Confessions of A Superman Fan is no more!

[Super Monkey]

In case some of you missed it, the site is officially dead.

So I guess that means I am back.

Hopefully, everyone else will join me back here as well.

[MatterEaterLad]

I'm so sporadic these last couple of years that I have to admit that switching back is not something I'm "super" likely to do.

I also have to say that many of the philosophic angles about the comics I liked have been discussed, and that new product doesn't interest me much.

[Super Monkey]

Just to be clear the message board is gone, the blog is still up for the time being:

http://thesupermanfan.wordpress.com/

[Aldous]

I still have my door key to the old haunt, so here I am.

I think the SupermanFan blog will endure. Nightwing's whole "Confessions" site is one of the better ones out there.

Actually, the links to all his great articles, etc. are still OK...

[nightwing]

Hey, gang, sorry for the drama, it's been a bumpy week. 

It looks like all the articles made the move, but the ones using video and audio clips are pretty screwed up.  Might take a while to get them working again.

I plan to keep posting articles for a while yet (though like M-E Lad, I'm running out of steam), so I encourage you to keep visiting.  I've put in a request to forward the old domain to the new address, so hopefully more people will soon be seeing the site instead of the "no server found" message.

Very sorry about the boards, but I guess they'd gotten kind of quiet, anyway.  It feels like most of the interesting discussions were taking place in the comments sections of the posts themselves, and that still works.

One issue -- at least for the time being -- is that the new set-up isn't letting me add blog authors.  So if anyone wants to contribute, you'll either need a Wordpress account (for a blog of your own, maybe...not sure how it works), or you'll need to send your piece to me to post for you (with a by-line added, of course).

[MatterEaterLad]

I had noticed that my blog articles no longer have my byline, though I still get messages to log onto WordPress and moderate comments to them every blue moon.

But anyways, I am just out of gas. I love the comics of my youth, but some really long and interesting forum discussions have been deleted over the years as the original site was nuked and now that the second site has been decommisioned (this is no judgment on anyone's reasons or motivations). I feel the same way about Supermanica - I spent thousands of hours on it and never liked the fact that some users were constantly re-organizing it, others were adding tiny details as entries or writing in the wrong tense etc. And I always strongly disagreed with the idea of ripping off the text of the "Great Superman Book" - a clear copyright violation.

I will still drop by here from time to time. It's been a fun ride from over the last decade and has been stimulating posting with all the people who were regulars.

[nightwing]

M-E Lad, I may be wrong, but I think most if not all of our old discussions here still exist.  In fact, if you hunt around, there's still the discussions we had on the old Kal-L mailing list, which is really going back.  I believe I've also saved everything from the SFN board, but retrieving it may be a job for someone more technical than I.

Another issue entirely is whether anyone really wants to read a bunch of old conversations.  I always assume a message board discussion is like conversation at a party; fun while in progress, but gone off into the ether immediately afterward.  For that matter, I assume all my blog posts could one day be wiped out by some technical disaster or other; the Web is just not a permanent place for anything in my way of thinking.

That said, it looks like when you host a (free) site at Wordpress, one of the things to go is the by-lines, so no one's are showing, including my own.  I assume that's one of the things I can fix when and if I purchase an upgrade that allows me to modify the CSS, but in the meantime I can go in and physically add a by-line to each "guest" post since that information still exists in the data of the post as I see it through my admin interface.  That's on my to-do list, along with trying to get the media files working again.

I'm just about where you are on the "said all I want to" front.  I had the same experience when I was working on my old James Bond web magazine.  I had a million things to say about James Bond and one day I was looking at a deadline for number one million and one, and realized I was done.  Not just done writing about it, but done talking about it (which was a relief to my wife!) and even done thinking about it.  I still think working on that site for nine years totally exhausted my interest in the subject, which I wouldn't have even thought was possible. 

Supermanica is a great resource to have (especially when writing for the blog) but I agree contributing to any Wiki is a sisyphean pursuit.

[MatterEaterLad]

No worries...the by-line is not important to me.

I should check to see what's left here. I don't worship old threads but I do like them as sources of information and perspective - especially those where there is heated disagreement.

I just have too much going on, I suppose. A plenty full real world career plus I write thousands of 1910s-1940s movie reviews, edit a bunch of 50s and 60s TV programs at TV.com and post a lot on many popular culture forums.

My Supermanica "hell" is purely of my own making. I'm the kind of person who looks at many entries and can't stand others that don't "match" the tone and info of what went before. It got so I DREADED looking at "most recent edits and entries". That and one member who would re-organize entire categories of thousands of pages over night. And I never have gotten over the idea that the Fleisher book would be "stolen" from word-for-word.

But I AM positive and sentimental about these forums. DC comics from decades gone by and those that love them like I did will always be an interest of mine.