Wednesday, September 14, 2011

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Copyediting

 As often is the case when I write a post about magazine covers, this is apropos of nothing particularly significant.

This morning I found online the above cover of a 1992 issue of Omni magazine. I immediately figured I should order a copy, because it features an article on Mystery Science Theater 3000, one of the great TV shows of all time. Except ... Omni mistitles MST3K on the cover text: "Laughing at the Future with Mystery Science 3000."

It would not be the last time that MST3K was incorrectly identified on a genre magazine cover. Four years later, Starlog would announce the MST3K motion picture by shouting on its cover, "Joel, Tom Servo & Crow make a movie!" Which would have been great, except that creator and host Joel Hodgson had left the show some time earlier and it was his successor, Michael J. Nelson, who made a movie with the help of his robot friends.

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