A little question

[Carnotaurus Wrex]

Good morning, or evening,depending on your time zone

Are there any of you ladies and gentlemen who've been a member since the day of this forum's conception?

If so, kindly tell me about how things have changed since then.

[Tami]

I started here in 2004. I'm certain there are others still around whose memberships predated mine. In some ways not much has changed. The biggest changes came after the 2014 reboot.

There is no way I can do an Oral History of everything I remember about the forum over the last 14 years, at least not here.

About 6 months before I joined [November 2004], in May of 2004, there had been a forum crash that lost a lot of older posts. When it was brought back, at least from what I understand, upgrades were made. So I am sure it looked different in some ways afterwards.

I think the forum dates back to around 1995 or so. As technology changed, the forum was updated to keep up with it.

[Duskman]

The winds have been blowing westward since the great crisis.

[Iron Maiden]

I wish there was a way to tell when my first post was but the board has been rebooted at least 3 times IIRC since as Tami mentions. Today's MBs have a much more efficient design. I remember when the posts used to be just text and each reply became indented so that it got really crazy looking in a busy thread. They would sort of drift off to the right as the nested replies multiplied.

The biggest thing that I recall happening to the boards was the crash caused by Mark Waid (who was writing the Fantastic Four at the time) being fired by Bill Jemas. That was back in the summer of 2003. By that time I had been here for a couple of years. So maybe around the late 1990's or after.

I belong to Fantastic Four board elsewhere where you can look up posts going back to the 1990s but it's less active than here.

On a side note, one thing I miss is the presence of the comic book pros. Kurt Busiek still posts on the Marvel boards from time to time but there were a lot more of them before Twitter, etc. I recall Walt Simonson (who still posts every once in a while) discussing Doombots with me and explained how he used them in his FF #350-#352. Gail Simone had her own forum here too. She was also a columnist.