Catching up on webcomics, at your desired speed

September 7, 2009 2:57 AM

"Have you ever found an interesting looking webcomic, looked at the archive, and thought: I can't start reading this! There are hundreds of strips to catch up on! Rather than spend a whole day or more bingeing on a comic archive, set up an Archive Binge feed. You can start from the beginning, or wherever you're up to. You can set your custom feed to deliver a strip every day, 4 strips every weekday, or whatever you want, up to 10 strips a day."
posted by jbickers (24 comments total)

Two things: (1) It does require registration, and (2) is limited to strips whose authors consent. Still, pretty awesome, and the list of #2 will likely grow over time.
posted by jbickers at 2:58 AM on September 7, 2009

Interesting. I always thought the problem with reading web comics was the delivery system. Most of them have feeds now, but for reading the archives, there usually wasn't a good way to keep track of where you were reading (yeah, it's possible but annoying).
posted by delmoi at 3:51 AM on September 7, 2009

Yeah, this is really clever.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 3:57 AM on September 7, 2009

Very nice idea. However, I don't see Fritzi Ritz.
posted by pracowity at 4:43 AM on September 7, 2009

Nice. Would love a non-consensual version of this though. (I'm always saying that.)

Also if it did blogs would be double nice.
posted by frenetic at 6:07 AM on September 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Oh god.
posted by lucidium at 6:09 AM on September 7, 2009

Why did no one come up with this before?!
posted by mistersquid at 6:27 AM on September 7, 2009

Sweet, I got some 3-digit feed ids.
posted by Phssthpok at 6:30 AM on September 7, 2009

I usually tend to do the binge on the spot as it were. Towards the end of last term, no real work to do, and several hours of downtime at work, I stumbled upon Erfworld, and kinda sorta finished it in one three hour binge.
posted by Ghidorah at 6:33 AM on September 7, 2009

Don't you wish you could find a whole lot of current comics in one spot?
posted by Balisong at 6:43 AM on September 7, 2009 [5 favorites]

What a great idea
posted by Mick at 6:57 AM on September 7, 2009

I can definitely see myself using this. Thanks for posting it!
posted by sabira at 7:34 AM on September 7, 2009

Thanks Balisong
posted by manny_calavera at 7:52 AM on September 7, 2009

Does anyone know what happened to Comics.com over the weekend? I need my 9 Chickweed Lane/Frazz fix NOW!
posted by Ber at 7:56 AM on September 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

As someone who relies on Comics.com's strip inline links for a blog, I'd also like to know what's happened to them.
posted by JHarris at 7:59 AM on September 7, 2009

Reminds me of the time as a college student I had work-study in the library, and as an exercise in Perl I wrote a script that mined the Doonesbury archives and presented the strips one year at a time. I got through about 2/3 of the archive in my 4 hour shift, and learned a lot about recent US history. Pretty much opened my eyes to a fascinating period that my high school AP US history teacher had left out.
posted by msittig at 8:16 AM on September 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

the list of #2 will likely grow over time

Yep, that's webcomics for you.
posted by sleevener at 8:21 AM on September 7, 2009

I was about to say, "Why did no one post this before I spent Saturday reading xkcd?" but then I realized it's not available through this. [[shrugs]]
posted by limeonaire at 8:32 AM on September 7, 2009

Awesome! I actually started a project to do the same thing a couple of years ago, but only for myself. There was no way I could have made it scale.
posted by xorry at 8:41 AM on September 7, 2009

This would be a very good match with The Order of the Stick, which is an absolutely hilarious D&D webcomic that's up over 800 strips now. Getting a couple of those every day for a year or so would be quite a treat.
posted by Malor at 8:49 AM on September 7, 2009

The 'Available Comics' page could really use an RSS feed.
posted by xorry at 8:52 AM on September 7, 2009 [1 favorite]

Yeah, they need a version of this for blogs. The LIFO stack format is ideal for time-sensitive news-update blogs, but really damages blogs in which entries are not independent and form a continuing narrative.
posted by painquale at 12:17 PM on September 7, 2009

I've been avoiding picking up Girl Genius for exactly this reason, so thank you!

Also, since limeonaire mentioned it, they added xkcd today - looks like you can follow the additions via their site news RSS feed.
posted by polymath at 6:10 PM on September 7, 2009

Oh man, I can see so much time going down the tubes with this. As a completist, I try to catch everything from the beginning. Now the world of web-comics is my oyster! Mwah ha ha!

Wait. This isn't evil. This is awesome.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:58 PM on September 8, 2009