Last updated 2006 August 3
This page is an archive of all the "news and announcements" from the main page, so if you haven't been here in a month you will know what improvements there were since then. The most recent updates are also mentioned on the main page, and they duplicate ones shown here.
2006 August 3 Items: Removed the X-Day 2004 link and banner, because the event has been suspended indefinitely, while I instead focus my time on developing Perl 6 projects.
2005 August 10 Items: Removed the Gatecon 2005 link and banner, because the event ended over a week ago. Also updated the X-Day 2004 link to say it will be in Fall of 2005, probably.
2005 May 11 Items: Added link and banner to promote the Gatecon 2005 fan convention, which you really should attend, honest.
2005 February 1 Items: Updated the web site self-description on the front page, and the X-Day link to indicate its delay to Spring 2005.
2004 November 9 Items: Updated the X-Day 2004 links and banners; X-Day is in January now.
2004 September 26 Items: Added links and banners to promote the X-Day 2004 fan works showcase, which you really should participate in.
2004 August 18 Items: Updated external links on Timelines page for Jimmy Petersson's Marvel Chronology Graph website.
2004 June 25 Items: Updated credits and external links for one of my sources, Dan Wilson and Brian Alan Smith's Unofficial Site of Power Pack. Besides the site moving for the 4th time (and not being updated), I now know that the main other creator is Brian Alan Smith, who was previously credited with "and others".
2004 June 1 Items: Added a new first paragraph to the 'Home' page web site description.
2004 May 23 Items: Updated the web site's title to be the same as it tentatively will be after the summer of 2004 relaunch: "Chronology.Net - A Multiverse of Discourse". This new name should be more descriptive of the upcoming site's intended function. Also updated some of the introductory paragraphs on the 'Home' page.
2004 March 30 Items: Updated my index links to Markus Mueller and Paulo Costa's Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators to fix some some deep links that broke due to a site rearrangement.
2003 November 8 Items: Added appropriate site links to the X-Day 2003 creative arts competition. (Also, this site is competing in it.)
2003 June 19 Items: Updated my index links to Markus Mueller and Paulo Costa's Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators, which has moved servers, and also fixed some deep links that broke due to a site rearrangement. Also added two or three new titles to the Indexes page (links to UHMCC pages) for: New X-Men, X-treme X-Men, New Mutants (2003).
Meanwhile, I have been working on that database code some more. Given a recent change in my employment status, I now have a lot more time to work on it each week than I did before, and so I should have something up a lot sooner. Stay tuned!
2003 January 11 Items: A minor update this month. Updated my index link to Hypert's An Uncanny History, which has moved servers.
Meanwhile, I have been working on that database code some more; it has been split into two projects which work together. One is open source and will be available on CPAN, likely under the name of "Rosetta"; it is a framework that allows any database-driven application to be easily portable between different databases; this allows developers to not be tied to a specific vendor just because they already invested effort programming to it; it also just plain makes it easier to work with databases. The other project is my Chronology application, which is driving the Database Preview that you already know about.
2002 July 28 Item: The Database Preview received a major update to its code over the last 40 days, whereby the main hierarchical menu for browsing the database is now generated from an index rather than the data itself. This allows some complicated work to be done once in advance rather than with every page request, making things faster. What you will notice the most is that every menu item now has beside it in parenthesis a count of the items that are behind it, and menu items which would have gone to dead ends are now disabled (not hyperlinks).
Under the previous version of the Database Preview, if you clicked on a few random menu items to burrow down the hierarchy, there was only a 1 in 247 chance that you would have found anything other than dead ends. Now you are guaranteed of finding something since only the links that go somewhere are enabled. Also, the number beside each menu item says how much you would find when going that way. In the end, the main change is that it is much easier for you to find what you are looking for. No content changes.
2002 June 17 Item: Fixed a one-word bug in the Database demo that caused some screens to fail with an error message. Thank you to Owen Brady for reporting this problem.
2002 June 15 Item: There was a minor update to the Database Preview. Part of this was a bit of database structure changes, which you can't see. The other part, that you can see, is the addition of a menu bar along the top that shows more or less what the new main menu bar would be. The root page of the database viewer was renamed to "Browse" from "Main Menu". No content changes.
2002 June 9 Item: The second Chronology Database Preview is now online, right here. So you can see that I have been making a lot of progress since the first preview went up 11 months ago (2001 July 12). No dawdling here.
The new database is very different, structurally, from the previous one, being larger and much more flexible, although some design ideas are the same. The new structure plainly supports multiple media and languages of catalogued materials. I shouldn't have to change the structure again any time soon, so I can now focus on the content, which is still the same as the first preview but organized differently. So there are titles, dates, prices, etc, for about 2300 issues, but not summaries.
Most of the time that I still have to spend next is to write conversion scripts that analyse my source data files, such as Robert Diehl's paragraph-based FAQs, and extract the info into a format which is easy to insert into the database. This is still being done in my spare time, so it could take between a few weeks and a few months. Regardless, you should see an update of some kind several times each month from now on, since most of the "invisible" work is behind me. Enjoy!
2002 March 3 Item: Added a website link on my Timelines page to Ronald Byrd's The Unofficial Wolverine Chronology FAQ. This is a thorough narrative summary of Wolverine's less-well-known history as pieced together from hundreds of flashbacks and other historical references, from the late 1800s and later. "This chronology is intended to fill in the *blanks* of Wolverine's career, by presenting dozens of seemingly random strings of information in a reasonably coherent series. It goes into comparatively few details about his known adventures with Team X and even fewer details about his activities since joining the X-Men."
2001 December 25 Item: I created a YahooGroup for you so that you can find out when this site is updated without looking back every day. My Christmas present to you. Instructions for signing on are here.
2001 December 23 Item: Changed the leading message at the top of this site's main page, since the previous one has become rather incorrect. To be specific, I wrote that message in July, saying the site would be converted to a database within a few days, but I was wrong. In truth, the conversion will finish REAL SOON NOW (tm), so I won't put any promises up there. No other changes.
2001 November 26 Item: Renamed this website to "Chronology.Net" from "Fandom Chronology". I thought the new name rolls off the tongue better. If you have a good idea for what this site should be called, feel free to email me with it (but the name must be generic, and not refer to any specific fiction). A few site menu items had their names changed too. No other changes.
2001 November 10 Item: Replaced Robert Diehl's Gambit summaries with new versions that he just wrote, which are more accurate and a bit longer. The same issues are covered as before. Also, his Wolverine summaries were updated with 3 new titles (limiteds or specials) added.
2001 November 4 Item: Added a website link on my Timelines page to Jimmy Petersson's Chronology website. I discovered this gem yesterday when the author had sent me an email to introduce himself. As Jimmy explained, he got very inspired by the 2D continuity graphs that I made in my Timelines section. So he made a Java program that creates timeline graphs automatically using information at The Marvel Chronology Project, which lists what issues each Marvel character is in. You can download this customizable Java applet from his website and make it generate graphs following whatever set of characters you choose. While it uses the layout of my graphs, Jimmy has actually delivered on something I only promised to make (computer generated graphs) a couple years ago, and he has done it better than what I had in mind. Well done!
In other news, the external site links to Dan Wilson's Unofficial Site of Power Pack broke recently (I'm not sure how long ago), as the site seems to be down. I have installed back-up copies (less covers) of his Power Pack Issue Reviews on my own server, so you can read them again. They can be accessed from the Indexes page as before.
2001 October 14 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for Wolverine #s 1-158 with several limited series and specials, effectively finishing the series. These take precedence over my older external link to Alan Quan's Wolverine's R.E.A.L.M, which also had good summaries; the latter has now been moved to the Other Useful Resources section at the bottom of Indexes.
2001 October 7 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for X-Men Hidden Years #s 21-22, finishing the series, and Cable 94-96, also effectively finishing the series.
For all intents and purposes, this site is now caught up with the various x-men related books, except for Uncanny 1-280 and Excalibur 1-125; those will be done next. Any books published after the middle of 2001, which is approximately the demarkation point for Marvel's total relaunch of their x-title line, will not be summarized in the next few months. Rather, it is the remaining old books that are given the top priority. When I say "total relaunch", I am referring to Marvel's cancelling of half their x-titles, and changing the others so drastically that it is as if the old title was cancelled. So everything coming out of Marvel now is being considered a different set of titles.
On a different note, much of my time recently was spent working on Perl code operating behind the scenes in this site. What you should notice the most at this moment is that the HTML code has been mostly changed to XHTML, a dialect of XML that is "the future" of standards-based web markup, but this site should still work on older web browsers. My doctype still says HTML 4.0, though.
2001 September 28 Item: My webserver was host to the X-Day 2001 competition, organized by Shannon Pipik. This site was also an entry in the competition, but it didn't win anything.
2001 August 1 Item: This website has placed as runner-up in the 5th Annual Exy Awards in the Best Reference Site category! And I sincerely thank every one of you who either nominated or voted for me in this competition. I have placed the official certificate graphic for this award on the Awards page, which I added to the site today.
2001 July 28 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for the whole short-lived series Bishop the Last X-Man #s 1-16, and linked to the Handbook of Marvel Creators for that title also.
2001 July 12 Item: Hooray! That new database which I have been promising for the last few years is now online, right here. Sort of. What we have now is code-complete as far as being able to store and present the information that I have on my site, namely issue indexes with synopsis, dates, prices, pages, creators, and characters. However, it will take just a few more days to translate all of my 3000K+ of text into the new format so that it will appear there. In the meantime, the database already has the content of my own Index to the X-titles, which covers about 1600 issues. Enjoy!
2001 July 10 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for Generation X #s 1-75 (whole series) and related specials, X-Men: Hidden Years #s 14-20, Cable #s 87-93, X-Men Unlimited #30. I also moved the website link to Tigrr Wildcat's "Kindred Spirits" down the Indexes page from the summary table to the "Other Useful Resources" section, since its previous placement has become redundant. On the previous day I had updated the links to "Wolverine's Realm" because the old ones were broken (different domain).
In other news, my new database has a semblence of working order now, and you should be able to see it within the next couple days.
2001 June 18 Items: On this date I removed myself from all webrings that I was part of, namely X-Fan and Knights of Comics. While I had been on each of these for at least 2 years, I have found that webrings in general are almost never used, so they aren't worth the effort for me to maintain. The "welcome" page was also simplified.
On another matter, the MySQL database for my new site is now complete, except for fine-tuning, and the Perl front end is "mostly done". My intro text has been changed to reflect this. So we should realisticly see the new site between one week and one month from now. This initial version will index publications cross-referenced with creators and characters, for any medium, and grouped by categories. It will not yet index web sites or fan fiction, which comes later, and it will not incorporate continuity, which comes later; these things are left out in the interest of simplicity so I have *something* to show. This web site will still maintain continuity/website content that it aleady had some how.
2001 June 11 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for X-Force 109-115, X-Men vol.2 110-113, Uncanny 390-393, and about 9 whole limited series (last 4 segments of Uncanny index).
2001 June 8 Item: Added a web site link to the web site "Rogue Unlimited" (by Mitz) on my External Links page at the author's request.
2001 May 29 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for all remaining issues of Gambit (to 25), X-Man (to 75), and Mutant X (to 32), so those titles are complete. Added indexes for the 9-issue Warlock series of 1999 also.
2001 May 10 Item: The back-end Perl code generating this website has been updated again. If you want a copy of the source code which is free to you to use on your own web apps, then you can get it at CPAN. This site is now running under mod_perl full time now rather than CGI, which should make it much faster.
When you click a link on this site that takes you out of the site, the other site will now appear in a new browser window rather than the same one. So if you close the window holding the other site then mine is still there. It should be easier to return here now should you want to.
Those "badge" images that were on the front page of this site have been moved to a separate page, here, so that we don't keep loading 7-8 images unnecessarily on the front page. There are now text links in place of the badges on the front page.
2001 March 19 Item: Updated my index link to Hypert's An Uncanny History, which has been enlarged and now covers issues 1-280. Incidentally this means that now I have summaries for all Uncanny in some form or other.
2001 March 12 Items: This site is officially located at "http://www.chronology.net" now, and the old domain of x-titles.com no longer functions. If any of you have linked to this site from yours or have bookmarks, then please update them right away. The change is due to chronology.net being more descriptive of my needs.
Added indexes by Robert Diehl for 28 stories that were published in Marvel Comics Presents over about 60 issues. These stories cover a wide range of characters and teams active during the late '80s and early '90s.
FYI, the old domain of x-titles.com has been sold to Steve Thoemke of The Mutant Page fame, who is setting up a new site there.
2001 February 11 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for all of the Age of Apocalypse issues, which consist of limited series and specials.
2001 January 21 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for Uncanny X-Men #s 281-321,387-389, X-Men vol.2 1-41,107-109, X-Men Unlimited #s 28-29. And with that, all X-Men from late 1991 to the present are now available, including the entire run of X-Men vol.2. (This also brings the mass of Robert's indexes up to 2000K of text.)
2000 December 18 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for Cable, Gambit, Mutant X, X-Force, X-Man, X-Men Hidden Years, X-Men Unlimited. In each case there are between 3 and 8 of the newest issues added.
2000 December 2 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for Uncanny X-Men #s 322-350,385-386, X-Men #s 42-70,105-106, most of the other miscellaneous Onslaught-related books, and a "a line-by-line comparison of Jean's message with Bishop's faulty recording" (ref Uncanny 287 / Onslaught: X-Men). All of the Onslaught stuff and the comparison of Jean's "x-traitor" recordings appear with the indexes for Uncanny 333-336.
2000 November 21 Item: This web-site has been renamed to "Fandom Chronology" instead of "X-title Chronology" in light of my imminent plans to expand it to cover a lot more subjects besides X-Men and related titles. In addition, there are now 4 internet domains that can be used to reach this site: www.chronology.net, www.chronology.tv, www.fandom.ws, www.x-titles.com. Please note that due to its more limited scope I may not renew the last one past 2 more years, but as it is currently the most widely used domain, it will persist for quite awhile yet.
2000 October 30 Item: I became aware that my link to the "detailed" excalibur synopsis was broken thanks to a visitor e-mail. I have now moved Katya's FAQ to my own server and it is accessible again. Her site, Legends of the Sword, has received significant updates meanwhile.
2000 October 25 Item: Updated my index link to Hypert's An Uncanny History, to reflect that he now has summaries of Uncanny X-Men #s 1-201 (up 57 from 1-144). He is on target to be up to the Onslaught saga by the end of the year.
2000 September 28 Item: Today I found out where the personal website of Eric Borer is. He was my very first contributor, having agreed to let me maintain his Continuity FAQ around December of 1997. Click here to see the site.
2000 September 2 Items: Added an Index link in the detailed column to Tigrr Wildcat's complete set of Generation X issue indexes from his Kindred Spirits, which I have permission to use in my database. His includes titles, creators, characters, and story summaries for all Generation X issues.
Also, Paul O'Brien's issue guide now has more Uncanny X-Men summaries, so between him and Robert Diehl I now have all of #s 281-384 covered on my Index page, in the detailed column.
2000 August 23 Item: Added a timelines link to Sean Kleefeld's MAP: Marvel Atlas Project, which is a multi-resolution map of the earth that shows the locations of all the various important things in the Marvel universe. Very useful if you want to see where the various Marvel stories take place, and aren't up to discovering this trivia on your own. I was able to verify a couple sites I recognized such as Xavier's mansion (see Special Edition X-Men #1 story #2, 1983).
Added the Recent Updates page to this site, so the main page wouldn't get too large.
2000 August 14 Items: Added 4th column to the Issue Indexes which links to various sections of Markus Mueller and Paulo Costa's The Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators, which provides title and creator information for all the books Marvel publishes, more or less. I have their permission to incorporate their data into my upcoming database. Their site also provides a list of Marvel crossovers and what books they're in.
Added indexes by Robert Diehl for Uncanny X-Men #s 351-384, X-Men #s 71-104, and both Magneto limited series. Also added an Index-page link to Ken Arromdee's X-Men Reprint List, which shows all the places the xbooks are reprinted.
2000 August 10 Item: Added an index link to Hypert's An Uncanny History, which has summaries of Uncanny X-Men #s 1-144, which I also have permission to use in my upcoming database. He also promises to be up to #300 by the end of the year. We're getting there.
Also, I have now just completed a major update to the back end Perl code which generates this site. This mostly consisted of half-rewriting what I consider the "core" of the program to make it more elegant, expandible, and functional. In addition, half of the other components needed some modifications to be compatible with the new version, but now they are all more elegant to show for it. Currently you won't see a significant difference in the site, but the changes were needed to support the likes of mod_perl or handling of advanced forms. Of course, this is all preparation for that database I was promising. If you wish to see the source code, you can go to my personal web site.
2000 August 9 Item: Added a link to Kate the Short's definitive RACMX Where Can I Find It FAQ. Also added stripped-down versions of my webring links on this main page where they are supposed to be; full versions are still under Webrings. Also added Index link to some AnotherUniverse summaries of the X-Men Animated Series, not too exciting though.
2000 August 7 Item: Added an index link to Paul O'Brien's issue guide for Uncanny X-Men #s 281-235, under the detailed column. I really should have done this months ago, but didn't, sorry (although I had linked to his X-Axis all along, which this is a component of).
2000 August 1 Item: After being tardy for a year, I finally got around to providing more detailed info on what is available from Shieldz Issue Summaries, and put more direct links to the various sub-pages in my own Issue Summaries index. It really wasn't too much work, so I don't know why I never did it before. For one thing, his are the *only* summaries I have on Uncanny X-Men or X-Men vol.2. The site also has some great caricatures of various characters. Enjoy. Oh yeah, I also did the same thing to the detailed Power Pack summaries. But I can't do it for Wolverine, as every issue is on a separate page.
2000 July 17 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for X-Man #s 5-62 with specials, and X-Men Hidden Years #s 1-9.
2000 July 11 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for Gambit #s 12-19, Cable #s 74-78, and 4 more limited series related to Cable or family. Also, all of the Cable issues now have creator credits added.
2000 July 7 Item: Added indexes by Robert Diehl for X-Force #s 97-101, Mutant X 15-22, and Mutant X 2000.
2000 June 13 Item: Arriving in theatres on July 14th is the hotly anticipated live-action X-Men movie which, from what I could see, looks to be great. But if you want to know more, you won't get it from me. Rather, Steve Thoemke has the most comprehensive list of sites on the movie that I have seen on The Mutant Page, so I recommend you start your looking there. Included are fan sites, commercial sites, official sites, actor sites, production company sites, and more.
2000 May 22 Item: This site is now officially located at "www.x-titles.com" rather than that domain simply forwarding visitors to my old Camosun address. This means that any remaining links to the Camosun address are broken, so if any of you have outdated links on your web sites or FAQs then please update them. Meanwhile, I will have a redirection page there for a few months.
Item: Now that the front-end coding for this new site is feature-complete (see the May 8 item), I am currently working on coding and seeding the back-end database. I have been developing the plans for it during the last 18 months, and they are now feature-complete. The initial version has about 30 tables. It can store info to distinguish between versions of a book and identify just the specific pages that characters appear on. Since I am very busy with life, hopefully the database back-end will be usable on this site in the next month or so. Meanwhile, you will just have to look at my sources, found on the Timelines, Indexes, and Works Cited pages.
2000 May 8 Item: On 2000 May 8th I had completed the most significant update to X-title Chronology since a year earlier. The reusable Perl libraries that generate this site on demand have been rewritten from scratch since that time (over several 100s of hours), making them many times more robust, flexible and elegant than they were before. Additionally, I intend to release these new libraries to the public as open-source (but all rights reserved) in a short time, so any of you can use or modify them for free (as your ISP permits).
We now have detailed summaries for the X-Men Unlimited, Gambit, and Mutant X series, as well as more of the same for X-Force, Cable, and Alpha Flight II; courtesy of Robert Diehl. Brief summaries of the entire Excalibur run are new, courtesy of Katya. Also new are detailed reviews for much of Generation X, courtesy of Trevor. The main site index now appears on the top of each page, rather than on the left-hand-side, so those of you who want to print the pages will now have a much easier time of it. The "works cited" page was added, and contains the most exhaustive list of what limited series and specials I have summaries for, but that aren't indicated on the "indexes" page. Some new external links have been added as well, and the existing ones updated.
Chronology.Net was created and is maintained for personal use by Darren Duncan. All content and source code was created by me, unless otherwise stated. Content that I did not create is used with permission from the creators, who are appropriately credited where it is used and in the Works Cited section of this site.
You may not copy any text, graphics, layouts, code, or database structure from this site for use in any public forum unless I have given you written permission to do so. However, I encourage you to provide hyperlinks to this site. I have put years of hard work into the content of this website and consider it a valuable asset.
This site is not affiliated with Marvel Entertainment Group, who are the TM and copyright holders of the 'X-Men' and associated characters. Any references made on this site to said property constitutes fair use.