By David Gallaher
I started interning at Marvel Comics back in January 1999. As an editorial intern, reporting to John Cerilli, I was responsible for answering e-mails, interviewing creators, and writing articles for Marvel.com. [Oh, there was lots of scanning, photocopying and running files off to the colorist too!]
During my tenure, I was privy to lots of super secret information about
Spider-Man, The
X-Men, The
Avengers and The
Fantastic Four, but the most exciting event during my internship was something that never made it to the printed page.
At the time Marvel.com was not the primary destination for news, interviews and articles about our vast characters. This was something that Cerilli, the editorial director of Marvel.com wanted to change.
So, in the spirit of April Fool's, Marvel Interactive editors Frank Tieri, Gregg Sanderson along with Cerilli decided to pull a prank that would bring attention to our newly redesigned web site—while having a bit of harmless fun. A few days before our massive web site redesign was scheduled to go live on April 1, John had called me into his office:
"David, have you ever heard the story of Sidd Finch?"
John went on to describe that in 1985, legendary sports writer, George Plimpton, wrote an article for Sports Illustrated called "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch." The article, which ran in the issue dated April 1, 1985, detailed the tremendous ability of a young New York Mets prospect, who could throw a 168 mph fastball with pinpoint accuracy. This guy, known as "Barefoot" Sidd Finch, reportedly learned to pitch in a Buddhist monastery.
The story sounded too good to be true, and it turns out, it wasn't true at all. Renowned for his sense of humor, Plimpton had fabricated the Sidd Finch story as part of an elaborate ruse for April Fool's Day. He actually left an obscure hint that the story was a hoax within the article itself, where the first letter in each word of the article's subhead taken together, spelled out "H-a-p-p-y A-p-r-i-l F-o-o-l-s D-a-y." Sports Illustrated received almost 2000 letters in response to the article, and it became one of their most famous stories ever.
"So," I asked. "Does this mean Spider-Man is joining the Mets?"
"No, but he will be joining The X-Men," John said with a smile.
The idea was just crazy enough to work and the plan was simple—our department would issue a phony press release stating that there was a new mini-series coming out, called "X Marks the Spider" where Spider-Man would be accused of being a mutant and would have to join the X-Men roster.
Since no mock title would be complete without its own mock creative team, we enlisted the aid of ace-writer Joe Kelly and top notch artist Jimmy Palmiotti. To further sell the joke, Palmiotti went so far as to draw up some sketches.
The first piece was a promotional image that featured Spider-Man swinging through the air in a brand new X-Men-inspired costume. As an intern, my responsibilities were to compile a list of over two dozen comic news sites and to ensure that the news sites had the story in their inboxes.
On the morning of April 1, 1999, I wasn't sure what the response to our prank would be. When I got to the office, I eagerly surfed the internet trying to track the response. Site after site, message board after message board, I had found that all of them had taken this news to be true. Our office was flooded with e-mails and phone calls asking us to confirm or deny the story. The plan to drive more traffic and attention to the efforts of Marvel.com had become a rousing success.
On April 2, after some of the uproar had subsided, we declared the story to be certifiably false, releasing a second promotional image featuring
Mary Jane Watson standing in front of webbing that read "Did we fool you, Tiger?" The prank landed us a write-up in that month's issue of WIZARD magazine!
Amid all the attention that week, I felt that I got to experience a unique and inspired moment. Our big success became a big opportunity for me to discover how everyone is vital towards the success of a project. Ten years later, the lessons I learned at Marvel have become an invaluable part of my professional career. And, I owe it, in part, to the day Spider-Man joined the X-Men.
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