Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
SuperMegaMonkey
Comics Chronology
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Why are you doing this?
This is, to me, the real appeal of comic books - especially marvel universe comics. There's no other medium out there where there's been multiple ongoing stories that intertwine within a single shared universe. To truly enjoy that aspect of the comics, i like to keep my comics in the order that the events occur.
How is this different than the Marvel Chronology Project?
Do you really rip up your trades?
Your placement seems somewhat arbitrary.
You are missing some key issues.
Ugh, your entries are full of typos, grammatical errors, logical gaps...
I'm a sick, sick boy. But more specifically, i first started collecting comics around the time that Secret Wars was coming out. So i had these issues where the characters disappeared in their own titles, and then they were supposed to be on the Battleplanet, and then they came back in the next issue of their own series. It made much more sense to order my comics so that when i read them, i got the complete story.
First of all, those guys are my heroes. A lot of my work is built on what they have over there. But there are two main differences:
Yeah. I even rip up Giant Sized issues and things. Actually, Priscilla does most of the ripping since she has the patience and talent. But i have to do it. Otherwise the comic is no good to me. It would be impossible to place in the right spot. Hey, i buy these comics to read and enjoy - i don't treat them like precious treasures. I only rip up "compilation" style books. For example, i didn't rip up my Fantastic Four Marvel Masterworks trade that reprints FF #1-10 because those issues can be placed chronologically (even if some stories, like random Strange Tales stories featuring the Human Torch might have fit in better between issues). However, i did rip up my Hulk Transformations trade, which reprints stories where the Hulk underwent significant changes, so that i could put those stories in their proper time periods.
Well, to a certain degree it is. If you have a random, single issue of the Hulk and random, single issue of Spider-Man, and nothing happens in either issue that affects the other, it doesn't really matter what order you read them in. I try to follow the publication order as much as possible, but i also try to keep things mixed up enough so that you aren't reading three unrelated stories about the same character at the same time. Also, the format of the story, especially with reprints, sometimes dictates how things get grouped. While i do rip up my trades, if i have a steady run of, say, Journey Into Mystery featuring Thor, from a volume of Essentials, i will keep as many of those grouped together as i can as long as it does not interfere with Thor's appearance in other titles.
I like to think i have a decent collection (~30 boxes), but i don't have everything. Since starting this project i've found myself hitting the back issue bins a bit more to pick up some milestones, but i still can't afford everything and i'm not very fond of the black and white Essentials. I also deliberately avoided a lot of things that seemed bad to me at the time, like the Spider Clone Saga. If you see that i'm missing something that leads to a placement error, please let me know. Oh, and feel free to send me free copies of anything i'm missing that you'd like to see covered!
Sorry about that. I basically crank these entries out very quickly so that i can get back to actually reading the comics. Let me know about any problems and i'll fix 'em.
