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Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Sat Mar 24, 2012 11:35 am
by wolframbane
I came across this on Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Marvel-Timeline-P ... 1461012732

Appears to be a detailed syynopsis of the first few years of the Marvel chronology. Has anyone had the chance to look through it?

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2012 9:52 am
by Russ Chappell
Thanks for the heads up. I've ordered it...should be in tomorrow.

The choics of a title is...curiously...derivative.

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 10:40 pm
by Chris McCarver
I read some of the preview pages... the format looks scarily like Paul's calendar.

I also noticed (mainly from the abbreviation key) they don't seem to be referencing any flashbacks from later comics or comics set during that time period (particularly excluding UTSM).

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 1:39 am
by wolframbane
After you read the book Russ, would you be able to let us know how it stood up? I was thinking about ordering it myself, it seem to be a good resource for my own Marvel timeline research.

I noticed that they peg Year One as 1967 and work forward. Odd choice but I can understand their logic behind it. I am not sure though how it would stand if future books come out, with later years Sliding Back rather than Sliding FOrward.

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2012 9:22 am
by Russ Chappell
They use Paul's calendar approach (you'd swear the notes were written by Paul), but they're willing to reshuffle the order of issues in a particular title (i.e. let's say that TOS 54 comes between TOS 49 & 50) based on whether trees have leaves.

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 11:02 am
by ikonoklast61
Hi, all ... Jeff Deischer here.

Someone mentioned that my chronology was mentioned here, and I wanted to take a look.

To address a few things: I started the Timeline Project ten years ago. I don't know when this website was up, but I wasn't aware of it until 2009, well after the first draft of the Timeline was complete. The similarity of names is an unfortunate coincidence.

So, I didn't copy anything from the website. I really owe George Olshevsky for inspiring my Timeline, as noted in the book.

Murray wrote the synopses and I wrote the Timeline, so you can blame me for anything chronology related in the book.

My e-mail is ikonoklast61@juno.com if anyone wants to contact me directly.

Best, Jeff

Re: a couple of things

Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 11:05 am
by ikonoklast61
Sorry ... we largely didn't include flashbacks from much later comics becauswe we'd be constantly updating the MTP. Our idea is to tell when flashbacks in a story occur when we cover the story. We haven't come up with a good way to cover flashback series.

Also, I don't definitively state that the first year of the Marvel Age is 1967. That's my theory and it is only mentioned in the preface, not in the main text itself.

Jeff

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 12:46 pm
by wolframbane
Hey there Jeff Deischer. Just ordered your book off of Amazon.com and really looking forward to reading it. The preview seems to indicate it is well researched.
ikonoklast61 wrote: So, I didn't copy anything from the website. I really owe George Olshevsky for inspiring my Timeline, as noted in the book.
George Olshevsky is a primary insiration to a lot of the researchers here. So I can see how there are parallels between the MCP site and your own research developed.
George himself used similar crieria for his own research.

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2012 6:09 pm
by RLG
Just bought this book the other day (MANY THANKS to Wolframbane's initial post making me aware of it) and have been reading it ever since. What an amazing book! It (like the MCP, Paul's calendar, George O's work, and all other attempts to make chronological sense out of the Marvel universe - both past and present) is an excellent source for all of us Marvel-ites.

I'm assuming that all of us here (well, not me so much in the last few years - sometimes one's passion must take a backseat to things like rent, food, etc. LOL) are very interested in anyone's attempts at making chronologically sense of the Marvel universe. Sure, there's some of us who are fans fo the 'sliding timeline scale' theory and others of us who subscribe to the "Year 1" theory (suspension of disbelif and all...), but we all share that same common passion - placing decades of Marvel history in some kind of orderly fashion.

This book clearly attempts to meet that goal. I have to say, having read a majority of the book, I just don't see the criticism that some issues are placed out-of-order in favor of seasonal references (i.e. green leaves). Yes, there is an attempt to break up various issues into Part 1, 2, and so on. But, from my reading this is done purely for the sake of avoiding having a particular issue not cover a huge amount of calendar time. For example, if the Trapster is released from jail in the first scene of ST 108/1 (totally making this example up!) and the second scene is "three weeks later" where the Human Torch confronts him, then this book might reflect that "three week" gap by breaking up that issue into two parts. So yeah, ST 108/1 (part 1 in which the Trapster is released) might occurs before ST 105/1 - 107/1, but I've found (with a very rare exception) that the authors have been very dilgent in making sure that ST 108/1 part 2 (in which the Torch fights the Trapster) definately occurs after ST 107/1. In other words, during the "three week" gap from which the Trapster is released, the Torch has his adventures chronociled in ST 105/1 - 107/1, and then, after those "three weeks" is up, the main part of ST 108/1 occurs.

For what it's worth - I believe that the Marvel Timeline Project Part 1 book is another (just like the MCP and all the rest of the above-mentioned examples) wonderful source of entertainment, discussion, etc. for us chronological fans. BTW, for you potential readers who might get hung up and turned-off by the "1967" reference... don't be. Other than the inital prologue, the book keeps to the "YEAR 1" format like Paul B's calendar.

Here's personally hoping volume 2 is released soon (as is my desire for the continued sucess of the MCP and the "Official Handbooks" that originate from the cadre of AIM-worthy brilliant minds that run this site!)

RLG

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 11:50 am
by Russ Chappell
Hi, Jeff. Welcome to the Forum.
ikonoklast61 wrote:To address a few things: I started the Timeline Project ten years ago. I don't know when this website was up, but I wasn't aware of it until 2009, well after the first draft of the Timeline was complete. The similarity of names is an unfortunate coincidence.

So, I didn't copy anything from the website. I really owe George Olshevsky for inspiring my Timeline, as noted in the book.
The website went live in 1997, after a spring 1996 posting in the newsgroup rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe, but that's neither here nor there. I don't think any of the faithful contributors here think that you copied stuff from here. I suspect we'll find differences in the chronological placements to prove that.

And to be clear, I wouldn't have a problem if someone DID build on our information to construct a timeline and publish it, as long as they gave credit to us. There are loads of examples on the web already of people who have found innovative ways to repackage the data skeleton we have here in more user-friendly formats, and I'm fine with that.

Having said all that, yes, as you said, the names are an unfortunate coincidence. I fear that casual readers may draw an incorrect conclusion that the Marvel Chronology Project and the Marvel Timeline Project are connected.
My e-mail is ikonoklast61@juno.com if anyone wants to contact me directly.
Whoa, Jeff. I hope this doesn't mean that you're just driving by. We desperately need help from people like you. Please stay and contribute. We provide a community here, where you can propose chronological theories for your future volumes, but even if you want to keep those close to the vest until published, we can provide you with a public forum to defend your views (and promote future volumes).

Now. I have a question. Why did you use the format of a right-hand column for the chronological notes, and a more typical format for the synopsis? Honestly, I found that format a little...umm...jarring, and it led to an awful lot of empty white space. It would flow a lot better visually, if you could add, say, one panel from the comic, to the left of your analysis. Just a thought.

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 1:12 pm
by ikonoklast61
Russ,

My format was copied from my Doc Savage chronology book, The Adventures of Doc Savage: a Definitive Chronology (2000), which was inspired by Farmer's biography of Doc in both content and format -- which like the MTP, I had been working on for years before publication. It seemed that continuing that right-side format for the synopses would waste space and look bad, so used normal formatting for it.

As for contributing, who knows? I don't really know how that would work, since I have a lot of my timeline written up through 1992, and nothing after that. I largely stopped collecting that year. I'm not sure how or where to jump in, but I won't shy away from expressing a theory about a sequence of events in the MU if it comes up.

I haven't checked out the site or the aforementioned calendar because I don't want to be influenced by others' views on chronology -- and not just for "copying" reasons. I'd read all of George's indexes when they came out, but when I started writing my timeline, I think I only consulted George's work 3 or 4 times, for tough chronological nuts to crack, and even then, I ended up disagreeing with how he solved the problems at last half the time. In the Doc Savage milieu, every chronologist seems to use his own ground rules so that the differences we have cannot be solved by reasoning. For example, Rick Lai doesn't use Farmer's rule of events happening before they are published, so our chronologies are quite different (though we both were influenced by the other's work at times).

Getting back to me posting: the Timeline is complete up through MA 8, which covers up through publishing year 1972 or so. I can speak definitively about that period. After that, research is partially done but not complete.

One idea I had recently was -- becuase I have even more years pass than George, and ideally we want as few years to pass as possible, I think -- is what if you ignored all the seasonal references (I used even more than George), and just looked at the passage of time that is mentioned in dialogue and narrative? For example, when someone says "Such-and-such occurred two years ago." Although there are variations month-by-month in my current placements, overall, my TImeline works through at least MA 8. My biggest worry was during Conway's Amazing Spider-Man run, where he often wrote that it had been a few months after Gwen's death when it had been a year -- due to the Christmas around ASM #130. But it all evened out in the end, to my surprise.

Here's what I mean: we know that the Torch and Spidey are the same age because they started college the same year. We have been told that Peter Parker gained his powers when he was 15, a high school sophomore. This puts the FF's origin the year before -- MA 1 -- with Spidey's in MA 2. Marvel Girl goes to college the same time as the other two.

Instead of going to college, Flash Thompson goes into the military. He probably had the normal two-year hitch, which means he returns in MA 6 circa ASM #109 (which actually occurs in MA 7, I found). Wyatt Wingfoot graduates college in Fantastic Four #138-139, so it is June MA 8 at that time.

So this all proves my overall passage of time up through the second part of my Timeline. The problem with this is, of course, lack of detail, which is where seasonal references come in. Sometimes they are an integral part of the story.

Jeff

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 1:16 pm
by ikonoklast61
Sorry, forgot to address your question about art: that was the big hold-up from when it was finished and finally published. Murray was worried about using art, which he thought could cause Marvel to make us un-publish the book. After waiting interminably long for Murray to resolve this issue, I went ahead and found a publisher for it ... and then waited for it to be published (not too long).

Jeff

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 8:03 pm
by Jason Doty
Hey Jeff,
I also purchased your work. It's very good, but a couple of things to make it an easier read would be to divide the synopsis' of issues where there is a continuing story (XMN 38/2-42/2) and offering page breaks rather than "first part", second part, ect...
(STR/HT part 1 "Pg.1-?)

This would allow for the user (reader) to compile a list and make comparisons, even if they don't own the mentioned issue, based on your synopsis', the official indexes, Paul's calender, the chronology project, wolframbrane's work, and all the others that have contributed.

All and all, this is a great work. I look forward to your future volumes.

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2012 8:22 pm
by ikonoklast61
Good point.

I tried to describe where the breaks were in many cases, and in particularly tricky spots -- none in P1, I think -- I do mention a page. Maybe I should have done that all along, but it's impossible for me to go back and change things.

Glad you're enjoying it and thanks for the feedback.

Jeff

Re: Marvel Timeline Project Part One

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2012 1:58 am
by wolframbane
Just recieved my copy today thru Amazon.com. And looking thru it, I am quite impressed, I will definitely enjoy reading this. Thanks!!