Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-61022-20160711220926

So I've been working a lot with comic summaries and I have a few suggestions to add in addition to the Appearance sections that I think will greatly help. In terms of formatting and in terms of making things look more organised. It's something I was thinking about since we added "Races/Species" to the template.

Some of this stuff can be put in the code, some of this is formatting standard.

Flashbacks

I think we should add a "Flashbacks" section because I find the tag is just too unwieldy. Also sometimes a Flashback appearance is either an previously unseen event or a flashback to a previous issue.

I think the "Flashbacks" section should focus entirely on the original scenes that have not been previously seen at that point. It would assist when using the APN tag, that way we can map out a characters continuity between two points in time that appear in the same story.

The best example of how this works is when I plotted out. I created a different appearance for each version of Earth-616 Reed and Sue Richards that appear in that story with their proper APN tags for each iteration that appears. (In that story they were all supporting characters, but it would be the same principal here)

This would be ideal for simple flashbacks that don't last more than a panel or two.

Mentions:

I think they deserve their own category. I understand why people want them placed in the appearance list (I don't fully agree), but I think they rate under "Other characters" and should have their own section.

Two narratives:

I find that when a story is "bookended" (typically with a character in the "present" recounting a story at some point in the past) we should actual put in two distinct appearance lists differentiating between those two periods.

I would recommend this when the substantial portion of the story is a flashback and the book ends take place in the present and I think that -- at a glance -- it keeps things more organised.

Continuity Notes

To be added at the bottom of the template. I've been putting these into all of the Fantastic Four comics I've been editing over the past number of months. I think it's a great way of expanding on what is referenced in the story that is in excess to the plot. A lot of other Wiki's do this and I think we should adopt it as well.

It also gives up space to explain what might be considered a Topical Reference, how the Sliding Timescale measures the passage of time between stories, and other logistical stuff that would otherwise bog down the base summary. 