WeirdSpace - Culture without borders

Site History 2006



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December 17, 2006: Added to site, entry #840-843: God, Jesus, Wendy Testaburger, and Diana Choksondik from South Park.

Normally I've been really happy with the Big Cartoon Database as a source for appearances in cartoons. I was however a little surprised and rather annoyed when I discovered that the character Diana Choksondik had been selectively removed from all the South Park data in the database. I know that the name Choksondik is a rather rude sexual reference and some people are very sensitive towards this, but it is the type of behavior I find offensive. Due to the very nature of databases you can't include everything in the files, and if Choksondik had only been a peripheral character in the cartoons she could have been left out with the argument that she wasn't relevant to the story. It's very common, and I'm forced to do the same thing from time to time. In several stories however, especially at her first appearance she played a pivotal role in the story and the overall South Park continuity. As a fan I have to say it's pathetic, but I can get the information elsewhere, but as a historian I have to say that this is NOT the proper behavior of a serious resource site.


December 10, 2006: Added to site, entry #835-839: Ike Broflowski, Satan and Leopold Stotch/Butters/Professor Chaos from South Park.


November 13, 2006: Added to site, entry #824-834: Oliver Queen/Green Arrow, Connor Hawke/Green Arrow, Mia Dearden/Speedy, Roy Harper/Speedy/Arsenal, and Sue Dibney/Sue Dearbon from DC Comics.


November 12, 2006: Added to site, entry #817-823: Aphrodite, Hermes, Apollo/Phoibos Apollon, Artemis, and Dionysos/Zagreus from Greek mythology.

I'm finally done going thru all the files on the site, to get the references done right and remove the inconsistencies in the programming. The programing worked fine per se, but the way programming works, it's just a matter of time before some programming rutine will interpret the code in a way it shouldn't, and make a mess of it.


November 5, 2006: Added to site, entry #816: Ax from Valiant VH-1.

Had some time to clean up some more of the older articles... Found a few mistakes to be corrected.


October 31, 2006: Finally had some time to get my guestbook up and running again.


October 30, 2006: Added to site, entry #802-815: Ralph Dibney/The Elongated Man/The Ductile Detective/The Stretchable Sleuth, Bruce Wayne/Batman/Starman, Barbara Gordon/Batgirl/Oracle, Cassandra Cain/Batgirl and Harleen Quinzel/Harley Quinn from DC Comics.


October 18, 2006: I had a closer look at some of the first articles I did for the site. Good thing that I did. Some of the graphics really needed an update, and so did the information. The first articles that got an overhaul was the Mortadelo y Filemón stuff... *sigh* and now comes the translation of the articles.

Added to site, entry #801: Vicente El Súper from Mortadelo y Filemón.


October 11, 2006: 500,000 visitors and counting.


October 7, 2006: I have to say that trying to translate some of the articles on the site has produced some really interesting results. I expected spanish to produce some traffic as it is a big language, and it did. I expected the same in french as it is a big language in regards to comics, but so far it's been almost nothing. Danish on the other hand gives me much more traffic than I had anticipated. I just did that one because it's my primary spoken language, I never expected it to really give any traffic. German was sort of a dark horse, so far that has actually given the most traffic. Another strange thing is how the search engines work. The language tag on the page and the language version of the search engine has a greater importance than one would expect. So far I haven't translated that many articles, so the new traffic profile for the site may change many times before I'm done. One thing is for certain though, the language thing works.

Added to site, entry #796-800: Don Martin's characters Fester Bestertester, Karbunkle, Ringo Fonebone/Captain Klutz and Chief O'Freenbean.


August 29, 2006: One of the news groups about SEO that I subscribe to suggested that a site should have some type of link to translations of the pages. There are some translators on Google and Altavista and the idea was to make a link that would instantaneously translate the page. Not a bad idea when you think about it. What good is the information if you can't read the language? I gave it som thought. From the way people search for information and find my site, I decided against the link to the translators. The solution with the translator requires that you search in English to find what you are looking for. You may be lucky that whatever you are looking for has the same name all over the World, but chances are slim. The translators also screw up the page layout, so the pages look like crap. Maybe later on some of the languages I don't speak. To begin with I'll make Danish, German, French and Spanish versions of the pages. It takes some time to translate, even with the help of the translators, but I expect the speed will increase as I get better. So far, I have two Danish and a German translation, and I'm working on a French and a Spanish page. By the way... It's a really strange sight to see your words and thoughts translated to another language like that.


August 1, 2006: One of the objectives of this site has been to provide som really nice picures as a part of the information. Pictures that catches the essential feel of the character. No just grainy scans from comics or screen dumps from movies where you get the basic idea, but nice, detailed and clear picures. Of course, that meant that I had to learn how to draw. I'm not very good at it yet, but I'm making progress. For quite a while I've been doing relatively simple character like Flintstones and Disney, and it's going quite well. It's still taking an awful long time, but IMHO the results are pretty good, so for a guy who's only drawing for the fun of it, I consider things going well. Anyway, I have tried to make some more complex pictures. My first successful attempt is Earth-1 Superman and his alter ego in Kandor, Nightwing, and they turned out really well.


July 9, 2006: Doing bios on Marvel characters is not one of the things I enjoy the most. Too many retcons over the years. Before the 1990s the continuity was relatively straight forward, but in the late 1980s Marvel started retconning everything. It's hard to tell exactly when things started getting out of control, but my guess is 1986 when Jean Grey was brought back to life for the X-Factor series and they undid one of the most significant stories in comics. Back then, resurrecting a deceased character wasn't something Marvel just did, unlike today. Anyway, continuity became fluid. Major retcons like where Vision's body came from and Gwen Stacy's clone started appearing. It could be argued that super-heroes by their very nature are silly, but what was happening at Marvel in the early to mid 1990s was stupid, even by comic book standards. Fortunately most of the 1990s has been "forgotten" by Marvel.

Now while I dislike retcons in general, there are at least some I can understand (and also a few that I like, because they make sense). The Abomination from the Incredible Hulk was a former spy from the East Block in the original story. Back then with the Cold War it made some sense, but today when there is no Cold War, no Warsaw Pact and no USSR... Hell, even Yugoslavia where the Abomination was from doesn't exist anymore... it makes sense to take out the Cold War part of the Abomination's origin in a retcon because in the continuity Bruce Banner haven't been Hulk long enough to have been created during the Cold War. I may not like the retcon, it's only necessary because Marvel refuses to move forward in time and age the characters, and I think that's crap, but at least it makes sense.

Back in April, Marvel started doing bios the way Wikipedia does, i.e. having the fans write them, only with an editor to remove the problems with faulty information which is currently giving Wikipedia a lot of critique. IMO this is a really good idea, and I'd recommend other companies taking the same approach. Having said that, I'm also a little curious how it'll actually turn out. From the articles and interviews I've read over the years, Marvel has a tradition in editing out the things they don't like to hear e.g. in the fan mail they print. If they do the same thing here, i.e. edit out the things they don't like to remember happened, it could seriously ruin the support for the project.

This brings me back to where I started. I don't particularly enjoy doing Marvel bios so why do them? Loss of information is a major reason. In the few years I've had this site I've seen quite a few sites either vanish or stop being updated with new information. The scope of many sites is another. Most sites focus solely on the characters in comics whereas I prefer a broader view, especially the historical context of how a character came to be and how it evolved, and/or ended up being forgotten.

Added to site, entry #775-795: Abigail Mercy Wright/Mercy, Robert Bruce Banner/Hulk/The Green Goliath/The Jade Giant/Joe Fixit/War/The Green Scar, Robert "Robbie" Baldwin/Speedball/Masked Marvel, Natalia Alianovna Romanova/Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Matthew Michael Murdock/Mike Murdock/Daredevil, and Wendell Vaughn/Marvel Man/Quasar from Marvel Universe (616 continiuty)


June 4, 2006: I've finally had the time to start working on the Savage Dragon continuity. This is one of the continuities I've looked forward to doing. With everything Erik Larsen has done with his characters since 1992, it's going to be a while before I'm done, but it's really nice to read the series again.

Added to site, entry #758-774: Annihilus and Jason Strongbow/American Eagle from Marvel Comics, Meico from Alien Legion, and Debbie Harris, Bonnie Harris/The Fiend, Arnold Dimple/The Fiend, Hardware, David Gorelick/Skullface, Antonio Seghetti/Overlord and Savage Dragon/Dragon/Kurr from Erik Larsen's part of the Image Universe.


May 23, 2006: Added to site, entry #738-757: Chuck Chandler/3D-Man, Hal Chandler/3D-Man, Abdul Qamar/Arabian Knight and Eric Brooks/Blade/Daywalker/Switchblade/Frank Blade from Marvel Comics, Alessandra Fermi/Diva from Image/WildStorm, Amy Belcher/Sensation/She-Dragon from Erik Larsen/Image, Lydia O'Rourke/Misery from Image/Top Cow and Magilla Gorilla and Mr. Peebles from Hanna & Barbera.


May 7, 2006: Haven't had the time for the site. I'm trying to get another site started. A couple of years back I bought Pilgaard.info, as I thought it would be a good idea with a family site. Apparently the idea wasn't very appealing to anyone but me, so I'm starting a material science site instead. This should have been my next project anyway, and it is indeed something I've been looking forward to getting off the ground. Unlike WeirdSpace however, the way to do that site wasn't obvious, and chemistry written in HTML is exhausting due to all the changes in typography involved, but I'm making progress. It just takes an awful lot of time.

By now I've been living with spamming attempts on my guestbook for about a year. It can't be spammed since the reading and writing is done in two different databases and I have to transfer the entries manually, if I want them to be seen. I realise there are a lot of spammers out there as it is a big world, and I'm presumably going to have spamming attempts as long as I have a guestbook. Mostly I see a few attempts from single spammers, and after some 10 to 20 attempts over a few days they usually understand that it's no use. Sometimes there are some more persistant spammers. You have to admire their perseverance. You can tell from their attempts that they actually try to find a way to defeat the filter. After some 50 attempts they usually bugger off too. And then of course there are the retards. There was one moron who tried more than 100 times with variations of the same bits of text added to the spam. In the end I was actually starting to feel sorry for the pathetic little looser. I mean, 100+ attempts for nothing. Heh... what a retard.

Added to site, entry #720-737: Emil Blonsky/Abomination/Agent R-7/The Ravager of Worlds, Henry Pym/Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Goliath/Yellowjacket, Rita DeMara/Yellowjacket, Erik Josten/Power-Man/Smuggler/Goliath/Atlas, The Yellow Claw and Zzzax from Marvel Comics.


March 23, 2006: Added to site, entry #716-719: Cowboy-Kalle, Dock-Lisa, Indian-dockan and Lille-Nalle from Rune Andréasson's series Pellefant.


March 5, 2006: Added to site, entry #705-715: Fred Flintstone/Twinkle Toes/Fred Flagstone, Wilma Flintstone/Wilma Flagstone, Barney Rubble and Huckleberry Hound by Hanna & Barbera and Lakristrollet, Filur, Giraffen and Mysko from Rune Andréasson's series Pellefant.


February 19, 2006: Three years... 272,000 visitors from all over the World. I can't believe that it's been three years already.


January 25, 2006: Just passed visitor no. 250,000.


January 9, 2006: Added to site, entry #693-704: Artige Werner, Solvej, and Skrækkelige Olfert from Qvist's series Skrækkelige Olfert, Pellefant and Pip from Rune Andréasson's series Pellefant, Tweety/Orson, Porky Pig, and Petunia Pig from Looney Tunes and Dino, Motormouse, and Autocat by Hanna & Barbera.