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Author Topic: Earths 1 and 2  (Read 11256 times)
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Great Rao
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« Reply #8 on: December 14, 2006, 05:26:40 AM »

Wow.  When faced with the problem of indoctrinating newbies, my immediate response is, "why did we make this thing so seemingly arbitrary and slavishly devoted to The Great Superman Book by Fleisher?"
Telle, that's an excellent question and lately I've been wondering the same thing myself.

Quote
I must confess, half the time I think of the Golden Age Superman as the Earth-2 Superman!  It involves a different mindset to think about E-2 adventures only existing post-1970 (or post-1961 if we are feeling charitable).

I am also beginning to feel that our arbitrary choice of canon titles will have to be expanded at some point to include the JLA, at the very least.

I have recently been considering opening up the canon to the new post-infinite crisis books but then I began to have serious doubts about the 1986 cut-off date entirely - that's twenty years ago and Supermanica runs the risk of becoming completely obselete.

And I wonder about limiting the canonical sources to specific comic books.  I think it's time to stop trying to be the Catholic Church, and to be more ecumenical in our approach.  I think Supermanica should be open to any and all Superman stories from all media and from all eras.  The published stories, the unpublished stories (like K-Metal and the secret origin of the Legion Clubhouse), the radio show, the dailies, all the TV shows, all the movies, the Maggin novels and short stories, etc.  Superman is bigger than what we few think he should be.

This would mean that, for instance, instead of just having celebrity articles about Don Rickles and Orson Welles, we could also have entries for Lucy Ricardo and for Jerry Seinfeld.  We could put the Mole Men back in, we can include the events of All-Star Superman, the Fleischer 'toons and the Spider Lady from the Kirk Alyn serial.

Some here have complained that if we did this, the Iron Agers would take over.   They wouldn't take over - there's far too much non-Iron Age content that they could be swamped with - but so what if they tried?  Let them have their say, but keep a leash on them.

That's the way that wikis work.  The people who care are the people who control the content.  If some Iron Age kid comes in and writes about Superman killing the PZ criminals - and if you don't like it - then you'd have options:

Just be obnoxious and delete it;
Be more polite and delete it because he neglected to cite his references (and cite this as the reason for its deletion);
Reword it to tone it down and make it more objective;
Just ignore it and let him take over;
Bury it amidst twenty pages of Silver and Bronze Age goodness detailing all the many times that Superman has quoted his code against killing, the times it was stated that he'd never killed and never would kill, the times that he has exiled himself to the moon or somewhere back in the past for the benefit of humanity after mistakenly believing that he had killed someone, etc.  Instead of just complaining about what's happening on Supermanica - do something about it!  Add more of what you like, delete what you don't like, and discuss the whys and wherefores on the article discussion pages. 

In this way, the wiki's contents will be determined by who cares most.  This sort of set-up also encourages discussion and cooperation and seems to work extremely well on Wikipedia.  People have to hammer things out.

If all references are cited, and all contradictions clearly explained and all conflicting stories are allowed and presented in an objective manner, then the choice on what is canonical is left to the ultimate authority: the reader.  Just make sure that if you think something is important, that it's there.

I believe that the Great Superman Book is an excellent guide on how to handle this:  All conflicts are mentioned.

Quote from: Telle
In addition to using the "talk" feature more often, we should add more articles in "Supermanica" to expand on the differences between fandom's view of the canon and Supermanica's view.  Another area of clarity would maybe be the actual Ages --fans love to dispute these dates and maybe we could explain our own take. Or does this invite too much deviation from our main project?

I think that for Supermanica to succeed, such "meta" discussion pages are absolutely necessary.  People need to know and understand what the rules and guidelines are, and they need to have the opportunity to participate in the creation of same.

Quote from: Telle
For the moment I will try to be more diligent in welcoming newcomers/policing entries as well  --I've been pretty dormant on Supermanica lately but maybe over the Holidays?  The FAQ is a good idea, as is greater clarity about E-2.  Maybe we could work on a lengthier, Fleisher-style article on the subject.

Sounds great, I look forward to seeing it.

Quote from: MatterEaterLad
I also think people click on the articles hyperlink pretty quickly.  I think that there should be a hyperlink to this page on the homepage in the text, maybe linked to text saying "read these articles before adding entries" or something similar.

http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Category:Supermanica

And I do like the Earth 1 and 2 article, maybe just a reference to its 1960s history, and a definite comic that shows the first appearance of the Earth-2 Superman in the JLA along with saying that this is not a part of the canonical references for Supermanica.

I agree, these are good ideas.
« Last Edit: December 14, 2006, 06:07:40 AM by Great Rao » Logged

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« Reply #9 on: December 14, 2006, 05:55:22 PM »

Wow.  When faced with the problem of indoctrinating newbies, my immediate response is, "why did we make this thing so seemingly arbitrary and slavishly devoted to The Great Superman Book by Fleisher?"
Telle, that's an excellent question and lately I've been wondering the same thing myself.



I have recently been considering opening up the canon to the new post-infinite crisis books but then I began to have serious doubts about the 1986 cut-off date entirely - that's twenty years ago and Supermanica runs the risk of becoming completely obselete.

And I wonder about limiting the canonical sources to specific comic books.  I think it's time to stop trying to be the Catholic Church, and to be more ecumenical in our approach.  I think Supermanica should be open to any and all Superman stories from all media and from all eras. 

Ha ha --I make one little suggestion and you go crazy! Smiley

I agree that the wiki format has built-in safeguards, checks and balances but it also quite a bit of work --not to mention depressing to think that so many people would rather write about the Iron Age.
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« Reply #10 on: December 15, 2006, 01:18:32 AM »

That is crazy!

The day that Iron Age is consider canon is the day I stop going to the Supermanica forever. I mean wasn't that the whole point? To preserve the spirit of Superman? To teach people about the real Superman?

That said, I wouldn't be against a Superman Serials Category or a Adventures of Superman one, or a Fleischer/Famous Cartoons Superman one, a Superman novels one, and a Superman films one (including new films), Superfriends, and the other Superman and Superboy cartoons.

I would even be for including all appearances of Superman and I mean all before 1986!

To keep things current, I would even be for an All-Star Superman one and even a Mercury Age one!

But never, ever an Iron Age one, that's crazy talk! Plus the Wiki already exist for that.


However, before we go crazy and include the above, we should complete it in full using the current Canon sources. Only after that, would the rest be warranted. Once we actually run out of stuff to add, then and only then we should think of including JLA, LSH, and the rest.

There is no reason for that now, just because of one person causing trouble.

Crazy indeed...


Well, that's my opinion anyway, for what it's worth.

 


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« Reply #11 on: December 15, 2006, 02:08:46 AM »

I guess I think that the entries that are already in Supermanica come from many, many hours work from people who care and used a certain set of rules to enter them.  I know it was often a challenge to me to incorporate all the right references, and use the language to conform to the original rules.  It was even fun researching a lot of 70s era stories that I still don't like, but it was fun to learn about them.

What I liked about Supermanica (and contrasts to Wiki in general) is that it was directed in scope, making it something that the few people who stop by to work on it to keep on top of.  Its actually unique among a lot of wikis for that reason.

I wouldn't mind separate pages for Superman serials, newspaper strips, TV or movies, but I'm not particularly interested in them.  But having a Lucy Ricardo entry in the same list of entries as The Toyman would make the catalog less relevant to me.  Lucy Ricardo is a fictional character that met the "real" George Reeves at a fictional birthday party -- its interesting but far from the story of Superman to me.

One thing I will say is that keeping the exact prose of TGSB was always a little too rigid for me, it is lifted text and doesn't always mesh well with later stories, and editing it in takes some work.  I like the idea of TGSB and liked that its rules were adopted here, I just was never a huge fan of pasting in entries word-for-word from it.

And yeah, if it had Iron Age stories, or even for that matter, post Iron Age references, I would just assume its a copy of the current DC wikis and never visit it.  Just like this site...I may never be a fan of the Maggin and Bates stories like many here, but the pre-Crisis approach and respect for history of this site is why I come here rather than other web sites.
« Last Edit: December 15, 2006, 02:12:46 AM by MatterEaterLad » Logged
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« Reply #12 on: December 15, 2006, 09:16:50 AM »

What I liked about Supermanica (and contrasts to Wiki in general) is that it was directed in scope, making it something that the few people who stop by to work on it to keep on top of.  Its actually unique among a lot of wikis for that reason.

And it is working --as has been mentioned here before, entries show up high in google searches.  As well, I've even seen academics who are interested in comics direct each other to Supermanica entries.
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« Reply #13 on: December 18, 2006, 01:19:43 AM »

I agree with the Great Rao about the non-comics entries, with reservations. I've been watching the DVDs of the first two seasons of the George Reeves series and it would be fun to add entries on the Mole Men or Ro-Zan or Sarah and Eben Kent.

However, I dread seeing entries based on Lois and Clark! Cry

As far as the comics go, I would prefer to stick to the pre-Man of Steel days, for now at least.
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« Reply #14 on: December 18, 2006, 01:30:14 AM »

If the Golden Age does change in definition, its a major category, so all the entries will have to be gone through to look at the dates of the references.  One problem with Wiki is that once there are a lot of entries, new categories or definitions of categories take a lot of editing.
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« Reply #15 on: December 18, 2006, 04:10:59 AM »

I don't understand why the  "The  Golden Age" is listed as 1938-1948 here: http://superman.nu/a/comics.php

but not there, other than no one knows what 1948-1958 should be called.

Yes, it would make quite a mess of things.

So maybe it is better to just leave it as is.
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