United Features Realizes That Setting Comics Free Online Makes Sense

from the about-time dept

For years, the big comic strip syndicators tried to pretend they could recreate a world of scarcities online. They tried to hide comic strips behind registration walls and make it difficult to regularly view them. RSS was completely out in some cases -- especially if that RSS included the actual strip. This was backwards, as something like RSS for comic strips is a perfect example of what the technology was designed to do. For many years, one of the most popular RSS feeds online was a scraped unauthorized version of Dilbert. All of this artificial scarcity and fear over openness actually allowed many webcomics to become quite popular in place of the professionally syndicated comics. Finally, earlier this year, United Features, which syndicates Dilbert, revamped the entire Dilbert.com site and added a real RSS feed.

It appears that United Features is taking that even further, freeing up all of its comic strips online, including vast archives, and is adding full RSS feeds for all of them. This includes 50 years (and 20,000 strips) of Peanuts. You can even create your own custom feed of comics that you like. United Features is probably about five years late in getting around to this, but better late than never.

1 Comments | Leave a Comment..

Scott Adams To Try Crowdsourcing Dilbert's Jokes?

from the can't-wait-to-see-dogbert's-take dept

While I've had my own minor run in with Dilbert-creator Scott Adams, I remain a fan of the strip. Adams has always received many of his ideas for the strip from readers, incorporating them into the storylines and jokes. Now, it looks like he's taking that idea even further: letting his fans write the comics themselves. Late last week, the Dilbert.com website got a massive makeover, which upset many folks, in particular for its wide use of flash. It also broke the "unofficial" RSS feed that someone had created for Dilbert comic strips -- though the Dilbert people (finally!) realized it wasn't such a bad idea to offer one of their own. While the new site may be a bit flash-heavy and annoying to manage, it's quite interesting to see that one of the features on the site will be to allow fans of the strip to write their own punchline, filling in the text for the final frame. Eventually, this will extend to filling in the text of the whole cartoon. While there are no official plans to publish any of the results, Adams seems curious to see what pops out. He even admits the realities of copyright when it comes to these cartoons (which is amusing, since the argument we had was over copyright), telling News.com:

"We're accepting the realities of IP on the Internet, and trying to get ahead of the curve. People already alter Dilbert strips and distribute them. If we make it easy and legal to do so, and drive more traffic to Dilbert.com in the process, everyone wins. Plus it's a lot of fun to see what people come up with in the mashups."

Even though there is something of a filter in place, it's likely that (as with other such efforts) some of the results will push the boundaries of tastelessness. Still, once you get past that, it will be worth seeing how much this impacts Adams' work. The suggested punchlines could influence future strips, or Adams may eventually do something interesting with those alternative panels. Of course, the whole thing could fail miserably, but it'll still be fun to watch the experiment in action.

17 Comments | Leave a Comment..