The Marvel Heroes Library website went live on May 2, 2017.
It is the third generation of Superhero Libraries, an online encyclopedic website that can hold vast amounts of information and media
regarding comics, movies,
and more about comic book characters.
It all started about 25+ years ago, in June 1997.
Back then, when the Internet was in dippers, dial-up modems were the norm, there was no Wi-Fi, no Facebook, and Altavista was the search engine of choice for many, a humble but brave static, HTML-only Spanish website about Marvel's the Hulk, went live.
It was the cornerstone that commenced it all.
"El Increible Hulk", that was the name of the site, was The first Spanish Hulk website in the world, and one of the very first superhero sites too.
That Hulk site was the personal project of a young and upcoming Web Developer and Designer who loved comics:
Julio Molina-Muscara (from Cordoba, Argentina).
As years passed, the Hulk site evolved technologically, and grew in content.
Circa 2003, it was translated into English, and renamed The Incredible Hulk Library (hulklibrary.com).
It was the first time the term "Library" was used.
Because how much that site grew, Julio realized that updating and maintain the ever-growing Hulk site was a monstrous task.
So he asked his site's visitors for help with writing comic book synopses and reviews.
In exchange, they would be granted access to special sections of the site.
Many comic book aficionados responded positively, and started submitting their synopses.
One of them was Peter Silvestro, a Literature expert from Philadelphia, USA.
Peter sent three synopses, then two more. A week later, four more. By the end of the second month, he had sent about a dozen.
And by the end of the year, and of the next year, and the year after, Peter had sent so many synopses that he had matched, even surpassed Julio in the number of reviewed comics!
Today, Peter Silvestro is a fundamental member of the Marvel Comics Library Team.
Another fundamental team member is Rob Johnson from the UK.
Rob started aiding the Superhero Libraries with his profound comics expertise in 2010.
Since then, Rob has written a very large number of comic synopses and commentaries, and manages the Iron Man Library.
But I am getting ahead of myself. Allow me to go back a little bit.
Since the beginning, and for more than a decade, the Hulk Library was the only Superhero Library site there was.
But when Marvel movies started to come out (in 2008 with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk), Julio decided to expand the Libraries world, creating Superhero Libraries for each of the main movie characters.
Thus, Iron Man (ironmanlibrary.com), Captain America (captainamericalibrary.com), and Thor (mightythorlibrary.com) got their very own Library websites.
The new multi-hero model project (second generation) was as large as ever: It required better technology (mark), but also time and devotion.
So Julio decided to share the management of the sites with the two most devoted, prolific, and lovable contributors of the galaxy: Peter and Rob.
When the dust settled, Peter was managing Captain America and Thor, Rob managed Iron Man, and Julio stayed with the Hulk.
For practicality, Julio built a proprietary Content Management System (CMS) to allow Managers to enter site updates without knowing web programming languages.
Each Superhero Library had unique content, but they also shared some of it. For example, if their characters showed up in the same comic, that comic would be listed under both sites.
Although such was practical for visitors, that practice hurt the site's search engine rankings because content redundancies are considered spam by Google and the like.
So to resolve that, and provide the very best experience possible for the candid, loyal, and special comic-book-lover visitors we receive, the Marvel Comics Library came to be, gathering all Libraries under "one umbrella".
That brings us to today. And the story will continue in the years ahead.
Thanks very much for visiting the site. We, the Marvel Heroes Library Team, hope you enjoy your stay, and visit us again, anytime.