sabretooth had never been identified as Jewish, and aside from the fact that this demonstrated an apalling lack of quality control -- ie, editorial oversight -- it served also to point up the utter disingenuousness of the Press.

Seeing this story, I sprinted to my computer, summoned up my old and trusted MacWrite, and typed "a killer called Sabretooth" (an extract of the sentence concerned, modified for my purpose), only I didn't type "killer". Deliberately, I let my middle finger drift one key to the right, and the word "kikker" emerged. Then I summoned forth the spellcheck. The first "guess" for "kikker" was "kike".

The backstory of the "slur" in X-MEN was immediately obvious. With computer lettering, what we used to call "typos" are now, really, typos. And some sloth of a proofreader, checking the lettering still on disc, was clicking the first choice for each spelling question without bothering to check what it was.

Oddly, I don't recall anyone at Marvel offering this simple, almost certainly accurate explanation of the gaff.

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Noah Smith
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 11:23am | IP Logged | 2  

My favorite typo of all time would have to be this, from the final issue of Infinite Crisis:

 

 

Yep.  They managed to misspell the word "spell."

 

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Simon Bowland
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 11:29am | IP Logged | 3  

Although it's really the job of the editor, I proofread all my lettering work myself before it's submitted for approval. Perhaps I am making more work for myself, but at the end of the day I'm too proud of my efforts to knowingly send them out with a typo. I don't just letter comics to pay the bills, I have a deep love for them as well.
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Brian Sherwin
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 11:54am | IP Logged | 4  

Every time someone spells my name as "Brain", I die a little bit inside.
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Larry Bonds
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | 5  

Sometimes in doing a google search on Spider-Man...I might get the " did you mean spiderman?" inquiry.  I usually think to myself..I thought I was typing it correctly...

I prefer to keep the hyphen in.  But since we're on the topic, I was watching Batman Begins, and it was at the part where
Dr. Crane says "He's here.",
The unnamed henchman goes  "Who?"
Dr. Crane: The Bat-Man!
I guess any purist can also ask whatever happened to the 'the' in the Bat-Man"?
This was, after all how Batman was first introduced in Detective 27.  What do you think?
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Brian Hunt
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 12:22pm | IP Logged | 6  

When I was 15 years old, my first job was working for a 7-11 convenience store.  When I got my name tag it said "Brain."
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Darragh Greene
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | 7  

 Andy Mokler wrote:
Darragh, you seem to have a wealth of information
related to names and things Irish, any advice or resources you could point
me to so I could research my last name(Mokler)?


Sorry, Andy, I'm not a genealogist, so I can't give you any expert advice
for your research. Anyway, good luck with it!
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David Kingsley Kingsley
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | 8  

Noah, I hadn't noticed that gaff before. My favorite spelling error from a comic, though, would have to be the issue of Amazing Spider-Man from the late-90s where it is revealed that Peter Parker is the photographer for the Daily Bulge.
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Lars Johansson
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | 9  

Spider-Man in Google will probably be inerpreted as +spider -man.
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Kurt Anderson
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | 10  


 QUOTE:
When I was 15 years old, my first job was working for a 7-11 convenience store.  When I got my name tag it said "Brain."

That's one of my favorite name mispellings.  We had a birthday cake for my friend Brian at work, and when they brought the cake out it said "Happy Birthday Brain."

The woman who had picked up the cake was horrified, but Brian and I thought it was hilarious.

 

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Knut Robert Knutsen
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | 11  

I get a lot of mispronunciations of my first name from english speaking friends, and people have a disturbing tendency to misspell my last name as "Knudsen" with a "d" but thankfully no-one has yet thought to transpose letters in my first name. That would be awkward.

(And yes, the word has the same meaning in Norrwegian, but it's an archaic term. )

Oh, to be a Brian.

 

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John Byrne
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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 24 March 2007 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | 12  

I guess any purist can also ask whatever happened to the 'the' in the Bat-Man"?

***

It comes and goes. Under Denny O'Neil, it made a successful comeback in the 70s, for instance.

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