WELCOME TO REC.ARTS.COMICS (part 2 of 10: the r.a.c. glossary) written by lots of different people
edited by Paul A. Estin 1990-1993
Tom Galloway 1993-present

[last update: 6/13/95]

2. The USENET/ Rec.arts.comics lingo glossary:

Terms defined here (a + before a term indicates a changed definition, a * indicates a new entry).

General Usenet Terms:

AOL			   bandwidth		  btw
CIS			   FAQ			  flame
flame war		   FYI			  IMHO
IMPO			   kill file		  LOL
newbie			   ROFL			  September
signal-to-noise ratio	   SOL			  Web
wrt			   WWW			  :-)

rec.arts.comics Specific Terms

ashcan			   Bizarro Squiddy	  CBG
comix			   Crisis		  CSN
dangling plotline/dangler  dino                   eye tracks
fanboy/fangirl/otaku       flame                  fourth wall
furry                      JLA, JLE, JLI	  Kirbyesque/Kirbytech
L*                         LNH			  LSH
*META:                     nimbo                  PAD
patch                      phonebook              pod person/pod
pogs/milk caps             post-Crisis            pre-Crisis
rac                        raca                   racdu/racdcu
race                       racm                   racmp
racmu                      racom/raco-m           retcon
spoiler                    Squiddy                Suicide Squid
*TMK                       TMNT                   xbooks
Zero Hour/ZH		   zombie

General Usenet terms:

AOL
America On-Line, a commercial on-line service which provides Usenet access.

bandwidth
analogous to a radio bandwidth (frequency), referring to the resources needed to propagate posts. Usually used in the phrase "stop wasting bandwidth", which means simply "don't post if you don't have anything relevant to say."

btw
by the way

CIS
Compuserve, a commercial on-line service which provides Usenet access.

FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions; topics which have come up repeatedly with answers to try to avoid having them come up again. See part 3.

flame
an inflammatory, insulting post. See also entry in r.a.c. specific section.

flame war
a flame response to a flame responding to a flame...

FYI
for your information

IMHO
in my humble (or honest) opinion

IMPO
in my personal (or pompous) opinion

kill file
a file usable in the "rn" and "nn" news programs that one can keep to "filter out" disliked topics, keywords, or posters

LOL
Laughing Out Loud. To the compiler of this FAQ, an unfortunate migration from BBS land to indicate that you thought a post was funny. See ROFL.

newbie
[General] anyone new to Usenet or a particular newsgroup. [Specific] anyone who makes a netiquette mistake showing that they've not bothered to learn the customs of either Usenet or the newsgroup they're posting to.

ROFL
Rolling On Floor Laughing. To the compiler of this FAQ, an unfortunate migration from BBS land to indicate that you thought a post was *really* funny. See LOL.

September
Traditionally the time the net sees an influx of newbies as college freshlings get accounts. This is now distinguished as Actual September (the actual month of September) and Virtual September, which occurs when a pay service such as AOL or Compuserve causes a large number of newbies to gain access to Usenet. There is also the theory that Septemeber 1993 never ended, and the net is now in a state of Perpetual September.

signal-to-noise ratio
in a newsgroup, the proportion of useful articles to useless ones (such as flames). We like to keep the signal relatively high and the noise very low.

SOL
shit out of luck

Web
See WWW

wrt
with respect to

WWW
World Wide Web, a hypertext linked system of information resources. See part 5 of the Welcome message for more information.

:-)
a "smiley", used to indicate humor or sarcasm

SPECIFIC R.A.C TERMS:

ashcan
a half-sized (4" x 5"), typically black and white, promotional copy of a comic book. Originally, ashcans were produced to claim trademarks. Today, ashcans are produced more as a promotion than to gain guardianship of intellectual property.

Bizarro Squiddy
The sillier and more net oriented annual r.a.c. awards. See "Squiddy" for more detail. Formerly known as the Alternative Squiddy, but changed to avoid confusion with alt.comics.alternative

CBG
Comic Buyers' Guide, a weekly newspaper

comix
independent, non-mainstream comics, such as Yummy Fur or Desert Peach.

Crisis
the Crisis on Infinite Earths (usually). (See the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) in part 3)

CSN
Comic Shop News, a free weekly hype sheet

dangling plotline/dangler
an unresolved plotline or mystery which an author has apparently forgotten about, since it hasn't been mentioned in a long time.

dino
someone who prefers, or even was just around, for a title's "good old days". Most frequently used on rac.xbooks to refer to someone who prefers the days when Chris Claremont was writing X-Men.

eye tracks
The supposed traces left on a comic by reading it.

fanboy/fangirl/otaku
a rabidly devoted fan, often said to be "drooling". This can be used in a general sense, or a specific sense, such as X-Men fanboy, Sandgirl, Image fanboy, etc.

flame
As in "Keeper of the * flame" where * is replaced by a comics character or series, such as "Keeper of the Suicide Squid flame". Indicates a strong liking for that particular character/series, with said character/series usually being currently in limbo. Or in other words, a not often seen character or series that the person wishes would get more exposure/be brought back. Originated by Dwayne MacKinnon as Keeper of the Alpha Flight flame.

fourth wall
originally used with reference to stage sets, this term refers to the imaginary wall between the characters and the audience. "Breaking the fourth wall" refers to comics in which the characters are aware that they exist in a comic book, sometimes for the purpose of humor.

furry
an anthropomorphic animal, such as Mickey Mouse, Cerebus, or Omaha

JLA, JLE, JLI, EJ, JL
the DC super-hero groups "Justice League America", "Justice League Europe", "Justice League International", "Extreme Justice", "Justice League"

Kirbyesque/Kirbytech
Similar in tone or style to the work of Jack Kirby. Kirbytech refers to similar to Kirby designed devices/weapons/gizmos, sometimes drawn with an actual "Kirbytech" label

L*
Shorthand for the DC comic title Legionnaires, to distinguish it from the title LSH.

LNH
Legion of Net Heroes, a parody of sorts of...

LSH
Legion of Super-heroes (a DC comic book)

META:
Keyword used in the Subject: line of posts to indicate that the post is about the newsgroup itself, rather than the topic of the newsgroup. For example, posts about electing a new Squiddies organizer would have their subjects prefaced with META:, since that's about the newsgroup rather than a particular comic.

nimbo
Contraction of "ninja bimbo" to describe a female character trained in Asian (usually Japanese) martial arts and skills who wears a skimpy outfit, often with high heels, and has incredibly large breasts and incredibly narrow waist. Much more common in comics than they should be.

PAD
Peter A. David, a comics writer known to read r.a.c

patch
see retcon

phonebook
name for the collections of 20-25 issues of Cerebus, so called because they're the thickness of the phonebook for a large city. Sometimes applied to other hefty collections, but most often to Cerebus.

pod person/pod
a character who has been taken over by a new writer and/or editor and immediately acts very inconsistently with previous characterization, with no explanation given for the change, and no change noticed by other characters in the book. The term is from the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where aliens grew duplicates of people in giant pods. First use of 'pod' was in reference to the changeover after Keith Giffen left the JLI titles, concerning the characters Fire, Ice, Max, and Oberon.

pogs/milk caps
Round, approximately 1-2.5 inches in diameter, and cardboard, pogs are the element of a game from Hawaii. While the game involves stacking the pogs and flipping another to knock them over, on the continent in recent months, they have simply become another alternative to trading cards, bearing art and/or text concerning super-heroes. Many here consider pogs on the mainland an example of a manufactured fad.

post-Crisis
events/history/characters in the DC Universe as they existed *after* the Crisis on Infinite Earths. (See the "Frequently-Asked Questions" section in part 3.)

pre-Crisis
events/history/characters in the DC Universe as they existed *prior* to the Crisis on Infinite Earths. (See the "Frequently-Asked Questions" section in part 3.)

rac
Abbreviation for the rec.arts.comics hierarcy, sometimes shown as r.a.c.

raca
Abbreviation for the rec.arts.comics.alternative newsgroup

racdu/racdcu
Abbreviations for the rec.arts.comics.dc.universe newsgroup

race
Abbreviation for the rec.arts.comics.elfquest newsgroup

racm
Abbreviation for the rec.arts.comics.misc newsgroup

racmp
Abbreviation for the rec.arts.comics.marketplace newsgroup

racmu
Abbreviation for the rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe newsgroup

racom/raco-m
Abbreviations for the rec.arts.comics.other-media newsgroup

retcon
To retroactively change the continuity of a character or title. (This term, a r.a.c favorite, was coined by Damian Cugley. It is a shortening and, at times, a verbification of the Roy Thomas popularized term "retroactive continuity". That term appears to have first been used in a letter column in All-Star Squardron #18, where Thomas writes that he heard it at a convention) Originally, the term "retcon" was used only in cases where the interpretation of "facts" from earlier stories is changed, but the facts themselves are preserved. For example, Alan Moore took took Swamp Thing, previously considered to be a man transformed into a plant creature, and with minimal changes to facts presented in previous stories, wrote Swamp Thing to be a "plant elemental", one of a long line of such beings. A "patch" was the term used (taken from programmer's jargon) to mean an actual change, rather than merely filling in details. These days, however, "retcon" is used increasingly to mean changes to history as well as to retroactive continuity. So, to "retcon" is to change history, so that something that had existed in the continuity of the fictional universe, not ONLY doesn't exist now, but in the fictional history, NEVER HAS existed. This can be true of an event, of a character, or whatever. For example, if Hawkman appears in the Justice League, and then years later a writer decides that "No, Hawkman just came to Earth, he was *never* in the Justice League," that's a retcon. Retcon is also listed in the New Hacker's Dictionary, with credit given to r.a.c.. In the second edition, this is disputed. In the third edition, should there be one, there will likely be a dispute of the dispute...

spoiler
any item which "gives away" information about a comic. Proper netiquette is to give a "Spolier Warning" first, to allow people to avoid the spoiler if they wish to not have their surprise ruined.

Squiddy
what some people call the annual r.a.c. Awards. See section 3 for why this is the case. These are the more formal and serious categories.

Suicide Squid
See the FAQ in part 3.

TMK
Abbreviation for TomMaryKeith, specifically Tom & Mary Bierbaum and Keith Giffen in reference to their work as writers on Legion of Super-Heroes.

TMNT
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

xbooks
comics in the X-Men family line

Zero Hour
DC Universe redefining mini-series. See the FAQ in part 3.

ZH
Zero Hour

Zombie
Similar to fanboy et al, this is most frequently used in the phrase "Marvel zombie" or "mutant zombie" to mean someone that will buy any Marvel or mutant title, no matter what, or even if they like it. The former was made as a joke by Carol Kalish in reference to a letter in Groo soon after Marvel started publishing it. The letter stated that the writer hated Groo, but "had to buy it, because it's from Marvel". This is even sillier than it appears, since Groo was not even connected to any other part of the Marvel Universe. A Ward Batty written Trufan Adventures strip in CBG popularized the term.

[end of part 2]

     This Welcome Message/FAQ is Copyright 1991-5 by Tom Galloway,
     and is made available as a service to the Internet community.
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