RIP: UserFriendly.org

[thewayne]

The daily web comic that was a joy to web developers and computer geeks for about 12 years or so, has finally been shut down. The comic started in 1997 by Illiad, J.D. Frazer, about a Canadian ISP and the people who ran it, covering all things geek and HTTP. In 2009 updates became rather sporadic, but continued looping daily with an occasional new strip and an occasional site outage.

In late February Illiad announced on the user forums that the site would be shut down in the very near future.

Well, the very near future happened a few days ago. The site is now gone.

I had a lot of fun reading those strips, even as a looping archive. The adventures of Erwin, Pitr the wannabe evil mastermind, Miranda, Smiling Man, etc. Now all gone. I was hoping Illiad might do a Kickstarter and release the entire archive as books/PDFs, but I doubt that's going to happen.

Apparently Illiad gave a complete copy of the site to two trusted people, identities undisclosed. So there is a possibility that the site could be resurrected.

The message board, which was pretty active, has been moved to
https://hedgehog.blindambitionstudios.com/index.php?board=1.0

Comments

[kathmandu]

That's a shame. Especially with no print availability or static online archive.

So much creativity is being lost to time...

[thewayne]

Yep, indeed.  There's a similar series that, at least, is still accessible.  The guy who does Questionable Content did a short run that wasn't really short called Alice Grove that was quite fun.  The site is still up, I've thought about capturing the content and making my own PDF.  For that matter, he's never done incremental Kickstarters to release QC.

[lovelyangel]

Questionable Content books are at TopatoCo.com. I've got only one of the volumes; I guess I should get the others before they're gone.

UPDATE; I've ordered the other five volumes to complete my printed collection. Hopefully Jeph gets to pocket a few bucks.

[thewayne]

Nice!  I've never seen him post a comment that they were available.  Thanks for mentioning this!

[thewayne]

All six as PDFs for $50? Not a bad deal! Either next paycheck or tax return....

[lovelyangel]

Well... note that each book contains 300 “strips.” So six volumes gets you only up to #1800 or so – less than halfway through the entire comic. But the only hope for additional volumes is to show that the already published volumes were worth doing. Support your artists!

[thewayne]

Absolutely!  I always buy PDFs - when I know about them!!!  I was slightly late coming to Questionable Content, but I do love his work.

[makovette]

Well bummer. I enjoyed UF a lot more than Penny Arcade; unsurprising perhaps given I am far more geek than gamer. That said some help here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220228234721/http://userfriendly.org/

All things change.

Cheers!
Mako

[thewayne]

Yeah, Penny Arcade was always a lot more miss than hit for me.  There was another strip that I really enjoyed and I can't recall the name, Torg & Bun-Bun, the rabbit with the switchblade.  But it went off the rails for me and the fun just went away.  Sadly, change is certain, progress is not.

[silveradept]

Sounds like Sluggy Freelance to me (and a quick search says yes, that's the right name.)

Change is certain, indeed.

[thewayne]

Yeah, that's the one.  I loved it years ago, but as I said, it went off the rails for me and I stopped following it a long time ago.

[silveradept]

That's too bad. I stopped reading UF when Illiad went on hiatus, since it was never really in the forums that much, but the signed print I have hangs in a frame in my house. I can hope for someone to crowdfund an omnibus to capture all of the material in print (there were, I think, books from somewhere earlier, as I have seen them, but they're probably long since our of print at this point.)

[thewayne]

A signed print?  Nice!

[silveradept]

Yeah. I ended up as a runner up in (one of) the Illiad For A Day contest(s), so I got to pick a print from the archives and have it signed. That's probably my greatest creative achievement in terms of audience reached.

[thewayne]

Awesome!  A moment of internet fame!  15 ms instead of 15 minutes. :-)

[silveradept]

Yep. A good joke at exactly the right time to deliver it to an audience that would appreciate it. And a nice print out of it. My whole 15 ms of Fame, and glad I got it out of the way before we had organized and effective methods of brigading just in case there was someone who didn't appreciate it.

[thewayne]

The right joke at the right time can wipe out a room.  My kudos, my friend!