10 Times Comics Purposefully Lied To Fans‏

Like a real-world Mister Mxyzptlk, as much as they exist to entertain and amuse us, comic books are out to vex us.

You have to give it up for us comic book fans. We will contend with a lot of nonsense. Whether it's papering over the cracks in continuity that writers don't bother to explain themselves or defending the cheesecake covers of our favourite titles to dubious non-geeks, we will defend comics from all sorts of attacks and structural issues, even when they don't necessarily deserve it. In fact, not only do they not deserve it, but we really don't get a lot from comic books in return. In fact, they have so much disdain for us that they make a habit of totally lying to our faces. The history of purposefully misleading readers has a long and storied history in comic books. Like all lies, they started off small - promising fans that characters were dead forever, or they weren't, and then reneging on that assurance - and have grown into such enormous fibs that it's hard to believe that they thought they could get away with them. Yet somehow, time and again, they have. We have been lied to within the pages of the comics themselves, where a plot twist will be clearly telegraphed only to be absolute hogwash, a character will turn out to be somebody else entirely, or those adverts that claim you can get a beach body with six weeks and do nothing of the sort. Nowadays we're just as likely to be misled by the people making the comics, as they stoke fanboy fires in interviews and press releases by teasing at things that never come to pass. Like a real-world Mister Mxyzptlk, as much as they exist to entertain and amuse us, comic books are out to vex us. Here are ten times when our favourite funnybooks purposefully lied to us.
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Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/