Links to selected web sites
Context
Back in the 1990s when writeups.org started, having a page with links toward similar resources was de rigueur . This usage faded as people increasingly relied on Google. Which isn’t a great idea. Especially when it comes to niche interests.
So here’s a little list, of society offenders who might well be… No wait, wrong song. But here are some sites anyway.
Main appearance lists sites
Lists of which comics characters appear in are indispensable for writeups.org work. Using the huge amount of work that went into compiling those, we can pore over the material for recap and analysis.
It’s always best to use multiple indices when doing research. This is all volunteer work across massive amounts of data. Therefore every site (including writeups.org) will have missed something somewhere, or have false positives.
Marvunapp’s Master List
The main classic of online appearances indices. It covers the Marvel Universe and its suburbs. The entries are listed using the same abbreviations as in the Marvel Chronology project.
The Master List is no longer fully maintained. But it remains useful for older material, and was an important forerunner.
The Comic Book Database
My main resource for appearances lists nowadays. Especially for characters for whom placing flashbacks in the correct order isn’t a hassle. It has the advantage of covering a wide breadth of material, and it has kept improving over the years. The chronological display of appearances (by publication date) is the most useful mode.
If you’re one of the 513 million persons in the EU, access is blocked due to some tiresome misunderstanding of the law. Meh, just use a proxy service.
The Marvel Chronology Project
Now that’s a project that takes courage… The MCP (no relation to the Tron evil software) works to place all material, per-character, in an order that makes sense.
This is of course precious to us. For historical reasons we’re a bit more Marvel-centric (since DC characters already had Mayfair stats).
The DCU guide
Solid lists of DC Universes appearance, to double-check the ComicBookDB ones. Was overhauled in 2018 so it’s now much nicer to use.
Other appearance lists sites
These see less use, but our need for appearances list is endless.
Comic Vine
ComicVine used to be an important source for complementing appearances indices. It can still can reference issues other sites missed. But the UI is a pain in the arse, and other sites have grown so much in recent years that checking ComicVine is less of a priority than it used to be.
Mike’s Amazing World of DC comics
A key research site for pre-Crisis DC material. Especially since Mike distinguishes Earth-1, Earth-2, etc. appearances. Which can save a lot of time.
DarkMark’s Comics Indexing Domain
Extensive and useful annotations for many older DCU series.
Comic Book + and Digital Comic Museum
Large archives of Golden Age comics that are now in the public domain, and thus free to download.
Marvel Comics Reprints
Lists which books have been reprinted and how. Which is quite useful for such logistics as avoiding to buy expensive comics (the expensive stuff is often what gets reprinted). And for finding better-printed versions of the art to work with.
Comicbookdb has superseded it in our usage, though. And then we went digital, so reprints became a non-issue.
SuperMegaMonkey’s Marvel Comics Chronology
Another heroic attempt at chronologically ordering the Marvel Universe. It went all the way to 1994 before it stopped. Note that the character names near the end of the issue recaps are clickable.
Encyclopaedia-like sites
These are sites similar to writeups.org, though not generally with a role-playing games angle.
Marvunapp.com
Extensive coverage of obscure Marvel characters (and sometimes not-so-obscure ones). They have even more articles than we do, and not too many folks can say that. :-) Hi guys!
DC Cosmic Teams
Large, content-heavy site with a lot of high-quality stuff about the DC Universe. Plus minor publishers whose creations ended up in the DC Universe.
Golden Age Heroes directory
This site went dead a decade ago, but its content — by Jess Nevins — is still invaluable. Numerous notes about fascinating Golden Age characters.
An international catalogue of super-heroes
Brief notes about a huge variety of characters, good for inspiring further research into non-US material.
Cool French Comics
A large site by comic books and TV scripts veteran Jean-Marc Lofficier. It lovingly covers decades of French sci-fi, adventure stories, fantastic stories, etc. in English.
DC database and Marvel Database
The usual Fandom stuff. Resistance is futile.
Public Domain Super Heroes
A wikia about characters in the public domain. Usually it’s Golden Age fare, though many have been used by small publishers since they became available.
Unofficial Guide to the DC Universe and the Green Lantern Corps Webpage
These were two of the classic sites from the 1990s. These have since been turned into wikis and expanded to cover quite a bit of ground.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia, of course. We suggest caution – comics are the type of subject where Wikipedia‘s weaknesses are more apparent. Entry camping, injection of original content by certain fan fiction writers, versions of real-world events that do not match the recollections of the professionals who were actually there, etc. are recurrent issues.
Herogoggles
Another Golden Age of Comics research site for that old time rock ‘n’ roll.
Super-hero RPGs sites
Siskoid’s Collection
Early on this site had DCH/MEGS/Blood of heroes writeups as Siskoid went through his comic books collection. It has since become a more general geek news blog, but still with RPG content. And the old writeups, many of which have no WORG equivalent, are still there.
Knight of Shadow site and Eric Padua’s JLA site
These were the two main DC Heroes homepages back in the day, and were swept into oblivion when Geocities closed. After checking with the authors, the full content has been archived on writeups.org. Knight of Shadow archive and Eric Padua archive.
DC Heroes community site
That‘s where we live and chat.
The Green Ronin (M&M) forum
That‘s also where we live and chat – specifically in our thread . But more broadly this is the main DC Adventures/Mutants & Masterminds discussion space and content base.
DC Heroes RPG Wiki
Artigos ilustrados e fichas de personagem sobre os caráteres de DC de todas eras. Em português.
Surbrook’s Stuff
The classic site for Champions players has entries for hundreds of characters. It was one of our inspirations when creating writeups.org back in the 1990s.
EN World and RPG.net
Sites to read about new super-hero RPGs and follow indie production.
Paper Friends character stand-ups
The original Marvel RPG had these neat little character standups to use as miniatures when playing out combat on a map. This site offers many stand-ups along the same lines, making me all nostalgic.
Comic book blogs
Firestorm Fan
As the name implies, a blog energetically keeping the Firestorm flame alive. The author also runs the Once upon a geek super-hero and science-fiction blog.
Steve Lopez’s Big Blog o’ Fun
Steve writes about many hobbies, but super-hero role-playing and Golden Age comic books are a common subject for his chronicles. Writeups.org readers who like our articles about 1940s characters should definitely check his blog for its reproduced stories and extensive commentary.
Bits of writeups.org presence
Small pages we maintain to help folks who like the sort of images we produce to find writeups.org. If you like the site, please re-pin, favourite, share, etc. this stuff !
Our Pinterest board
Recent illustrations on WORG that stand out for some reason, with brief commentary.
Our WeHeartIt collection
Exact same thing, but on a lesser-known immage collection service.
Facebook news page
This page simply warns you when there are new update messages on writeups.org. It’s handy. Or rather it was before Facebook made you unlikely to see posts from pages you Liked. Oh, well.
Twitter news page
Same thing as our Facebook page, really – news alerts.
Writeupsdotorg Instagram
A few writeups.org pictures every week, with small comments.
DeviantArt gallery
Originally created to contact people and get authorisation to publish fan art, I ended up putting some recent writeups.org pictures there so people who like this stuff can find them. Not maintained no more.
We’d also like to mention
These sites are smaller and usually older than the sites listed in the previous sections. But we did use them at some point for research, inspiration or just plain old reading.
Legion of Super-Heroes reference file
Hosted at Vanishing Point , this is a resource we still use a lot – but for a narrow subset of profiles. Definitely worth a link though, especially since our LSH entries are popular.
Titans’ Tower
We have very few Titans entries, since the team was well-covered in Mayfair‘s books back in the day. To fill this gap, Titans fans should definitely check the Meeting Room at the Titans‘ Tower.
Fanzing’s archives
Fanzing was a fan magazine that ran from 1997 to 2003 and talked about the DCU. Many of the DCU Info and Hall of Champions are good and may interest writeups.org readers.