The Question | Vic Sage | Renee Montoya

Despite the fact that I hardly finished more than three or four pages, I refer to this site as 3.0 for two reasons — it was the first site actually uploaded to VicSage.com, and it had actual visitors for some reason, one of them J. Bryan Shoup.

You can tell that I was really into looking at web trends and trying to copy them. Note the Squidfingers-style pattern, and the big fancy font. Just be glad that the site doesn’t currently have a reflecting Web 2.0 logo.

Something appealed to me about the idea from the previous version of making a site that had different layouts. So I decided to try to make a site that would have a different layout for each incarnation of the Question. Above is the main menu, the content of which I never wrote.

This was the Steve Ditko page, where I began my fascination with narrow layouts, and also drew a picture of the artist (few photographs exist). All of the issues, Charlton info, and Ditko bio were on the same page, which made loading times take forever.

This was the O’Neil / Cowan page. The uniting element of the site was supposed to be the typeface of the logos/titles — Badhouse, by House Industries.

Despite my refusal to break up the Ditko page, I couldn’t foresee putting all of the O’Neil issues on the same page, so I stole someone else’s layout for the issue pages. Sorry, whomever you are!

There’s something about this early summer 2006 version that I still really like. The reporter’s notebook was a scan of one I’d actually used myself, and the photo of the Question was a photo-manipulation of Alan Ladd, a noirish public domain picture of an alley, some newsprint and me playing with different Paint Shop Pro brushes.

This unpublished version was my first-ever brush with CSS, circa 2005.  I planned to have each page reflect the artist whose work was covered. See below for a Ditko page.

Then (2003), as now, I was enamored with  two things — the art of Rick Burchett, and rounded corners.

This version of the site was completed for a web design class I took as a sophomore in college, circa 2001. It was hosted on Brinkster, a site I loved at the time for the fact that they gave out free hosting with no pop-up ads (Geocities had started to get frustrating).

This tables-based site was never fully completed, but I still made an A in the class.

The site started in the summer of 1998, shortly after I’d been to HeroesCon in Charlotte and bought the entire O’Neil / Cowan run for about three cents an issue. I was immediately taken with the series, and remembered that I’d encountered the character before in my dad’s old issues of Blue Beetle (at one point, circa age 12, writing a song about Vic Sage).

I’d worked on a website before, in the 8th grade creating a Geocities tribute to Seattle grunge rock. But unlike my previous efforts, this one interested me because people were actually interested in what I was doing. One of those folks was a guy named Mikel Midnight, who seemed to be interested in any site that delved into the minute details of superhero history. He was extremely helpful in giving me tips and leads on what should go on the site. I hope he still drops by the new digs every once in awhile.

Another person who read the site was writer/artist Bob Layton, who told me that he’d looked over the site in preparing for his L.A.W. mini-series. He gave me an interview in those early days that got me excited about the potential for my humble Question site.

For those of you wondering who drew that awesome Question that’s in the middle of the menu up top, it was Warren Newsom, aka my Dad. I colored it in the days before I knew anything about palettes or layers or anything like that.

So that’s how things got started, almost a decade ago….

Details here.

But why post the news here? …Check out the caricatures Fred’s done of himself as numerous comic characters. Top row — fifth from the left.

I just posted the latest installment of our ongoing conversation with writer Greg Rucka. In this one, we discuss 52, the death of Vic/Charlie, the fall and rise and fall and rise again of Renee Montoya, and why us Question fans shouldn’t hate on Dan DiDio.

For those who missed them the first time, here are part one and part two.

(Edit 10/31 – And for those of you coming in late — here are parts four and five!)

And discusses what Denny’s run on the Question meant to him as a writer.

A writer should be more concerned about writing a given story as a question rather than as an answer. You should have an answer for yourself – a point of view – but don’t argue it as the answer. Writing the question and letting the reader answer for themselves makes them involved in the process. If you want to preach, get a pulpit.