Stan Lee's Favorite Marvel Mistake Humiliated Captain America
In a collection of Marvel Comics mistakes, Stan Lee revealed the best of all comes from Captain America's unfortunate attempt to threaten a villain.
In a collection of Marvel Comic errors, Stan Lee revealed his favorite gaffe was a piece of dialogue that accidentally made an imposing threat from Captain America totally ridiculous. The moment comes from 1983's Official Marvel No-Prize Book, which collected amusing errors from throughout Marvel comics with commentary from Stan Lee. While some of these errors involve continuity mistakes like Captain America losing a parachute between issues, or Lee's famous habit of forgetting his characters' names, the Marvel figurehead saves the best for last in a moment from Tales of Suspense #92.
In Marvel fan parlance, a "No-Prize" is a theoretical award (once actually mailed out by Marvel) given to fans who spot mistakes in the comics, especially if they can provide an adequate explanation for the error (for example, theorizing that the Hulk's tongue is often shown to be different colors because of his gamma-radiation levels.) A consummate showman, Stan Lee used the No-Prize to increase fan engagement, making even the practice of spotting Marvel's errors a chance for readers to connect with creators.
Few such errors are more endearing than Lee's chosen line from Tales of Suspense. In the 1967 comic, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's "Before My Eyes, Nick Fury Died!" sees the titular super-spy sentenced to death by A.I.M. The radical group target Fury with the deadly Mecho-Assassin, with Captain America too late to save his old ally. Seemingly outmatched by the Mecho-Assassin's abilities, Captain America finally gains the upper hand, summoning all his strength for a single blow while offering up the unfortunate threat, "Only one of us is gonna walk out of here under his own steam, and it won't be me!"
Obviously, Steve Rogers isn't actually undergoing a crisis of confidence, and the line was intended to end "...and it won't be you." The moment is made all the funnier by Jack Kirby's kinetic art, which sees Captain America land a mighty punch that fells the Mecho-Assassin, even as he apparently assures it that it will have him beaten momentarily. Thankfully, due to an early use of Life Model Decoy technology, Fury is alive and well, and is kind enough not to acknowledge the problem with Steve Rogers' poorly improvised boast.
Since their inception, superhero comics have been made to challenging deadlines by creators working on multiple projects at once, so it's no surprise some things slip through the net. Only recently, Thor was pictured with Mjolnir in Thor #18 despite being on a quest to find the missing hammer, and DC accidentally used the wrong Robin in initial art for Superman: Son of Kal-El #6. Stan Lee's willingness not just to laugh at these rare oversights but to make them the subject of fan outreach sets the appropriate tone not to take minor errors too seriously, especially when it's way more fun to imagine Captain America actually making this mistake himself - an understandable occurrence after taking a few shots to the head from a killer android.