Archive Binge

By Shamus Posted Monday Aug 31, 2009

Filed under: Links 33 comments

The Irregular Webcomic crowd has launched Archive Binge, a service that will take an existing webcomic and feed it to you via RSS at the rate you choose. So, if you’ve never read Order of the Stick before, all you have to do is:

1) Go into the kitchen
2) Open freezer
3) Insert head
4) Close freezer really hard
5) Realize the pain and facial damage is a just punishment for missing out on such a fine webcomic.
6) Go read OOTS

But you’re daunted by reading all 672 strips at once, you could tell Archive Binge to make a special RSS feed that will give you 2 OOTS strips every day until you’re all caught up.

It’s a great idea. Note that if you sign up for Irregular Webcomic and elect to read one a day, you will never catch up because David Morgan-Mar is an unstoppable madman. However, if you elect to read two Irregular Webcomic strips each day, then in 2407 days – just over six and a half years – you’ll be all caught up. Yeah. You might want to read more than one of those a day.

DM of the Rings is one of the available comics. If you’ve always wanted to read that, now would be a good time to do so. I won’t even make you do the freezer thing.

 


From The Archives:
 

33 thoughts on “Archive Binge

  1. Avilan the Grey says:

    This IS a great idea. And I am fully caught up already.

  2. Rosseloh says:

    This is a great idea for those who like systematic updates.

    Doesn’t help me at all, however. I read webcomics (when I find one I like) as if the world was going to end the next day: fast, most of the archive in a single sitting, and when I hit the end, I’m left with this sense of longing for more.

  3. Phase says:

    Whoo, Order of the Stick! Giant in the Playground representin’!

  4. Nickless says:

    Hey Shamus, any chance you could do that with Chainmail Bikini? (Assuming you haven’t already) I can’t find it anymore on Fear the Boot. I know it was discontinued but I occasionally like to glance back at memorable webcomics for nostalgia’s sake

    1. Shamus says:

      Nickless: I’ll be doing an announcement about CB at a later time. Shawn and I have been talking about putting up the CB archives for months. So far, only Shawn has actually put work into it, but the desire is there.

  5. Matt says:

    OOTS is great, and updates even restart today! Its a great day to binge on the archives.

  6. SatansBestBuddy says:

    Hmm, lets see…

    *glances through comic selection*

    Bad writing, poor drawings, all the good ones I’m already caught up with… wait a minute…

    AH-HA, Brick House, a comic I’ve never heard of before that manages to draw me in with it’s latest and first strip!

    We have a winner!

  7. HeadHunter says:

    I’ll bet that Guitar Hero/Rubik’s Cube kid could read all 672 OotS comics at once. AT ONCE.

  8. midgetonstilts says:

    The gods bless David Morgan-Mar and the Comic Irregulars. What will they think of next?

  9. Neil says:

    I’ve already caught up with OOTS, but I kinda want to insert my head in the freezer regardless. Such is the pain of living in the south. >:(

  10. mitian says:

    Man OOTS. When I first discovered it about a month ago, I finished reading it in three days. I couldn’t stop.

  11. Shawn says:

    “I'll be doing an announcement about CB at a later time. Shawn and I have been talking about putting up the CB archives for months. So far, only Shawn has actually put work into it, but the desire is there.”

    Damn straight, slacker!

  12. Graham says:

    Strangely, OotS isn’t one of the supported comics.

    Was it before, and now it is gone?

    Or was it just an example Shamus used, despite it not being there?

    1. Shamus says:

      OOTS isn’t supported? Facepalm. I thought it was.

  13. 6thfloormadness says:

    OOTS is awesome, they need to get Burlew to agree so they can create the RSS feed. It is one of the few comics that even though I am up to date I still go on an archive binge with it every now and then.

    Rosseloh I know exactly what you mean.

  14. Rosseloh says:

    @Neil:
    come to South Dakota, you can have some of our “summer” temperatures. It hasn’t gotten above 90 except for a couple weeks ago, and we rarely even creep past 80. It’s odd.

    Makes me wonder what the winter’s gonna be like. /shudder

  15. Gildan Bladeborn says:

    Methinks the freezer thing is perhaps too merciful Shamus, especially considering we’re reading your blog – if anyone is the target audience of OOTS, it’s the folks visiting this site!

  16. Deoxy says:

    Rosseloh – yeah, that’s Global Warming for you! Oh wait…

    Schlock Mercenary is another good that’s in the “unstoppable mad man” category. Very enjoyable, too.

    And you’re far too nice to people who haven’t read OotS. Heh.

  17. Shawn says:

    I actually prefer to Archive Binge the old fashioned way, by spending a few days doing nothing else but reading the entirety of a comic’s archive. It’s what sucked me in to both OOTS and Questionable Content. (Actually, DM of the Rings for that matter…)

  18. Mark says:

    I hope Penny-Arcade makes it onto that list. I’ve tried and failed many times to read through their whole archive.

  19. Bret says:

    I’m with Shawn. It took me about a week, maybe two to get through Irregular and Schlock. Lacking the ability to power through archives is for the weak.

    Also: Order of the stick is one of the best webcomics ever. (Dr. Mcninja’s the best of the ones already on the list, looks like. Also quite good.)

  20. Groboclown says:

    I beta tested it, and I’m really happy with how it’s turned out. Unfortunately, due to the whole ownership thing, the Comic Irregulars are wanting to get either the author to come to them, or for the author to reply to an e-mail saying, “yes, I’d like that.” Then it’s a matter of wiring it up.

    On an aside, I’d like to commend Shamus for constructing a very odd mapping between the comic number and the URL – it really made the Archive Binge adaptable to any setup!

  21. Thanks for the plug, Shamus! And yeah, we’d dearly love to get OotS on there, as well as Penny Arcade, xkcd, Dinosaur Comics, Achewood, Sluggy Freelance, Starslip, Freefall, etc, etc, etc…

    But we think it’s impolite to simply add other people’s comics without their permission. So we’re waiting on responses to our query e-mails to the authors. If any of you know any webcomic authors, give them a poke!

  22. mc says:

    David, I’m pretty sure that Randall would be totally fine with you republishing xkcd. He’s got the license necessary for it.

  23. Robert says:

    There’s three Irregular Webcomics a week, so at one a day you will eventually catch up…

  24. Hipparchus says:

    I read the entire OOTS archive in two days (600 strips at the time), and just check it biweekly. No problem.

  25. The Defenestrator says:

    They should put mezzacotta on there too [/obvious joke].

  26. rofltehcat says:

    I read the entire OOTS archive in two days (600 strips at the time), and just check it biweekly. No problem.
    Did that with some webcomics, too…
    always got a headache and couldn’t stop :(

    This archive-thingy sounds like a great idea!

  27. Daimbert says:

    There’s an Irregular Webcomic every day; Darths and Droids is on 3 a week.

  28. That’s one of the best ideas in webcomics I’ve heard of in a long time.

  29. ephant says:

    Thanks for pointing this out! This is one of the best ideas ever in the history of the world and I am really excited about catching up on a whole lot of comics I have always been too intimidated to catch up on :D

    I’m also pretty excited about my comic being up there too :D

  30. Melf_Himself says:

    “You have exceeded the number of registration attempts for this session. Please try again later.”

    Urge to kill…rising.

    Apparently I am a robot of some description and I didn’t know. Kind of like that dude in Terminator 4.

  31. Melf_Himself says:

    Oh, they have an additional thing where you have to use a lower case w in front of the captcha. Reading the fine print ftw.

    In other news, Order of the Stick does not appear to be one of the comics whose author has consented to have it appear. Therefore I accuse you of false advertising through an internet blog, one of the most dastardly of crimes.

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