Superman Through the Ages! Forum

In case some of you missed it, the site is officially dead. :'(

So I guess that means I am back. :D

Hopefully, everyone else will join me back here as well. 8)

I'm so sporadic these last couple of years that I have to admit that switching back is not something I'm "super" likely to do.

I also have to say that many of the philosophic angles about the comics I liked have been discussed, and that new product doesn't interest me much.

Just to be clear the message board is gone, the blog is still up for the time being:

http://thesupermanfan.wordpress.com/

I still have my door key to the old haunt, so here I am.

I think the SupermanFan blog will endure. Nightwing's whole "Confessions" site is one of the better ones out there.

Actually, the links to all his great articles, etc. are still OK...

Hey, gang, sorry for the drama, it's been a bumpy week.  :(

It looks like all the articles made the move, but the ones using video and audio clips are pretty screwed up.  Might take a while to get them working again.

I plan to keep posting articles for a while yet (though like M-E Lad, I'm running out of steam), so I encourage you to keep visiting.  I've put in a request to forward the old domain to the new address, so hopefully more people will soon be seeing the site instead of the "no server found" message.

Very sorry about the boards, but I guess they'd gotten kind of quiet, anyway.  It feels like most of the interesting discussions were taking place in the comments sections of the posts themselves, and that still works.

One issue -- at least for the time being -- is that the new set-up isn't letting me add blog authors.  So if anyone wants to contribute, you'll either need a Wordpress account (for a blog of your own, maybe...not sure how it works), or you'll need to send your piece to me to post for you (with a by-line added, of course).

I had noticed that my blog articles no longer have my byline, though I still get messages to log onto WordPress and moderate comments to them every blue moon.

But anyways, I am just out of gas. I love the comics of my youth, but some really long and interesting forum discussions have been deleted over the years as the original site was nuked and now that the second site has been decommisioned (this is no judgment on anyone's reasons or motivations). I feel the same way about Supermanica - I spent thousands of hours on it and never liked the fact that some users were constantly re-organizing it, others were adding tiny details as entries or writing in the wrong tense etc. And I always strongly disagreed with the idea of ripping off the text of the "Great Superman Book" - a clear copyright violation.

I will still drop by here from time to time. It's been a fun ride from over the last decade and has been stimulating posting with all the people who were regulars.

M-E Lad, I may be wrong, but I think most if not all of our old discussions here still exist.  In fact, if you hunt around, there's still the discussions we had on the old Kal-L mailing list, which is really going back.  I believe I've also saved everything from the SFN board, but retrieving it may be a job for someone more technical than I.

Another issue entirely is whether anyone really wants to read a bunch of old conversations.  I always assume a message board discussion is like conversation at a party; fun while in progress, but gone off into the ether immediately afterward.  For that matter, I assume all my blog posts could one day be wiped out by some technical disaster or other; the Web is just not a permanent place for anything in my way of thinking.

That said, it looks like when you host a (free) site at Wordpress, one of the things to go is the by-lines, so no one's are showing, including my own.  I assume that's one of the things I can fix when and if I purchase an upgrade that allows me to modify the CSS, but in the meantime I can go in and physically add a by-line to each "guest" post since that information still exists in the data of the post as I see it through my admin interface.  That's on my to-do list, along with trying to get the media files working again.

I'm just about where you are on the "said all I want to" front.  I had the same experience when I was working on my old James Bond web magazine.  I had a million things to say about James Bond and one day I was looking at a deadline for number one million and one, and realized I was done.  Not just done writing about it, but done talking about it (which was a relief to my wife!) and even done thinking about it.  I still think working on that site for nine years totally exhausted my interest in the subject, which I wouldn't have even thought was possible. 

Supermanica is a great resource to have (especially when writing for the blog) but I agree contributing to any Wiki is a sisyphean pursuit.

No worries...the by-line is not important to me.

I should check to see what's left here. I don't worship old threads but I do like them as sources of information and perspective - especially those where there is heated disagreement.

I just have too much going on, I suppose. A plenty full real world career plus I write thousands of 1910s-1940s movie reviews, edit a bunch of 50s and 60s TV programs at TV.com and post a lot on many popular culture forums.

My Supermanica "hell" is purely of my own making. I'm the kind of person who looks at many entries and can't stand others that don't "match" the tone and info of what went before. It got so I DREADED looking at "most recent edits and entries". ;D That and one member who would re-organize entire categories of thousands of pages over night. And I never have gotten over the idea that the Fleisher book would be "stolen" from word-for-word.

But I AM positive and sentimental about these forums. DC comics from decades gone by and those that love them like I did will always be an interest of mine.

Where do your reviews go up?  I'd be interested in that.  We got Netflix to catch up on recent films, but I find I'm doing with that service what I did with Blockbuster, and cable, etc.  And that is to watch vintage films instead of newer stuff.  There's just so little worth watching now.

I'm curious to know what kind of editing you do on the old TV shows.  Just taking out commercials or editing for content?

I'm sure Rao would use a different word than "stealing" to describe the wiki.  I think the reasoning at the time was that Fleischer's book was out of print for going on 30 years and looked unlikely to be printed again, with old copies going for insane prices on internet auctions.  So in a way you could argue it was "keeping it before the public."  Or something.  Who could have imagined they'd reprint the thing as they did a year or so ago?  I'm still astonished over that one, albeit in a good  way.

As for threads with "heated disagreement," I can't believe there is such a thing.  Certainly you'd never catch me participating. ;-)

Well, it's a complicated story. I logged about 600 reviews at a website called "movietome" once owned by CNET. CBS took over the site and three years later, tore down the site without warning - resulting in all my reviews being completely lost. I've begun to re-write them and now save them to my hard drive, about 100 can be found in a sub-forum called "The Green Dragon" at the website "LibraryThing." I'm particularly interested in both good and bad movies during the silent to talkie transition in the late 20s and early 1930s.

CBS now owns TV.com as well. As an editor, I add episode lists, cast and crew, airdates and trivia, quotes etc. to shows that I am the editor of. I also moderate other user contributions to programs I am editor of. In the case of many 1950s programs - these were never videotaped or filmed so I have to do a lot of searching in newspaper archives etc. or scan for those few episodes that were kinescoped for broadcast on the west coast. Shows like "I Love Lucy", "The Untouchables", or "The Adventures of Superman" are a relative rarity, they were filmed and in almost constant syndication - so they were never lost.

I blame no one for the "copying" of Fleischer's book at "Supermanica"...it's just my opinion. After working on it for a while I sort of had a wish that people would write entries in his "style" rather than just copy his own words.

That's right.

It was a different time. When the Supermanica project started, that book was LONG out of print, it was the only way for fans to read this information. Plus it wasn't just copied it was updated as well. Of course, many entries didn't come from the book. However, DC actually went ahead and reprinted the book, so at that point, well it seem rather pointless for me to keep going with it.

Might it be a good time to consider my suggestion to you -- that you open up the blog to all of the classic DC characters. By classic, I mean the long-lived, heavy-hitters like Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Batman, Flash, Green Arrow, etc. Even the Legion of Super-Heroes and other Superman offshoots like that.

They have a perfectly legitimate place on a "Confessions of a Superman Fan" blogsite.

If you're losing interest in writing a blog per se, that's a different story...

Well, that's reassuring. Whenever I hear someone's an "editor" of a past work I think of things being excised, especially in this shameful era of political correctness (Huck Finn, anyone?).  What you're doing sounds more like "curator" or "archivist," which is awesome.


I'd certainly consider the Legion, which I love.  Wonder Woman I couldn't care less about, unless her bustier is inhabited by Lynda Carter.  The others might be a stretch, if only because I want to eliminate duplication of effort, and Pat Curley's doing a terrific job covering the "Silver Age" in general at his blog.

I guess you could make a case that any title published under the "DC-Superman Comics" bullet is fair game.  It's something to consider.

Being back here it's good that I can actually post messages again, something which I have been unable to do for the past few years - despite it telling me I was logged in - although strangely, I could reply on the blog section!

I'm a little confused as to what happened to Superman Fan forum?  Server crash, Bondian no longer has his server, or something else?

As for the blog, I've enjoyed reading it.  Perhaps it should be opened up to other characters/books, like the Legion.  It could enable more material to be posted.

I agree.  Posting things on the web is hardly a permanent thing.  Sites can go down for a variety of reasons and never be seen again.

At least my old avatar is still here - 20yh century - 31st cant keep track/  Glad to keep this going despite my uber heavy workload.  have c ouple of days of so I can "water" my time reading great old comics -- ot's like Lightning Lad losing his life and then his arm  or Jimmy's new love is a giantess.

If THAT mad any sense.... ::)

Hey nightwing, unfortunately I've been tied up on other projects and haven't been able to post to the blog or the MB, but I do still follow it and hope you continue as time and inspiration allow.

As for the content on the SFN board,  I was hoping to somehow get access to the "Superman in the 60s/70s" threads, as I had posted some story reviews there that I regrettably don't think I backed up anywhere.  If anyone knows how to work some magic and resurrect those threads, I'd be much obliged!

It's funny I haven't stopped by here in a donkey's age, but somehow I find I am logged in here. Although, I suppose if I tried a different computer, it probably wouldn't work (and I'm not sure what password or email I used way back when I registered).

But today I finally had the time to go see The Black Swan (before the Oscars--still gotta see The King's Speech) and although I was not wowed by the movie, the whole time I was thinking of two things--the movie Showgirls and the 1960s Lois Lane.

Sounds like a theme. Maybe I will develop this analysis somewhere.

Yes, do. And do it here.

I've been itching to do something about Lois Lane for years now, but it seems like a monumental undertaking. And last year I spent a lot of time on one monumental undertaking, so I was hoping to kick back this year (and attend to real life aspirations). But sometimes these topics just take over and I can't stop myself. So we'll see.

On another front, my well wishes to those in New Zealand at this time of crisis.

There hasn't been a disaster of this magnitude in living memory........ And a disaster it is.