Obsessively putting our comics in chronological order since 1985.
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Q&As
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.
It's also interesting to watch how the industry evolved over time as styles changed, new creators come in, the lines expands, etc. And to see how well the continuity insert books (like Untold Tales of Spider-Man) fit in with the era it's supposed to take place in.
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, half-finished thoughts, and other sloppiness!
The URLs for your page entries don't always line up exactly with the issues covered.
Why didn't you respond to my comment?
How could you grade my favorite comic so low, or worse, how dare you grade a Lee/Kirby issue so low?
Some of your years are slightly off (Jim Shooter actually became EiC in 1978, etc.).
I found an entry that says "This entry is a stub." and is incomplete. Why not hide it until it's ready?
When adding back issues (as opposed to a new year), do you post a list?
You modified an entry after i read it!
What are these ugly checkboxes on the category pages for?
Some of your screenshots are cropped poorly, or have faded colors, and some are not even straight!
The second factor is that many comics are not divided neatly into panels. Artists use non-traditional layouts, or art (or especially word balloons) explode into other panels. So i have to make choices about how much to include or crop, meaning that some scans have extraneous stuff in them.
(The fact that i use digital copies for scans also explains why sometimes i'll say i have an issue in black & white but have color screenshots.)
How much is my comic worth?
Seriously, this is the wrong website for that type of question, and that should be obvious. Try mycomicshop.com.
What's a "temporal reference"?
The phrase was coined by George Olshevsky in the Marvel Indexes, i believe.
The Thing and the Human Torch met the Beatles in Strange Tales #130. Henry Kissinger signed a non-aggression pact with Dr. Doom in Super-Villain Team-Up #6. But by Marvel's sliding timescale, if the Fantastic Four didn’t launch their rocket until 2006, those events couldn’t have happened. So we’re supposed to gloss over things like that or replace them with more modern references. It was really the Strokes, not the Beatles. Condoleezza Rice, not Kissinger. Obviously those scenes lose a lot of their impact – the Beatles were HUGE in 1965; there is no band in 2006 that can match the wow factor of the Beatles appearing in a comic. Often it's ok - a passing reference to a movie, celebrity, politician when it's not part of the main plot can easily be mentally replaced, but when it's central to the plot (as in the above examples), it's a little more difficult. Nonetheless, we soldier on...
Abbreviations?
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, my partner in crime (code named "min") 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. But finally and most importantly, there's a reason i'm doing this in a blog format with comments enabled. If you disagree with a placement, or if there's information i'm not aware of that you can share, let me know!
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!
I know, and i'm sorry! I do value speed over quality here to a degree; i've got a huge backlog to get through so i try to crank these things out. I'll often do little-to-no proofreading before my initial publication because i'm trying to get through the pile of the day and then much later i'll realize with embarrassment that i have to go back and make edits. But to keep up my preferred pace i've decided to live with that embarrassment rather than slow things down.
Yeah, i know. The URLs are generated when i initially create the entry, and sometimes i later add or remove issues from the entries. And i don't want to modify the URLs due to inbound links (possibly even ones outside my site)
I read and enjoy every comment, but i don't feel like i need the last word on every entry. So unless you're pointing out an error or asking a question, i might not respond, but it's only because i'm letting your comment speak for itself. Keep 'em coming.
First, read The Rules to see how i apply my rankings. I love all my comics, even the ones i give a D. But objectively speaking, a lot of them are pretty bad. A lot of them are books i couldn't give a non-comic reading friend and expect him to enjoy. And that's how i apply the ratings. A = anyone could enjoy it. B = You have to be a comics fan. C = only a Marvel fan would love it. D = even i'm not so sure. If you're on this site, you're probably a Marvel fan and that means even the C and D comics have a lot of appeal to you. And clearly to me or i wouldn't be spending the time to do all of this. As for the Stan Lee stuff, let's face it. The writing is pretty corny. Awesomely corny, and groundbreaking for its time in the comic industry, but still. So i love it, but i'm trying to be objective. Maybe it's an exercise in futility. But in any event, don't get mad.
When i list a date, it's based on the comics' cover dates, which were generally a few months ahead of the actual publication dates. Beyond that, the EiC break-outs are never going to line up 100% with the chronology since the stories aren't always polite about when they take place (A comic published in the Jim Shooter era may still have taken place during the Archie Goodwin era, or vice versa). The categorizations serve as rough and blurry eras, not clear lines of demarcation.
When i'm adding new issues, i create the stub first and take my first crack at placement. Then i see where the entry fits in for all of the characters appearing. I can't do that if the entry isn't published. Then i add references, check again, and then add the full review. So i need to keep it published so i can check during those phases. I keep the stub message as a warning so you know it's not complete. If i'm adding a new year, i'll probably put the message at the top of the category page instead of in each entry.
Yes. The see the Recent Updates section. When i've completed a wave of back issues, I'll also announce it in the news section on the front page.
I reserve that right! Sometimes after reading a later book, i realize that some random event turned out to be more significant than i originally thought and needs to be called out. Sometimes i just miss something and have to add it back. This website is a living document!
They just let you highlight an entry, so you can compare where i've placed things ("Let's see... he put this issue of Captain America here (click), but Cap also appears in this issue of Avengers (click) and all the Avengers return from space together in this issue (click), so that Cap issue can't go in the middle. He screwed up again!").
Well, some of that is just my own shoddy workmanship, but mainly there are two problems. First, i get my scans via digital files, so they're of variable quality. Actually the worst quality files are the official GIT PDFs that i bought; they are guaranteed to be slightly tilted, meaning that images will always be on a slight angle. And of course the GIT PDFs were put out for the biggest titles at Marvel. Scans put together by the fine upstanding citizens of the torrent community are usually (but not always) of much better quality. Meaning it's Avengers and Hulk and Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four (etc.) that are not going to be straight, as opposed to, say, Marvel Two-In-One. Annoying, but i'm not wasting time in Photoshop rotating each screenshot, although i do make adjustments or scan my own hard copy when things are really bad.
Probably a lot less than you think.
MCP = Marvel Chronology Project
UHBMCC = Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators
GCD = Grand Comics Database
