Comics historian Jess Nevins first came to the attention of many fans for his amazingly complete annotations of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Projects like that led to his creating The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana and The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes. Now Nevins is hoping to complete his trilogy of heroic history with The Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes, cataloging "every hero of the Golden Age. Yes, all of them."

To do that will require some expensive research, so Nevins has created a Kickstarter page to help fund it. "There's really only one place to do the kind of research necessary for this project," he explains, "and that's Michigan State University, in East Lansing. I'm estimating that I will need to spend at least two weeks at Michigan State to get all the necessary research done, and that will be expensive. (Air fare, hotel, rental car, incidentals -- they all add up, and quickly). Moreover, I will need to pay for professional web design for the accompanying web site, and that, too, is not cheap."

If he reaches his goal of $6000 (he's almost halfway there with a little less than a month to go as of this writing), he promises to "make the entire manuscript free online, as a professionally designed website, similar to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. You'll be able to buy copies of the book as print-on-demand, but it will be permanently available, for free, to the world." There are of course pledge incentives and Nevins will add additional stretch goals should the project pull in $6,000 quickly. [UPDATE: He's reached his initial goal, so keep checking the link for additions.]