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Underground > Comic Books >

Mooting an idea - wikipediarise The Bomb and create a new resource for annotating comic books?

21:19 / 16.12.04

So here's what's been stuck in my head over the last week or two... Basically you guys are familiar with wikipedia, right? It's a collaboratively generated encyclopedia that runs on the same software that we're now using for the new barbelith FAQs - FAQs.

So you guys are also familiar with The Bomb, right? The site that spawned this community originally? Annotations of Grant Morrison's Invisibles? So I was thinking - if I set up a new site and we all got together and worked out a format for how we might do this stuff, we could start creating an open site - just like Wikipedia - but for the collation of annotations on comic books. We could start off with Grant's stuff and work from there - move stuff over from The Bomb, start work on Doom Patrol and then... well who knows - other people might get interested and start taking on annotating Warren Ellis or something?

I think it could be great, although it could also suck and be really frustrating, and I'd need to get together a group of people who could run this alongside me and eventually maybe take over running it in time (as it's clear from this place that I can't necessarily commit to having an enormous ongoing engagement), but I think it could be a neat idea...

21:36 / 16.12.04

Me, I'm up for it. It would be nice to learn how to wiki properly and I would also like to put that big pile of comics to some good use. I need some kind of project right now and I think this might hit the spot. We might have to be careful not to tread to heavily on the toes of the Anarchy for The Masses chaps (ie. "Life as a film is a recurring theme" should not be on every page.) but otherwise sounds sound. What I think we need a link to is a wiki sandbox to play in and a FAQ for who hosts etc. Given the current debate over subscriptions I think it might be a good idea to say that only subbers get to contribute. Might be a good reason to pony up.
Then again, I'm a relatively new boy who buys about 6 comics a month....

22:20 / 16.12.04

I get the majority of my Morrison collection back tonight, just in time, it seems. I'm definitely down for this Can we finally get an annotation for the 'blood on the wall' that shows up in a few different Georgie M. comics? Despite just starting another Invisibles thread the other day, I think there's been enough coverage on that for a bit, and there's got to be more deserving stuff... 'Arkham Asylum', 'Marvel Boy', or 'JLA'? And, yes, 'JLA' could warrant annotations; loads of sideways stuff in there, from Icke-style white martians to the 'Wisdom of Solomon' reasoning for getting Cap. Marvel into Crisis X 5. And, surely, the first mention of W. Reich in a non-Vertigo DC title.
Non-Morrisonian comics? I'd say Ellis, Shirow, or heck, 'Savage Dragon' or something.
There aren't really enough comics that need annos, are there? Surely some Tom Peyer comic, maybe 'Unstable Molecules'?
NXM annotations should also mark points that were immediately and horribly retconned away, and/or completely missed and misinterpretted. The Xorn twin, Ernst/Cass, the amazing euro-faced Chinese madman who razed Manhattan... And we should make up a better name for Mindee, through available evidence and possibly torturing those who might know something in ways not sanctioned by even the vilest of vile nations, as proves necessary. Anything but Mindee, really, should prove satisfactory.

23:10 / 16.12.04

Sounds fun and fasinating... what would be the first steps?

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

01:06 / 17.12.04

Let's annotate some indie people as well. Clowes et al. And Nelson Evergreen. And me. Before he's famous.

Suedey! SHOT FOR MEAT!

01:07 / 17.12.04

Nelson, that is.

01:28 / 17.12.04

Tom it's sounds like an amazing idea. I'm a bit gutted about the picture loss that will happen, but I'm sure that people being able to contribute who have good views/ideas/input will easily make up for that.

In other words : ignore my picture loss moans, great idea chief.

Sean the frumious Bandersnatch

02:18 / 17.12.04

This is a good idea, Tom. Like many others, it was the annotations that drew me to this site.

What series need annotations but don't already have them? I could see Top 10 and Promethea...maybe Lone Wolf and Cub. Should we limit ourselves to just comics?

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

03:05 / 17.12.04

I'd be willing to contribute, and could even do things that would be historical, such as the EC comics of the 50's, or Jack Kirby's New Gods series.

03:46 / 17.12.04

It seems to me that League of Extrordinary Gentlemen is probably well documented out there in the great wide internet, but surely the Barbelith could add a thing or two?

07:59 / 17.12.04

It's certainly an interesting idea and while I am all up for participation I'll probably only add a few little tidbits to the thing.

As far as worrying about 'treading on toes' of comic annotation books - I'm not sure how far the accusation (of treading on the toes) can be justified since the source material is open to all and its a bit difficult for any single author of an annotation site/book/whatever to claim ownership of the interpretation of someone else's work, particularly if, as in the case of The Bomb and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen annos, they were assembled collaboratively.

That said, there is perhaps limited value in re-doing the work of annotating a comic when extensive annotations to it already exist online. The only reason I can see to duplicating something like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen annos would be to maintain some level of editorial control over them, leaving them open for ongoing revision and addition.

Dan Fish - @Fish1k

08:52 / 17.12.04

I think it's a fantastic idea.

enjolrasworld.com is the place online for comic annotations, I wonder if it's worth contacting some of the guys linked there for ideas or contributions?

The biggest problem I foresee would be a formatting thing -Presumably you'd want content to be consistent, if people are adding stuff you might need a team to keep an eye on things in that respect. Can people accidently delete stuff, or is there a record of changes?

Apart from that, I say go for it! I'm looking forward to reading it.

10:01 / 17.12.04

So yeah - we'd have to figure out how we wanted to organise the pages and how you would navigate between em and stuff. And yeah - that would clearly be a bit of a conundrum, but I think it would be eminently manageable.

So then - first things first - project needs a name and a convincing URL. Any ideas from people?

Next thing - everyone go and hang out on http://www.wikipedia.org straight away and see how it works / how they organise stuff.

13:05 / 17.12.04

How about "Try to remember"? [Off to do wikiresearch]

Dan Fish - @Fish1k

13:26 / 17.12.04

Did you want it as part of Barbelith (eg www.barbelith.com/comicnotes), or under its own URL (eg www.comicnotes.org)?

Maybe a play on words, like barbelists.com or barbelit.com, or babelith.com?

How about bomb.barbelith.com, as a nod to the old barbelith.com/bomb?

14:06 / 17.12.04

I don't think we really want the site to be too heavily associated with Barbelith otherwise - if it takes off - all the conversation here would be swamped by newbies off the wiki. I think we should think of it as a new project that could be handled differently and that we could spin off to one of the board to run at some point in the future if necessary.

Dan Fish - @Fish1k

14:40 / 17.12.04

Maybe something straightforward like ComicCommentary.com then (nice and alliterative)

15:09 / 17.12.04

I definitely agree that this should be something that is distinctive from Barbelith itself - and it would preserve the annotations and speculations surrounding popular seriesin a more immediately accessible form than the the comics forum does currently...

15:50 / 17.12.04

um.. just off the top of my head -

comicoracle.com or org?

comicnotes.com

saddlestitched.com

thecomicsreader.com

15:54 / 17.12.04

I retract the earlier suggestion as it was clearly a bit rubbish. I think that "Concordance" rather than "Commentary" might be better, as we're bound to end up with a thematic index as well as the panel-by-panel breakdowns

20:52 / 17.12.04

I was thinking around concordance as well. Very interesting.

01:54 / 18.12.04

Would it be worthwhile to have something along the lines of the DC/Marvel surgery threads turned into something wiki-like?

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:40 / 18.12.04

Not really, they are a bit slapdash and random.

19:51 / 18.12.04

Yeah. You could still pick out a sizeable bit from each Morrison-related thread, I reckon.

To a certain extent, I treat a lot of my post on his comics as inspired by The Bomb, and hope to add a little info on most occasions.

I think algorithmising the process, and indeed other areas of the 'lith, is a very good idea.

00:55 / 19.12.04

Splendid idea.

Hope something comes out of this.

17:11 / 21.12.04

Comicordance.com ?

Nah, that sounds too much like a choice. I'll have both, thanks.

The Four Color Concordance, maybe? www.4color.com or something similar?

I think it sounds like a great idea. I wonder -- do those Google things work on wikis?

Also, there are some really great concordance/annotations sites out there already (the LOEG pages, the Doom Patrol annotations).

If the Bomb gets converted into a pretty good wiki, I wonder if it'd be possible to talk the owners of those sites into wiki-izing them.

18:47 / 28.12.04

By which I mean assimilating their content onto our site.

18:25 / 29.12.04

If the Bomb gets converted into a pretty good wiki, I wonder if it'd be possible to talk the owners of those sites into wiki-izing them.

By which I mean assimilating their content onto our site.

i think that's an excellent idea. isn't there a pretty good annotated Sandman site out there, too?

combining existing commentary and annotation sites could very easily build a very solid critical mass which would get the ball rolling.

21:12 / 29.11.05

More like "Invisible Ink"? Like words between words...between lines... behind enemy lines.
Supercontext... binary mean... Echomic-o-rama...:S

21:28 / 29.11.05

Our Wiki defo gets google hits; I was looking for something on Zor, I think, and it was top link.