Thread " The 30th Anniversary of the Greatest Thing You've Never Heard of!" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 9:04PM, Apr. 28, 2022

Just thought I'd point out to everyone here that April 29th, 2022 is the 30th Anniversary of the Legion of Net.Heroes, which – yeah, guessing most if not all of you have never heard of that. (But if you've ever heard of this or even heard of its rival original amateur prose shared universe – The Superguy Altiverse – feel free to chime in. Or chime in about how you've never heard of it – whichever works for you.)

The Legion of Net.Heroes began way back in 1992 on the USENET newsgroup rec.arts.comics (basically a thread with a bunch of college students goofing off – creating their own superhero alter egos like Marvel Zombie Lad, Lurking Girl, Cheesecake Eater Lad, Comics Snob Boy and so on – an early meme). And people started writing stories with those characters parodying the various comic storylines or the comic industry its self. It would get its own newsgroup alt.comics.lnh a few months later and the LNH posters would help create rec.arts.comics.creative in 1994, which was a newsgroup for all types of original shared universes of various sci-fi and fantasyish types (since all the stories were prose – the comics thing was a bit confusing – although my first foray into webcomics was The Legion of Net.Heroes: The Webcomic – which was the only time the LNH was an actual comic. One of these days I should post those to the Drunk Duck site).

It was at its biggest in the 90s. Probably over 200 people (of all stripes across the world) wrote or made up characters for it in total. Probably over a 1000 stories have been written for it (who knows how many – too many to count). And while a lot of stories were goofy in nature there were also some pretty serious stories (in sort of Alan Mooreish sort of way). And the quality of the stories – well, you know – a lot of rough amateurish not ready for prime time type stuff – but also some really great stuff too. I mean I'd rather read the best LNH story than the best Wildcard or Thieves World story. But, I'm biased being one of those LNH Writers (and I also wrote some of those really bad LNH stories that no one should ever read).

And it still exists. Even to this day – there are still stubborn old timers giving CPR to the LNH to keep it from its final oblivion. In that really dead place that is USENET, rec.arts.comics.creative still has a little life in it. And any new people who have the desire to write for it could theoretically still do that (One the best things about the LNH is that they have absolutely no standards – so anyone can join up). But its time is probably almost up – can't really see it getting to the 35th or 40th year – but who knows.

But just thought I would point out this relic from the Internet's Ancient Past – in case there are any of you out there that are curious about it and have some free time to read its vast archive.

Here's an archive of most of the stories from 1992 to 2006 (The archivist kind of quit after 2006):

https://archives.eyrie.org/racc/lnh/

And here's a wiki site detailing all of the characters, stories, timelines, and latest LNH stories:

https://lnh.diamond-age.net/wiki/Main_Page

Arthur "Spreading the word…" Spitzer

Posted at 9:04PM, Apr. 28, 2022

Congrats on that! 30 years is ma massive milestone! DD has only been around for 20!

I have never heard of that comic but I do remember newsgroups. XD

Posted at 12:04PM, Apr. 29, 2022

Ozoneocean wrote:
Congrats on that! 30 years is ma massive milestone! DD has only been around for 20!

I have never heard of that comic but I do remember newsgroups. XD

Thanks!

Did post the first strip of the LNH Webcomic on the Duck today:
https://next.theduckwebcomics.com/The_LNH_Webcomic/5709150/

I should say that a lot of the LNH prose stories were way, way better than the LNH Webcomic (which was mostly done as a goof and in 2007 when I couldn't draw that well) (I myself did way, way better LNH stories than the LNH Webcomic). So don't judge the rest of the LNH too harshly by reading the LNH Webcomic.

Posted at 6:08AM, Aug. 18, 2022

He comes to a stop, standing beside Dr. Killfile. He's slightly
shorter than your average hero, with a black bodysuit, and loud green hair
that mysteriously droops over one eye…

YES, IT'S MANGA-MAN!!

This is a fascinating time capsule. I feel like reading rejected scripts for MST3K skits lol.