top of page

BAM! POW! WOW! It's National Comic Book Day!

The Bottom Line: Facts about comics only nerds would appreciate?

1. The font Comic Sans is based on Dave Gibbons’ lettering in the Watchmen comic books. (He calls the font “dreadful.”)

2. Depending on the type, the symbols used to censor words in comic books are called jarns, quips, nittles or grawlixes. Most of the terms have just been lumped under the blanket term, grawlixes.

3. The world’s largest comic book collection belongs to the Library of Congress. They currently hold over 100,000 individual issues.

4.Nicolas Coppola took his stage name, Nic Cage, from the Marvel character Luke Cage.

5.Comic book letterers avoid words like “Clint” and “flick” because during printing the letters can run together, making the words look like profanity.

6. When the comics code was created, it prohibited judges and law enforcement agents from being depicted negatively.

7. It also prevented comics from being sold at newsstands unless the hero won at the end of the book.

8. There was a superhero in the 1940s called the Green Lama who was a practicing Buddhist. One of his powers was reincarnation.

9. The 1940s superhero called Red Bee fought nazis using trained bees. His favorite bee was named Michael, and lived in Red Bee’s belt buckle.

10. Our universe actually exists in the Marvel multiverse. Our Earth is Earth-1218.

11. Michael Jackson wanted to play Spider-Man in a movie, so he tried to buy Marvel comics in the ’90s.

12. Marvel got around a law that increases taxes on toys that resemble humans by claiming that X-Men figures were mutants, not humans.

13. There is a company in the Marvel universe called “Damage Control” that specializes in cleaning up after villains and heroes.

14. Technically speaking, Gotham City is in New Jersey, and Metropolis is in Delaware.

15. Wayne Enterprises, which is controlled by Batman’s alter ego, Bruce Wayne, owns The Daily Planet, the newspaper that Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, works for.

16. In an alternate timeline of Spider-man, an elderly Mary Jane Watson gets cancer and dies because of Peter Parker’s irradiated sperm.

17. Spider-man has a hyphen in it so that people don’t confuse him with Superman.

18. Marvel once collaborated on a Spider-Man comic with Planned Parenthood that discouraged teens from having unprotected sex.

19. In an alternate reality, Peter Parker is bitten by a radioactive sheep, turning him into a hero named Sheep-Boy.

20. Superman once wielded Thor’s hammer, after being deemed worthy of the honor in a crossover event between the Justice League of America and the Avengers.

Weekdays 6-10 am

TOP STORIES

SEARCH TAGS

Studio Request Line: 779-1043

bottom of page