This is basically a direct question to the creators, but I'm open to everyone else's thoughts, since any results that come of this will eventually be brought here to the forums, possibly in video form, because I'm usually too lazy to type and don't wanna make a TL;DR. Anyways...
Say, hypothetically, that a group of maybe two or three young men, all of intelligent minds, were, like many others, curious to all of the hidden backstory and timeline of the Multiverse. So they decided to spend a day during the summer laying out all of the SotM cards, looking at both the art and flavor text of each, making notes, drawing connections, consulting with the forum community, referring to podcasts, etc and trying to get a sense, or at least a good guess, as to what the details of the SotM timeline is.
Would they actually get anywhere in terms of knowing or having a good guess at the timeline? Or would it be a waste of time, because there isn't enough info in the flavor texts, art, etc to actually get anywhere?
You're free to do whatever you want to.
Shouldn't take more than an hour or so to do. Why don't you just lay out the cards and see what you find?
Spiff's SotM site: www.spiffworld.com/sotm
I mean like actually write down and make a list of the names of the comics, then try to put them in order. Like that kind of thing. We wouldn't end up posting that whole list; we're just using them as a way to keep track of what's going on. And this doesn't seem like something anyone could do in an hour. I'm talking about looking at every single card and making a timeline which includes all of them. Again, we won't bore everyone with that; it's just a way to help guide us.
You're free to do whatever you want to.
I will say that you could potentially learn a lot by doing so. :)
In a fit of boredom, I actually did something similar to this. Freedom Five is probably your baseline for events, since it has the longest "run" (almost 700 issues!). The only problem is, I haven't seen a way to correlate the various "series" to build a comprehensive progression of events. For example, where does the Wrath's first appearance in Mystery Comics line up with Legacy's first appearance in Justice Comics #1? Where does Arcane Tales fall line up with this, not to mention the personal series (Bunker, Fanatic) and the smaller series such as Engine Block Blues and Sunrise fall into this timeline. So far, I have a very rough gauge of when most of the character appeared in relation to the others, but that's it, and most of that was pulled from the "First Appearance" line in the website's character bios... which will hopefully be updated to include Rook City before Infernal Relics drops in August (happy birthday to me!).
Maybe if I broke out my entire set and laid it all out by series, it would give me a bigger picture. Yeah, my wife will be thrilled to come home to that on the living room floor...
I did notice that one of Plague Rat's cards references Chrono-Ranger and Plague Rat's nemesis symbol is a sheriff's star, so I imagine Chrono-Ranger will be part of an upcoming expansion, possibly one with an extratemporal/extradimensional theme. I imagine this has been surmised elsewhere on the forums, but I'm something of a Johnny-come-lately and haven't had time to read the whole thing. :-[
I'm kind of hoping Chrono-Ranger is more of a title (like "Green Lantern" or "Time Agent") rather than the character's chosen honorific.
-CSR
Then it shall be done!
Like I said, I'll try and post any findings in a video form, so it's not a massive paragraph of text. It'll be in a few weeks, though.
And yeah, we've caught CR. I don't wanna brag, but I'm pretty sure I was the slick one who informed everyone almost as soon as Rook City came out. 8)
You're free to do whatever you want to.
Is the Enhanced Edition going to give issue numbers to the flavor texts from the Environment decks?