From: [p--b] at [festival.ed.ac.uk] (Paul O'Brien)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.marvel.xbooks
Subject: X-Men Danglers FAQ - Part 1
Date: 27 Dec 1995 17:00:09 GMT

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The X-Men Danglers FAQ, Part 1: Introduction
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Part 1 - Last updated 21 December 1995.


Welcome to Version 9.1 (V9.1) of the Official X-Men Dangling
Plotlines List.

This is a list of all the plotlines and other information given
to the reader which, for one reason or another, have not been 
resolved.  This edition has slightly narrowed the definition of
"Danglers" to confine it to deliberately created plots.  That
means that the various plot holes and examples of bad writing which
made their way onto the FAQ have been deleted.  Also gone are some,
but not all, of the "Whatever happened to...?" questions.  While we
need to know what happened to Eric the Red, I'm not convinced that
the White Queen's personality changing device from ten years ago
really counts as a dangler.

So what is a dangler?  Well, they tend to come in one of three
ways.  Firstly, there's plots that were started and never resolved.
The classic example is the "who killed the X-Men in Bishop's
timeline" dangler.  Secondly, there's plots resolved in such a way
as to make it clear that they will be reopened.  "Whatever happened
to the Kulan Gath necklace?" is one of those.  Thirdly, there's
lines of dialogue that refer to past events that haven't been shown
yet, hence the reams of "How did Cable meet such-and-such" entries.

The lists currently cover Uncanny X-Men, X-Men (Vol. 2), the
New Mutants, X-Force and Wolverine.  When completed, it will cover
all the X-books ever published.  (Then the next ice age will set in
and I'll have to start all over again.)

The postings are split in the following way:

    #1     That's this one.
    #2     Chris Claremont's run on Uncanny X-Men
    #3     Subsequent issues of Uncanny X-Men
    #4     X-Men (Vol. 2)
    #5     The New Mutants
    #6     X-Force
    #7     Wolverine
    #8     [will be X-Factor]
    #9     [will cover other miscellaneous series]

Accompanying each new edition will be a post listing the
changes made.  If I receive more than five e-mails requesting
that a change be reversed, then it will be.  Simple, huh?

At present there are no plans to include the 1960s run of
the X-Men.  I tend to the view that if nobody's referred to a
plot in twenty-five years, it's probably not very significant.

Excalibur is not included because a separate Danglers FAQ 
already exists for it.  You can probably find it on the
same WWW or FTP site where you found this.

History
-------

The X-Men Dangling Plotline List was originated by Laura
Burchard.  That was V1.  Tom Galloway provided V2, and he
collaborated with Connie Hirsch for V3 and V4.  Robi Karp's
run as editor started in July 1992 with V5, and an amended
version appeared in May 1993 as V5.1.  I'm Paul O'Brien, and
I took over the list in 1994.  My first updated version was
V6.  V7 was the version that added the New Mutants.

Unfortunately, by this time everything was becoming a bit
of a mess.  The files weren't all in the same format, and with
the best will in the world, finding anything on the Claremont-era
list was next to impossible.  V8 was a total rewrite of Parts 1
and 2, and a substantial rewrite of the other parts.  It also adds
X-Force for the first time, and closes down a few sections
(Danglers Unlikely To Be Answered, and Bad Writing - their
contents have been distributed to the Open and Closed sections as
appropriate).  A slightly updated version, V8.1, came out in
June 1995.

This is V9.  Aside from the usual updates and corrections, this
edition is the first to include Wolverine danglers.  There's 
actually fewer than you'd think, but they're here anyway.

Contributors
------------

Many people have contributed to this list over the years.  Without
the support of them, this list would be incomplete.  Actually, it
probably is anyway, but let's let that pass.  Thanks to:

Laura Burchard, Tom Galloway, Connie Hirsch, Robi Karp, Pete
Granger, James Robert Drew, Ken Arromdee, Subrata Sircar, Raleff
the Wanderer, David Goldfarb, Kent Campbell, David Kidd, Ryan
Matthews, Ted Ying, D. Scott Kitschen, Gary Lewandowski, Vaughn Clark
Gross, Mike Harrison, Jeff Leyser, Seth D. Kadesh, Douglas R. Oosting,
Kris L. Cox, R. Travis Jones, Dennis Balagtas, Carl Rigney, Richard
Johnstone, [o--te--t] at [ifi.uio.no], [e--i] at [midway.uchicago.edu], Kingston
Arthur, Joshua Michael Wolf, Shurron M. Farmer, [w--lr--s] at [ccwf.cc.utexas.]
edu, Richard Chlopan, [m--ll--s] at [nyx.cs.du.edu], Naomi Gayle Rivkis,
P.J. Case, Sam Bratton, Craig H. Rettig, [rich bellacera] at [amail.amdahl.]
com, David R. Henry, Lance Visser, Jason Rosenbaum, Ruthanna Gordon,
Eivind Gladheimstreng, Martin Livingstone, Owen Erasmus, Shannon
Pipik, Addison Godel, Jane Griffin, Kelly A Madsen, Alisdair Watson,
Dwayne MacKinnon, "Greenstool", J. Wilson and Sara Berg.

As always, there are doubtless people who sent me lists of suggestions
in the past which I've completely lost or just forgotten about entirely.
If you're one of them, then sorry, and please mail again.

List Breakdown and List Format
------------------------------

Much simpler on this edition.  There are open danglers; and there
are closed danglers.  Simple as that.  Almost all the danglers are
associated with an issue number and a page number.  They are listed
in order.  Some have been missing issue numbers ever since I took
the list over, and some are too general to pin down - they are
listed at the beginning.  The format of a dangler is as follows:

Dangler number (issue number, page number)
Dangler text
Dangler resolution and editors' comments.

The Claremont-era list has now been put into this format.  It
does not include page numbers because frankly, even I have better
things to do with my time than go through every single issue of
the X-Men identifying the page numbers of each dangler.

Previous editors' comments have been deleted as of version 8.
This is because many of them were several years out of date and
consequently were requiring even more explanation after them.  I
decided it was best to cut my losses and start from scratch.

Please direct any comments to [p--b] at [festival.ed.ac.uk.]

Copyright
---------

Yes, you may feel free to place this document on your FTP site
or WWW page.  You may also feel free to post it to bulletin 
boards, AOL, or anywhere else as long as it is relevant to the
topic there.

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