The article chronicled a number of events that Simply Didn't Happpen, including an M.C. Escher-drawn issue of the Avengers, Daredevil's battle with a giant, cosmic-powered Foggy Nelson, and, of course, the first appearance of Lectronn. I drew the covers that went with the articles (and contributed the blurb for the DD cover: "My Friend--MY GOD!!!"). Inks were likely by the late Jack Abel (Lectronn) and/or G.I.Joe's Andy Myshynsky (Daredevil). The fake-Escher cover was never finished; Jim only had room for two covers and the two that saw print were faster and easier to produce.

  The character was a vaguely parodical amalgam of other, earlier comics characters (conceptually Nova , visuallly Nova and the Charlton-era Captain Atom) , so any resemblance is less than coincidental. We never had any idea which alien race was responsible for Tommy's powers. As for his being able to fly by lowering his atomic weight, though neither Sholly nor I are scientists in the strictest sense (though he IS a doctor), both of us were knowledgeable enough to know that it shouldn't work that way. This was intended to recall and poke fun at the "fake-scientific-explanation-of-the-hero's-powers-that-make-no-damn-sense" trope that had been an integral part of the comics landscape---e.g. Stan and Jack's insistence that the Human Torch could fly because fire is lighter than air. If being covered in fire made this possible, then the skies over Hollywood would be filled with gravity-defying stuntmen. Which would, on examination, be pretty cool.

Part 2: Sholly Fisch

Pretty much everything James said is right (although Jim Salicrup scoffed at any suggestion that it was an April Fools gag -- the idea for the fake article was inspired much more by Jim's delightfully-twisted sense of humor than by April Fools Day). But here's the rest of the story:

  At the time, I was freelancing regularly as a writer/contributing editor for Marvel Age (in addition to writing scripts for various comics). One of my regular assignments was the history column, and another was the Marvel Age letters column. So once the fake column appeared, Jim and I waited anxiously to see the mail that would come in response...
...and it added up to a grand total of two letters.

  The meager response left us wondering what was going on. Did people not get the joke? (I had even inserted an explicit disclaimer in the intro paragraph to that month's price guide -- something to the effect of "Of course, none of these comics exist. But if they did, here's what you'd expect to pay for them...") Or were people just not reading the history column at all? (Which is the much more unnerving option for a freelancer whose income depends on the column continuing.) There was no way to know.<7p>

  But that changed a month or two later, when Jim and I each picked up that week's issue of the Comics Buyer's Guide. At the time, CBG ran a sporadic column called "Squash That Rumor!" This particular column talked about how a specific issue of Avengers was rapidly disappearing from back-issues bins in Pittsburgh and starting to become rare as a result. Nobody could figure out why at first -- until they realized that it was the issue that I had designated as the MC Escher issue of Avengers. Apparently, people were spotting it in stores and saying, "Wow! Avengers #124 for only $2.50? That's worth $12!" (since I had written the price guide with the thought that an actual Escher issue should probably go for a bit more money). And so, they were snapping it up, the issue was becoming rare... and the demand was starting to drive the back-issue price up for real!

  So that's when we realized that people had read the article and didn't get the joke --despite the explicit disclaimer and the fact that the article included stuff like an entire year of Conan fighting animal gods named after characters from Winnie the Pooh. I felt a little bad about people spending money on the Avengers issue, but realistically, it was a cheap back issue and a good story (part of the Englehart Zodiac arc), so there wasn't a lot of harm done.

  And that's basically the scoop -- at least until James and I get old and crotchety enough to start fighting over who "really" created Lectronn. But then again, we all know it was me...

Jack Fury

Part 1: James Fry III

I had created the pseudonym "Jack Fury", and the name can be found in a number of '80s Marvel projects (if I could remember them all, I'd list them for you, but I can barely recall what I had for lunch yesterday). Generally, Mr. Fury was myself, working in concert with at least one other creator who wished to remain anonymous. When Jim Shooter was less than happy with the first issue of Justice (New Universe title) and original penciler Isherwood was unavailable, Shooter enlisted the aid of a small army of artists to redraw large portions of the book over the space of a single weekend. Said army consisted of myself, Art Nichols, Mark Bright, Mike Harris, Frank Giacoia and Vince Colletta. When time came for credits to be applied, Shooter felt that a long list of art credits would make the book's slapdash nature even more obvious and suggested that a single collective name might work better. I offered up "Jack Fury" and the rest is some sort of history.
  It had been my hope to make the name available to anyone who wished to keep a low profile for whatever reason, a la Alan Smithee, but I don't think anyone ever took me up on it. Sholly and I wound up creating an entire history for the fictional Mr. Fury, going all the way back to the 1940s and his creation of the Blue Whiz for "All-Swell Comics". We crafted an article detailing the reclusive artist's body of work, but it never saw print. This sort of thing was actually pretty popular during the '80s (See "Amazing Heroes" magazine's non-existent contributor Sidney Mellon, or Dark Horse Comics' faux publishing history of "The American").

Lectronn in Mutant X

The Mutant X appearances raised the possibility that Lectronn could be a native to Earth-1298. Mutant X Annual 2001 artist James Fry had this to say:

Determining which Earth was home base to Lectronn? Not moot at all! For the record, the original Lectronn was native to the regular-Marvel-Earth (616?). After only a few adventures, he officially retired from crimefighting moments after losing his virginity to longtime crush Amy Jo Bessolo. They live happpily in Pennsylvania, where Tommy is a high school English teacher, Amy Jo is a party clown (--excuse me; "full-service family entertainer") and oldest son Nathan was voted by his junior high class Most Likely To Be A Super-Powered Mutant.

As for the Lectronn of Earth Mutant X, he has a different background and origin altogether. Underachieving,steroid-abusing jock Rider Richards was attending Empire State University on a football scholarship. One spring afternoon, Richards (cousin of this reality's Reed Richards) went to visit the office of ESU Psychology Department head Professor Martin Braine, hoping to strong-arm Braine into giving him a passing grade. Before the matter could be settled, a Cosmic Ray experiment being conducted elsewhere in the building by students hoping to apply for summer internships with A.I.M. went awry, fusing the two men into one super-powered being... and Lectronn was born! 'Cause, you know, everything on Earth-Mutant X is all grim and gritty and crap.