User blog:Nausiated/Project 11/61 - Coming Soon...

My last blog was talking about how when I was finished with the last of the 50s comics I was going to dive right into doing the Marvel age of heroes, the precursor to what I'm calling Project 11/61. For those interested in what I'm planning on doing here's the idea to this:

The purpose of Project 11/61 is to plot and expand the information available on the Wiki ranging from issue summaries to expanded character profiles and present every scrap of information in both chronological and publication order. This is a project I am undertaking on my own, but should anyone wish to assist me on my endeavours the more the merrier. The intent of this project is to make the Wiki the go to place for all information Marvel and provide the appropriate references and supplement material so that anyone who wishes to research a character’s history they can navigate it in chronological order and be able to find references about the issue the facts come from and in turn read summaries about that issue so that – eventually – all the gaps of information on this wiki are closed. This is going to be no easy task, and the project has started in sorts, by the culmination of my work reading Pre-Marvel books from the Timely and Atlas eras between 1939 and 1961. It’s not complete as some issues were hard to come by or are mired in “sort of” continuity. Through my work I have skipped on doing work on the Patsy Walker books (Since most of them are works of “fiction” in the Marvel Universe proper), romance books, and sci-fi and horror anthology stories as they are not necessarily considered part of continuity (a few examples are part of continuity, and I will get into how – in an if and when scenario – I will address those) While working with the wartime super-hero books, I had the advanced knowledge that Marvel has since gone back and expanded on events that happened during that period and those characters and their life during and prior to that period. Captain America is the best example of this with many many stories going back to World War II, but also in other characters Marvel reintroduced to modern reading audiences (in such titles as The Twelve, Band of Heroes and various 70th Anniversary titles) while plotting their chronologies I often researched these later stories and inserted them into the tapestry of their chronology. This was done with the help of not only the source material but also Marvel’s Official Index series and the Marvel Chronology Project website as sources to confirm the order of these stories as much as possible. This is how I will be trying to organize things in the future. With all years prior to 1961, I had originally went issue by issue based on month of publication and alphabetical order, however trying to navigate through anything post November 1961 will be difficult to keep track of things in this manner when considering the many flashback stories that revisit past points in the “age of heroes” So starting with Fantastic Four #1 I will be adopting this method of going through information to provide the most complete chronology. Starting with FF #1, I will focus on one title as it was published during the course of that year (starting with November 1961 to December 1962): (1)   With each character that has their first appearance in a particular issue, I will research all chronological appearances that occur before before the first published story featuring that character (For example, with Reed Richards, I’d go back and determine what issues feature stories about Reed prior to FF #1 and chronicle those first) This will start the first phase of doing expanded histories of some of bigger characters, chronicling their early lives. Not all this early life information will be gleaned from simple flashbacks alone in that there will be passing mentions in dialogue that flesh out the characters past, those facts can only be gleaned by meticulously going through each issue and adding this information later. (2)   Next I would focus on each issue of the flag ship title that the character appears in then also find out what flashback issues that happen between these stories. I would read them all in chronological order and update the issue summaries in that order. I will keep detailed notes on every character appearance and what they did in that particular story. I will be focusing on the flagship title characters but keeping notes on guest-stars and passing characters, cameos, and the like for later when I move to another title for quick updating and so I’m not duplicating work. (3)   Once the year is complete, I will update expanded profiles of the characters from that period. Individual “Expanded History” pages will be created. These pages will initially be copies of the abridged profiles for the characters already available and the expanded content will be put in and expanded upon based on that groundwork. In many cases the information already available in the abridged versions will face entire rewrites and likely look completely different once the project begins to expand. For minor characters, such as supporting cast members and villains, where an expanded history is not necessary the information will be entered into their primary profiles. (4)   Once I have completed one year of a title (Fantastic Four for example) I would move onto the next title that was published during that period (Amazing Spider-Man for example) and repeat the same process as above until all titles during that year that are considered part of continuity until the year is complete in which case I will start over for the next year (1963) and continue forward (hopefully) until I reach present publications. '''Omissions: ''' Naturally there will be titles I will stay away from that fall into that “grey” area of continuity. Namely the horror/suspense/sci-fi stories prominently featured in titles such as Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, Journey into Mystery and the like, focusing primarily on the hero books. Naturally a number of the monsters and characters featured in these books resurfaced later (such as Fin Fang Foom, Arthur Nagan, Groot, members of the Promise etc) the intent is not to ignore them entirely, I intend to go back and revisit the relevant issues once I encounter when they appear in other Marvel books post “age of monsters”. That way I can spend the time doing research on the individual characters and ensuring I catalogue all the information accordingly. '''When Referencing the Handbook: ''' Taking information directly from the Marvel Handbooks mostly defeats the purposes of this project. However some information about characters and clarifications of events and important facts are discerned through the handbooks. As such, once I have completed a year and am in the process of updating character profiles I will refer to the most current edition of the Handbooks to verify information to see what has been gleaned or revealed or otherwise disclosed only in the handbooks (I suspect for the most part these will for the most part be character names). This will also help determine the next thing with the project and that is…. '''Topical References: ''' As many readers know, Marvel operates on what is called a “sliding time scale” which is what the writers use to gage how much time has gone by in the Marvel Universe and in real time. With publications going back as far as the 60s that are part of the “modern era” of Marvel history this leaves a lot of dated references and stories that are not “modern” by any stretch (such as appearances of pop-culture icons, former presidents, what conflicts were being fought at the time, characters who were active in the war and so on) to determine what events should be specific or which ones should be generalized. How these will be handled is with the actual issue summary state the reference how it was presented in the story but put a mention in the notes how it should be considered a topical reference. With the character summaries, only a generalized reference would be made with a more specific reference in the citations section.

That's what I've got figured out so far... If any other ideas come to me as I am gearing up on this project. I won't be getting into it right away, it's still a few months down the road while I clear out the last of the 50s stuff left in my cue.