...is down.

Anyone know what's up? I'd hate to lose the best web resource on the Silver Age Legion permanently.

It's been down for a few days. I click on it every day for information on some bit character like Modulus, and it's very disheartening!

Alas, they've disbanded it permanently in order to pursue other interests. I will miss it terribly. But thank you Jo and Terri-Anne for the many years of enjoyment I got out of it.

Sad news indeed. I wanted to go through the site just today and noticed it was down. Like Eryk, I was hoping it was just a fluke.

I'll second a thanks to the Sannings. It was a great site with a lot of heart and fun ideas put in it.

I wish I'd known ahead of time, so I could've of saved copies of all the pages.

It will definitely be missed!

Maybe you could contact them and ask if you can still copy the pages. I'm not sure if I'm authorized to give out their email address, but you could send them a message through my message board (which they created for me) at the address below.

I noticed it was down a few days ago and was instantly fearful it might be permanent.

I think this is a horrible blow to the Legion's presence on the internet.

Their site was so thorough and fun... they put a lot of heart and soul into it obviously... I wish they would reconsider.

I'm sorry to see their site go. I hadn't visited it in years, but it was fun and creative, and full of their love for the Silver Age Legion.

Was their's the site that you accessed by piloting Cosmic Boy in a Time Bubble through the Time Stream? (I always thought that was an excellent homepage idea.) What a shame to lose it, if so. I didn't visit it much but did happen to go there just last week. I'm glad I got to check it out one last time before it went.

Yep, that's the one, Blacula.

I mostly used it for the Rogue's Gallery, and would love to see it preserved somehow.

I should probably check if it's archived on the Wayback Machine, although that can be such a slow slog to access with my home internet.

Here\'s the last snapshot I can find, from July 2011. It doesn't include the Rogue's Gallery, so I'm gonna keep spelunking.

Something else else about using the Wayback Machine to find information on a site that you had to click on a Time Bubble to access in the first place is very meta...

^Thanks Set!

Hmmm....

Terrible news.

Given the huge amount of work that obviously went into the site's creation, I'd have to think the only reason they would take it down (rather than simply leave it un-updated) would be

• money to maintain the pager/server
• fear of lawsuit/lack of time to defend against it.
• changes in web technology slowly causing it to break, and lack of time to keep up.

Of the three, I'd think the first is most likely, and ... well ... if people wanted it that badly, maybe someone could contact them about how they'd respond if fans of the site took up a collection, or enough people pledged to split the monthly server fee?

None of the above. They're about to publish a novel and want to distance themselves from LSH and have their internet identity be about their own creative work rather than DC's. I'll ask Jo if he wants to come on here and explain his motives himself.

Well, I can totally understand that, but, man, I hate to lose a lot of the groovy info that was on the site!

What I'd like to do, if they'll give us permission, is to archive a lot of the info from site in the Encyclopedia Galatica forum on this site.

I just wish they hadn't ended it so abruptly. Jo said there was an announcement that the end was near on the site, but I never saw it.

You can write them and ask, EDE.

This just in from Jo and Terri-Anne:


Hi, everyone! We just wanted to give a big thank you for all your kind words
about us and our former website. As well, we wanted to clarify our reasons
for wanting to retire it after more than a decade.

What Jim said above about us wanting to pursue other interests is true.
Please know that it was not our intention to deprive anyone of their
enjoyment of our efforts. (To be honest, we didn't expect it to be missed
all that much, as there are other online encyclopedias around these days
that did not exist when we started our site). But as we move into publishing
our own works, we hope you'll respect our desire to not have so extensive a
collection of our personal review and commentary writings as seen in any way
as promoting what is essentially another publisher's property.

That said . Eryk, thank you for asking our permission to distill some of the
information that appeared on our site-and which for the time being still
exists in cached form on the internet-in order to put some of it on the
forums you mention. To that end, Jim has our okay to PM you our email addy
so we can go over a few provisions we'd like to make first. Even with these
omissions, though, it's no small task you're undertaking, Eryk, but we thank
you for your dedication.

To all our supporters, sincerest thanks and best wishes,

- J & T

Hmmm...do you think Jo and Teri would object to me hosting their old site here?

I was thinking of converting www.longlivethelegion.com to something like what they accomplished and it would be nice to just use what they had already built as a starting point.

It wouldn't hurt to ask.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to contact them.

Doesn't EDE have the contact info?

Did anyone happen to save the images from this site before it closed? Specifically the images that are not showing in the Wayback Machine link?

Right now I really need the Superboy head-shot from this page. It's for a Comic-Con related item, so I need it soonish.

Is it a blown up one of Superboy from this page?

Correct. But that one is too small.

It's here - http://antimonitorhqsv1.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/s-de-superboy-parte-i.html - probably taken from the dead site, but 240x240 still isn't exactly huge for print. Wouldn't it be better to ID the original source/issue for it?

Thank you! I ended up using another scan (couldn't figure out the source) for the Comic-Con thing.

But this will come in handy!

Anybody want to help with this project?

Even though the Sannings haven't provided their blessing on recreating their site, I've decided to recreate it anyway. What I've been able to recreate so far can be found here - http://www.silveragelegion.com/

My ultimate goal isn't to just have a copy of their old site, but to fill in the gaps and use it as a template to make the site more our own. They did such a great job initially, that I felt that it made the most sense to use their structure as the core to a new Silver-Age Legion-centric site.

Phase One is to recreate ALL of the pages that I can find in the Wayback Machine and restore any lost images that I can find or that anyone else can provide to me. Then, once I have everything that could be salvaged, we can work on the other two phases.

Phase Two is to fill in the missing info/pages and Phase Three is to go back and customize the site more so that it no longer appears as a blatant rip-off and more like a homage or something that was inspired by their work. There's also a few pages that are really personal and should either be replaced by Legion World member's contributions or removed altogether. I'd just like to get a full picture before I dig into those, though. And it'd be nice to discuss the merits of what to keep an what should remain archived.

As it makes sense, Phase Two and Three will be happening simultaneously.

How can you help? Well, even though I've been searching out all of the pages that I could find, I may have missed a page or two that may exist out there. More eyes on what's missing could be a real help.

Also, where the pages exist, not all of the images were saved. If you have one of them saved somewhere to share, that would be great. Or, if you know or have a good guess as to what the image may have been either you or I could find the image/panel and replace it.*

After we've salvaged what we can, then I could use a lot of help on filling in the missing info/pages and/or adding things that they may have missed/skipped over. Also, any ideas on how to improve the site or styles/suggestions on how to make it feel more Silver-Age Legiony would be welcome too.

*One thing to note...the Wayback Machine has a lot of versions of some of the pages, I went with the one that best represented where I wanted to start from, so if there's that kind of discrepancy, go ahead and mention/link to it, but the answer may be that that's the older version or maybe the older version just appealed to me more. We can always discuss what works best should the subject arise.

I've redone a few of the pages just to see what kinds of styles I want to alter and what I want to keep. I haven't changed the content all that much yet.

Here are the updated (styles-wise) pages & their corresponding Wayback Machine page -

New Main Page vs Old Main Page.

New Membership Page vs Old Membership Page.

New Monitor Board vs Old Monitor Board. (Edit: Just realized I linked to a newer page than the one that I used as a template. Which one do you guys prefer?)

New Legion of Substitute Heroes vs Old Legion of Substitute Heroes.

Are the buttons meant to look like this?


Also, scrolling is... inelegant:

Yes, the buttons are meant to simulate 60's comic book coloring that was off a bit. Apparently, you aren't a fan. But thanks for the feedback.

I noticed the header issue, but didn't think it was a big deal. I guess I was wrong. (Edit: It's now been fixed.)

thanks for your hard work, Nighty! I'm digging the checkerboard header.

Monitor Board - I like the new one.

Thanks Ibby!


Having seen the newer version and deciding it better matched my sensibilities (although I'm a Supergirl came first guy...so I may change it further after I investigate when that became a thing...so far it's as early as AMAZING WORLD OF DC COMICS #9 in 1975), I've updated the page to match the newer version by the Sannings.

Thanks for all your hard work on this Nighty!

Looks great to me!

Thank you!

I'm busy updating the other member pages. Need to either find a Miscellaneous page (if it exists) or create one. Expelled Members is all I can think of for it. But why not call it "Expelled Members?" Maybe I'll add that, but that still doesn't help with "Miscellaneous."

Anyone have any ideas?

Hmm... there's future members, but that's covered under the Adult Legion section.

Also, just so I don't lose it, here's the link to the original, original website.

Here they list out Future Members, Expelled Members and Temporary Members. I might actually go this route instead of Miscellaneous. I also like "Roll Call" better than "Membership."

Hmm... it's a bit awkward the way they classify things there, though. I'd group all of the various traitorous members together (The Murrans, LSV, Command Kid, Dynamo Boy, Nemesis Kid, Universo) and separate them from things like Unknown Boy, the Weirdo Legionnaire, etc. I'm not sure "expelled members" is that useful, as nearly everyone gets expelled at one point or another, between stuff like the Dream Girl story and the Dynamo Boy story.

I agree with "Roll Call" over "Membership" as a term.

I do agree that the Temporary vs. Expelled members split is awkward, and support EDE's suggestion (good guys in one bucket, bad guys in another). Perhaps change Expelled to "False Pretenses members' or "Villainous/Traitor members"?

members in good-standing who were expelled (e.g. Superboy, Supergirl, the Dynamo boy entry) - perhaps grouped together, and the page named... um.... gosh tough one. I'd name it something like Instances of Expulsion, to show that these were otherwise long-standing/permanent members who were expelled as a one-off, if that makes sense. most of these instances lasted only one issue/story, after all. The intro could read something like, "Being a Legionnaire is very cool, but even good and heroic members can temporarily get expelled..."

I think this is really cool!

One suggestion (and this may have been discussed earlier), is that on the main page there are the button links to the various subsections, then in the layer below that, you have the Hyperlink text that is analogous to the old version that you linked to above. For example, from the main page, you click on the Adult Legion button, but on that page there are more traditional hyperlinks. Its the plan to stylistically make the button? style for all the links?

Otherwise, this is great! I love the idea to have all the Silver Age content in one place!

Yeah, sorry. Most of the pages are from the original site that I'm recreating. I'm slowly changing some of the pages to a new design, but I'm still working out what that new design will be as well as trying to fill in gaps as I find them or we create them. I'd also like to try and update the text here and there as well. The ultimate goal is to not just have the Sanning's site, but to use it as the basis for a Legion World version.

Thanks for the suggestions EDE and Ibby.

And btw, I'm kind of considering doing a site per era like this one. I'm just not sure if they'll all appear under www.longlivethelegion.com or each get their own domains like www.silveragelegion.com. Would having www.rebootlegion.com be a good thing or a bad thing?

Oh that is an awesome idea about the per-era sites.

I think the single LLL site would probably be the best route, then readers can fork off for the four different (or more, depending on how you count it) eras.

If I'm either a longtime Legion fan, or a newbie, I'll probably go to a unified site versus something era specific (that said, you can probably do custom URLs for the subsites). And the nice thing there is that if I'm a Bendis Legion fan and I go to the root Legion site, then I can dig into all these other eras if I really like it.

I was actually thinking a site for each Era would be super-cool, but didn't want to suggest it because I know how much work it's going to be just getting this one done.

Yeah, they'd definitely have to wait for this one (Silver Age) to get more fleshed out at least. The current (?!?) Legion has www.legionofsuper-heroes.com currently. And back in the day, I had a lot of Threeboot-area content for Legion World that I could reuse/repurpose. Everything else would have to be created from scratch.

I do think a main site, with dedicated sub-sites for each era, would be cool. but yeah it must be a lot of work! thanks for this labor of love Nighty.

if you need help with editing /writing and stuff like that, i'm happy to pitch in. i can't help with the coding and layouts unfortunately, other than giving suggestions

Thanks! I'll definitely need your help with the copy and ideas on how to best organize the Reboot Legion (and the others that you wish to help out on).

What do you think your timeline is going to be?

I'd like to help out, but spare time has not been my friend lately....

I'm concentrating on this Silver Age site for now. So, everything else is at a minimum months away, but more like a year or so. I also have very limited time (should be writing reviews as I type this). I've been trying to motivate myself to get the Sanning site copied over and worked on. I figured making it public would help light a fire.

aye aye! Happy to help with the copy of any of the versions of the Legion and will keep checking in to give feedback/ideas for the rest

I've updated the following pages' styles -

Animation

The Ghost of Ferro Lad and all of it's sub-pages.

Escape of the Fatal Five and all of it's sub-pages.

Two pages that were updated but I'm missing all of the key art for is Escape of the Fatal Five Blooper Reel and the some of the images for the Animated GIFs page. Although I could probably (with a lot of time and work) recreate the animated gifs (or at least create my versions of them, there's no way I could recreate the Blooper Reel from scratch. I'm hoping, beyond hope, that someone has saved it somewhere or knows where to find it online. Please help! And if you have or know where any of the missing animated gifs might be, that would be a big help as well. I'm missing Cosmic Boy's "magnetism.gif," Colossal Boy's "grow.gif," Invisible Kid's "invisibility.gif," Sun Boy's "radiance.gif," Chemical King's "catalyst.gif," and Stone Boy's "petrify.gif." - Found on one of my old computers.

Every other piece of art for the site came from the comics and is reproducible given enough clues as to what's supposed to be there, but these items were unique to the original site and pretty precious. So, any help tracking these down is appreciated.

sorry, I have no clue but If I find something I'll let you know!

really digging these pages by the way. Really movie-ish down to the casting and rotating "posters"

I can see why you wanted to preserve this. The amount of effort put in to create those "movie trailers" must have been huge. Your recreation of the setting works very well.

Btw, the movie I'm looking for was originally called "eoff_outtakes.mpg" and later renamed "eoff_bloopers.mpg." The best chance of finding it is if anyone had saved it when it was a live page or when they briefly had them up on YouTube. Unfortunately, if I had done it (which I'm not sure if I had like the main two), it's on a computer that's since died and my backup external drive of that computer also died (been trying to access it for awhile now to no avail).