Friday, May 22, 1981
Police arrive at Dayton Place to arrest Cash Mitchell, but he, Sampson, and Eva-Lynne are not on the premises. Having been pre-warned of the police’s imminent arrival, the trio have already headed to a nearby military base, and begun preparing to once again take Quicksilver to the Moon. They launch that day. (29: Cassutt)

Late May, 1981
Cash, Sampson and Eva-Lynne once again fly to the Moon. While they’re en route, Eva-Lynne mutates into her final joker form and begins slowly dying. Once the trio land, they collect samples of lunar dust, and also take a panel from the communications array they had previously established on the Moon in 1968. (Presumably it’s just a pile of wreckage, since 29: Mohanraj Three confirms the array was destroyed by Aarti almost as soon as it was erected.) Eva-Lynne dies while Sampson and Cash are collecting evidence. As Aarti observes them with both anger and confusion, Cash and Sampson bury Eva-Lynne’s body on the Moon. (29: Cassutt) (Aarti’s observation from 29: Mohanraj Four)

Aarti decides that the next time humans come to the Moon, she will kill them. (29: Mohanraj Four) Sampson and Mitchell return to Earth, to some fanfare and celebration. (29: Cassutt)

June, 1981
Cash has another confrontation with Bertram Neal, during which Cash angrily throws a pile of Moon dust in Neal’s face. (29: Cassutt)

Japanese executive Koyama Eido retires to the island of Shikoku with the ambition to discover a comet. (2: Williams “Comet”)

On a Friday in London’s Jokertown, Allen Crippen, recently infected with the wild card virus, intervenes when a three-armed joker named Jenny Scott is accosted by some delinquents. Allen and Jenny get better acquainted back at her flat, and she promises to introduce him around the community. She invites him to move in with her, and he accepts. After a few days of living together, Allen and Jenny become intimate. Not long after that, Allen learns that the use of his tunneling powers to try and rescue Jenny has brought him to the attention of a joker criminal named McAndrews, aka “Pussyface.” Allen demonstrates his abilities to McAndrews, and is told that he’ll be called upon soon to do a job. (27: Stross)

The Thursday after Jenny first met Allen, she reports in at New Scotland Yard, and tells her superior – Rutherford – about Allen, having pegged him as a potential new police asset. That night, Allen takes Jenny out to dinner. (27: Stross)

The week after first being contacted by McAndrews, Crippen does his first job for him, which is simply the burial of some boxes. Several other jobs follow. Meanwhile, Jenny learns from a background check performed by New Scotland Yard that Allen has a prior criminal record, something he’s never shared with her. (27: Stross)

August, 1981
By now, Allen Crippen has told Jenny Scott that he is working for McAndrews on jobs that are not quite legal. Jenny lets her superiors know about the buried boxes from Allen’s first job. The boxes are dug up, and the police find a body inside one of them. Meanwhile, Allen has been tasked with the job of creating a tunnel underneath a jewelry store so that McAndrews can send men in rob it. It’s a large-scale project, one which will take several days to complete. (27: Stross)

Jenny is kidnapped by thugs working for McAndrews, so that he can punish her for having told her superiors about the buried body. Meanwhile, on a break from the jewelry store dig, Allen calls Jenny both at work and at home, and gets no answer. Worried she might be in danger, he heads back to his house, finding it ransacked. He takes a cab to McAndrews’ house and tunnels into it via the neighboring yard. He and Jenny escape, and McAndrews and his gang are arrested. (27: Stross) (Note: The internal chronology of this story is somewhat contradictory, sometimes being said to take place over “weeks and weeks,” and at other times seemingly contained in a tighter period, maybe only three weeks long, rather than two months.)

The summer after his first year of medical school, centaur joker Bradley Finn is working as an extra for the film Jason and the Argonauts. His father, acclaimed director Benton Finn, is concurrently shooting The French Lieutenant’s Women on the same lot. During a break, Finn meets a quartet of gorgeous female extras from his father’s film. Not long after, Stan Whitehorn-Humphries – the makeup man for The French Lieutenant’s Women star Grace Kelly – goes missing, which causes Kelly to hide out in her trailer. Bradley discerns that Stan has the ace power to make Grace look young, but it’s a temporary effect that has to be redone on a regular basis. Benton doesn’t want to involve the police because it will turn into a media circus, so he asks Bradley to investigate the wild card community for clues as to Stan’s whereabouts. Eventually, it’s discovered that Stan was kidnapped by the four female extras that Bradley met only days ago. Upon finding the house where Stan is being held, Finn is threatened at gunpoint by the girls’ ringleader, Tanya. However, Stan convinces her that – now that the scheme has been uncovered – she should simply come clean and bargain, before any law enforcement becomes involved. She agrees. Sometime after the scandal surrounding the entire affair has died down, Tanya calls up Bradley for a date, and he accepts. (16: Snodgrass)

Late Summer, 1981
Teenaged joker Theodorus Witherspoon enlists the aid of a theatre actor named Trevor Fitzgerald, in an elaborate Cyrano-inspired scheme to woo Amare “Peregrine” Sweet, famous model and winged wild card. The plan goes awry, but Peregrine shows compassion to Theodorus after his and Fitzgerald’s deception is exposed. She tells Theodorus that he is a savant, and that he is going to make the world a better place. (31: Rowe)

Sept. 15, 1981
Aces! Magazine publishes a piece titled “35 Years of Wild Cards: A Retrospective.” (1: Martin “Retrospective”)

Dec. 13, 1981
Nineteen-year-old ace Jennifer Maloy is convinced to go to CBGBs one night with her friend Tricia. At one point in the night, Tricia is carried into a limo by a member of the band The Fads. Jennifer assumes that Tricia is being kidnapped against her will, and tries to get help. She meets Croyd Crenson, who takes her to the loft where the Fads’ after-party is taking place. Tricia is nowhere to be found, but a stranger – fleeing from criminals – ends up running into Jennifer and pressing a key into Jennifer’s hand. The stranger then disappears, and armed thugs show up looking for the key. When one of them sees that Jennifer has it, he starts toward her. Panicked, Jennifer exercises her ace power, passing through the floor of the loft and sinking down to the lower levels of the building. (1: Vaughn) (Year is based on Jennifer’s age in the story, and her birth year (1962) as given in M&M. Exact date is conjecture based on Sonic Youth’s appearance at CBGB’s. According to sonicyouth.com, in real-world history, the only date that Sonic Youth played CBGB’s in 1981 is Dec. 13.)

Croyd finds Jennifer on the lower levels, and the two of them team up to avoid the criminals, and to try to solve the mystery surrounding the key that Jennifer has accidentally acquired. Croyd takes her to Jokertown nightspot Freakers, where a psychometric joker waitress named Sheila is able to divine that the key opens a post office box on the edge of Chinatown. Croyd and Jennifer head to the PO box. As they walk, Croyd tells Jennifer a bit about how she could use her powers to be a thief, if she wanted to. Jennifer absorbs his advice thoughtfully. (1: Vaughn)

At the PO box, they retrieve an envelope containing about $30,000 in cash. Croyd uses his current ace ability – to suspend a person in place for a brief period of time – to freeze Jennifer and leave with half of the money in the envelope. When the effect wears off, Jennifer is bemused to realize that Croyd is both a rat bastard and a gentleman. When the criminals chasing her catch up once again, Jennifer is forced to use her ghosting power to escape. The repeated use of her power starts to make her tired and sick. She takes shelter in the Blythe van Renssaeler Clinic in Jokertown, ghosting through the back wall in order to avoid a nine-foot-tall joker night guard, named Troll. While resting in the clinic, Jennifer briefly meets Dr. Tachyon. (1: Vaughn) (Troll’s name given in later books.)

Dec. 14, 1981
In the early morning, Jennifer finally finds Tricia and learns that she wasn’t kidnapped, but had gone along willingly with the Fads. Later, Jennifer returns to the Jokertown Clinic and puts almost the entirety of the recovered $15,000 in cash in the clinic’s donation box. (1: Vaughn) This is thus the first time that Jennifer has essentially robbed the rich to give to the needy, but it will turn out not to be the last. (Book 3)

Apr. 30, 1982
Naval ship Hermes arrives at the Falkland Islands prepared for war. On board are two aces affiliated with the Order of the Silver Helix: Ranjit Singh, aka “the Lion,” an ace with enhanced strength; and probationary member Rory Campbell, aka “Archimedes,” who can generate directed electro-magnetic pulses. (27: Kloos)

May 3-25, 1982
Thanks partly to the invaluable assistance of the Silver Helix aces Archimedes and the Lion, the British military campaign against Argentina in the Falkland Islands is successful. (27: Kloos)

1982
Theodorus Witherspoon’s parents are killed in a plane crash. The entirety of their fortune is bequeathed to Theodorus. Since he is only seventeen years old, still a minor, his family’s companies are placed in the charge of Witherspoon family attorney Malachi Schwartz, to be handled by Malachi until Theodorus turns twenty-one and can take control of them himself. (29: Rowe Two)

December, 1982
Koyama Eido discovers a comet, but at the same time as does another comet-seeker, Seki, and so Koyama has to share credit, much to his chagrin. (2: Williams “Comet”)

March, 1983
Koyama Eido finally discovers a comet all his own, which is then coded Koyama 1983D. Mr. Koyama enjoys some bit of celebrity due to the comet’s unusual composition and speed. Over the next two and a half years, Koyama will discover four more comets of the same weird nature. These seeming comets are – it will turn out – pieces of the Swarm Mother, slowly approaching Earth for an invasion. (2: Williams “Comet”)

Late July, 1983
During the Black July riots in Sri Lanka, five-year-old Kavitha Kandiah hides with her parents and younger siblings in a neighbor’s house. Kavitha prays for her older brother, Ariyasiri, who is staying with a friend’s family. Later that night, Kavitha and her family learn that Ari and the family he was staying with did not survive the violence. (25: Mohanraj)

Dec. 5, 1983
Jacob “Wide Awake Jake” Riskin – a joker, and the overnight DJ for NYC Jokertown’s radio station, WAJT – is murdered by the station manager, Terry Wilson. Fifth Precinct police officers Leo Storgman and Ralph Pleasant are assigned to the homicide. Storgman, a nat back when the Rathole murders took place in the 1970s, has since contracted the wild card virus. He is now a joker, with pallid skin and ram’s horns on his head. (32: Priest)

Dec. 6, 1983
Running down leads in the Wide Awake Jake homicide, Leo Storgman interviews a joker entrepeneur named Angus Hood, and decides that Hood doesn’t look good for it. Storgman then makes contact with another suspect, Croyd Crenson. Crenson – whose current body is covered in prehensile vines – says that he’s not responsible. He explains that he was friends with the DJ, who would sometimes let him crash in a room at the station. (32: Priest)

Dec. 7, 1983
As part of their investigation into the Wide Awake Jake murder, detectives Storgman and Pleasant interview Father Squid at the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker. Storgman introduces Squid to Pleasant, and the two shake hands. Neither of the two men make any show of having already met and interacted more than once before – back in the 1970s, first when Pleasant interviewed Squid about the latter’s encounter with Monsignor Romulus Contarini, and then later when Squid informed to Pleasant about the whereabouts of Bernard “Deedle” Augustus. (32: Priest)

Storgman has another talk with Croyd, who reveals that he is currently staying in the flat that the late Jake Riskin kept at the WAJT building. (32: Priest)

Dec. 8, 1983
Storgman and Pleasant interview another murder suspect – a religious nut named Lewis Perry – who had threatened Jake Riskin not long before the latter was killed. (32: Priest)

Dec. 9, 1983
Out of guilt over having killed Jake, station manager Terry Wilson attempts suicide by jumping from the top of the WAJT building. Her life is saved by Croyd Crenson, who – from the window of the small apartment he’s staying in – reaches out to grab her with one of his vines. Though he isn’t able to catch her, he does successfully arrest her descent, which results in Wilson being injured rather than killed. While emergency responders tend to Terry, Leo Storgman heads into the building to confront Croyd. (32: Priest)

Storgman finds Croyd in the late Jake Riskin’s small crash-space. Croyd falls asleep, and so Storgman seals him inside the flat to keep him safe. (32: Priest)

Dec. 10, 1983
Storgman interviews Terry Wilson in the hospital, where she officially confesses to the murder of Wide Awake Jake. (32: Preist)

Dec. 24, 1983
Leo Storgman visits the flat in the WAJT building, where he finds it abandoned – Croyd having recently awoken, and moved on. (32: Priest)

October, 1984
While watching Margaret Thatcher on television delivering a speech that he wrote, Roger Barnes is infected with the wild card, transforming from flesh-and-blood to a being made of wood. He is immediately apprehended by Ranjit “The Lion” Singh of the Silver Helix, and taken before Winston Churchill. In a private conversation between the two of them, Churchill asks Roger to join the international joker terrorist organization the Twisted Fists as an undercover operative. Barnes agrees. (27: Peter Newman One) (Exact month conjecture, based on the date of a famous speech given by Margaret Thatcher on Oct. 12, 1984 in real-world history.)

Nov. 28, 1984
Tachyon’s daughter, Gisele Andrieux, is killed in a shootout with the bodyguard of industrialist Simon de Montfort. (4: Snodgrass)

December, 1984
New doctor and Peace Corps volunteer Bradley Finn arrives in Kenya to work with the joker community outside of Nairobi. He meets his new boss, Etienne Faneuil, and Faneuil’s assistant, Margaret “Peggy” Durand. (13: Snodgrass) (Peggy tells Bradley that it is long rain season, but she may be misspeaking, since the end of the story is also said to be during long rain season but it is five months later. I’d suggest Peggy simply exaggerated, and that the earlier scene is set in December, during Kenya’s short rain season. Perhaps on Dec. 13, the day after a particularly heavy rainfall in Kenya, according to online rainfall charts for December of 1984.)

On the Ololkisalie Game Preserve, Bradley Finn meets and befriends Zulu Mosi Jomo, and Australian J.D. Snopes, who guard the preserve from poachers. (13: Snodgrass)

March, 1985
After three months in Kenya treating and vaccinating joker children, Finn suggests to Dr. Faneuil that his wealthy father could hold a benefit, raising money to buy better medical supplies. Etienne agrees to let Bradley and his father make the attempt. (13: Snodgrass)

May, 1985
James Spector, a failed CPA from Teaneck, New Jersey, is infected with the wild card. He is clinically dead upon arrival at the Jokertown Clinic, in New York City. Tachyon revives him with an experimental process. Spector spends the next six months in the clinic’s ICU, screaming uncontrollably. (2: Simons)

In Kenya, Bradley Finn gets a phone call from his father, Benton, and is told that the plane filled with medical supplies will not be coming to Kenya, because of unending government delays. Benton relays his suspicion that someone with a lot of power doesn’t want the plane to fly. Not long after the conversation with his father, Bradley reads an article about the AIDS virus, and realizes the symptoms match the illness that seems to be running rampant among the Kenyan joker community. He runs a test on a sample of fifty jokers, and the results come back that all fifty of them are infected with AIDS. (13: Snodgrass)

Finn takes his results to Etienne Faneuil, who chastises Finn for running the test behind Faneuil’s back. Ultimately however, he apologizes to Finn for having been blind to what was happening. (13: Snodgrass)

May 27, 1985
Sometime later, Finn wonders how the AIDS virus could have moved through the community so quickly and completely. With some horrible suspicions, he breaks into the hospital one night and inspects the sterilized needles. He realizes that one of the cleaning solutions is actually no such thing, but is in fact dilute human serum, deliberately designed to infect. Before Bradley can leave the hospital, he is locked in, and the building is set on fire. Bradley manages to escape with a sample of Faneuil’s serum, but is then chased by killers just as heavy rains start suddenly to fall. Finn eventually retreats into the Ololkisalie Game Preserve. (13: Snodgrass) (Exact date based on the date of a large evening rainstorm in May of 1985, per online weather charts for Kenya’s rainy seasons.)

May 28, 1985
The next morning, the killers chasing Bradley Finn catch up to him in the preserve. His life is saved when the men about to shoot him are instead shot themselves, by Mosi Jomo and J.D. Snopes. Mosi and J.D. help transport Finn safely back to Nairobi, and Finn is able to get the information about Faneuil to the proper authorities. (13: Snodgrass)

Late summer, 1985
In New York, Mai, a wild card with the ability to heal jokers, is kidnapped by an ace criminal called Scar. Her father, Minh, starts tailing Scar for clues as to what has been done with his daughter, and he manages to espy Scar reporting to his boss, Kien Phuc. Recognizing Kien as a criminal from Vietnam, Minh sends a letter to Daniel Brennan, who has a history with both Minh and Kien. Brennan comes to NYC as soon as he can. When Daniel at last arrives at Minh’s Vietnamese restaurant, Minh is in the midst of being tortured and killed by thugs working for Kien. Armed with a bow-and-arrow, Brennan kills the men, but he is too late to save Minh. With his dying breaths, Minh gives Brennan as much information as his strength will allow, including telling Daniel that he should seek information from Chrysalis at the Crystal Palace. Before leaving the restaurant, Daniel leaves an ace of spades at the scene – a symbol of death, and a warning to his nemesis, Kien, who murdered Brennan’s wife years earlier. (1: Miller)

Brennan goes to the Crystal Palace, a bar in Jokertown, where he meets Sascha, a telepathic eyeless bartender, and the bouncer Elmo, a dwarf with enhanced strength. They point him toward the table where the joker Chrysalis sits, in conference with Fortunato. When Daniel joins them, Fortunato attempts to read Brennan telepathically, so the latter uses a Zen exercise to entirely empty his mind of thoughts. Fortunato seems impressed. Chrysalis asks Fortunato to leave her and Brennan alone. (1: Miller)

From Chrysalis, Brennan learns where Scar is keeping Mai Minh. She tells him that in exchange for the information, she wants him to come back to her apartment above the Palace that evening, where he’ll pay off his debt in sexual favors. He agrees, then heads to the property where Mai is being held. He bluffs his way in, and – despite having no wild card powers – Brennan ultimately kills Scar and rescues Mai. He decides that he will remain in New York City until he can bring down Kien’s criminal empire. Daniel’s romantic liaison with Chrysalis that night will turn out to be the first of many. (1: Miller)

Fall, 1985
One night before he goes to sleep, teenager Arnold Fentner’s wild card turns. He will gain the ability to shapeshift into various dinosaur forms. (1: Shiner “Generation” and 2: Zelazny) (Last name from M&M and Vol. 3.) (“Fall, 1985” is conjecture based simply on the story’s placement in Vol 1.)

After four years of working on it, Tom Tudbury completes a new Turtle shell. It is his fifth since he first debuted as the Turtle back in 1963. The new shell has “infrared, zoom lenses, four big monitors and twenty little ones, tape deck, graphic equalizer, fridge, everything on fingertip remote, computerized, state-of-the-art.” (5: Martin One)

And with that, we hit the end of Volume One.

Only 32 more books to go!

Just wanted to say that, though I personally have no more interest in reading about the Wild Cards universe than anything else by George R.R. Martin, your effort to lay the whole thing out like this is impressive. I've always had a soft spot for a good reference book. Which is pretty much what you're creating here.

I'm still enjoying this so much, Doot.

I especially love the stuff with Brennan who is one of my favourite characters (you've got to love the concept of Zen Archery). He's such a great version of the 'normal person with a bow and arrow who somehow manages to keep up with super-powered heroes' character that we all know so well.

I also love the way you've cross referenced things - and the fact that Kid Dinosaur gets his powers at the same time Brennan becomes active as the 'Crossbow Killer' is kind of awesome. I hadn't thought about that before.