The difficult 47th issue

 It's my 47th birthday! Honestly, it's hardly worth celebrating when you get to such a big number. 47 is a good number for fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation - someone thought it was fun to put lots of 47s into computer displays and things on the show. But for a fan of superhero comics, it's not a very good number - as proof, here are all the Marvel Comics 47th issues I could find in my comic collection today!

A motley collection. Comics nowadays rarely publish an issue numbered 47 - by the time they get that high, they've usually rebooted with a new #1, to boost the flagging sales. And in days gone by, the 47th issue would usually see a title struggling to establish an identity after the departure of the original writer or artist or both. Or being a convenient place to slot a fill-in issue to allow the regular writer or artist to catch up. Or just starting the build-up to a big fiftieth-issue spectacular. Nothing very cool happens in 47th issues. Here are the nine, with at least one interesting piece of trivia about them:

Defenders #47 - May 1977

Guest Scripter John Warner

Artists Keith Giffen & Klaus Janson

Plot David Kraft & Roger Slifer

That's how the credits are written. It's more normal to put the 'plotters' first, but I guess Kraft and Slifer didn't make much contribution to this one. Warner is a one-off fill-in writer. Defenders was trying to continue with the kind of stories Steve Gerber had been writing, but had no real sense of direction.

In this one, Valkyrie apologises to Clea for not wearing the hideous gold costume she'd recently adopted (explaining that her magic clothes-changing spell defaults to her original outifit), and Clea spontaneously fixes that problem and designs her a much nicer-looking white suit to wear in future.

Marvel Two-in-One #47 - January 1979

Writer Bill Mantlo

Artist Chic Stone

Marvel Two-in-One didn't really have a regular writer or artist at this point - it was a series of one-off stories in which the Thing teams up with a random Marvel superhero. This is the first of two issues by Mantlo and Stone, and the first which doesn't even have a guest-star - the Thing this issue deals with his regular off-screen bullies the Yancy Street Gang. It's really not much good.

Alpha Flight #47 - June 1987

Writer Bill Mantlo

Pencils Craig Brasfield, Mike Mignola, Steve Purcell

Inks Whilce Portacio, Terry Austin

Three pencillers, two inkers and one inventory story wedged into the middle of Bill Mantlo's continuing storylines.

Funnily enough, this was one of the very first comics I bought as a young comic-collector discovering the joys of back issues. That I soon became a devoted fan of Bill Mantlo's Alpha Flight is despite, rather than because of, this comic. I always tell people they need to read the whole Mantlo saga, but they're allowed to skip this one.

Avengers West Coast #47 - August 1989

Writer/Penciller John Byrne

Inker Mike Machlan

This was actually the first issue of "Avengers West Coast" - the previous 46 had been called "West Coast Avengers". They changed the title so that it would go on comic shop shelves next to the main Avengers comic, and maybe someone would buy it. This isn't any kind of fill-in story; Byrne was the regular creator.

John Byrne's time on the second-string Avengers comic has its fans, but I'm not one of them, I'm afraid. I don't actually know why I own this comic. It totally ruined the Vision, a great character, for years and years to come. Sorry, I'll calm down now. Why DO I own this comic?

New Warriors #47 - May 1994

Writer Fabian Nicieza

Pencillers Darick Robertson, Vince Evans, Kevin Kobasic, John Czop

Inkers Larry Mahlstedt, Mark Stegbauer, Tim Dzon

Four pencillers and three inkers. Wow. It doesn't look as bad or rushed as the credits might imply.

First part of the "Time and Time Again" crossover with the solo Night Thrasher and Nova comics which had recently spun off from New Warriors. Fabian Nicieza was REALLY keen to get as many comics on the shelves as possible. In this one, Night Thrasher announces that he's planning to split the team into two comics, recruiting a bunch of new members and giving Nicieza yet another monthly paycheque. But this plan was axed by editorial on the grounds the sales weren't good enough.

Generation X #47 - January 1999

Writer Larry Hama

Pencils Aaron Lopresti

Inks Walden Wong

The second of two issues drawn by Lopresti and Wong - next month, Terry and Rachel Dodson return to the regular artist position, and Hama is replaced by new writer Jay Faerber.

So this is basically a 'downtime' story, in which the gang catch up on sub-plots and have a training session in the Danger Room, which goes wrong and tries to kill them, like always. But everything's fine in the end and they play basketball.

Thunderbolts #47 - February 2001

Writer Fabian Nicieza

Pencils Mark Bagley

Inks Greg Adams & Scott Hanna

Barely any kind of fill-in at all, although the two inkers stops it getting a perfect business-as-usual score.

A whole lot of ongoing plotlines are slightly advanced in this one. We're building up to the big fiftieth issue. A little later, Nicieza was able to do what he hadn't been allowed to do with the New Warriors, and Thunderbolts started coming out twice a month, chronicling the adventures of two different teams. Yay!

Avengers #47 - December 2001

Writer Kurt Busiek

Reserve Artists Manuel Garcia & Bob Layton

They really are credited as "reserve artists" but this was the fourth consecutive issue drawn by Garcia and Layton. They'd taken over from Alan Davis, and with the next issue the "new regular artist" Kieron Dwyer arrives. He lasted three issues before we were back to fill-ins.

This is an issue focusing entirely on Warbird and the rather uncomfortable subject of her relationship with Marcus, son of Kang. Not Marcus, son of Immortus, although Immortus and Kang are the same person. It's all complicated and gets historically very weird. He asks her to grasp his halberd at one point, but she refuses.

Wolverine #47 - December 2006

Writer Marc Guggenheim

Penciller Humberto Ramos

Inker Carlos Cuevas

Part of the extensive "Civil War" crossover storyline - every participating comic had that layout, with the bottom half of the cover in one solid colour.

No fill-ins at all here - this was the regular creative team for the lengthy Civil War storyline, which had started in #42. Next issue there's one final aftermath issue, and then we're onto the new writer/artist lineup. I'm really not a fan of Humberto Ramos's art either - maybe I'm just in the mood to complain about the number 47 today, I don't know...

Only Jerks and Horses

 Do you remember, many years ago, there was some kind of 'comedy night', maybe on Channel 4, which included a series of short sketches mocking the American approach to sitcoms? Matt Lucas might have been involved, somehow. I suppose I could look it up, and not come across as someone with a poor memory, but I'm impressed with my powers of recollection here even if you're not.

The point is, it finished with an "American adaptation" of Only Fools and Horses, with Nicholas Lyndhurst (not the real one, an actor playing him) transplanted into it and being baffled by how they'd removed anything even remotely funny from the whole setup. So naturally it came to mind when watching the first episode of the new Frasier series.

Nicholas Lyndhurst does seem superfluous and pointless, and obviously rather awkwardly performing a script written by Americans (Jane Leeves suffered from the same problem in the classic series, of course), but the rest of it was actually quite good. There are some nice character dynamics among the all-new extended cast, and in fact (proving that that comedy-night parody was being unfair) quite a few funny jokes. It might turn out to be good, you know.

There's another episode to watch, but I don't like binge-watching a show like that, so I'll give it a day or two. And I might get an episode 3 before my week's free subscription to Paramount+ runs out - even if New Frasier is the best thing ever, I'm not paying that kind of money just to watch it.

So on that tightwad note, and since Frasier is all about poking fun at people whose idea of 'sport' is sitting at a computer solving problems on Excel spreadsheets (having paid an entry fee roughly the price of a Paramount+ subscription for the privilege), I should add that the draw for the Microsoft Excel World Championship has been made today!

And ouch, I've been drawn against the sixth seed in the first round...

Michael Clarke got to the quarter-finals last year, having qualified with a perfect score in the second-fastest time in the qualifiers - but I can maybe take some comfort in the fact that this year he's been focused on the Financial Modeling World Cup and hasn't played in this year's more eccentric challenges of the type that feature in the world championship. Unless he's been downloading them and doing them for practice, which he probably has.

But hey, I can still hope I do so well or he does so uncharacteristically badly that I win our match! And then I'm guaranteed not to meet any of the other top eight seeds until I get down to the quarter finals myself! Positive thinking is a major factor in Excel success, I think!

Microsoft Excel World Championship, here I come!

 Actually, as I said, I was already qualified for the world championship, and didn't need to compete in the final qualifying round yesterday - but I wanted to anyway, just to see how I did. It was a 60-minute challenge rather than the 30-minute monthly ones in the "Road to Las Vegas", so a bit different. Five unrelated tasks of different difficulty and point value - I went for the four easier ones and left the highest-scoring (which looked like it would take a lot longer to do), and I think that was a sensible strategy. And I made it to the front page of the results sheet, in eighteenth place!

Last year in the equivalent competition I was 74th, and you had to scroll down quite a way to find me. Knowing how these competitions work is the trick - that's why I always say people should go to a memory competition as soon as they learn such a thing exists, rather than waiting and training until they think they're good enough!

I see from the points I made one mistake in section 1 (I did notice that only 'losing' attempts at the game were divided by 2, but missed that the one 'winning' one needed to be multiplied by 2! Careless skimming of the instructions, but at least it wasn't too costly - I suspect this was designed for the RtLV scoring system rather than the one used yesterday; it would have cost a bigger chunk of points that way), and got one of the bonus questions wrong (just a careless mistake, doing it quickly), but otherwise missed any other pitfalls.

So now it's the first two rounds on October 28th - I just have to hope not to get drawn against any of the REALLY good Excellers, and maybe I can make it a bit further this year than I did in 2022! A paid trip to Vegas is still at least a theoretical possibility...