The Random Nature of Information
Things will appear when they appear, and no amount of willing might alter this at all...
Everything began so simply, and so beautifully, and it was all so wonderfully quick that of course there had to be a catch. While I had intended to continue from where I had left off, chronicling through the letter B, it seems that titles from within that category do not wish to make themselves seen. There were always going to be a couple of titles which were going to be a massive headache, but when even something as easy to cover as The Beverly Hillbillies Annual - which I’ve already covered, extensively - proves difficult to locate, then everything grinds to a halt.
I made the decision to keep going, compiling information on whatever revealed itself, irrespective of any alphabetical standing. I have so far spent a couple of days attempting to figure out Judge Dredd Megazine’s compact listing, and slightly longer on the 2000 A.D. one, both of which are suffering from gaps in my records - which is going to be slow to get resolved if things continue as they are. There is a very heavy box full of Farthing Wood things, and nothing seems to have dates. I went through it all extremely carefully, reading all the tiny copyright notices, and scouring whatever seemed likely to have a date within, and have admitted defeat. It’s not an abandonment of that particular title, just yet, but I will need to approach it’s dates from another title. Other titles are similarly afflicted by a lack of concrete dates, and I am going to ponder what avenues I have available (with an eye on time already spent with these) to get as much cleared as possible.
Having had time to process just how skewed entries are going to be weighed towards long-runners (2000 A.D. is not alone in being so complex, and other titles will require similarly expansive coverage) I have to admit that I’m a little disappointed that certain titles are going to need entire pages to themselves. Any edits will likely eat into useful information, and I can’t see myself shrinking the font down much more,,, What was intended, when I began, was to keep things as brief as possible, racing through a title’s information and moving on to the next - that’s not going to work with the format as is. It doesn’t really matter, this early in the process, as some editing of these entries will undoubtedly take place later.
There are approximately three hundred issues of Edge sitting in a box near the chair I have set up in storage, and I may be checking through those for a short while, rather than hurrying to index more comics. I’ve been meaning to scratch off a couple of references from that title, and now’s as good a time as any, when it is freed from all surrounding material.
Who really needs a break, anyway?