This is a bit of a special batch. I’m currently reviewing very old material for a WORG project, and have discovered a number of writeups that were on WORG version 2 and have never migrated to v3 and v4. Most of it is no longer standards-compliant, but there’s stuff that’s sort of OK.

I’ve hesitated a while – I don’t have time to provide good illustrations for them, and the text is no longer the way we’d do those with ten years of extra collective experience. On the other hand, it’s good work on its own merits, and let’s face it — if it’s not published now, the odds that we’re going to cover this material again on WORG are minuscule. So those entries are going to look a bit grungy (especially the illos, though a volunteer may improve them — please), but I’ll reluctantly say it’s an OK trade-off. All version numbers have been lowered to reflect the age of the entries.

All entries in this batch are early Image material (most of it from what would become the Wildstorm universe, I guess) written up by Nicolas about ten years ago – mostly Wetworks and Black Ops material. Please note that we’ve also refreshed and expanded our Brigade material, and that I’m currently working on revising and expanding our Deathblow volume 1 material. More reposts from WORG v2 are also likely, since it’s faster to prepare than modern entries and there’s a lot more of it than I thought.

Roll call:

• Big Dozer
• Bloodmoon
• Claymore
• Dane
• Dozer
• Geek
• HERB
• Jester
• Mother One
• Pilgrim
• Redbird
• Shire
• Grail

Furthermore…

• Three Hostess nonsense entries have received a better illo (Legal Eagle, Photoman, June Jitsui)
• Extra illustrations for Typhoid (who obviously wasn’t illustrated enough !) and Deathbird (ditto), both from rapsheet.co.uk.
• REWRITES. The entries for Sachs and Violens have been expanded, edited and re-illustrated to reflect their appearances in Bete Noire in Fallen Angel volume 2. Go PAD !

These blasts from the past bring us to 4089 entries.

Oi,

The results produced by the Google-powered “Parse” function of writeups.org are now largely garbage-free. The “Character sheet” and “Untitled document” references are almost gone.

There’s still a long distance to go before the whole site is indexed (frex, searching for “goonbane” in order to clean the revised Schticks up provide no result), but using this function is not actively annoying any longer.

I’m still considering adding another search technology – search engines have been for years the primary way to access content-rich sites, and IMO WORG is off-target as long as it doesn’t have a powerful and up-to-date full-text search function.

Abraços,

S.A.

Special WORG Update

The archive for the Knight of Shadow DCH website has now been officially added to writeups.org as a downloadable pdf. It is accessed from a standard entry – look for “Knight of Shadow”.

For many of us this site was a godsend in the mid-90s, and has been in continuous use ever since since it was very complementary with WORG. Since Geocities is scheduled to disappear this year, preserving it was important.

I’m currently considering an alternative search tech to serve as a primary full-text search engine, since Google has produced insufficient results so far. If this works out I’ll make sure to have the .pdf crawler along with our content so a search can cover both sites.

The bulk of the backlog destruction is done, I think – which of course is a very different proposition from “the backlog is empty”. Thus, this batch looks about as random as the run-of-the mill ones. Roll call:

• ART. New and/or better stuff for the guys below. Note that Marvel makes it a fair bit easier than DC to find WORG-grade illos, so folks wanting to restablish a balance are welcome to send DC illos. This batch features a handful of illustrations by Moebius, BTW.
  • Omega of the Inhumans (from the previous batch)
  • Master Man
  • Lamplighter
  • Tony Stark
  • Angel (early)
  • Punisher II
  • Green Lantern I
  • Elektra
  • El Matador
  • Hand Genin
  • Black Hand
  • Wolverine
  • Lobo
  • Captain Marvel I (DCU)
  • The Thing (Classic)
  • Spider-Man (obviously)
  • Jean Grey
  • Steel (obviously)
  • Bane
  • Mister Hyde
  • Bullseye
  • Batgirl I
  • Huntress (Bertinelli)
  • Batman Beyond
  • And the winner of today’s “finally found some time to get this guy done” award — Sunburst (pre-Crisis DCH)
• GREATEST AMERICAN HERO. Roy’s arc through this TV series starts with old school FBI agent Bill Maxwell.
• REAVERS. Peter has written ‘em up, and we start with Bonebreaker, the tracked cyborg.
• STRIKEBACK. Somehow I had forgotten a minor villain from Gareth’s arc about this obscure book – Doberman.
• DRAX THE DESTROYER. Part 3 of the writeups trilogy of the big, mean, green guy – the current era after his resurrection and his return as one of the toughest warriors in the local galactic group.
• Foe-Dog is a minor Chinese hero which Gareth introduced to us from his X-Men appearance.
• LARGO WINCH. I dunno if there will actually be other Largo Winch entries, but here is a profile of a favourite character from the series, Freddy Kaplan.
• FATAL FURY. After the King of Fighters arc, Tom continues with video games martial arts mayhem as his Fatal Fury writeups get published. In this batch the baddie, Geese Howard.
• CROSSGEN / NEGATION. The last two entries from this voluminous arc by Gareth, starring :
  • General Murquade of the Negation
  • Obregon Kaine
• WILD CARDS. After a number of discussions to fine-tune his entry, Dr. Tachyon makes it to WORG.
• Ethan’s brother asked if Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python’s Holy Grail was on writeups.org… so Ethan wrote Tim up, to join the killer rabbit (who’s already been there for a while).
• And finally we have the latest writeups.org’s monster, evil writeup that is full of things and complicated stuff — Typhoid. Covering her early appearances, which is already fairly complex.
• I’ve also adjusted the Sonny Sumo entry to reflect the explanations in the second half of the Final Crisis story, released after the writeup was done.

That’s now 4076 entries.

The backlog accumulated during and since the work on WORG v4 is starting to look okay – one more batch and it should be reduced to acceptable proportions, I think. Of course, many of the usual contributors have had a heavy not-WORG schedule these last few months, diminishing the density and diversity of posts, which unfortunately helped.

We are currently working to kill all the bugs of v4. one problem will remain, though – the views of the entries were not counted correctly, possibly since v4 went live. This explains the long trail of recent entries at zero views in the “Popular” section.

Many of the usual categories are still there, but it’s starting to look more random :

• ART. New or improved stuff for :
  • Grizzly III (who’s scheduled for rewriting, but the low-res Master OHOTMU shot just had to go)
  • Robocop
  • Spider-Man (of course)
  • Gladiator II
  • Thor (main take)
  • Punisher II
  • Elektra
  • Daredevil
  • Captain Marvel (mainline DCU)
  • Echo
  • Nick Fury (still thinking about the best way to handle a rewrite)
  • Ms. Marvel I (Year One) (Darci found an inked version of the Matthew Clark sketch)
  • Black Bolt
  • Medusa (Inhumans)
  • Wonder Woman II
  • Dr. Strange
  • Vulture I (Toomes)
• DEATHBIRD. Part two of this big two-parter – her 1990s and 2000s appearances, up to the Spring of 2009. By the time I was finished with the main illustration I wanted to kill Jim Lee – the man is a badass craftsman. Spending so much time with one’s nose buried into scannings to prepare art does teach further respect for the work of artists, inkers and colourists – and to hate cheap printing and paper.
• DRAX THE DESTROYER. The other big current multi-parter. In this batch, the era during which Drax was mostly stupid and extremely strong, chiefly with Infinity Watch appearances. However, there is no truth to the rumours that we are chiefly writing up people who match the WORG colour scheme.
• The Spider, Master of Men, is one of the classic pulp heroes, so it’s high time he got published on Writeups.org. Stats and all sort of stuff by Peter, current History section by Wikipedia.
• The Destructor was an early, obscure Ms. Marvel villain. Since the latest Ms. Marvel I writeup refers to his entry he had to be in ASAP.
• CROSSGEN/NEGATION. More from this copious arc by Gareth. in this batch:
  • Shrakti, another agent of Charon
  • Westin, a Sigil bearer
  • Shassa, another Sigil bearer
• Peter wrote up a Golden Age goodie – Lyle, of the Galactic Knights. It’s vintage !
• Indigo aka Brainiac 8, a somewhat recent DCU character involved with the Outsiders and Titans. By Gareth.
• COMMITTEE KILLERS. Somehow, I had missed one of those in the backlogs. Razor will now join his friends (low-powered hitmen with a cliché schtick one and all) already on WORG.
• Roy wrote up good ol’ Omega, the giant menace that threatened the Inhumans over Alpha Primitives issues. Very “late Silver Age” character.
• ASTRO CITY. This time it’s the turn of Roustabout, hero of the Midwest, again thanks to Peter.

So… 4063 entries.

This batch started as a formulaic backlog-killing batch, but halfway through I remembered I had to cram in the Helix writeups at some point. If only to clear the pictures from my illustrations folders, where they’ve been for nearly a year. Thus we end up with:

• ART. New or improved stuff for:
  • Grotesk
  • Nick Fury
  • Batroc
  • Nightshade (Marvel)
  • Huntress (Bertinelli)
  • Man-Thing
  • Diamondback (enhanced)
  • Green Arrow II
  • Steel (J. H. Irons)
  • Fang (Imperial Guard)
  • Trapster
  • Darna (yay !)
  • Atomic mutates
  • Brother Nature
  • The first Carol Danvers writeup
  • Smasher III
  • Bat-Wing (Rancor’s lieutenants)
• Ms. MARVEL I. The third big writeup for Carol – so we’re finally starting to replace the old quasi-placeholder entries with the new, big, detailed, illustrated, rich entries. Note that we’re talking a break from Carol and this series of big writeups will only resume in a while.
• NEGATION. More from Gareth’s travels in the Negation parts of the Crossgen Universe. Like the last time it’s Negation baddies:
  • Lawbringer Qztr
  • Tibian
• DEATHBIRD. This popular Marvel villain (almost an anti-heroine of sorts) receives a two-parts entry — Classic and Modern. This batch has, of course, the Classic entry, hatchlings.
• KING OF FIGHTERS. Tom’s KOF guy for this batch is K’ (or K-dash).
• HELIX. The full roster, so it’s over and done with :
  • Arak the Wind-Walker
  • Baby Boom aka Babe
  • Kritter
  • Mr. Bones (Classic). Note that we have no plan ATM to cover his DEO career due to a lack of full appearances listings for this era.
  • Penny Dreadful
  • Tao Jones
• DRAX THE DESTROYER. Now that the Psylocke arc is done, time to start another huge three-parters with our friend the Destroyer. The first third of his profile is the Classic one, covering the 70s and 80s. With lots of adjusted colours, since the dark violet ink used back then did not age well and soon ended looking hot pink…
• DOCTOR BANNERS. Fixed or replaced the following:
  • Savage Mutates from the Post-Atomic Future!
  • Shellshock
  • Marvel Boy I

And now we got, what, 4051 entries ? That’s dedication fer ya.

This batch is just like the previous ones, really.

• ART. Additional material for:
  • Fallen Angel
  • Marvel Boy VII
  • Man-Thing
  • Jaws
  • Sachs
  • Violens
• Grotesk, an old school Marvel subterranean villain who wants to destroy the world (who doesn’t ?)
• MINUTEMEN. Civafan’s new entry for the Watchmen’s predecessors is Hooded Justice
• NEGATION (CROSSGEN). The pair of entries from this arc of Gareth are :
  • Javi Gobian, a fallen hero
  • Komptin, a Negation castellan
• Kaleb, an Elseworld Superman by Roy and Azrael
• KING OF FIGHTERS. Arguably the main character – Kyo Kusanagi, by Tom
• REWRITES. We’ve got two, because making our old stuff better gives us warm fuzzies:
  • Angelocurtis rewrote the Magician from Mars, a very early super-powered heroine
  • Minor DCU villain Baron Bedlam has also been written
• PSYLOCKE. Last entry in Gareth’s trilogy about Betsy.
• BRIGADE. Another entry in our sloooowwwww arc about this terrible 1990s book – Stasis.
• Hominid gave us a very neat writeup about the Triffids, classic early sci-fi creatures of some repute.

So, that’s 4040 entries all told. So far.

Another paint-by-numbers batch to control the backlog.

• SUBSECTIONS. Subsection titles have been added in the long History sections of the following entries:
  • Diamondback II (Classic)
  • Georges Batroc
  • Diamondback II (post-transfusion)
  • Nightwing
  • Wonder Woman II. Diana also has some new quotes, since so few people seem to get the character.
  • Mandarin (Early)
  • Maverick I
• Argorous Astrap, the best-known character from the GURPS International Super Teams campaign world
• 1980s DC VILLAIN. Bloodsport II, the walking arsenal/white supremacist villain. Technically not 1980s, but was written after writing Bloodsport I up.
• UPGRADE. I’ve finally managed to publish the additional material for the Antibody entry (from DP7)
• PRE-CRISIS LSH WEIRDNESS. Sden, a vaguely Cthulhoid con man… from the future ! By Chris.
• CROSSGEN / NEGATION. As it turns out, two of Gareth’s writeups on the subject:
  • Iress, one of the First
  • Mercer Drake, the flying pirate who can always get what he wants
• INITIATIVE. Capita_Senyera has started an arc about Initiatives trainees. In this batch, Komodo.
• Jaws, the most famous shark in the world from the landmark… well, seamark, I guess, eponymous movie. By Ethan.
• PARSE FUNCTION. The first few Google results with the entry’s title being correctly displayed are beginning to appear in results when you do some searches on the “Parse” page. At first we just had a number of entries who all started with an “A” but it’s progressing. We’ll see how quickly Google repopulates its bases, though I’m also considering an alternative search technology.
• EPISODE II IN MULTI-PARTERS. This batch continues to cover two major characters, with the second instalment – since those are much easier to read (and write !) than an encyclopaedia-sized full writeup would be. In this batch :
  • Carol Danvers. Part two covers Carol before she becomes Ms. Marvel, and while she is at her lowest ebb as NASA security chief, writer and Captain Mar-Vell groupie.
  • Psylocke. Gareth’s second entry covers the 1990s (more or less), her “psychic ninja” phase.
• MINUTEMEN. Another of Civafan’s profiles for the team that preceded the Watchmen – this time it’s Captain Metropolis.
• ASTRO CITY. Here comes the Mock Turtle, thanks to Peter. You remember the Mock Turtle, right ? Everybody reads Astro City, right ? Good.
• ART. More prettification of the site, more drops in the ocean… Improved and/or new material for:
  • Drom the Backward Man
  • Human Torch II
  • The Super-Skrull
  • Chance Falconer
  • Varnae
  • Chrome (Acolytes of Magneto)
  • Falcon
  • Smiling Tiger
  • Blastaar
  • Medusa (… but the one from the Hostess fruit pies ads)
  • Fallen Angel
  • Lizard
  • Cheetah
  • Spider-Man (as with every batch, I guess)
  • Loki
  • Steel (John H. Irons)
  • Bishop (X-Men)
  • Grizzly
  • Green Goblin I
  • Rhino
  • Batroc…. ze leepair !!
  • Trapster
  • Vulture I (Marvel)
  • Carnage
  • Wonder Girl (Cassie)
  • Maverick
  • Chameleon (Marvel)
  • Wonder Woman II (Diana)
  • Fixed the Bete Noire illustration in the Fallen Angel entry and related entries
• ADVERT ODDITY. Google thinks that people reading Normal Osborn’s entry want to buy combat helmets and bulletproof vests. Which, I’ll admit, sort of makes sense.
• KING OF FIGHTERS. Now it’s Iori Yagami’s turn, thanks to Tom. Why does he have that belt between the knees ? Nobody knows.
• DOCTOR BANNERS. A few here and there:
  • Nightfall (Cadre)
  • Starshrike (Cadre)
  • White Tiger (Del Toro)
  • Yukon Jack
  • Cheetah
  • Jonah Hex
  • Saboteur
  • Mangler II
  • Psycho Mantis

So, that’s 4030 entries. Getting to 5K will take a while… especially since writeups are constantly getting more detailed and more illustrated, and there’s stuff to be rewritten.