Comments on: Online Comic Fandom in 1995

By: History and Memories » Comics Worth Reading

History and Memories » Comics Worth Reading — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 17:05:49 +0000

[...] poster, Paul Grant, passed away last month. I remember him, from back in the early 90s where their Comics & Animation forum was the place to be. (Paid access helped keep out the riffraff and troublemakers that plague so [...]

By: Johanna

Johanna — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:32:29 +0000

This was spring 1995, so I must have gone to work for DC later that year.

I don’t think anyone ever goes back to the old — if they become abandoned, it seems like too much trouble to recolonize when there are always new technologies. For instance, when I first posted this almost two years ago, I didn’t mention blogs in the first paragraph; instead, I said “Delphi forums”. Now, though, I’ve got a little community here, with my comments.

The same patterns recur, though, with groups fragmenting for similar reasons, regardless of the method of delivery.

Lyle, based on my memories, the behavior on the boards depended in part on which ones you visited. The GL one, for instance, was always a pit, because several bullies set up shop there.

And there’s a whole story about broken promises when they went from AOL to the web, but that’s outside this scope.

By: Lyle

Lyle — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:03:38 +0000

That certainly brought about flashbacks, even though I wasn’t reading comics (but was participating in online discussions) in 1995.

AOL’s DC section seemed to have calmed down by the time I started reading comics a couple years later (in 1995 I think I was spending most of my time on AOL’s writer boards, where people were likely to see the value in spending your time to write a good post.) By the time I got there the forums struck me as being very well-moderated, though I did frequently find myself in flamewars about gay characters and racial diversity on the Legion boards (I especially remember one Tyroc fanboy that I’d spar with).

I was actually sad to see the DC boards on AOL go away. I found them much more friendly than the web version.

By: Mark Fossen

Mark Fossen — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 17:02:32 +0000

Thanks for posting this, Johanna. This is an interesting picture of online fandom from right before The September Without End, when AOL allowed it’s members internet access and USENET (and the net as a whole) started changing for good.

By: James Schee

James Schee — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 05:57:54 +0000

Interesting piece. Had you started working at DC when you did this? This was a year or so before I first got online through a $100 for a year disc from AOL. So yes I was one of those young males you were talking about. :)

(My first ever e-mail was to a DCOJohanna, bluntlly asking why DC didn’t have a trivia game like Marvel’s. Because I didn’t realize there was a person on the other end.)

I missed out on Compuserve, as when they opened up on the web for free it just didn’t have the same feel as you describe here.

Nice to read about the history though. I wonder what the future holds for the online community? Will we see a circular progress with fans going back to older areas?