Same Old Stuff, New Address

I've just finished the migration of The Annotated Infinite Crisis site from the old googlepages host to the new googlesites address.  There's an automatic redirect so any links to the old site will take you to the new one.  You can check out the changes here.

Over the next couple of days I plan to do the last few bits and pieces with The Annotated Final Crisis and get that migrated as well - then it's back to normal service.

Working Behind The Scenes

Been kinda busy over the weekend - I know you're all desperately waiting to find out just how many people Hitman killed, aren't you? - but that'll have to wait for a while.

As I've mentioned before, the platform I used to create The Annotated Infinite Crisis and The Annotated Final Crisis called Google Page Creator is being shut down. Google are pushing their newer platform, Google Sites which is what I used for The Annotated Blackest Night.

Sites created with Page Creator are due to be automatically transferred at some point but I figured I'd take the opportunity to make some slight tweaks and push them over myself. I've been copying files over from one to the other and hope to get the new Sites-driven pages up by the weekend so at the moment the sites look just the same. The original addresses should automatically redirect to the new ones once they're up and running.

Soon as they're ready, I'll drop a note here.

No Evil Shall Escape My Site

Oh, I'm probably going to regret this - I haven't half as much time as I need to do half as many things as I want but damn it, I'm annotating the Blackest Night despite having said that I wasn't going to.

You can find the site here but bear in mind it's early days so there's not going to be a lot of stuff over there right now.  Obviously as the series continues, I'll be putting more stuff up and, as happened with the Annotated Infinite Crisis and then the Annotated Final Crisis, I'll be happy to have your input.

See something I've missed?  See something I've got wrong?  Mail me at jigsawmen [AT] googlemail [DOT] com and get your name in the Acknowledgements page.

Wish me luck!

Finally Annotated?

Back last year, I mentioned that the platform I used for both my Annotated sites - Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis - was going to change from Google Page Creator to Google Sites.  Everything seemed to go a bit quiet after that so I carried on using Page Creator to make any updates to either site.

About a month or two back I had an automated mail from Google saying they'd be migrating both sites over to the new platform but nothing's happened yet.

I'm loathe to make any more additions/changes to either of them (which is my way of saying I'm getting out of finishing the few odds and ends on Final Crisis for a while) until they're migrated.  I still feel the urge, though, to throw something together and get back into annotating . . . if only there was another big DC event coming up that I could have a go at . . .

Need A Little Help Part II

Thanks to everyone who responded by commenting or e-mailing me following the post where I asked for help with Infinite Crisis #2, page 9, panel 2. Between you all, you managed to get most of the unidentified characters.

Steve has pointed out that the ones I'm missing are shown as uncoloured headshots at the back of the collected edition, as well as correctly identifying Cyborgirl.

So, here's the original scene again and who we've identified so far: In the top left (slightly hidden by the speech bubble) is Cyborgirl; the main screens from left to right show Psycho Pirate; Luthor; Ultivac and Mr Poseidon (the robot and a small man on his shoulder); and Sivana; bottom left shows a blond man with goggles and a metal skinned man/robot; going round the desk, the next screen shows Bug and Byte; the last shows a smiling man; and bottom right Colonel Computron. Here's a close-up of the three we're missing:

If anyone can identify them, either leave a comment or mail me.

Big thanks to Steve for pointing this out!

Need A Little Help

Over at my Annotated Infinite Crisis site, someone got in touch to say that I'd missed something.

Infinite Crisis #2, page 9, panel 2 shows Calculator surrounded by a variety of screens, all of which show members of the Society. Somehow the faces on those screens had slipped past me when I was annotating the series so I need to get them identified, but am having a bit of trouble.

In the top left (slightly hidden by the speech bubble) is what appears to be Dr Psycho; the main screens from left to right show Psycho Pirate; Luthor; Ultivac and Mr Poseidon (the robot and a small man on his shoulder); and Sivana; bottom left shows a blond man with goggles and another who has been identified as Chronos; going round the desk, the next screen shows Bug and Byte; the last shows a smiling man; and bottom right Colonel Computron.

If anyone here can name those I'm missing, either post a comment or mail me at jigsawmen [at] googlemail [dot] com and let me know what you've got.

Google Provide Search Engines, You Say?

Sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to see.

I'm a big fan of Google's products: I use Blogger to power this blog; Google Page Creator for the two Annotated sites I have; gmail for my e-mail; and a whole host of others but it was only this evening that I thought of adding a search engine, powered by Google, to The Annotated Infinite Crisis site.

Live and learn, I guess.

Slight Adjustment And Another Link

Had an e-mail from Greg who runs Be The Shepherd.com with a suggestion concerning The Annotated Infinite Crisis which I've now added in - nothing major, just a quick note about the Psycho Pirate's powers in the first issue notes.

As a quick thank-you, I've put a link to Greg's site which has annotations of Swamp Thing and Uncle Sam and is well worth a look.

Who'd Like A Cocktail? #3

For the second time in a row, a week containing a Garth Ennis comic - two, actually, and one of them was a Garth Ennis DCU comic at that - gets beaten to the dubious position of starring in a Who'd Like A Cocktail? post.

As strong as JLA/Hitman #1 was and as wonderful as it was to read about Tommy Monaghan again, it was Justice Society of America #9 that worked best for me this week. Other highlights included Streets of Glory #1 (the other Ennis written comic), the Green Arrow And Black Canary Wedding Special #1 and the better than expected Countdown To Mystery #1.

Each of these first issues, though, were beaten by JSoA #9 which showed once again why Geoff Johns is such a good writer. There are moments of comedy such as Flash gently warning off a firefighter from Stargirl or the charity boxing match between father and son Wildcats as well as the gruesome scene of an old Titans villain, Goth, being discovered murdered. In each scene, Johns ably manages the characters, staying true to each of them. His writing - particularly his dialogue - has come a long way since the less than brilliant Day of Judgement back in 1999. He now has the measure of the characters and in particular one that, when he was writing JSA, he was reluctant to introduce.

Power Girl was not his favourite character but he has, over the years, obviously grown to respect her, recently installing her as chairwoman of the JSA. She may still be finding her feet a little - as illustrated by the brief hesitation below - when it comes to making decisions but that's to be expected when starting a new job.

With the new story arc, Thy Kingdom Come, beginning, Power Girl is likely to play a major part; the story involves the arrival into the DCU of the Kingdom Come Superman - since the last issue of 52, I guess that should be the Earth-22 Superman. Incidentally, the last page of JSoA #9 is a clear pastiche of the cover of Crisis On Infinite Earths #7 and as such has been added to the relevant page over at The Annotated Infinite Crisis.

With this new Kal-El - older and looking like her Earth-2 cousin who died at the end of Infinite Crisis - coming into her life, Power Girl is likely to have a difficult time ahead of her.

Public Enemies

Typed up some short notes for the Public Enemies page over at The Annotated Infinite Crisis. There's only a tangential tie-in to IC as it's where Luthor finally puts on the green and purple warsuit that he wears throughout IC, but it was worth covering.

The Who'd Like A Cocktail? post is a little late this week as I was away all weekend; I'll sort something soon.

Covers Are Done

I finished adding the credits and annotating the covers for Infinite Crisis and have published everything over at The Annotated Infinite Crisis. A fair bit of credit must go to the contributors to this thread over at Comic Book Resources; much of the work had already been done which is probably why I was able to finish them so quickly.

There are still a fair few things to do, as I mentioned in my first post here, and I hope to get everything done before the end of this year.

Damn George Perez!

I've just spent the best part of an hour over at The Annotated Infinite Crisis annotating the covers for issues 1 and 2 of Infinite Crisis - it's something I've been meaning to do for a while but just haven't gotten round to and I think I know why.

George Perez, damn his eyes, just packs way too much detail into his artwork! The Jim Lee variants, however, are nice and simple by comparison.

Once the seven issues of IC are done, I'll publish all of them at once.

And We're Off!

As the little text box on the right states, this is (hopefully) going to be a periodic chat about comics - primarily DC's output as the vast majority The of the titles I buy are from DC - but also about the two sites that I run. The Annotated Infinite Crisis has been up and running since the middle of 2006 and I've recently prepped a site for next year's big event where I plan to do much the same. No surprise, then, that I've called it The Annotated Final Crisis.

There are a handful of things that I still have to do on The Annotated Infinite Crisis which include listing creators, finding scans of the Jim Lee covers, annotating the covers of the issues themselves and a couple of other bits and pieces.

Due to time constraints, you can probably expect updates once a week, usually on a weekend.