I?m happy to say that the Pro/Fan Silver Age Trivia Challenge starring Mark Waid (and Mr. Silver Age) is on again this year at WizardWorld Chicago!
It?s scheduled for 3:30-4:30 on Sunday afternoon, August 6, in the meetings room at the Rosemont Convention Center. The exact location will be available in the program guide.
Come watch king comics geek Mark Waid take on four fans as they battle to answer the oddest, loopiest and most trivial questions about DC and Marvel?s Silver Age that can be imagined! The panel, as always, will be moderated by Mr. Silver Age.
Waid remains undefeated in this competition, which goes back to 1997 (when he had three Pros helping him out). But last year, the Fans nearly pulled it out during the Lightning Round.
Will this finally be the year that Waid goes down? Or will he bounce back to trounce the Fans once again? Even more intriguing, will this be the year he finally gets the Lyla Lerrol question correct after years of flubbing her name every time it comes up? Come watch and see!
As a warm up, check out this link to the thread that gives an overview of last year?s event.
— Craig Shutt
The Magazine
The Pro/Fan Silver Age Trivia Challenge at WizardWorld Chicago was a barn-burning display of amazing levels of totally useless Silver Age knowledge, as it always has been in its 11 years of performance.
This year added a new wrinkle to the legend, although the outcome, yet again, was the same as in the past. Mark Waid, taking on four knowledgeable fans (Mike Chary, Matt Holmes, Todd Allen and Doug Tonks (a former panel member returning when Sidne Gail Ward couldnt make it), won the battle handily. This was made even more impressive this year because Mark was not actually, technically, in Chicago at the time!
Because of a last-minute schedule conflict, Mark was unable to make it to the con this year. But he refused to let that keep him from participating in the Trivia panel.
Instead, when we arrived at the panel, we dialed up Mark on Fan Mike Charys cell phone and spent a little time fiddling with microphones and the best way to allow him to hear and send his answers back to us from the West Coast. Amazingly enough, it worked pretty well! He was able to yell in when he wanted a toss-up question and answer the team questions well enough. Sadly, the usual trash talking between teams was a bit muted.
At the end of the regular round, the score was Mark-750, Fans-440. We then went to the Lightning Round, where questions were worth 50 points apiece. There, Mark took 5 and the Fans took 4, which did not actually help them close the gap.
Final Score: Mark Waid: 1,000; Fans: 640.
But theres no reason to give you all these details. Thanks to the fact that we live in the 21st century now, you can relive every moment of that hour of useless trivia, thanks to Matt Hawes, who videotaped it and uploaded it to YouTube. Be warned, thougha goodly portion of it consists of Mr. Silver Age talking, and theres only so much of that you can probably watch on your computer before you go mad.
— Craig Shutt
And a great time was had by all, as far as I could tell! It was too bad Mark wasn’t at the Con but at least he “phoned it in” rather than miss it altogether. And this way we didn’t have to look at his pasty white face all through it (let the trash talkin’ begin!)
We Fans got off to a very slow start this year, but if you review the videotape you’ll see that we were robbed.. ROBBED! I say! early on!
One of the early categories was “Cover Scenes” and the toss-up was, “Who are the 2 Green Lanterns freeing from their prison cells on the cover of JLA # 22?” to which I answered, “The 2 Flashes…” only to be told by Mr Silver Age Himself that I was wrong (and then Mark answered, “The 2 Atoms” and was awarded the points and control of the category). Wouldn’t you just know that the latest issue of CBG would come out and have Mike Carey’s 10 Favourite Covers, including JLA # 22, on which we can all see the 2 Green Lanterns FREEING THE 2 FLASHES (just like I had seen in my mind’s eye when I answered the question)?? The saddest part to this admittedly silly story is that the next 2 questions in the category were ones I knew the answer to, meaning we missed 40 pts that we would’ve gotten (and which Mark wouldn’t have gotten). Now, we all know that wouldn’t have made up the huge gap that we ended up with going into the Lightning Round, but at least we might not have had that horrible start that we had!
Far be it from me to criticize Craig and his thankless task of researching, writing up and asking the questions, but maybe this just fuels the fire for next year? Maybe, like the 2000 US Presidential Election, this year’s results weren’t quite on the UP-AND-UP (hanging chads, anyone?) I mean, for all we know, Waid was sitting cross-legged in a pile of Silver Age comics throughout the whole contest!!
Consider the gauntlet thrown down for next year, folks… 2007: The Year Waid Goes Down (and not in a good way!)
Sorry about that, I can’t explain why I had Atom instead of Flash on that one. Maybe I was thinking about the story as I typed it and who helped the GLs escape. It’s not exactly a tough question to make up if you’re looking at the cover(which is why I like Cover Scenes as a topic).
It’s not like, say, figuring out if Power Man was ever a member of the Avengers, which I gave the Fan team credit for saying in BOTH 1993 and 1995, when I mistakenly reused the question and let a member of the team browbeat me into giving them points for saying BOTH TIMES because they assured me that I was wrong to say he wasn’t an official member. Who was it who made that claim? Ah, it doesn’t matter, it’s in the past now.
Although, the first time I used that question, it was a Toss-Up that probably led the Fan team to run the category and gain 70 points, and last year’s use was a Lightning Round question worth 50 points, which is 120 points they had that Mark shoulda/coulda had. So I’m thinking that, to be fair, we’ll start out next time giving Mark a credit of 80 points and calling it square.
Actually, I appreciate you pointing out that JLA screwup, as I can make sure it’s right in the printed version, which I’m putting together now, and save me so many letters I don’t want to think about it. Every year there seems to be some glitch when I put these together that I look at and can’t figure out how that got in there. Writing the wrong answer for JLA #22 is a bad one, since I see that cover so often, and now it’s been preserved by YouTube.
But, as I noted at the panel, we’ve been doing this for 11 years, and we use about 90-100 questions per year. So we’ve gone through a good 1,000 questions so far. Despite being a self-proclaimed expert, I do occasionally slip up.
I just wish it hadn’t been on the cover of JLA #22…
— Craig Shutt
It was Mopee! Mopee, I tell you! (Well, at least that’s my excuse.)
As for hanging chads, don’t many of our dog-eared, well-read Silver Age comics have some bits of covers or interior pages hanging from them already?
“It’s not like, say, figuring out if Power Man was ever a member of the Avengers…”
Whooo.. somebody certainly got up on the wrong side of the bed in the Fortress of Solitude this morning! Geez!
First, it’s “Wonder Man”, not “Power Man” (only a complete imbecile would think Power Man was a member… whereas it only takes a partial imbecile like me to believe FOR THIRTY PLUS YEARS that Wonder Man was made a member in # 9). And I guess I wasn’t clear about not pointing fingers on the one boo-boo made during a job that most of us would run screaming from if faced with it… but rather using it as a launch pad to drum up some heat for next year’s contest, should it happen. In actual fact, I was just relieved to find out my memory WASN’T wrong in this case (unlike the Power… I mean WONDER Man debacle of years past) since it seems to get worse with each new grey hair I add. Like you, I have a very special place in my heart for that first JLA/JSA crossover, and it was killing me this year when Mark was struggling coming up with the 6 members of the Crime Champions, since I could’ve rattled them off in my sleep (and probably do).
Still buddies, Mr Silver Age??!!??
>>First, it’s “Wonder Man”, not “Power Man” (only a complete imbecile would think Power Man was a member… whereas it only takes a partial imbecile like me to believe FOR THIRTY PLUS YEARS that Wonder Man was made a member in # 9).< <
LOL! Maybe that’s why I have such a problem figuring out how you came to that conclusion. I can’t keep the two of them straight, so it never occurred to me that one could have been a member and one wasn’t. So tell me again, which is the one with the ENORMOUS “W” on his chest?
>>And I guess I wasn’t clear about not pointing fingers on the one boo-boo made during a job that most of us would run screaming from if faced with it… but rather using it as a launch pad to drum up some heat for next year’s contest, should it happen.< <
Um, yeah, that launch-pad part didn’t stick with me as much, but I probably was looking at it differently. I mean, I do understand and sympathize that it’s got to be frustrating to actually get a question right and not get credit for it, when you’re facing a room full of fans. It’s also frustrating to have actually been the one who made such a boneheaded goof on something even easier than keeping Power Man and Wonder Man straight!
But I knew the job was dangerous when I took it. I just wanted to point out that Trivia Fate taketh away, but it also giveth. I’m more surprised that Waid not only didn’t agree you were right (as sometimes happens if I goof up) but came up with the answer I’d written down. That reassured me as I was standing there thinking, “That was a tricky one, since it wasn’t the Flashes…”
No doubt about it, my Toss-up questions needed a little more attention this year, as several others weren’t guessed, which I try to ensure never happens. I think that’s what happens when Wizard holds off until the last minute to give us the go-ahead, and I dive into this stuff all at once deeply. *Everything* starts sounding easy after a few hours of burrowing through Silver Age comics like a gopher! And therefore, the “hard” questions are off the chart. Although some people around here don’t consider the name of Bob Hope’s landlady all that difficult…
Next year (assuming there is a next year, and I guess I could do that after 11 years) will be easier, as I made up a ton of extra questions this year, after 1995 went for 1 1/2 hours rather than the planned 1 hour and I burned through a lot more questions than I expected. We went through a lot this year, too, even in only an hour, but I had plenty left.
>>it was killing me this year when Mark was struggling coming up with the 6 members of the Crime Champions, since I could’ve rattled them off in my sleep (and probably do).< <
That must be fun. It’s the kind of question where you need a pen and paper to keep straight who you’ve already listed. I was surprised that, as he was agonizing over it, the Fan team wasn’t preparing their answer, but maybe you’d already assured them it wouldn’t be a problem.
>>Still buddies, Mr Silver Age??!!??< <
Ha! We were never buddies! That would imply favoritism, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I could be biased! Although all those points I gave you for that flimsy Power/Wonder Man charade must make the audience wonder.
— Craig Shutt
Mr. Age claims to have written 1,000 questions for his trivia challenges, and yet I haven’t seen him actually use this one yet:
Who goosed Wonder Woman in JLA # 11? (This goose, by the way, saved the entire cosmos from imminent destruction.)
Dave Blanchard
I’m moderately skeptical that you’ve actually read all 1,000+ questions, but I know why you’re fairly certain that your question hasn’t been used.
That’s because I don’t use trick questions, like “What does orange kryptonite do?” or “What is the name of Captain America’s son?” or “Who goosed Wonder Woman in JLA #11?” I prefer questions that actually have an answer, such as “Who is Bob Hope’s landlady?” even if no one knows, or “Who did the GLs free on the cover of JLA #22?” even if there could be some question as to whether *I* know the right answer.
It makes for a snappier program to have answers available instead of having five contestants say, “What you talking ’bout, Mr. Silver Age?” Not that I haven’t had that happen, of course (see Bob Hope question above).
BTW, Mark Waid told me a few days after the event that this year I asked him one of his all-time favorite contest questions. He got it wrong, but knew it as soon as he said the wrong thing. I just hope I got that one right…
— Craig Shutt
Mr. Age wrote:
>> “What does orange kryptonite do?” < <
Orange kryptonite is a rare combination of red and gold kryptonite, and I believe it was only used in one story, and in fact just in one panel of one story, and in fact it was talked about rather than actually shown. In any event, orange kryptonite temporarily shifts a Kryptonian’s superpowers from one organ to another, so that if you were using your heat vision, for example, all of a sudden the rays would be shooting out your nose.
“What is the name of Captain America’s son?”
Junior.
“Who goosed Wonder Woman in JLA #11?”
Green Lantern.
“Who is Bob Hope’s landlady?”
Mrs. Peabody.
Now here are a couple questions for you: What was Mrs. Peabody’s first name (no, it wasn’t “Mrs.”), and whatever happened to Mr. Peabody (and no, he’s not the same Mr. Peabody who traveled with Sherman in the Way-Back Machine)?
Dave Blanchard
>>orange kryptonite temporarily shifts a Kryptonian’s superpowers from one organ to another, so that if you were using your heat vision, for example, all of a sudden the rays would be shooting out your nose.< <
Well, I’m certainly sorry I was sick the day that issue hit the newsstand, it sounds like a winner. I remember when beams were shooting out his fingertips, but not that one. The possibilities for orifices they could shoot out of boggles the mind. I’m glad we never saw orange kryptonite work on his super-wind.
>>What was Mrs. Peabody’s first name?< <
I don’t remember running across it, and if I did, I definitely don’t remember it. She seldom had more than a bit part, although she did take part in a few adventures. So what is it?
>> and whatever happened to Mr. Peabody?< <
I assume he died a peaceful death and left the misses to run the boarding house in her tyrranical way.
Of more interest to me is: Whatever happened to Mrs. Peabody? She kind of faded away after Harvard Harvard III showed up, and I don’t remember seeing her by the time Tadwallader appeared. So where did she go?
— Craig Shutt
All this impromptu quizzing of the Quizmaster Himself reminds me of a thought I had during the Con in Chicago this year, once the rumours about Waid being a no-show started circulating. I started thinking about how much fun it’d be to mix up the format some year, and do a Mr Silver Age vs Mark Waid vs the Fans three-way contest. Why did I think that might be fun? Well:
1) Variety is the spice of Life (or so I’m told);
b) Having lost a gazillion of these in a row now, I can’t help but wonder is it really that we (the Fans) are that bad, that Mark’s that good, or both? A third contestant might help answer that head-scratcher;
iii) What kind of questions might we get if, just once, someone besides Mr Silver Age made up the questions? We’ve gotten pretty comfortable, albeit not terribly successful, with a certain style of question by now;
IV) It’d just be so much fun watching Craig sweat it out for a change!!!
Not sure if it’ll ever happen (or if anyone else would ever want it to happen) but if it does: I’d certainly volunteer to make up the questions just once so I could put everyone ELSE through the wringer for once! Not that anyone could ever match the inestimable Mr Shutt, though!
>> how much fun it’d be to mix up the format some year, and do a Mr Silver Age vs Mark Waid vs the Fans three-way contest.< <
I appreciate the thought, but I think you overestimate the audience’s desire to see me insert myself into the panel as another entire team. That Mark can do it by himself is pretty amazing. I would probably do about as well as any Fan member would do all by himself, if that well.
>>I can’t help but wonder is it really that we (the Fans) are that bad, that Mark’s that good, or both?< <
Oh, have no worries, you guys are good. It’s that Mark is phenomenal at pulling this stuff out of his memory. He has a bit of an advantage on Toss-Ups, because he doesn’t have to worry his wild guess is hurting a teammate who really knows the answer. But he also loses by not being able to confer and have another teammate trigger his own memory. So it evens out, I figure.
>>What kind of questions might we get if, just once, someone besides Mr Silver Age made up the questions?< <
I don’t know who that would be, but I agree that I write a certain type of question that appeals to me, and others would write different kinds. They have a quiz in San Diego each year on a certain topic (Superman up to the Crisis, etc.) and the questions sometimes get pretty esoteric, so there are examples of other people writing trivia questions. To me, the key is finding questions that vary between relatively easy and fairly hard, but still making them interesting to the audience–the difference between “trivia” and “insignifica,” as Mark puts it.
>>It’d just be so much fun watching Craig sweat it out for a change!!!< <
I doubt it’d be that much fun after the first 10 minutes or so, when you realize you’re dealing with the guy behind the curtain and not the great and powerful Mr. Silver Age. I don’t have that great of a memory, but repetition in seeing this stuff has made some of it stick in my head. I just have a great reference library to draw on and the chutzpah to call myself “Mr. Silver Age.” And, as you well know, I don’t even get all the right answers for questions that I *write*!
— Craig Shutt
One of the things that struck me this year was that virtually no one got up and left once it became apparent Mark wasn’t going to be there in-person, especially considering that we were scheduled into the final hour of the Con to begin with! I think we’ve somehow managed to build up a very loyal fan base over the years, despite the seemingly predictable result each year (although last year we came really, really close to upsetting the champ). In fact, if you consider that it started off as 4 pro writers going up against 4 fans, where clearly the attraction was the pro’s, and this year we only had Virtual Mark to hold peoples’ attention, that’s quite a statement about the format and the wacky questions that Mr Silver Age prepared. And boy were they especially wacky this year! Who knew Jerry Lewis could sometimes talk to animals (or that that was a superpower? I talk to my cat all the time!) or that a Toss-Up question in the category of “Lex Luthor” would be unanswerable by both fans AND Mark??! At times our team seemed completely stunned even understanding the QUESTION, let alone figuring out the answer, but that’s part of what makes it so much fun!
Oh well, in the words most sports fan will understand: “Just wait ’til next year!”
>>One of the things that struck me this year was that virtually no one got up and left once it became apparent Mark wasn’t going to be there in-person,< <
Yeah, that turn of events–especially when Geoff Johns couldn’t stay either–could have been disappointing, as I’m sure it was to all of us on the panel in any event. I had a variety of Plan Cs, which fortunately weren’t needed when Plan B worked.
I think that points to the fact that his presence isn’t the only reason to come, or at least to stay. Besides, being part of such a wacky experience was probably reason enough to stick around!
>>especially considering that we were scheduled into the final hour of the Con to begin with!< <
We always get a less attractive time, usually Friday afternoon or Sunday morning. which is fine with me. I just don’t like being the first thing on Friday, as people don’t always look at the schedule in time for the first things. I figured being the last thing on Sunday would suppress the crowd, but we still did well. I think that shows that we do have a following and don’t just attract the people who are taking a break from the show. If nothing else, we are one of the few (if not only) non-publisher-centric panels based on current or upcoming comics.
>>despite the seemingly predictable result each year< <
I agree, I think there are a number of reasons fans come to see the panel, and probably the least of them is wondering who will win. Granted, I think seeing Mark’s reaction as questions became more pivotal would be entertaining, but I’m just as glad the winner doesn’t come down to one or two questions. It gives us more leeway for goofing around. Whereas I think in SD, winning is a bigger part of the equation.
>>And boy were they especially wacky this year! Who knew Jerry Lewis could sometimes talk to animals (or that that was a superpower? I talk to my cat all the time!)< <
Well, Dave Blanchard and me, for two. That was too hard for its position, for sure. It occurred in a number of the comics, but you have to be familiar with mid-run AOJL to know it, and that’s pretty rare–definitely rarer than a 20-point question should be!
>> or that a Toss-Up question in the category of “Lex Luthor” would be unanswerable by both fans AND Mark??!< <
That’s one of those classic They’re All Easy If You Know Them questions I try to avoid. My reasoning was that, even if everyone was unfamiliar with the comic (and they were), once the easy but wrong answer was guessed, the other team would consider the options and quickly come up with the obvious right alternative. That was a stretch on my part for a Toss-Up, where a right answer is necessary to get to the rest of the questions. I’d thought I’d learned that lesson many years ago, but I had to relearn it this year.
>>At times our team seemed completely stunned even understanding the QUESTION, let alone figuring out the answer, but that’s part of what makes it so much fun!< <
It’s always interesting, in a car-crash kind of way, to find that some questions that I think are precisely explained are totally unfathomable to the panels. I still don’t know why that “which JLA member was the first to start in a second B&B team-up” makes no sense. I can see not getting it right, but nobody even seemed to understand what I was looking for.
And Mrs. Silver Age said afterward that I should have explained some of the categories a little better, which I didn’t spend much time doing, because the titles weren’t as apparent as I thought. But heck, *I* knew what I meant! Oh well, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.
— Craig Shutt
“I still don’t know why that “which JLA member was the first to start in a second B&B team-up” makes no sense. I can see not getting it right, but nobody even seemed to understand what I was looking for. ”
I can at least shed some light on that one. While I didn’t interpret it the way Mike Chary did, I could see why he was looking at it that way. Since the 3 JLA try-out issues of B&B were essentially an extended team-up (teaming the top tier DC heroes of the day for the first 3 times), he was thinking you were being sneaky and including those 3 issues as “the first B&B team-up”, in which case the answer would’ve been either Green Arrow or Martian Manhunter (from # 50, of course). It’s too bad it took as long as it did to get Mike OFF that track, as I was desperately trying to replay the first few issues from # 50 on in my head, since it was a very straight-forward question (to me) but I couldn’t concentrate due to the other ruckas going on. I’d narrowed it down to Aquaman, Atom or Flash, remembering the trick that Aquaman actually shows up in # 54 (the first Teen Titans appearance, though not by name) and was trying to line them up in the right order. I ended up guessing one of the wrong answers (not Atom) but might’ve come up with the right one if we’d been discussing THAT instead of what the legal definition of the question meant (which seemed to be Mike’s goal!) I don’t blame the question writer, as I thought it was worded clearly enough, but obviously not everyone agreed.
Another question that almost tripped me up was “Who was assisted by Myra Mason?” which somehow sounded like “Who was the assistant of Myra Mason?” Hence my pause before answering “Space Ranger” since I wanted to make sure I couldn’t actually think of an assistant TO Myra that might’ve been the trick answer. It doesn’t help that, the older I get, the worse my hearing gets!!
In general, I have to say that I love hearing the questions that Mr Silver Age comes up with each year, as they always make me realize just how rich and yet bizarre the Silver Age stories were, and how much of it I either don’t know or can’t quickly recall. I’m always inspired to try just a little harder for next year, and who knows… maybe next year we’ll pull off the Upset of the Millennium!! (As Mr Silver Age says, though, it’s not really so much about who wins as it is about enjoying the obscure questions and Mark’s antics.)