Superman Through the Ages! Forum

In another thread (http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=8560&highlight=#8560), TELLE writes:


TELLE, keep those notes!

Thoughts:

How many people would be interested in participating in something like this?  I assume that once it got underway, it would take off - so to speak - much like Wikipedia, imdb, etc. all did.

I'm also assuming that we'd start with the material in The Great Superman Book, maybe flush it out with material from the titles that Fleisher missed - like Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, etc.  So the question becomes:  Just which titles?  I don't want this to be an entire DCU encylopedia, just Superman related.  So who and what should it cover?

Time period:  Action 1 (1938) up until - when?  Just before the Byrne MOS reboot?  Or up until Crisis?  Do we need to figure out just what the cut-off point is, or can we be more subjectively  judgmental as to what's canonical and what isn't during that final year?  (note: discussion on this question has been split off into a new thread (http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1337).)

If enough poeple express an interest in possibly participating in this possible project, I can look into setting up mediawiki -- that big dynamic database based multi-user updated thing that Wikipedia, Wiktionary, etc. all use.

:s:

And there's ALL of Jimmy Olsen's permutations - Elastic Lad, Collosal Jimmy, Wolf boy, Porcupine Boy, Giant Turtle Man, etc. :shock:

You know, we're ignoring the most important question of all:

What to do about "The Master Mesmerizer of Metropolis"?  :lol:

We'll do whatever the Master Mesmerizer tells us to do, of course. :P

Thanks Bill, it's on the up and up.

I've started entries for Halk Kar (http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Halk_Kar)   (at least, that's what he's called in Fleisher's book, but I always thought it was Hulk Kar), Professor Potter (http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Professor_Potter), and Superman (http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Superman) (which I'll be completing from the 138-page bio in the Fleisher book).  If you want to do pictures of them for their entries, that would be great, just create an account (http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Userlogin) at the site and you'll be able to upload pictures and edit  the entries to include them.

I'm going to continue to add more Fleisher entries, if anyone else wants to help out -- with adding articles from the Fleisher book, updating them past 1964, or creating new entries for post 1964 characters or events -- the site is open.   Like Wikipedia, it's updatable by anyone.  Please remember, pre-1986 continuity only (http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Canonical_sources).  As you've already pointed out, the rest of the internet is post-1986 heavy and we need to add some weight in the other direction.

:s:

Sounds good. I've just created an account, and my first official donation to the site will be my 1949 Superman from Generations (which is essentially the Pre-Crisis Superman anyway). :wink:

By the way, how large do you want the character images to be? I can adjust them to any specifications that are deemed necessary. I can also design a logo for the site, too, if everybody wants. Just to put any fears to rest, I really am a professional graphic artist.

Hee! This is gonna be soooooo fun!

I'm in too!  Not sure what I want to tackle at this point and I can also contribute some "original" art - my stuff or text.

Rao, pretty sure it's HALK KAR - just picked up an annual with that story reprinted.

I suppose I could do  :s: 2965 but I hate writing about "myself".  :wink:  :lol:

Looks really good Bill, thanks!

I put the picture you submitted on the main page (http://superman.nu/wiki/).  I think the page looks fine on my 1024x768 monitor, but I most people might run at 800x600 or there might even be a few holdouts at 640x480, so maybe the inline pictures should be just a tad smaller?  What do your professional graphic artist sensibilities tell you?   I'd love to see what you could come up with for a logo.

:s:

It looks great!

It would be great to have Bill 9000 do a drawing for every character in order to keep a consisted uniform look. Of course he should get billing as the illustrator for the site so that he can use it for his resume/art portfolio and get assignments from it.

This is a fun idea! I'll be glad to contribute entries as time allows.  Also, let us know if you need entries transcribed from Fleischer's book and if so which ones.

I'd cut off this expanded history with the last pre-Byrne issues; the few issues between "Crisis" and "Man of Steel" may not technically be the Superman of Earth 1, but then Fleischer's book treated him as one guy from 38 to 64 anyway.  

That creates another conundrum for you; how to acknowledge the meetings between Kal-El and Kal-L when Fleischer's book -- with it's '64 cut-off -- never dealt with multiple Earths.  They did meet several times in several titles.

If it were up to me, I'd include stuff from "DC Comics Presents" and especially "World's Finest" as that title built on the Kandor legends.  But again, if we're to follow Fleischer's model, we should limit it to Superman and Action.  Otherwise we'd have to back and fill for the years of those titles that he left out, right?  And it's a big enough job filling in 65-86 without going in and expanding his pre-64 coverage, too.

Great, thanks.  Just check out the list of entries (http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Category:Entries), and whatever's not there yet still needs to be done.

:s:

Wow.  This is the first time in my life someone has gone to such lengths based on a small suggestion I made (not counting that time 10 years ago when I proposed to my then-girlfriend).

Rao, you have already done so much, I don't know where to begin.  I wasn't very familiar with the various online encyclopedias when I made my suggestion but one of the things that always bothered me was the general lack of documentation, something that plagues most info on the web --this is amplified by the open-access nature of the project.  However, I trust classic Superman fans to follow the model to the letter, with the Fleisher example to lead us, issue numbers and dates included.

The new site looks good but I had trouble navigating.  Is there going to be a browse function or at least an alphabetical index?

Think I'll get to work on Halk Kar and Wonder Man next.

Bill, I can't wait to see those pictures!  This whole project is a fantastic idea, and I'm very glad that you're going to be one of the participants.

I noticed that you (or someone) changed the caption for your Superman picture to read, "Superman, the classic Pre-Crisis Man of Steel"

Now it seems to me that if one of the points of this encyclopedia is to overwhelm all the post-crisis fans with the sheer amount, wonder, and beauty of pre-crisis material, why are we acknowledging and validating the post-crisis version at all? Why bring him up? The site isn't about the post-crisis character, so why mention him at all? Wouldn't it be better if the caption just read something like, "Superman, the Man of Steel - illustration by Bill 9000" or something?

Just my 2 cents.

Hmm ... you have a valid point. I'll make that change right now. Thanks for the advice, Starchild. Think I'll just put the caption "Superman - illustration by Bill 9000" and that should be the standard that I use when captioning the illustrations.

I couldn't resist. I added the text on Wonder-Man for the site. Please take a read and tell me if you find it acceptable.

Looks good to me!  Did you write it yourself?

It might make sense to also incorporate the material from the Fleisher entry:

http://superman.nu/a/Encyclopaedia/wonder.php

Hah! I'm gonna love drawing that one ... Superboy with funky 70's sideburns! :lol:

Um ... if nobody else minds. I'd like to imbed the Superman image that I originally posted to the Superman entry in the Overview section. But since this deals with Superman's entry itself, I wanted to check with everyone before I went ahead and did it.

Hey, the Super Sons were in World's Finest, so they're canonical - but the computer simulation explanation was also in WF, so that's canonical too.  None of this Earth-E stuff which, although I prefer as an explanation, was never acknowledged in the chronicles themselves.

I for one certainly don't mind you putting your Superman picture in the Superman entry.  But it also looks good on the main page, are you going to keep it in both places, or come up with something else for the splash?

Actually, I'll keep it where it is for now. I'll be reworking the image for Superman's actual entry, and I'll also be coming up with a logo for the site, too.

Not sure if this has been discussed, but shouldn't we be including Pre-Crisis material that's found in the original Who's Who series? I noticed that there's more info on such things as the Phantom Zone in the series than what's in the current Supermanica entry. Might be worth including since these sources can pretty much be considered canonical.

I think most of the entries that are up now are from the Fleischer book, which ends at 1964, so obviously there's lots of Phantom Zone material not covered.  Rao's set it up so once we've got the bare bones online, we can always go in and add to or amend existing entries.  So if you know something about the Phantom Zone you want added, go for it.

The Who's Who could be a great source for post 1964 info, so long as we only include the info that relates to titles that are in canon.  The problem with Who's Who is that it's not always clear what happened where.  (For example, a Who's Who entry might mention that Superman met He-Man, but if it happened in DC Comics Presents, then we can't include it.  Fleischer cited each bit of data, but Who's Who did not.  In fact, all I remember them citing was first appearances).

I think the Who's Who would be most useful for old-timers like me, who need our memory jogged about what happened to certain characters, so we can begin searching for the exact issues where it happened.

Well, I wrote mine of the top of my head and certainly those entries could use some emblellishments & addenum(s).

Bill, I think it looks terrific! Great job as usual.

I just added entries for the Composite Superman (surprise, surprise) and his alter-ego Joe Meach as a test of the system.  It's really cool.

The only problem I had was that I made an error in the entry name itself...I wrote "Joe meach" with a lower-case "M."  I couldn't find any way to correct it, though I see now that it's corrected itself...or perhaps Rao did it.  Anyway, just for future reference, is there a way to fix an entry name when we goof it up?

I love how easy it is to go in and add internal links to related articles! I just added Xan and will soon add Xyl, two aliens from the second Compy tale.  (One of them is only "on" for two panels!).  At this rate, this thing is going to be huge in no time!

Rao -thanks.

Bill 9k - WOW!

Nightwing- Compy, natch. Is Flamebird next?


Wish I could color that SGirl Mooney pic I posted....... :roll:

I tried to color it for you, but I don't know if I'm happy with the results.  Check it out:

http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Image:400px-SupergirlbyJim_Mooney.jpg

Looks good to me! :D

That was me, I fixed it.  I moved the page from "Joe meach" to "Joe Meach."    Moving a page seems to be one of the special powers reserved for the site administrator.

:s:

Im thinking of deleting some of the images Ive uploaded that arent being used to free up some bandwidth but havent yet figured out how to do so.

Thoughts?

Good question. I've been trying to figure that one out myself. By the way, Klar, would you mind terribly if I expanded on your Titano write-up? I'm planning on writing up an entry for the Atomic Skull, and since I have to cross-reference it with Titano anyway, I thought I might add to it.

Another suggestion for categories comes to mind. Maybe we should include an Objects category that would cover such things as the Phantom Zone Projector, Jimmy Olsen's signal watch, the ever-popular Supermobile and (of course) the various forms of kryptonite.

And while on the subject of Categories, I've been looking through them and I found that some of them have become sort of redundant. For example, we have a general category for Locations, yet we also have a "Geographic Locations" category, a "Planets" category, a "Dimensional Realms" category, and a category for Krypton itself. In my humble opinion, these should all come under the "Locations" category. That's how the official Star Wars site's databank handles it. We also have a "Villains" category and a "Criminals" category. Since these two are pretty much interchangeable, why not just have a "Villains" category and just leave it at that? The same thing goes for the "Aliases" and "Superman's Aliases" categories. These two can just be amalgamated into a simple "Aliases" category. These might make things a little less confusing to visitors.

Any thoughts?[/url]

Bill, go for it.  I do quick overviews as to jump start categories.  Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane are nothing but pics thus far...

Thought the Atomic Skull came much later (in the post reboot era but maybe that's another Atomic Skull) and since I stopped reading comics for the most part in the mid 70s there's plenty I dont know about!

Yeah categories - need one for creatures like the Matter Eater Beast and The Thing from 400,000 AD. Teleptahic hounds from Kandor would be animals, kryptonian me thinks.

What the heck were the names of those critters from Krypton with big TV sets on their heads which revealled what they were thinking?

How about 'Gadgets' for the PZ projector, signal watch, and Supermobile?  The various kryptonites could maybe get a 'Kryptonite' category, or just be part of one entry.

I don't know.  I don't think some two-bit inept mugger or jewel thief (a "criminal") from the 1950s is really in the same category as someone like, say, Brainiac or Mongul (a "super-villain").  If Criminals and Villains are combined, maybe there should be different name, something more general, for the category?

Klar, do you mind if I expand (or even replace) some of your entries with the material from Fleisher's book?

Go for it, Star child - dont have the Fleischer book just my 12th level memory bank...which is kinda overdrawn at the moment.

The intent was just to get those entries up and then lets those with the Fleischer book or their vast array of Supermanica knowledge get busy! :)

I think you can leave some of mine up (rather than replace them) as capsule OVERVIEWS so that the basics can be dessiminated at a glance and then delve into the more detailed entry.

Har! There was a Pre-Crisis Atomic Skull. When he first appeared, he was a renegade STAR Labs scientist who implanted a control device into Titano's skull in order to use him against Big Blue. He first appeared in Superman Vol. 1 #323 (September 1976).

I am going to add a Kryptonite entry, since I spent so much time complete a full list, I might as well :) You can all then go in and edit it by writing information about each one, and I will as well.

Simply, "Thought-Beasts"... :D  

Rhino-like but with miraculous "flat screen" heads, since there seemed to be no picture tubes..maybe plasma screens?

They might have been accused of limited thinking as the TV screens always projected images of them chomping on the torso of whoever they intended to attack...

Alright, I'm going to start with Jimmy Olsen.  It's a doozy at 12 pages (not as long as Superman, though) so I might have to do it in installments.

Ok, I have added the Kryptonite entry! It is the largest and most comprehensive Kryptonite list on the web or in print!

Feel free to add more information to each one if you like (I only gave brief descriptions of each one), but please do not take anything out if you can help it.


Edit:

Here is a direct link: http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Kryptonite

But it doesn't show up here:
http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Category:Entries

only here:
http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Special:Allpages

which I notice has many articles not included in the 1st page.

   1. Digby_Selwyn
   2. Flamebird
   3. Gorgeous_Superman
   4. Kryptonite
   5. Nightwing
   6. Ugly_Superman


what is going on :?:

Only articles which are in the "Entries" category will show up on the Entries page.  Every article anyone adds, they should also add to the Entries category.  You do this by putting the following line at the end of your article:

[[Category:Entries]]

Some articles should also be in more than one category:  like Flamebird  should also be in People and Heroes.  

See this forum article (http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1321) for more on categories, or click on 'edit' on one of the other entries at Supermanica to see how it's done.

:s:

Thanks!

I went ahead and added:

1. Digby_Selwyn
2. Flamebird
3. Gorgeous_Superman
4. Kryptonite
5. Nightwing
6. Ugly_Superman

to the [[Category:Entries]]

Whew! Just posted the entry for Captain Thunder! SHA-BOOOOOM!  :wink:

By the way, please see the finished Wonder-Man entry. I just posted a thumbnail of Superman No. 163, so now people can get a true picture of what my entries will look like. I felt that the inclusion of the cover shot along with the figure illustration served to "legitimize" the character. For example, not many folks know that there was a Pre-Crisis Atomic Skull as well as a Post-Crisis version. The inclusion of the actual cover of the issue in which he first appeared will serve as proof that this stuff isn't made up. Hope this doesn't cause too much of a problem.