Comment Log
It is the coolest thing in the world that people are even reading this website in the first place. It's a very personal project; the content is the product of a very small group of friends, while the actual text of the website is almost completely my own. This is really "Matt's headcannon, the website", and any time anyone ever spends reading it is just a gift.
I started posting people's comments a few years ago, but it got a little hard to keep track of, so I decided to move it all to it's own page. I'll be keeping the most recent comments here, while moving the older ones over to the Comment Archive. |
Also, I'm going to start setting up a FAQ, because some questions just aren't ever going to stop happening. If nothing else, it will give me something to link people to when they insist on explaining to me why the extra Lantern Corps are actually cool. (They're not.)
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This was on Aquaman's page, but I'm sure you figured that out.
Me too! If you've been around the project long enough, you might have seen the original version of Aquaman's timeline, which was based on the Peter David origin. That series was my jam, and this was just my preferred backstory. It wasn't until the James Wan movie when i finally had to admit that the love story between a human lighthouse keeper and Atlantean Queen was just way better in it's simplicity. It feels like a classic myth. But that doesn't mean this book is any less fantastic. Everyone should check it out. |
Why would I?
I'm assuming you left this comment after just reading this one page, and haven't looked around elsewhere. I also didn't mention Eli Wallach as Mr. Freeze. I'm not trying to catalog every appearance of the characters, I'm just writing a fun little review of the character and their history. It's not meant to be exhaustive. |
It does kind of make you wonder if there was an existing trope of sexy redhead Russian femme fatales that they were both tapping into, doesn't it?
Part of the fun of Skartaris as a whole is that Grell was just drawing whatever he wanted, and he was clearly (I think I'm using this right) "being horny on main". The fact that you know what you're getting into when you read it makes it less jarring, like reading Conan or Heavy Metal, but I do think some of the depictions of Mariah actually managed to shock me a little, even still. I mean look at the art I wound up using for her page. Scandalous. |
~"Because I’m into the new Penguin show do you have any plans to do a page for Carmine Falcone’s children, Alberto and Sofia? I know Alberto is in your timeline but he doesn’t have a page"
~"was just wondering if you'd ever include julia pennyworth and your thoughts on her? She's just a huge favorite of mine."
~"Any plans for Savant?"
~"Will you ever include Jakeem Thunder, he's the only core member of the Johns JSA you haven't touched yet, and a good and fun character all around"
~"Any plans for Baby Doll? Her debut episode in the Batman:TAS is one of the best in the series imho"
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I hope it's okay for me to answer all of these in bulk; I just don't have anything in particular to say about any of them individually…
As usual, I will be the absolute first person to follow your fan continuities if you find a way to use these characters that feels like a worthwhile contribution? They obviously have their fans, and I'm sure a person can find stories to tell with them… I just personally don't have any connection to them, and haven't had a particular need to include them. |
A big part of making Richie trans was trying to find a modern version of the classic story that tracked to a modern teenager experience. I don't know if you’ve hung out with any teenagers lately… I'm sure it's different in different places, but observing my nieces and nephews and their friends, my big takeaway has generally been that they don't really concern themselves with labels like gay or straight anymore… They know people are attracted to other people, and don’t really care beyond that?
So… yea, I do think Richie is gay, but only because there's literally no reason for him not to be. |
~(from Bane’s page) "The fourth image is crazy."
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Thanks for catching it! Just for clarification; I wrote a lot of the site, where I fanboy about Grant quite a bit, before they came out as non-binary and stated that their preferred pronouns are they/them. I've done my best to correct myself, but it's a big site, so if you find any instances where I still use the wrong pronouns, please let me know!
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As far as doing whole SITES for them, no. This is a labor of love, but it's a LOT of labor :)
We do talk about other franchises all the time, though. I even cranked out what I thought was a very workable Mario Brothers continuity in the revisionist style of the DCCP over in our discord. What's even better is a lot of our readers do the same thing, everyone is working on different continuity projects in there. If you're interested in joining us, you can email me at [email protected] and ask for a discord invite! |
I KNOW! Insane, right?
For those that don't know, I use the Black Book where we built the original timelines to collect signatures at conventions now. I know most of these creators have seen every possible ridiculous fan project, so I try not to act like I'm trying to show it to them... but let's be honest, I kind of am. Well, Mark Waid got it IMMEDIATELY. It was very cool. He asked me to send him a link and his response made me tear up a little bit :) I asked for his permission to use his quote, by the way. Class act, that guy :) |
~"I'm a big fan of the rough outline for the Seven Soldiers of Victory that you laid out while talking about Vigilante a while back (it gives off big Hollywood blockbuster event vibes in the best kind of way), and I was just wondering whether or not you had locked it in as something that's going to be added to the timeline?"
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I'm combining these because the first question was on the front page, where they asked a very good question about how we're using Jon Kent, and the second one was on Jon's page, where I presume the original commenter found their answer.
Generally speaking, characters rapid-aging out of childhood is almost never a functional story device, it's almost always done to solve some other problem, like not wanting to cast a small child in your TV show, or in the case of Bendis, being lazy and short-sighted. To answer your question, though, Jon being 10 is ALSO him being aged up out of nowhere. There really is no way for Jon and Damian to be the same age, but we've built a whole group of characters into the timeline to be his contemporaries as he grows up. |
~"I found the source for the Adult Lian fanart! "
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That's fantastic! Thank you!
Frankly I'm a little relieved, because the one little closeup image we'd found did show that string at her hip and I was worried the artwork might be... a bit more NSFW than I would be comfortable with using? But this is really great! Just a fantastic piece of design for a grown-up Lian. Of course, this being a ten-year-old Tumblr post means we're not really able to reach out the artist for permission, but it's still really cool to get the complete character! |
We certainly could have done that, absolutely.
Bear in mind, all we've really done here is made Iris & Wally black. For Bart, that just means his paternal grandmother is black. Barry is white, (Barry White!), so Bart's dad Don would be HALF black. We don't know traditionally-white Meloni Thawne's ethnicity (until crackpot makes sprites for her), but we know that, while we haven't really made any familial connection with Eobard, they at least share a name, and he's white... All that said, I think crackpot actually nailed Bart's particular look, remembering that at least some of his family is black. What do you guys think? |
I'll just start by answering both comments. The first one was posted on the Pantheress page, where we absolutely mention the Young All-Stars. Yes. We read it. This site is a fan continuity; we use things we like and ignore the rest. If you want to make yourself feel clever by naming content we deliberately didn't include, you're going to be here for a long time. As for the second post, Tim was never Talon. That's an original idea. We do that here sometimes. If you don't like it that's fine, but I have a sneaking suspicion you didn't know that when you decided to write this.
Our comment system is actually deliberately set up in this unwieldy format so that I have the option of just not bothering with comments like these most of the time; where someone is just being deliberately combative and not trying to contribute anything out of what I presume is a misguided effort for... attention? I guess? I just thought I'd share them this time as a general example to everyone else. Don't be these guys. |
~"Have you ever considered making a "Miscellaneous Characters" page for characters who definitively exist in the project but aren't really worth devoting full pages for, like Alura and Zor-El? I imagine they'd consist of a brief timeline and a single paragraph beneath it, roughly as long as some of the oldest pages on here if not slightly shorter, and just speaking for myself I think it would make the project as a whole feel more complete/comprehensive."
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So... I don't actually have a minimum length for what a usable character timeline would look like. Even if I had a brief timeline and short paragraph to write about a character, then that would be enough to just include them normally. What you're talking about here is people for whom I really don't even have that much. There are plenty of minor supporting characters who just get name dropped all over the place without needing a whole page... I hope you can accept that I don't need to tell the whole life story of every single person every single one of these characters ever interact with. While I have done the parents of certain characters, it's only because those parents are actually narratively relevant, and have stories of their own.
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Thank you! This was, of course, something we came up with WAY back when we were doing the original Black Book timelines. Not to toot our own horn, but I actually really do think this one stands out as one of our better ideas as a framework for integrating lesser-known characters.
Now, to your Dillon point (which is my favorite sentence I've written today)… Remember that Dillon wasn't actually on Dutch's team! He was a "spook" that was tagging along on the mission, so he doesn't need to be represented in Easy Company. |
Wow, nice catch.
I actually think I might have just fully not known that back when I made that page (which honestly wasn't THAT long ago?). I've just always been so enamored with the idea of 13-year-old Jim Shooter building such an elaborate world in his Legion that this detail just shot past me. Thank you for catching it, and please enjoy your no-prize! |
~"Not going to lie, I find it odd to gloss over or omit the problematic bits of Deathstroke, a superhero, when you have not done so for other characters, particularly heroes, who have dealt with trauma- or even accentuate the less than savory aspects of heroic characters- such as the allegations of Green Arrow being a cheater.
I feel you’re omitting key facets of the character here with Deathstroke as his relationship and internal morality towards his repeated conflicts with the Titans- a team of predominantly teens, children and young adults, shouldn’t be ignored. Jericho, his scarring and his mother’s shooting of Deathstroke being omitted is a particularly glaring imho." |
I ran this comment by the Discord server, because I really wanted to get a little perspective on it before I decided if I wanted to respond at all. Just the fact that they refer to Slade as a hero really made me think that this was just one of the Deathstroke fans that I absolutely predicted I'd piss off with our page, but it was pointed out to me that this could just be worded incorrectly. If you DO think of Slade as a hero... then we're just approaching this from wildly different directions and we're not going to agree no matter what.
I do want to always respond to this sort of thing by making it clear that we're never suggesting our take is the only viable one, right? If you would like to see this character handled differently, well then that's just as valid as our choice to handle it this way. I would, without sarcasm, love to see your own fan continuity. In this case, however, I really do need to respond to the specific content we're talking about. Without getting too specific about it, the content from Deathstroke's story that we're choosing to not include? It has no business being in these comics. We are ALWAYS going to take that content out. If we changed nothing else anywhere, we would still change this. Lots of stuff I totally admit is open to debate. We honestly were sad we couldn't work out a way to include Jericho, we LIKE him, he's just largely tacked into the timeline. Often the fact that we work with timelines means we need to be pragmatic about what we include, and I'm very open to conversations about how that can be better! But I just don't know that I have the emotional tools to debate you on this particular topic. If you really, legitimately, believe that the Deathstroke content in question is somehow equal to Ollie cheating... I just don't know that I can meet you on that battlefield. Sorry. |
~"Hi! I really appreciate how in depth your timelines are. They're really helpful in trying to piece together a cohesive chronology. For Stephanie Brown, I'm wondering if "Two Years Ago" where you say she sacrifices herself for Leslie Brown actually occurred in the comics sometime since Post-Crisis or if it's one of your headcanons. Personally, I prefer it because it gives her more agency and doesn't make Leslie seem like a psychopath. Thanks!"
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Thank you! We're focused on adding all the backlogged "Black Book" timelines right now, but we will eventually be going in to regularly redo some of our thinner timelines to get them a little more complete.
As to Stephanie, It's one of our headcanons. This is just one of those moments that is sort of a no-brainer... if you're redoing the timeline, then you can definitely do it better than it was originally handled. |
Thank you! We're aware of this, and actually had her as Gordon's niece at one point too... but the reality is that she wasn't ORIGINALLY Gordon's niece in the comics. That was retconned after Frank Miller's Year One managed to forget that Barbara existed, so to make her fit into the post-crisis timeline they did these weird backstory gymnastics. It was unwieldy then, and it was just as bad in our own timeline, so we finally just got rid of it and everything got much smoother.
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If you think you'd enjoy the discord, you can ask me for an invite @ [email protected]. It's a very small community of very nerdy folks, small enough that you can actually follow the conversation
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~"Hola, my friend! Still reading your chronology , still loving it. I add my vote to maintain the canon Obsidian relationship with Damon Mathews. One of the tropes that always bothered me in super heroes is that too many of them have a relationship with another super powered guy/gal. Of course a bunch of that kind of pairings ( not strange, they are in the same line of work and so they can know more people there) but for variety's sake is cool to have that kind of relationship. Also, the feeling is that the relationship is nice and calms Obsidian's demons. Thanks for the work. Hasta la vista."
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I really do like answering these questions, but I worry that my answers over in the "Do You Have Plans For This character" FAQ page might be getting a little samey. I should think about possibly reorganizing it.
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I'm going to try to answer this question carefully, because this is actually important for the project to make sense.
Technically? Right now? Yes. It is currently 2024, so 32 years ago is 1992. More to the point, however: we deliberately don't use any actual years for the sliding timeline for a REASON. I would have originally written that timeline sometime around 2012, so at that time 32 years ago would have been 1980. Next year it'll be 1993… It's just going to keep changing, which basically renders the whole point of creating a timeline moot. We deliberately aren't trying to work that out. It was 32 years ago, no matter when you read it, and that's as accurate as you need to be “Now” just means now, and that's it. |
Canonically, no, it’s more or less entirely in Bane’s head. It's just one of those story details that lingers forever until someone decides to make something out of it.
Personally, I don't think having something actually connecting them is really all that necessary, it's just a function of Bane’s obsession. |
Believe it or not, we've actually had a conversation about this. We do try our best to represent both queer people and queer relationships… but for some reason, there seem to be more opportunities for lesbian relationships than relationships between gay men? So we really did want to make this a priority, and Obsidian was the first character we thought of. Damon Matthews is definitely where your brain goes, and we do like him. We haven't COMMITTED to him yet, because we haven't quite decided if we want Obsidian to have a civilian love interest, like a gay Lois Lane (fun), or for him to actually be in a relationship with another gay hero?
Maybe the solution is just to have more gay characters in relationships overall so Obsidian doesn't feel as much pressure to be representative. |
That's a good question! (Thank you for getting on board with our idea to change Barbara Gordon's mom's name and use her middle name instead, by the way.) The reality of course is that she just leaves the story for the time being until someone decides to write her back in for one reason or another, and at that time they would come up with what she's been up to.
There are a few stories that have made proposals in this regard; none of which we’ve felt particularly compelled to adapt. Personally, I just imagine that she's been living as a socialite and actress in Europe, something befitting someone who was selfish enough to not really be a part of her daughter's life. |
I can’t speak for everyone that was reading Gotham Central when it was being published, but when a new character Jim Corrigan showed up *I* certainly though we were being set up to get a new Spectre somehow. Despite the fact that he DOES wind up leading to a new Spectre inasmuch as he kills Crispus Allen, who goes on to become the new Spectre, he himself does not have any canon connection to the original Jim Corrigan. (He also has no connection to ANOTHER character named Jim Corrigan, a recurring black police officer in Jimmy Olsen comics, who first showed up in the 70s, and as recently as the Matt Fraction series.)
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Well he's in there now! Head on over to the "Do You Have Plans For This character" FAQ page where I've answered both these questions.
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This is a fun question, because answering it kind of highlights some features of how we approach this stuff. The character of course wasn't concieved with this feature, right? He was just a boxer dressed up in a cool Bill Finger costume. He didn't need to have his longevity explained until after the first Crisis, when all of a sudden those classic Earth 2 heroes were now understood to be WWII era veterans and if anyone wanted to use them, we needed to know why they were still kicking.
So, given that we aren't doing any of that, the technically correct answer to your question is no, we DIDN'T remove Wildcat's nine lives, because the version of the character we're adapting never had it to begin with :) |
Yeah, I think we might. We don't have one planned currently, but the Order does touch our timeline enough currently, both in Jean Paul Valley & Mark Shaw's stories, that I think it could justify a timeline of its own.
Once we finish the current round of black book timelines, our focus is going to be on finishing the page updates for everyone currently on the site. There's a list of new ideas for stories and characters that we'll probably keep peppering in through that period. I think I could see the Order getting added to that list. |
Well, in a sense, yes?
The reality is we were never planning on adapting any of Batman Beyond to our timeline. It's a great show that we all love, of course, but we don't really do future continuity here. Personally I always feel like once you start plotting what the later events of your characters lives will be, you take away their agency in the current moment. We are, of course, setting up characters and stories so they can pay off later, and we have stories set in the distant future of the Legion, but we very specifically don't do future continuity, so you weren't ever going to see Terry anyway. But part of what we all really liked about our take on Batwing was that it allowed us to draw thematically on those Batman Beyond stories. It's not a direct replacement, we're not suggesting that we start transposing a bunch of Spider-Man villain analogs over to Neo-Gotham, but we just all thought it was cool that we could create space for this version of Gotham that seems to crop up on so many places. |