Amph "On your left." - Captain America (Brave New World)

Adamantium first appeared in comics in Avengers #66. Hank Pym used it in the creation of Ultron. This was decades after Cap and his shield first appeared in the 40s.

 

Oh bull. It has been called a vibranium/admantoum mixture for like 30 years of Cap comics. All of a sudden it was an error? Bull. Retcon if they wish, but do not pretend otherwise.

 

No, you're simply wrong here, and no amount of grumbling will make you right. It was a mistake and it was specifically refered as one in-universe in a mid-80s Captain America issue (can't tell you the issue, I've always had a bad head for issue numbers, but I'm sure a quick Google search could help us here). Some writers have kept refering at that inexistent alloy, just the same way some writers insist on calling Deadpool a mutant. It's still false.

 

30? 30? Try 3. Error showed up in the Handbook circa '82, correction was made in '85.

Issues you're looking for are Captain America v1 303-304, incidentally, JTS.

 

[bolding mine]

Hi, TadjiStation! I find your bolded assertion above very intriguing, since Johnston and Evans both are, and have been since before the film's release, claiming that "Skinny Steve" was performed exclusively by Chris Evans, and that Evans' image was "digitally shrunk" with special software developed by the film's effects team. The backgrounds where Evans' larger, taller frame had been were then digitally restored based on plates shot separately, without Evans in frame.

In an NPR radio program the week of the film's release, I heard Evans discussing specifically how different methods of approaching this problem had been suggested and rejected, including the "Benjamin Button" approach in which a skinny actor would have had Evans' head stripped digitally onto his body. This technique was rejected, Evans said, primarily as it seems because the filmmakers wanted "Skinny Steve"'s body language to match "Heroic Steve" -- and because Evans wanted to own the role, as it were, rather than relying on another actor to play half his part for him.

Now here you are, saying the exact opposite of what the filmmakers have been asserting. Can you, will you offer some support (read:evidence) for your assertions here? I don't mean to suggest that you are lying, but you might be mistaken. The producers are saying one thing and you're saying another, so I'm only trying to clarify the question.

Thanks!

 

No.

My Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, Vol. 2 No. 2, January 1986, asserts:

Captain America's only weapon is his shield, a concave disk 2.5 feet in diameter, weighing 12 pounds. It is made of a unique Vibranium-Adamantium alloy that has never been duplicated (see Adamantium, Vibranium). The shield was cast by American metallurgist Dr. Myron MacLain, who was contracted by the US government to create an impenetrable substance to use for tanks during World War II. During his experiments, MacLain combined Vibranium with an Adamantium-steel alloy he was working with and created the disc-shaped shield. MacLain was never able to duplicate the process due to his inability to identify a still unknown factor that played a role in it. The shield was awarded to Captain America by the government several months after the beginning of his career.

So we see that this was not some one-off mistake made by a single writer and repeated by others who weren't doing their homework. It was official Marvel canon, described in detail with a backstory of its own, and codified in the 1986 Handbook written by Mark Gruenwald and Peter Sanderson, and edited by Jim Shooter and Howard Mackie.

EDITED TO ADD: Under the listings for both Adamantium (Vol. 2, No. 1, August 1985) and Vibranium (Vol. 2, No. 14, January 1987) the same story about MacLain creating the shield out of a unique alloy of both metals is repeated. The Adamantium listing gets a more in-depth reporting of the story. I'll gladly transcribe one or both if requested to do so.

 

No. Series proper trumps the Handbooks. Always has.

Not to mention the handbook contradicts itself on the issue.

Now can we all shut up about it because it doesn't even freaking matter? It's all a fancy way of saying "super strong lightweight shield".

EDIT: And that goes for me, too!

 

All three listings in the Official Handbook in 1986 and 1987 occur after that April 1985 mention in the Cap series. Wikipedia, as sometimes happens, is simply mistaken.

 

Except the handbooks are subservient canon to the series proper like I just said. Citing the handbook is equivalent to arguing that the official MLB statistical records are incorrect because they contradict your baseball card.

 

Look, the Handbook was written by Cap writer mark Gruenwald and edited by Marvel big shot Jim Shooter. They poured over this stuff getting every detail just so. Cap was one of their flagship characters. They didn't just off-handedly refer to the A-V alloy; they invented a detailed backstory to explain it.

Technically the allusion in Cap #303 to a "steel alloy" mixed with Vibranium is correct. That "steel alloy", described as you point out in April 1985, was later specifically explained to be Adamntium and steel. The April 1985 "steel alloy" reference was in August 1985 explained to be Adamantium, and this was corroborated in January 1986 and January 1987.

 

TadjiStation, do you have any more details you can share about Chris Evans' chest cavity? That's a subject I think would be of interest to us all.

[image=http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lp7xcgdjPX1qd5525o1_500.gif]

 

Fine. Could we both agree that it was not consistently portrayed as V-A alloy for the 30 years that VLM seems to be suggesting?

 

A page from the issue in question:
[image=http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6017/6003960979_899acf48e8_b.jpg]

 

So I wiki'd this since the Official Handbook of the MU was also MY source in regards to the Adamantium/vibranium thing and it's a retcon then. Fine, I guess that sorta crap can happen and I guess it makes sense, but it's still funny this "error" took such a long time to be corrected.

 

It's mezmerizing.

 

I don't know about this "30 year" thing. I stopped reading Cap in the early 90s. When did the retcon of "oh, it was a mistake, it was only vibranium" happen?

 

1985.

 

No, that's incorrect.

Here's the timeline:

April 1985: In Captain America issue #303, Mark Gruenwald wrote that MacLain combined Vibranium with a "steel alloy" to create the shield (see Spider-Fan's pic, upthread).

August 1985: In the Official Handbook issue #1, Mark Gruenwald wrote that MacLain combined Vibranium with an Adamantium-steel alloy to create the shield. Note that this does not contradict the story given in April of the same year: it adds the detail that the "steel alloy" was in fact Adamantium.

January 1986: In the OHB #2, Mark Gruenwald repeated and summarized the information given in the OHB #1.

January 1987: In the OHB #14, Mark Gruenwald repeated and summarized the information given in the OHB #1 and 2.

JointheSchwarz, your information that CA #303 corrected previously stated information is mistaken. The Wikipedia entry is getting the timeline wrong. The "steel alloy" reference came first, followed by expanded explanations that Adamantium-steel was the referenced alloy, over the next year and a half, written by the same author and edited by then-Editor in Chief Jim Shooter.

 

I don't think you read that whole page. The page mentions adamantium as something created trying to replicate the vibranium steel alloy. Saying the steel alloy was adamantium would contradict that.

 

Oh my word, you people are NERDS!!!!!!!!!!

Slimy!

 

[image=http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6149/6006110974_24f7203ebe.jpg]

It sounds to me like he is specifically differentiating between Adamantium and the steel-alloy in question.

 

The only sane explanation is that Immortus traveled back through time and added adamantium to the process while Dr. MacLain was sleeping (probably around the same time he was splitting the original Human Torch into two separate entities to resolve a horrible continuity error that endangered the entire Marvel Universe - that guy is an unsung hero).

 

No no, I've read it. I understand why you believe that MacLain created Adamantium after he created the shield, given the ambiguity of the wording: "Ever since that day, decades ago, I've been trying to recreate that metal. The best I've come up with so far is a substance called Adamantium".

But OHB #1, August 1985 (4 months after CA #303, written by the same author, under the entry Adamantium on p. 5) clarifies that Adamantium was part of the shield, unbeknownst to MacLain, in the form of an "iron alloy" he had developed in pursuit of creating a "super-metal with which to build tanks" in the early 1940s. MacLain later isolated Adamantium from the mysterious alloy that went into making the shield:

Finally, in recent years, he [MacLain] succeeded in developing the process by which the substance known as True Adamantium is created.

This comes after the paragraph in which it has been explained that MacLain "tried to fuse the [rare meteoric ore] Vibranium to the iron alloy [which he had previously developed] numerous times without success". In short, the "iron alloy" MacLain created was Adamantium, but he did not discover this until years later.

I concede that it is ambiguous and confusing, which is why we're having this debate. But it's clear to me at least that Adamantium was part of the shield but was not isolated from the "iron alloy" and named until years later.

 

That doesn't sound terribly ambiguous to me.

 

Just to muddy the waters still further:

I'm now thinking MacLain is a fraud and a liar!