Thrills Over Time

[Funt Solo]

Strontium Dog, anyone?

I've included Starlord, the prog, specials, Top Dogs and Judgement Day, but excluded Tales from the Dog House, Strontium Dogs and Durham Red:

[Funt Solo]

And, just for fun:

[AlexF]

In my dreams I'm hoping to find time to find data for exactly when/how often each character has appeared, whether or not in their own story. Barney does a pretty job of this, e.g. noting when Anderson and Hershey are in some epsiodes of Judge Dredd -

but really the only way to do it is to wade through each Prog one by one.

And it sounds as if I need to re-read me some Edginton, too! I'd no idea of any links between Kingmaker and Brass Sun, or if Stone Island had any connection to any of it. Next someone'll tell me the secret to unlocking the whole thing is Interceptor...

I do remember being rather sad when Leviathan turned out to be a one-off; these days I'm rather wishing Tharg would encourage Edginton to do that more often.

[I, Cosh]

Obviously I take no pleasure in nitpicking over tiny details but surely your Rogue Trooper overview isn't missing the Bland & Brass strip from the Villains Special?

Ah - I get to be smug - I counted that as part of the Rogue Trooper bundle - it's in the table as part of the 2019 double-blip that also includes "Secret of the Keep" from the Regened 2130.

Damn! I thought I'd doublechecked the cover dates of the regened progs. Keep up the good work.

Feels like I should give the Edgiverse a re-read. Brass Sun and Kingmaker are linked? And Stone Island directly links in to the Seas / Leviathan / Stickle-thing?

Maybe I should just do a Everything-By-Edginton table.

One of the things I like about Edginton's strips is that he's always been quite careful about implying the links rather than making them explicit. There are a couple of characters (Orlando Doyle) who have the same name and look but quite different roles and there's the Brotherhood of the Book. There's an episode of Red Seas where we see a room with 13 ^{[citation needed]} doors leading to other worlds and I think that's where the main idea of interconnection comes from.

[I, Cosh]

In my dreams I'm hoping to find time to find data for exactly when/how often each character has appeared, whether or not in their own story. Barney does a pretty job of this, e.g. noting when Anderson and Hershey are in some epsiodes of Judge Dredd.

This is something which has fallen by the wayside a bit. I do have notes for the more important characters like Hershey and Beeny which I must get round to updating, but I'd really like to get something up for the minor recurring characters who have been spreading like weeds in recent years. Your Maitlands and your Paxes, for instance.

If anybody's got notes on that feel free to message me.

And it sounds as if I need to re-read me some Edginton, too! I'd no idea of any links between Kingmaker and Brass Sun, or if Stone Island had any connection to any of it. Next someone'll tell me the secret to unlocking the whole thing is Interceptor...

Don't know about that, but the Hinterkind series he did for Vertigo pretty clearly develops out of American Gothic...

[TordelBack]

Feels like I should give the Edgiverse a re-read. Brass Sun and Kingmaker are linked? And Stone Island directly links in to the Seas / Leviathan / Stickle-thing?

I don't think Stone Island explicitly links to anything, but it's hard not to see it as part of the multiverse that later Ampney Crucis traverses (and not just because of SBD on the crayons), possibly even specifically. Whenever the transformative forces of elder chaos batter on the dimensional doors, I imagine those doors open into the Temple of Mithras.

Brass Sun and Kingmaker do however share a critical character, so the link there is explicit.

But lordy, Funt, Cosh and Alex debating the finer points of 2000AData on the same thread... it's like our very own Illuminati.

[Funt Solo]

In my dreams I'm hoping to find time to find data for exactly when/how often each character has appeared, whether or not in their own story. Barney does a pretty job of this, e.g. noting when Anderson and Hershey are in some epsiodes of Judge Dredd -

Ah, yes - me too. Whenever I think about this I think that there's no point in the project unless it improves on Barney (because we already have Barney).

My own data is in a terrible format when compared to a relational database, but it is useful for me - it allowed me to quickly make all the charts on this thread with just a few minutes work.

But a giant table that repeats information all over the place is not efficient (or easily searchable) - and generally doesn't include character information. I do try to get crossover stuff in there, but it involves duplicating rows. Here's my current example of Karyn, which I know is missing some key stuff (like Martyrs, for example):



(Table extends out to show script, art, letterer etc. Columns are title, type, appearances, pp, covers, year, publication. CS == Comic Strip, P == Poster, M == Megazine, JDMS == JD Mega-Special.)


So, I did start to think about a relational database that would allow all of this to be searchable, and be able to handle something like Trifecta without blowing a digital blood vessel. The problem here is that things quickly get complicated - and after the design it would need to be built, then I'd need to build an interface to do data input, then do the data input and then build an interface to access it in a nice way etc.

Anyway - I did a design that's really a work in progress, and given my experience with RDBs, I'm not even sure if it's a good design:



*I fixed the width for display to 750, but if you right click and open in a new tab you can see it full size.

And I made notes last time I worked on it (June):

1. Add contentNote and contentNoteInstance, so I can do something like attach "wraparound" or "gatefold" or "variant #1" to covers.

2. Add gigNote and gigNoteInstance, so I can do something like attach "after artistName" to an artist gig, or [adaptation] to a writer gig.

3. Maybe remove titledContent and just do the titling through the subTitle system. So: supertitle is good, but then a subTitle of rank "Title" could be used where the title is different from the supertitle. Not sure this works for things that appear under various super-titles. Like: you can only have one rank "Title" title.

[davidbishop]

Karyn is in Fetish too, iirc.

Sorry, that probably doesn't help!

[Colin YNWA]

Funt Solo I have NO idea what is going on in that diagram BUT my God it is just magnificent!

[Funt Solo]

Karyn is in Fetish too, iirc.

Sorry, that probably doesn't help!

*updating spreadsheet* - thanks!

Funt Solo I have NO idea what is going on in that diagram BUT my God it is just magnificent!

Yeah ... I've developed a one-to-many love/hate relationship with it. That's a database joke.

In general terms, it's trying to solve problems like "how do you deal with recording reprints", or "how do you record a list of creators where sometimes there are multiple writers, and sometimes the writer is the artist and sometimes there's a colourist and sometimes the writer on part 1 isn't the writer on part 2". Etc.

[Funt Solo]

Karyn is in Fetish too, iirc.

Sorry, that probably doesn't help!

*updating spreadsheet* - thanks!

Using a combination of Bishop, Barney & Funt (the lawyers you never want to call), I've updated my data on Karyn:

[Dark Jimbo]

Karyn is in Fetish too, iirc.

Sorry, that probably doesn't help!

*updating spreadsheet* - thanks!

Using a combination of Bishop, Barney & Funt (the lawyers you never want to call), I've updated my data on Karyn:

You've missed Asylum (Meg 4.05) - the story where she and Dredd first battle the beastie which later possesses her.

[Funt Solo]

Thanks, Jimbo, and welcome to the practice...

[DrJomster]

Loving these graphs!
How about combining Caballistics, Absalom and Diaboliks? (and I suppose you could throw Necronauts in which is thematically similar if entirely unconnected plotwise).

Ka-ching!

Love it! These are awesome.

I hadn’t realised Absalom ran over nine* years. NINE! Time flies when you’re having fun reading the prog!


*including a few gap years

[I, Cosh]

In my dreams I'm hoping to find time to find data for exactly when/how often each character has appeared, whether or not in their own story. Barney does a pretty job of this, e.g. noting when Anderson and Hershey are in some epsiodes of Judge Dredd -

Ah, yes - me too. Whenever I think about this I think that there's no point in the project unless it improves on Barney (because we already have Barney).

My own data is in a terrible format when compared to a relational database, but it is useful for me - it allowed me to quickly make all the charts on this thread with just a few minutes work.

But a giant table that repeats information all over the place is not efficient (or easily searchable) - and generally doesn't include character information. I do try to get crossover stuff in there, but it involves duplicating rows. Here's my current example of Karyn, which I know is missing some key stuff (like Martyrs, for example):

Very interesting.
 
FWIW I've also thought about this quite a bit. Off and on I've been messing around trying to create a little application to create my own bespoke digital GNs using a combination of the cbz files I've bought, Barney and an index of content.

Say I want to generate my own collection of every Sinister Dexter story since they arrive in Generica. I have all the files. I can get the relevant prog numbers from Barney. I can use that list to filter my files. The biggest problem I have is getting the right pages from those files into my new one. (The second biggest is handling correct page orientation in case there are splashes.) Keeps me occupied.

About your ER diagram

... takes deep breath...

If you're thinking about this as an exercise in data modelling and design then that's fair enough but as something functional for working with such a small dataset it's way too complex to me. I didn't create Barney and I'd love to be able to change some things about the database. However, it does quite a few cool things with a simple underlying structure just by smart querying.

You've already identified the biggest issue: if you normalise everything to this extent you have to spend ages building the interface to populate it. For querying and reporting though, a few views on top would give you everything you want.

Some specific comments/questions:
- I honestly got a bit lost in the supertitle/title/subtitle structure but I assume supertitle = strip and title = story name. The interface tables look pretty redundant unless you're really desperate to count the stories from the 2020 sci-fi special under both strips and, if I follow the example of "Sinister Dexter:  Bulletopia: Ghostlands" being broken down, you're getting dangerously close to tblWord(ID(int), WORDNAME(varchar32))

For me Strip and Title are enough but if you want to have all the others separate then a single with the all the fields and just coalesce them into a single value for display.

- You don't need a separate table for psuedonyms. Put them in the main creator table and add a self-key field referencing the "real" creator. In your design there's no way to get from a specific pseudonym to the strips it was used on. This way you can record the pseudonym in the main "gig" table and switch between displaying real and pseudo much more easily. Of course I'm not sure how you would handle the Alan Smithee case where multiple creators use the same pseudonym at different times...

- The biggest gap (as I'm sure you're aware) is the comics themselves. As far as I can see you have one table "comicTitle" but you're going to need something to classify those into prog, meg, etc and order them. But how to order them? I'm in love with the cover date but then how do you sort everything so that the Meg 427 (which came out on the same day as prog 2212) doesn't come after prog 2216. Do you use [prev issue cover date] + 1? Or add a separate ordering field? Lots of fun, which also brings us to...

- Content. If I follow the design correctly, datestart and dateend don't belong in this table. They're both tied to the cover date of the issues they appeared in so should be pushed back there.

- Strip/Supertitle vs character. I understand why you need both, but are you really going to have [Strip].[Judge Dredd] and then add [Character].[Judge Dredd] to every story?

- Gig. For any attempt to get page counts by artist, for example, this is a huge problem. Just "episode" isn't enough. How do you handle something like the Anderson story Undertow or Victims of Bennet Beeny? No detail = all episodes, otherwise break out?

 - Primary Keys. I am also old and wedded to the idea of a generated, numeric key but we don't have to think this way! PROG, MEG, INKER are all fine.

Wow, this is the longest post I've typed in ages. This was fun, lets do it again soon.