Preliminary thoughts

[Super Monkey]

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.

[nightwing]

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 Rao]

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.

Great, thanks.  Just check out the list of entries, and whatever's not there yet still needs to be done.

[TELLE]

In another thread, TELLE writes:

Awhile back (like, 1996) I started taking notes after I read or re-read any post-64 Superman family title, with the idea of updating the encyclopedia. I would suggest that users of this site do the same and submit the results to Rao --an open-source-style project to rival the Wikipedia. As has been noted, none of the Superboy, Supergirl, Legion, Lois or Jimmy material was covered in the original edition. We could overpower the post-Crisis world-view through sheer quantity of information available!

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.

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?

[Bill 9000]

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

[The Starchild]

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.

[Bill 9000]

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.

[Bill 9000]

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.