ComicBitsOnline.com

It is,perhaps,inevitable in this internet age that any form of comic fandom would die away quickly.

For many years I have been writing on Alan Class and his Class Comics;I set up the first Alan Class web-site anf the very first yahoo group on the man and his comics.  Look on the internet now and you’ll see a few -mainly using material from my site/group.  But it’s not an isolated thing.

If you search for John Cooper,artist on many UK comic strips but famously One Eyed Jack and Johnny Red,you’ll find snippets.  You’ll find a black and white photo of the man -the photo is a b&w version of the original colour photo in my possession and,uh,’perloined’ from Comic Bits [the magazine].  The snippets are also from my interview -the only one given by Coop [and only one person ever sought permission to use this and gave credit -Col.Marbles on his Johnny Red site].

But what can you expect -put stuff on the internet and you’ll get ripped off -even using without permission it would be nice to see a credit!

In recent weeks I’ve closed a number of my yahoo groups because,after years,many were getting no real activity.  I posted,uploaded files and tried and tried but the only thing members wanted was to download scans and that was it -in many cases not even a thank you.

What I found galling was the absolute ingratitude of a majority of members -demanding that more scans be uploaded,complaining that full series were not uploaded and when I warned of group closures I got very few messages but the ones I did get were mainly “you’ve got 500 members -you won’t close the group!”

There are now so many groups offering scans that people,very few even using real IDs,just join groups for scans and not to discuss or talk about comics.

It gets even more galling when you find your own scans going onto other groups without any credit.

Now,take my blog that I’m moving from:34000+ hits since January 2007 -that’s 34000 hits in 10 months.  How many of those visitors even commented or responded to requests?  Ten.  That’s 10 out of 34000.

Is fandom in comics dead?  I think it’s terminal.