El Santo reads some e-mail
I got an interesting e-mail from reader Cody Caltharp. Apparently, The Webcomic Overlook is on the bad side of the Chinese government. OK, probably overdramatic… though I am banned in China.
I’ll skip the cookies and go right for the cream- your reviews are the best in webcomicdom. So good in fact, that, like all sites worth seeing, your website has been blocked in China. This is particularly annoying for me, as I currently live in China. What was so absolutely necessary for me to need a vpn around the Great Firewall for? Facebook? Youtube? Greatbig Granny Butts? Nope. The Webcomic Overlook.
Oh, China. Was it because I only posted hotties from India and none from China? If so, I plan to rectify that matter soon. Consider this picture of actress Maggie Cheung to be my first attempt at penance.
Also, John Lustig of Last Kiss Comics sent me a press release of a contest he’s running on his site:
Seattle, WA — Jan. 24, 2010 — Last Kiss Inc. (http://www.lastkisscomics.com/), GoComics (http://www.gocomics.com/lastkiss) and Hugo-award-winning writer Orson Scott Card (http://www.hatrack.com/) have teamed up for the best comics writing contest of all time!
“Modesty prevents me from boasting more,” said Last Kiss creator John Lustig. “But really–how often do you get a chance to write a comic with a celebrated author, win cool prizes and get your brilliant dialog admired by millions?”
How the Contest Works: Orson Scott Card wrote a fun (and suitably bizarre) caption for a panel of Lustig’s Last Kiss art. The challenge for readers is to create some funny dialog that fits with Card’s wild caption and the art.
…
Submissions: Accepted until Feb. 5 at 11:59 p.m. CST. On Feb. 8, seven of the “best” submissions will be selected by Lustig and the winner be determined by an online poll Feb. 8-13. The winner will be announced Feb. 15.
More details at lastkisscomics.com.
Posted on January 24, 2010, in The Webcomic Overlook, webcomics. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
The Webcomic Overlook 
Dude I’ve been crawling you’re archives and I live in China and you are definitely not banned. Possible explanation:
1) Blocks rapidly go on and off, especially when something they don’t like is on the news. Often sites will vanish for a few days. I’d imagine there’s some bureaucracy back there and all kinds of queuing systems. God knows.
2) It’s easy to confuse a block with overseas websites (and to some extent local websites) slowing to a crawl during from 5PM-11PM and often on weekends. In a lot of big cities it is particularly bad. It’s a matter of infrastructure, though. Not much backbone here.
3) Some service providers have their own filters in addition to the governments, filtering obscene, harmful-to-children type stuff based on keywords which is infuriating.
Pingback: Plain ol’ comics on computers roundup | Paperless Comics