How Is Sequential Ellison Organized?

So there is a little more going on with the site than we've had in the past. Sequential Ellison has always been based around a traditional static bibliography, a list of items with various details and the occasional image. Different technologies have allowed us to explore the material in different ways, but it generally has been static text.

The new site is a little more interactive, taking on the form of a relational database. Entries are divided into two sections: Publications and Stories. Publications are the printed objects that contain work by or about Harlan Ellison. The specific issue of Incredible Hulk or the specific collection of Dream Corridor Vol. 1. Stories are just that, the pieces that appear in those publications. So the story "The Brute That Shouted Love At The Heart of the Atom" appears in Incredible Hulk #140, but it also appears in the Essential Avengers Vol. 4 and Hulk: Heart of The Atom.

So when you look at the entry for a Publication you'll see the individual "components" listed, along with some basic info. Click on the Title of a story and it'll take you to a separate entry with more detailed information about that story. And the Story entry will include a list of Publications that it appears in, and you can follow the links to look at those too.

The same is the case with the names of Creators and with many of the descriptive Keywords. Click on an artists name and it'll take you to a page which lists all of the other Publications and Stories where that creator appears. Click on "comic book, black-&-white" and it'll take you to a page that lists all the other black-&-white comics in the database.

Some of these pages are still works in progress, but the hope is that you can follow the links wherever you want, and find new context to the stories and the creators behind them.

Thanks. Be seeing you.

Welcome Back!

  • 5 comments

It's been awhile since we've updated, and awhile since the WordPress Theme broke on us, but Sequential Ellison has never really left. It just slowly became a pile of "to be cataloged" books on my shelf and a notebook full of ideas on topics to research and improvements to functionality. But I've been working on this site in one way or another since 1993 and I was not going to let it completely disappear

So finally, as we enter the later part of 2022, and before we near our 30th anniversary, we are back up--the "original" Harlan Ellison Comic Book Site. Other sites and databases and resources have popped up since I've let the site fall behind (and I plan on linking to all of them on a resource page) but I hope I can still bring my unique take to the material in the relaunched site.

This site has always been a way for me to explore new technologies while I explore my obsessions and the relaunch is no different. We first went up as a text file on usenet in the mid-90s. We moved to a series of static HTML pages from the late-90s through the first few years of the 20th century. And then moved to a WordPress blog for the past 15 years. Now, its Drupal! My work in Library Science moved me into the management of Digital Collections on a platform called Islandora, which is built off of Drupal, and I decided to use this site as a way of getting my hands into the nuts and bolts. I've hopefully been able to bring some new functionality and new ways to explore this material by using Drupal's tools, and my 15+ years experience as a Digital/Metadata Librarian.

This is still very much a work in progress. All textual material has been moved over from the previous site, but I am still working on rescanning images and updating all of the records. The home page will always feature a blog post or two featuring some of the most recent additions. And do let me know if you come across things that are broken or that don't seem to be working the way they should.

With Harlan's passing a few years ago we are probably at an end of new additions to the bibliography, barring some new collections or repackagings, so I'm trying to concentrate on new ways to look at the same data. To find connections and track collaborators. Harlan Ellison loved many things, and comics were one of them, and so I'd like to celebrate the artform that he both consumed and created.

Drop me a line at any point if you have corrections or suggestions. This is a growing and evolving document.

Be seeing you.