Without referring to any reference materials, see how well your memory or imagination does with these little pokes. Add some of your own if you want to.
What is Phineas Newborn known for?
Where would you have run across Osgood Z’Beard?
If you ordered Ouzo, what would you expect it to taste like?
How long is a furlong? A fortnight?
Give it your best shot on the words behind SHAZAM
=====================================
Ouzo: kerosine with black liquorice infusion. Disgusting.
Furlong: Down to your ankles. Fortnight: Two weeks.
Ouzo: Liquid fire and sunshine.
SHAZAM: Wisdom of Solomon, Strength of Hercules, Stamina of Atlas, Power of Zeus, Courage of Achilles, Speed of Mercury.
If you didn’t peek I’m impressed. I had to look it up myself. I cheated. It took Gomer Pyle for me to realize it’s pronounced sha-ZAM, instead of my effort as a kid to call it SHAZZ-um.
Big wheel keeps on turnin’…
Old Comic Book Geek, reporting for duty.
In that case, add a few items to the list. Do you collect, or just remember them?
A furlong is an eighth of a mile, 660 feet.
~RC
The only ones I knew were that a fortnight is two weeks (fourteen nights), and that “SHAZAM” stands for “Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury.” I remember that much from the Saturday morning TV show of my childhood, but I don’t think I could have come up with Prof. Pepperwinkle’s level of detail.
Used to collect, mainly memories.
Adding:
Who was the first mutant superhero? AND, who was the first mutant superhero whose mutant status was known at his first appearance?
What was truly unusual about Wonder Girl’s origin?
Who were the 2 superheroes who had their own TV series on different networks that aired on the same day and time, way back in 1967?
Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice?
(Who is that nut who flies around in pajamas? That’s no nut boy, that’s Captain Nice.)
Being… eh… a character in a Jules Verne novel?
Middle Earth?
Something Japanese? Like, spicy, maybe?
Euh… twenty… seven nautical miles? Fifteen days?
Oh, I knew that. Wait, it’s Samson, Hera, Apollo, Zeus, Aphrodite and M… M… Mercury?
FWIW, I’m assuming that if you really want to know these answers, you’ll look them up. I won’t be intruding to give my versions of the ones I post.
They change it all the time, don’t they? Last time I checked apocalypse was still considered the first, he was born in ancient Egypt. I have no idea who’s the first non-human looking mutant. That Pterodactyl guy that ended up in the Savage Land?
Which one? Current one? Troya? The one back at the Silver age, when it was supposed to be just Wonder Woman when she was a kid? The answer should be that in any case, it’s a mess and varies wildly from writer to writer, but this being a DC character that’s pretty much standard fare.
Batman was totally the sixties… Hulk I guess was the seventies… Wonder Woman?
Correct. Yeah, I watched Captain Nice instead of Mr. Terrific myself.
You are correct that it does change all the time. Sauron (the Pterodactyl guy) is probably as good an answer as any. Earlier contenders were the Sub-Mariner and Wolverine. DC/Warner hasn’t claimed Captain Caveman to be a mutant yet, as far as I know.
That leaves the question of Who was the first mutant superhero who was actually called a mutant superhero when first released?
Good point. I meant the original Silver Age Wonder Girl. Yes, she was supposed to be Wonder Woman when she was a girl. The kicker is that Wonder Woman’s origin has her created out of marble by Zeus as a full-grown woman, and so was never a girl. DC had a series of “Impossible Stories” (differentiated from “Imaginary Stories” as being stories that not only might have happened, as to being stories that could never happen) in which Wonder Woman teamed up with not only Wonder Girl, but, God help us all, Wonder Tot. The guy writing the new Teen Titans comic didn’t want to use Supergirl for whatever reason, so he reached over and glommed Wonder Girl without actually considering continuity. (DC Comics wasn’t big on continuity anyway.) So a character that, for all practical purposes, could never exist in the DC universe became a major member of a very popular title.
Nope, Capt. Nice and Mr. Terrific. See above.
And…
On which superheroes did Alan Moore base The Watchmen?
I tend to build up from the other end:
3 feet = 1 yard
22 yards = 1 chain (length of a cricket wicket!)
10 chains = 1 furlong
8 furlongs = 1 mile
As a bonus, 1 acre = 1 chain by 1 furlong
Ouzo is aniseed isn’t it?
The others? No idea.
ETA:
Fortnight is two weeks. I’m British, that’s still in common use for us.